Category Archives: Shoebox

all the odds and ends… scraps of scribbles and digressions, unfinished, almost forgotten and without a cycle to belong

Finding Home #transcription (repeat)

No longer daunted
By subterfuge
Payola schemes or even
Assassinations by a religious stooge

Still enamored by overbites
Pretty lies, feathered caps
and Japanese super cub motorbikes

Confused by burning coals
to alchemize
and quicksilver mines
in a triangular ruse

I don’t need a course
To tell me to be happy
I already know what wealthy means:
Have you a garden, a pen and Wood stove?

The answer to the biggest question is:
“to love, and to be loved”

The pathway to go there is: kindness, tolerance, empathy, intrepidness, weakness is strength

All this is to say:
Cynicism avoided, reality reinvented, consensus subverted, admiration for the usual
Savor the regular days, notice the magnificence in nonchalance & common place.

Get down on your knees!

To look closely
The tactility of grass
The softness of sand
The circles and cycles
The shards of pottery
The ants smaller than the other ants
The lichen, the moss the dirt
The rivulets
The worm holes to everywhere else

Will lead you back to exactly here.

At the library, observations #poem

A spangled Cub Scout in his short pants and neckerchief
check out a book, holding
little sister’s hand

Elder lady clutching armload of books her shirt says

“please please protect the love“

Posters for the J2 futbol club (with a solid blonde import out in front) sponsor laden jerseys on display

(the sign reminds you not to touch, inexplicably
But instead
write celebratory messages of
support on a preformatted card)

a message for Italian pheasants

oh look! kid with a jumper covered with excavators, mixers and cranes (just like mine wears)

Pamphlets to play baseball, or table tennis or some kind of martial art… I know none of these things

Magnets attaching, all right angles, no overlap, tidy

“Literature Okayama 2023” - some kind of event I missed? (Momotaro and his monkey companion gaze nonchalantly holding a banner I can’t read)

I should pay better attention, on second thought…

Or rather festival at a temple which involves a large bonfire

And now my little guy comes running out with a book to check out

later, outside the boy with spectacles, a bright vest straps on his backpack, does 20 Achilles tendon stretches before unlocking his bicycle

we walk past and purchase three pieces of Chilean salmon from a man in a converted kei-truck
¥800

Where do you disappear? #poem

Where do you go 
when
You disappear?

I have a hunch
(and want to ask)
but suspect, maybe

Possibly too intimate to inquire, maybe

And anyhow,
do not know
how to begin

A phone number? (Would you even pick up?) A postcard address?

Oh and – do you even remember me? Anyhow

Poetry transcription: “finding home”

{transcription from an “field notes” notebook while in bed… stashed here so I don’t misplace}

[Unrelated photo #SnowyOwl]
Finding home

No longer daunted
By subterfuge
Payola schemes or even
Assassinations by a religious stooge

Still enamored by overbites
Pretty lies feathered caps
and quicksilver mines

Confused by burning coals
to alchemize
cartoon currencies
in a triangular ruse

I don’t need a course
To tell me to be happy
I already know what wealthy means
Have you a garden, a pen and Wood stove?

The answer to the biggest question is:
“to love, and to be loved”

The pathway to go there is: kindness, tolerance, empathy, intrepidness, weakness is strength

All this is to say:
Cynicism avoided, reality reinvented, consensus subverted, admiration for the usual
Savor the regular days, notice the magnificence in nonchalance & common place.

Get down on your knees!

To look closely
The tactility of grass
The softness of sand
The circles and cycles
The shards of pottery
The ants smaller than the other ants
The lichen, the moss the dirt
The rivulets
The worm holes to everywhere else

Will lead you back to exactly here.

Snippets and words, w/o context per se {transcribed from notebooks}

“Hero card” images: unrelated to snippets below, as far as I can tell anyhow
Still enamoured by overbites
On your couch learning French
French as slowly as possible
Prevents encouraging habits
and libations
Depths and perceptions
Pacific driftwood heave
Bog lands
Where the houses
will float away
Though welded to the dock
Can’t hear you over the brightness of the lightsMoved it over a peg to the left
It didn’t seem
So symmetrical
Unnerving
The symmetry, you see
Makes me dizzy
& rather unsure on my feet
Bag of Zippers
Essence of Bergamot
Samovar
Lilywhite leaning
Envision a clear path homeward
Considering
Lubrious
Plaintive
Budding
Eagerly
Wafting sage and lavender
Transcendent to Tibet
High valley with a path
Leading towards mtns unknown

