The Secret of Poetry

If I cared what you thought

About my poems

I wouldn’t post them

If I tried to get money

From my poems

I wouldn’t post them

If I studied to be a poet

For my poems

I wouldn’t post them

Aren't you glad I am

A careless

Poor

Unpolished

Poetry writer

The Hand of Okinawa

When Satsuma swords

Robbed you of yours

You turned your hands and feet

To weapons of their defeat

But the Ryukyu kingdom did go

Absorbed into greedy Yamato

When Funakoshi was exiled from you

He spent his life among the Yamatonochu

Teaching their elite the empty hand

While they held contempt for their fellow man

Put with Koreans and Africans in their Human Museum

Tokyoites would pay money to see them

Of course Funakoshi hid the secrets

In simple dancing moves for idiots

Only those respectful of Okinawa-te

Can unlock the wisdom hid away

Yamato’s greed was its downfall

The Yankee horde crushed its armies all

The debt was paid in Okinawan blood

Two blinding flashes united them in victimhood

The same hand that plucks the sanshin

Strikes down foes with zanshin

This now empty hand, once Chinese

Is free to move as it may please

I humbly take the hand of Shuri

Which has given so much to me

Peace of mind and heart and health

There could be no greater wealth

Some take the hand in arrogance

And boastful of their karate dance

Think a white suit improves their mojo

Strut and bully in their dojo

That is why I train alone

In a park my skills I hone

With pages of Kanezawa and his mentors

I avoid the throng of blackbelt vendors

Those who see me and feel sorry

Have never heard of yamakomori

What I lose in fighting prowess

I gain in peace and humbleness

Naked Truths

Listen children to me

We are not born sinners

But make ourselves feel guilty

And only we can forgive us

Breasts and cock are not dirty parts

It is how you use them

The filth is in our hearts

And how we choose to view things

It is as natural to be nude

For a newborn baby

As for a young woman or old dude

Who cast off their cloaks of shame

Never think women whores

Because of thongs and miniskirts

It is the hypocrisy of our mores

To do this and forgive bikinis

Burqas to conceal feminine beauty

Are just bodily oppression

A weak-minded male imposed duty

To save them from their obsession

If we hated ourselves less

And learned to love our bodies

We’d feel less unease undressed

And learn to face the naked truth

Greenland

The hunter wakes up

Knowing what season it is

Whether to net ptarmigans

With a breath and a single stroke

As they fly north for summer

Or spear seals

As they come up to breathe

Though nowadays using a rifle

Behind a white blind

Or cutting up narwhales lost in the bay

The days of trudging

Pushes sledges

Are long gone

Outboard motors and rifles

Speed him on his way

To great family feasts

Of birds fermented in a sealskin bag

Or else boiled whole feathers and all

Divine heady stew

Fresh whale meat sweeter than any fruit

Steaks of caribou or musk ox

But sometimes sleep doesn’t come

When he reflects how warm

The days have become

Or how poorly his pelts sell

Barely enough to support

The wife and children

Who will not follow

In the footsteps he has followed

In a line unbroken for millennia

But be lost in the whiteout

Of the outside world

Working Staycation

 Reading the ‘The 47 Ronin’

On my sunny balcony in the morning

Cutting mushrooms and onions

For a simple lunch

For the wife and I

Tapping at the keyboard

As the noonday sun turns to evening rainclouds

And the heat of the day blows away

With cool winds from over Holy Hiezan

Watching a show together

On the flat widescreen we bought

At Christmas

Then collapsing side by side

On our futon in the dark

There are worse ways

To spend summer vacation

The Laws

Battery acid in a river

Shit dumped in a stream

Let’s prosecute environmental crimes

And make this world a dream

130 million dollar bonus

For 10 000 out of a job

Let’s jail economic wrongdoers

Crush the temptation to lie and rob

Only because we allow them

The system retains its flaws

Let’s stop those who abuse them

Inject justice in our laws

Summertime Butterfly Lesson

Dandelion and jet wings

Having a weightless screw

Amidst warm summer winds

Tumbling between sun and blue

This is how love should be

And how it feels

With you and me

Modern Cave, Man

Think we’ve come so far technologically?

I know we’re reversing anthropologically

Fruit picking cro magnon straightened his spine

While clicking this mouse is curving mine

He spotted distant tiny game with his eye

This tiny screen reddens my peepers till I cry

To stone caves he returned with game

My concrete pad is a cavern in all but name

It’s freezing in winter even with a heat fan

And in summer I sit nakeder than a caveman

Least those guys had the ice age to cool them

Our global warming has ruined earth’s system

My continent crossing frozen Thulian forebears

Would never have to walk round in their underwears

I’m embarrassing my wife and scaring the neighbors

While my ancestors would just carry on with their labours

And although I’m WiFi connected to the digital plane

I still get caught with no umbrella in the summer rain

We modern people think all this info makes us smarter

It just makes us less able to choose what we ought to

One thing for certain with this internet revolution

No doubt it is the start of our de-evolution

Canadiana

I sat with an American

On the other side of the world

So, he says grinning

You’re Canadian

Do you live in an igloo?

Of course not

Igloos are temporary shelters

No one ever lived in one

They built them to stay alive

When the arctic storms blotted out the sky

And the wind came to freeze their flesh

But we built and played in them

Often as kids

Well, can you see an aurora from your house?

The house where I was born

Yes

But my family moved

Away from the alcohol and joblessness

And quiet desperation of the north

To a place where the ghost of an aurora

Shines dimly

Once every few years

Over city streets where no one looks up

Are you an Eskimo?

Not 100 percent

I have Métis status

Which means I am proud of my Inuit blood

But don’t have enough in my veins

To get money or special treatment

From the government

But just enough to be called ‘skimo’ and ‘skapi’

In high school

Do you club seals?

