Cold Teeth

It’s amazing how time flies when you’re having fun. What’s even more amazing is when time flies and you’re not having fun. Like when it’s winter break and there are no more students to teach, and all the other ESL teachers are off on their South Pacific vacations. Suddenly the legging and plaid donning hipster ex-pats have become weather forecasters, tweeting the daily highs and complaining of the agonizing Balinese heat. When chattering teeth shake you awake in the middle of the night, you log onto Facebook, only to be bombarded with never-ending photo streams of Cambodian motorcyclists and meditating Buddha statues as visual proof that your friends are super cosmopolitan… and warm, too. But you’re trying to save a buck, so you stay home and stream “Lost” everyday for a month. And then all of a sudden you wake up one February afternoon with a soju hangover and realize that if you don’t book that plane ticket home right this minute you may have to stay in this freezing cold country longer than expected so you Skype up the Indian representative for Singapore Airlines and beg for an aisle seat with the vegetarian option and wonder what happened to the past year.

Destiny

You are invisible.
Your subtle movements act before blind eyes. Your presence barely increases the vibrational frequency of this heat-stroked room a half degree higher.
Your temper tantrum is a slight draft snaking in through plastic blinds -
A goosefleshed arm hurriedly reaches up and yanks the string before it’s back to the grind.
Curse words don’t phase them. Violence only causes a split second of confusion before annoyance permeates the hoard of grey faces scuttling across the room,
cascading upon agitated scanners,
fax machines,
that coffee pot stained brown from years of abuse.
You are inaudible.
Your carefully construed sentences fall on deaf ears. The mute button jammed long ago from repeated encounters with insistent index fingers.
White noise
Static fuzz decoys
Nonsensical sound layered many times over with insolent turbulence…
They stuff headphones into their ears, hoping to drown out reality with more.
A cacophony of media.
Shhhh…
Your soft whisper would startle them.
I saw you swirling around in my teacup onetime.
I ignored your frail figure precariously swaying back and forth on the subway as I burrowed deeper into my seat.
I took away the mirrors, surrounded myself with false friends, purchased the latest technological gadgets and plugged into the black hole of universal untruths.
The coin landed on tails and I flipped it again.
The boy broke my heart and I asked to be friends.
You’re breaking me down. I can feel your smile growing wider and wider. My dreams have become lucid and you meet with me there. You brought me to a country where mirrors are inescapable. You accost me on the street and I can no longer feign another language.
Your patience prevails.
I desperately grapple for your hand but you trip my foot instead.
And I land on tails.

rise and shine!

eyelids flutter open
sunlight filters through
a desperate grasp at the final scene
that subliminally sensuous haze of a dream
details evaporate
stale, dry air
all that remains is the truth

4

Cubicle prison.
Grab the day by its collar;
Shake it. Hurry up!

3

short breath, sweaty
palms, pupils
expand
he murmurs
the last line is always hard

2

dead leaf strewn sidewalk
purple gold orange maroon
let’s walk in the street

1

sliding doors burst wide
children
shout
shove
spill
inside
old man sips brown tea

A Dozen Dry Roses

Why is it that you must sit in anguish, watching something die, deteriorating into decrepitude, allowing the hurt to take hold, filling your void with colorful distractions and yoga classes…
Why is it that you must learn to let something go to trigger its majestic reign, an afterlife that bestows more beauty than if you had jumped in last minute to play hero, and like a bouquet of long stemmed red roses pinned upside down,
it becomes angry before it becomes art.

“Lament” by Roger McGough

The only problem
with haiku is that you just
get started and then

Parasite

Ignore the dark thing inside me
Leave its nasty words undigested
Scrutiny spoken by lips unaware
Reality crumbles from all contested
It swims inside my belly
And feeds upon my thought
Provokes my tongue to say crude things
Destroys great love to rot
It joins me on the subway
Crawls after me to work
It notices every ugly flaw
My shelter and shadow, a constant lurk
But barbed claws leech abreast my soul
Brittle fangs gnaw at my brain
I tear my sheets to shreds sometimes
I vomit down the drain
Then sunrise brings physical ache so acute
It nullifies last night
But my dark thing is there to comfort me through
We roll over and shut our eyes tight