Lady Mantis

Late season mantis before death

Laying your eggs on the wall

Ootheca like brown skirts peeping out

From under your jade beauty

Offspring of the mate you ate

Your nymphs will feed on one another

When the spring you will never see

Comes around again

Lost in the Desert

Sweating under desert sun

In your hand your golden gun

Placed against the browned nape

Of your partner in the rape

Of your people and your land

A machinegun in his hand

Held to the back of another ghoul

You used to torture as your tool

Who in turn a prisoner covers

Then in turn turns his gun on others

And on across the burning dunes

A line of threatening armed goons

Stretches past the horizon

Seems forever to go on

But unseen bends back again

Through the cities of your land

Like an asp the sands it roams

Till it loops back through homes

Through the country and the city

Threatening lives without pity

The final instant you come to know

The last muzzle rested on your brow

And the line of murderers you began

With a shot end your lifespan

What Would Conan Do?

In this savage civilization
When my soul suffers abrasions
There is one honest self-query
That renders me quite cheery

When I'm deathly sick at heart
A question brings to me comfort
When my mind is pained too
I ask, what would Conan do?

What would Conan do?

Spur his mighty thews

Into furious action!

Not be content with mere reaction

When relations with my wife

Have caused me undue stress and strife

I do like Conan with the vampire

Throw my worries in the fire!

When I compare my unlovely flab

To the Cimmerian’s iron abs

I tax my muscles in sun or rain

Like he did on the Wheel of Pain

When dirty workplace politics

Tire me of civilization’s tricks

I escape as the barbarian goes

By moving catlike in shadows

When from futile job searches

Zombielike my body lurches

Like Conan fighting foes undying

I fight on till the prize is mine

When misfortune from heaven comes

I rely on myself, never ask of Crom

If god doesn’t deign to pull me through

I’ll gladly yell ‘To hell with you!’

When life has me cowered

I channel that hero of Howard

This question always gets me through

I ask, what would Conan do?

Halogen Call

Unclenched feet from leather prisons

Pad catlike into sneakers

Radiation etched brown eyes

Drink lightless gulfs between halogen bursts

Chalk dust dry old man throat

Breathes night air free of conditioning and body stink

Bumper car psyche

Listens to the sound of itself

Mouse contorted back and arms

Fall gently into gentle swish

30 minutes without work or world

Ready to be home at my own door

Ode to Dying Men

Some of my best friends

Have been dying men

The explorer dying of cancer

Told me tales of sealhide boats

Why you never fix an outboard to them

Of a thousand near-death escapes

On ice pans in white storms

The breathless sight of Northern Lights

Of boundless friendship of the North

And made me proud

Of the homeland I had spent my life

Running from

The grappler diabetic with guts rotting

Told me tales of bloody streets

Showed me his long nihonto scar

Bruised knuckles from GI faces

Friends dead in yakuza wars

The transformation of his scarred land

Shared the strength and peace of budo

And made me proud

Of the second homeland where I spend my life

Creating myself

Some of my best friends

Have been dying men

Have taught me life

In the grip of Death

2012

Come Apocalypse!

Come the End of these Times

Come New Age

Awaken the Divine Feminine

To break open the Vaults of Knowledge

Let the Death of this world

Of its Priests of the Bull and Bear

Of Moneylender Temples

Give birth to a New Order

Where Each is valued what they are Worth

Come Apocalypse!

Come the End of all Wars

Come the New Humans

To banish Hate and Avarice

Seal up the Split Atom and Mother of All Bombs

Let the Death of this world

Of its Lords of Strife and Maiming

Of Old Men of the Mountain

Give birth to a New Country

Where each has his fill of Milk and Honey

Come Apocalypse!

Come the Birth of New Consciousness

Come Brotherhood of Man

Come the Singularity

To take us away from the Womb of this Earth

Help us stand Independent and fully Grown

Let the Death of our Childhood

Of its Caul of Fears and Fantasies

Of its Bogeymen and Bullies

Give Unity to our fractured Selves

Where we find Strength to step out into the Light

Modern Anthropology I

 I do not speak

This modern language of clothes

In sweat pants and Chinese hat

To work I do go

I see in the faces

Of morning bus riders

Disgust and disdain

For my casual attire

They do not know

I change in my office

They judge without thinking

That’s how tribal law is

Listen, I’d wear a pin stripe suit to bed

If it’d make me a better teacher

But it’s the man not the clothes

That teaches and reaches you

I do not speak this language of clothes

Or wish to know its taboos or to dos

I only know how primitive it is

When superficial judgments we choose to use

Perhaps they are right to judge by my wear

Perhaps I am a savage in modern dress

The truth is that I really don’t care

That’s my civil response to this world’s savageness

Ironic Koans

In Japan

They deliver food

On a motorbike

And leave a mountain

Of styrofoam

In Korea

They do the same

But leave metal dishes

And drive back to get them

Which is more eco?

In Egypt

Four men push a shovel

While one pulls it with a rope

In Canada

One man operates a steam shovel

While four hold flags and chat

Which is more efficient?

In North Korea

People with no freedom

Starve or eat their children

In America

People with nothing but freedom

Eat until they bust

Which is more meaningless?

Fall Haikus

Fall Haiku 1

Exercise in fall

Leaves and dried seed pods clinging

Even through washing

Fall Haiku 2

Early cooling dusks

Sweatless jogging home from work

Steaming I arrive

Ode to Kyoto

Like an old geisha

You lure me with melancholy songs

Like an old geisha

Your makeup hides ancient battle scars

Like an old geisha

I love you and think you love me

Like an old geisha

You just want my money

1000 yen just to get to you and back

More if I go downtown to Sanjo

Where all the action is

Like an old geisha

You befriend my wife

Like an old geisha

You take her shopping at Isetan and Shijo

Like an old geisha

You understand a woman's heart

Like an old geisha

You just want her man