keredomo

Tokyo, 2020
after plum blossoms yield
to Samurai cherry, perhaps
decorative almond trees will shade
your departure

I fade ahead of myself, keredomo
always anxious for the fatal blur,
the next deceptive upset.

wink

I vow to be
there; you'll glimpse
June-bugs caught
in my hair

I'll wear a second skin
of greening pink
and a mouth that drips
cherry blossom ink.

word count ( in praise of prepositions)

snaking close to 80,000,
my fingertips shed words
syllables untangled and reconvened
to be bid upon at foot of dawn.

keep your nouns true, verbs strong
modifiers cast aside,
soft pink leather
a second skin
to be sloughed and left behind
again.

unspeakable

my throat is patched
with kite strings,
particles detached from greater
lots, parts and parcels
undelivered to all that is lost

Make Haste

It is almost
upon us.
Past and future collapse
or collide in that tense Culture Shock,
a suitcase condensed
yet fitfully packed.

 

on the distortion of anecdote

the ghost girl
dances in and out of papered walls
Does she dream of freedom
or of ending the fall?
If your slaves won,
would they lord it over
overlords? Or
would they simply go away
to be heard of nevermore?

A Rose For Iris

 

icons crossed
stars tossed
into an open sky
which smiles down
upon a lake of slate and chalk

Let It Be Said, Leda Never Led

on the elegance of prefixes

I
never to forget
the day I dragged you home
setting you down
every once in a while
on a bedazzled drift of snow

II
where do errant
umbrellas stray
after they have lost
their way?

III
every life turn
can be explained
with a prefix; all of time
sliced and stitched again

IV
the seamstress at Buchenwald
grew to love transposed tattoos.
how else could she have laboured
with such devotion, such sang froid?

Katrina@Buchenwald

a cauldron at sea
roils with fierce memory
liquid walls decide:
loser straddles all.

that parachutes me into Buchenwald
an airy graceful fall
the lone oak
standing more mythical
than a lampshade suitcased
for an Easy funeral

hiraeth composed by trobairitz

absence for a buried time,
this old death
can do no wrong.

swim softly
toward your legend's shore.

I missed you once; I missed you twice,
heretic troubadour
your fingers long, your temper short,
our marriage — the end of lore.