Never had to

Nor have I wrung a chicken’s neck

Nor shot a pig, cow or goat

But I happily would eat

A good feed of seal

As I would any of those others

And if stranded on an isle

I'd as happily kill a seal for meat

As a pig, dolphin, or even you

Do you play hockey?

Nope

Never did, never will

Can barely skate

Can’t ski, love snowboarding

But never go

My generation was raised

To hate and fear winter

Not love and play in it

As these new Canadians

I think they’re right

But just can’t force myself out

Into the snow and cold

He says, none of the other Canadians

Knew or did as much Canadian stuff

As you

I laugh

He doesn’t know that

In Canada I am the exception

Rather than the rule

And feel as estranged in the land of my birth

As here on the other side of the world

Woman

Woman

Your are my weather

Greeting me with sun

Days

Till white clouds

Gather like sheep

Then dark clouds

Furrow your brow

Thunderheads roll in your face

And your eyes flash lightning bolts

Your words growl thunder at me

I grow agitated

Like animals in a zoo

Running panicked

From the crack and smell of ozone

Until you rain tears

All that is inside comes out

And you greet me with sun

Days

Again

Kyoto Cricket Song

Is that a cricket chirping

In our hot apartment

This sweaty Kyoto night

Or a loose screw

In our old fan

That barely turns

The turgid air

I know you cricket

I saw you yesterday

Brown cockroach color

Peeping out from under my slippers

In the hall

My roach murder rage dissipated

When I saw your fiddlebow legs

And sad pinhead eyes

I let you live

Now you serenade us this night

Your repeated high C

Cooler than any old fan

That barely turns

The turgid air

This sweaty Kyoto night

Of Terms and Terminology

 Rightful government

Is a contradiction in terms

No government has

Or ever will

Be full of right

A war on terror

Makes as much sense

As a mad king

Slashing the ocean waves

With his sword

We live in

A world of terminology

Terms infected with ideology

Germs of falsehood

Riddling our truth

Summer Slowdown

Hey all,


In case you haven't noticed or do care, I've slowed down to 2-3 poems a week since last month. Lot of writing projects going on now outside of poetry, but the mental exercise of doing the blog has really helped whip my writing ability into shape these past few months. Since I figure most of you are on summer hiatus anyway, enjoy the light build up of poems when you check in once or twice a week or on rainy Sundays.

Tedankhamen

Two Way Street

My blue bird of happiness

You chased from my brain cage

My inner dog of loyalty

Fled from your military boot

I am lost

Between your ‘this’ and ‘that’

Communication should be

A two way street

You make it one

I cannot enter

Life is Unfair

The cicada sings

Then screws for six weeks

And dies

Sharks never get cancer

But suffocate

When they stop moving

The poor person

Cries over pennies

But knows his friends

Are true

The rich man

Lives longer

Using his fortune

On painful degrading treatments

Life is

Unfair

But that

Is not always

A bad thing

The Old Joke

In the joke

The old couple

Making love

Each think of

Other people

Know that

When I love you

I fantasize

About you on

That night

Ghosts of Japan

My first year in Japan

I saw no ghosts

Just the rusted skeletons

Of a broken bubble

I heeded the call of blood

Ran to Europa in summer

Was exiled on my return

To a haunted mansion

In the screaming jungle

Praying at the foot

Of a templed jade mountain

Gazing out at the sea

My second year I met a ghost

Recognized his uniform

From ‘BANZAI!’ charges

In Sgt Rock comics books

It took me a year

To understand his words

The wife and child left in Kobe

The dysentery that killed him

Other foreigners came

To my place in the jungle

But couldn’t see the phantom

Walked drunk through him

My third year in Japan

Other ghosts arrived

The faceless woman

Eye for anus man

They held no fear for me

I drank sake with them

Told them of wendigo

And the old hag of Newfoundland

At my contract end they wept

As I returned to Canada

I hoped the next English teacher

Would love them as much

Simple Math

Poverty + Prejudice = Riots.

Work – Dignity = Unrest

Negligence x Brutality = Resistance

Despotic Regime  ∕  The People = Revolution

Leaders everywhere need to learn

This simple math

The Other Labradorian

I met him

Coal black hair

Dripping like a mop

Four paws

Scrabbling on hard stones

Tongue hanging

Dragged by the collar

His arctic body melting

As the red sun turned its back

Beyond holy Hiezan mountain

And the heat of the day died

Enough to let live

The other Labradorian

He met me

Thinning hair

Plastered to my skull

Arthritic feet

Pounding hard pavement

Chest burning

Dragging myself outside

My arctic body melting

As the red sun turned its back

Beyond holy Hiezan mountain

And the heat of the day died

Enough to let live

The other Labradorian

Lost Arts

Like retired sumos we meet

In the earthen ring of combat

Flabby conversation muscles

Lagging concentration ability

Duelists lose their touch

When everyone gets guns

We stare off into space

Tired of keeping the ball aloft between us

Wishing the face we face

Was inside a screen before us

I have started scribbling

Thoughts from my fingers

Onto paper airplanes

That circle the world to find you

Cheetahs get fat

When meat is thrown to them in cages

It numbs my digits

Cramps my hand for days

Costs money

Like all real things should

Summertime Simile

The singsong trilling of cicadas

On orange Japanese summer nights

Crying out for short-lived love

Sounds like the sad shrieks of loons

On lonely Ontario lakes

Moving ever further from the homes of man

It Finds You Everywhere

Fake American boulevard

In an Osaka movie park

Where a mechanical shark swims

Terrorizing a fake boat

In the fake New York town

Real Newfie music plays

And makes me wonder

Am I a real Newfie any more