(Just) words, w/o sentences {transcribed from notebooks}

No context image to go with no context words
Disserta
Lascivious
Fulcrum
Perspective
Tontine
Codicil
Byzantine
Baron Edselnir (Sykes)
Amatuer - for love of - Non-careerist
Dapple
Sinister channels
Boer war
Attache
Unconventional
Warfare
Arrogance
Special burden
Intellectual
Elements
Enlighten humility
Bold concise
August
Irregulars
Fifth column
Unforgiven enmity
Drivel
Successional leanings
Fecund mind
Latent
Glimmer
Collaborators
Cavalier
Unreliables
Circasian
Armenians in Anatolia
Entente
Cautious restraint
Aptitude for reason
Trenchant for frivolous
Consulate files
Silhouette of freighters
Impetuous
Fieldworks
Agronomist
Locusts
Duplicity
Squalid

breakfast haiku

eating hot oatmeal
from Bizen pottery bowl 
scraping the bottom 
not this bowl as this bowl is in a wall but… in the town of Bizen, where the bowl in question was made

Senryu / assorted, (rather silly, some not)

Senryu are meant to be (the more formal, serene and seasonal)Haiku’s sillier cousin and in fact pre-date haiku as a form.

Imagine Japanese folks, centuries ago, I’m getting themselves around the heart with short humorous anecdote and having a good laugh.

photo has nothing to do with the poems but put here because it will make it look more Japanese

Either way, here’s a wee cycle i uncovered in a forgotten shoebox, shared here for your possible bewilderment and amusement.

Written, 2003-4, Olympia, WA (likely)

“Spam – ku”
40 million dollars
again and again
offered from Nigeria

But she told me she’d meet me
At the Thai restaurant
downtown!

I already told you
I love you ~
Can I hang up now?

The dog and I
Shared a dinner
Of tortilla chips and beer

Thinking of Amsterdam,
I slip
on rainy cobblestones

Driving the old, old highway
through Central park
Avoiding all the birds

“Alchemists” poetry accolade from Muriel’s Journey

Poetry Accolade of sorts: Pleased to be on the prize list for a very interesting poetry initiative with roots in Vancouver’s downtown eastside.

I was selected as the “random” prize which i suppose isn’t flowered with prestige but that’s not the reason i write and share poetry anyhow. Thanks to Muriel’s Journey 2021 And Beyond (FB) for including me.

My poem “Alchemists Confer with Hypnotists” (below) comes from my fcked up #MECFS medical journey of conundrums and unintended reinvention which took me around the world seeking ways to re-create neural pathways and myself as an existing sentient creature. The poem will be included in a chapbook and reading at some juncture.

Anyhow, congratulations to those acknowledged, those who write, submit, deal with illness and also to the memory of namesake Muriel and the organizers of the campaign, especially Isabella J Mori.

{The prize booty is stashed in a Canadian bank account for Ichiro for when the opportunity comes for him to visit his ancestral homeland of sorts.}

Poetry is everything, distilled.

A note about Muriel:

“Muriel was a social justice activist, poet, and spoken word artist of Indigenous heritage from the Gitxsan nation’s Owl Clan who spent a lot of time in the Downtown Eastside. In her work, she always explored new ways of expressing herself, always talked and wrote about what’s urgent and important. Her energy was like fireworks, and her hugs legendary.”

bizen yaki kiln, forging clay into treasure
Alchemists Confer with Hypnotists

Varying days
of bliss and malaise
I'm busy these days
chasing dubbies away

When the ache nears 
the break comes and 
light becomes a haze
your soul is so faded,
no hiding, so worn

The alchemists confer 
and deny the hypnotists’
clinical opinions. 
Retorting,
“He simply needs
more magnesium
injected directly into his bones”

The past-life regression
of painters and pirates 
offered no evidence 
only barroom stories when
posted up envisioning
a distant yourself

Generate kinetic watts 
from my broken soul,
frantic heart and coiled brain
anxiety - I've plenty to power
all of Iowa - roller rinks and  all

Please won't you deplete me
save me from me and help me
tell me, to sleep? And you’ll
insist on my compliance, 
fading into ease.

note: dubbies is a Jamaican word for ghosts

Update from Muriel’s Journey selection committee:

Thanks for posting this. The randomness is important. Judging poetry (or anything literature) has an element of personal taste and is, therefore, biased. When we first receive poems, Kyle Hawke and I pre”judge” them so that our judges don’t have to Wade through too many poems. Then we present the three judges with about 30 poems. This year the judges were Heidi Greco , WJ Kehewin , and Gilles Cyrenne . All the poems are judged blind – nobody knows the names of the authors. By introducing a random price we give the chance to someone who might have otherwise fallen through the cracks. So far, by chance, all the random prizes went to poets who were already in the preselection.

poem: Leaving Saskatoon

wrote a poem (in reply to the great singer songwriter Hawksley Workman who’s playing in #Saskatoon tonight)

boarding pass leaving Saskatoon to Calgary and onwards to Vancouver and Eugene Oregon as an infant (allegedly 10 days old)
Saskatoon
I was born here
but
never lived there (left quickly on a 707)
but
obliged to print on application forms
since–
quite literally hundreds or possibly thousands
there’s never enough room
(especially in Japan)
to write:
b. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Aug, 16 1970