1

4AM Shanghai
Me, insomniatic as usual
Watching light rise
Through pollution skies
To illuminate building designed
By a committee of Dr. Seuss, Salvador Dali and MC Escher

The ship pulls out through endless gauntlet
of all the ships in the world
Each their own world
Tiny houses on giant barges, flags, cigarette and a wave

2

Yangtze River wide
As a sound
Cozy as an African watering hole
Herds of barges graze
Like wildebeests lady to fall into stampede
When hyena party boats of wedding revellers disappear into dark,
Moored behind elephant cruisers
The bulls wait beyond the marsupial floating dry docks
Holding wounded deer craft
Under gaze of manicured obedient flocks
Of bobbing cranes
Feeding vibes into yawning hippos accustomed to melons
Catamaran racers lean into wind, puny sailors lean to balance for the watches and cameras
As peacocks might
Beneath windmills grindingly faraway wheat

3

The wagon trail of floaters
Parade through river intersections
Obeying crackled jargon appointing times-subject to change
From typhoons, tainted waters, tides and an abundance of caution
And negotiation
Then the dispatch arrives
And like preschoolers, holding a string
The horizon redefines with tankers
Containers, cruisers, scoopers, prospectors, fighters, seekers, and free radicals
Bearing industrial names
Referred by diligent tugs
Pilots breakwater boundaries
And the wake and buoys ahead
Soon they will diverge to transient paths
Using similar charts
And common codes

Sparking Beeddies
Through the state of Hormuz
Considering the children I keep employed
Tying tiny green strings
Around tobacco leaves

Piracy warnings
Lights off on the decks
To pretend to confuse
And thwart grappling hooks
Avoid a dramatic turn

Maneuvering fast around
Sheep, minarets and sand dunes

Lanyards grant passage
Indicated by satellite
I’ll hide in the solarium
or perhaps the engine room

Next to acetylene tanks and greek captains
With nautical miles unequaled to date
“1 point to port”
To provide mathematicians a hobby
As statisticians a muse

Auctioneers work quicker than cartographers
And even faster than a bullet trains
Who at least have the decency to stop
At stations from time to time
To allow the slow minds
Needed moments to breathe

The buoys past behind
Soon this seabirds surrender
Pilot boat gives way
To empty depths beyond

Muslim Minarets
and Portuguese forts
Equally fade to gray
Prayer calls too far away

Gangway long
Tucked in belly
Can’t lean over railing
With a foreign cigar
Due to Pirates seeking
A life of spoil

Ocean haze gives way
To Orion stringing his bow
To hunt hearts and wild boar
For a cappuccino empress
So divine she must be Nepali

The earnest one encourages perspective
Unforced and transcending documentation
To story to art to community
The pinnacle of us all
All of us

The landscape defines culture
Culture determines our fate
We evolved slowly from the mountaintops
Now deep undersea
Awaiting earthquakes

We slip over depth sounding
To gauge the draft
Through a gauntlet
Or derrick isles

Freighters preferred to skirt
Ransom-seeking buccaneers
Laden with weapons from a
Floating armory

Pistachios for Bedouins
Origins delineated by headscarves
Indications of savagery
Evidence of restraint

Ancestors exactly one hundred years ago
Today
When marshes were laden with water fowl
And the deserts were undrained

The driest valleys
Criss crossed by salt water canals
Providing Sultanic dhows
Passageways to escape
The confines of destiny
And loneliness

Escape tyranny of washing plates
Just throw overboard
Settle next to treasure
And sunken containers
On the ocean floor

For reasons i don’t understand myself
I dream of downtowns i will never visit
I prefer to exist in tiny villages with a
Efficient post office, perfect cafe and bakery
Next to a bookshop with stationary
Fresh pencils and inky pens

But when i try (i only try) to sleep
Rocked by tracks or waves
Or a simulation of above
I am high collared coat and
Woolen scarf
Lost in a city i am unsure about

Devoid of knowledge or expectations
Tucking down alleys so narrow
I can touch each side
Intuition leads me to a diner or bar
With 8 seats or less
A barman asks me to finish a top-shelf bottle
So he can finally restock
Entirely impolite not to oblige

A lady en route to work asks me nervously
And tells me her real name without request
Immigrant dishwasher asks for five for a smoke
On the rainy stoop

Favorite music i’ve never heard
Faded enka ballads, and low fado
Improvised bass notes
From the Arco hotel

When i leave, only the lights gently undim,
As a gracious hint
Misty rain invariably falls
I steady with a cane rather than an umbrella
Which simply neglects the senses
Of acute tactility

Neither warm nor chill
Wool and silk release a fragrance
Of countryside hounds
And afternoon farm toil
The trousers are pressable to show again
A crisp crease and a scarf doubles as a hint
Of elegance and distracts from leather boots,
Muddied atop polish from a dirt road monsoon of
The non-fiction chapter of erstwhile reality

I dream of nowhere
My homing instinct is disappeared
Friends i suppose
But to what end?

Simplicity if includes
Conflicts resolved
{obstificated}
easy pleasure

I miss nowhere and no one
I’ve stopped missing myself
Resigned to something like weakness
Or strength of another kind

I dream of notebooks
Crisp pages, inky pens
Taken by someone to transform
Into something grander

I sit alone with pen
Words come easy
But the amplification
Is not mine

My half life
Is the better part of me
up to you entirely
which half you want to see

Stolen library books
Or loud guitars
I exist
Somewhere in between

Diamonds and dungaree
Top floor hotels
Or a flophouse squat
Something in a middle path
On a train or out to sea

Weirdness follows along
Wherever i wander and roam
Tiniest palm islands
Or festival jamboree

Trails up mountains
Without a map
Trying to get lost
Cities with no language
Means or currency

My skills are entirely impractical
Sitting in patio cafes
Writing letters to loves i never knew
And drinking watery tea

I’ve minted banknotes on vellum
Carved ink stamps in balsa wood
And manufactured clandestine postage stamps
Printed in Singapore

Who will you choose when we meet
Out here on the globe
Will you recognize my face
As a friend or
Consider me an enemy

Three miles sideways
Just a couple of pals
Perhaps a lover and a best friend
Rotating walk-on characters
In a dramatic documentary comedy

Will you cast me in yours
If i perform well in your required auditions?

Scars from stingrays
A list of broken bones
Initials carved on noble trees
Scrapbooks full of secrets

I’ve heard of something called a home
But not sure where i left it
You ask me where i’m from “from”
I ask you where we are

Observe the world with binoculars
But a monocle shows more clear
Usually hidden behind dark glasses
To hide my joyful tears

Shortwave radio brings me
News from a decade or four ago
Explorers gone before me
Charting meandering paths
Pointing the longest way
To warmth and mystery

Maybe i can be the one
Who inspires or perhaps
Breaks you out of everyday
You are whoever you choose
As though i know
When reality suggests
I know a little except
How to be occasionally free