From Hong Kong to Boston, December 19, 2009

Ambitiously bundled
Just off the plane
Blizzard waiting, throwing
Gorgeously threatening wind
Spattered with opaque ice particles
Snow like Julia Child's omelettes
Fluffed by who holds
A handle incessantly moving
Shaking up my life - my skin
Is not used to the fifty degree fahrenheit drop
Not noticing until rosy cheeks last through next dawn

Running in a snowstorm
Better than Buddhist leg-crossing meditation
It is easy to be here
Displacement disappears

Explaining in an hour all
Abstractions - shattered self identity
Forming willfully - no longer a mirrored double
Uncanny expat expectancies, experience -
Taking shape from within
Radiating the labyrinth I've created

I cook dinner for my family
Feeding them a story
They previously only heard by phone.

Meaning of Life

Dude in a drunken

syncopated journey

to his pee tree

marches awkwardly to the music

playing on my iPod—

In Rainbows ringing,

bouncing between my ears

But he doesn’t understand—

Radiohead creates dissonance

musically and philosophically

breaking normal frequencies

to find truth

It is one-thirty

in the afternoon and much

too early to cloud your life

in momentary perfection fading

His friends sit with their backs

to the glistening rooftops

of Prague

as if this day and this sky

alternating incessantly between azure

and white making shade and sun

surprisingly cycling temperatures

was already done by them at the age

of twenty-seven

When it’s later, when

your hair has lost

the rainbow in a white-out

including all colors

(as physics tells us)

your life’s truths then

return to the

dreamworld—when realized

as MLK hoped for—

only then can you

float through life in your enlightenment found

King and Gandhi found it

after death

Buddhists reincarnate for it

but we may earlier though never

by jogging through life—

I run in infinite circles, often

changing my pace

pushed forward through

education and experiences

like death, reading Lear, cliff-climbing—

I journey across the world and carry the

minds of many students

with me, always getting me one step

closer to knowing

Listen to the People of the Sun

in Oaxaca, to the roommate

you would never have chosen,

to the political refugee from Zimbabwe

selling you a Prada bag outside

the Duomo and to all

the Weird Fishes along the way

I want to hear this drunk

man’s story,

but I don’t speak Czech.

I hope he goes back to reality

to find a better dream and die

with that everything

and that nothing

we are trying to define merely

in journey and never in the final result.

Hanoi Lake Ladies

Gyrating - in syncopated harmony
Tai chi has evolved in this country.
Vietnamese women with soft middles
Stay flexible and vulnerable
As passersby chuckle in respect.
(They jump and kick in private gyms
lacking value beyond bodily development)
I wonder who hires the instructor?
She has them: touching,
Massaging shoulders in a train...
Something is slightly naughty in this scene
As if husbands watching are reminded
Of what they should do after dinner tonight.

Causeway Bay Chinese New Year Decorations