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I write Quirky Adventures with a Twist of Lemon;
And Poetry with a Pinch of Salt.

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Hey, welcome to my Newsletter, a body of words.

My Podcast Link

Primed

2, 3, 5, 7,
11, 13, 17,
19, 23, 29, 31, 37.

In the 13th prime of my
life I think back to when I
was last in my prime, at 37.

I divide my age by myself
to remind me there is only 1
of me, now at 41.

41, 43, 47,
53, 59, 61, 67,
71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97.

NT$38

spent money found glittering in the rain

dropped in a wet pile

now dried and preserved

flattened

a value of a different sort

touching at the edges

Found As Is

Jacaranda seed pods on a cork board at the window.

*

Under the jacaranda tree,
My scooter perches with others
Tilted in shaded comfort.

*

Under this jacaranda tree
Dry seed pods scatter among flowers.
And the forgotten trash of the rush
Grows together until clearing day.

*

My wire basket is heavy with flames.

*

The utility of a dry and seedless fertility.

*

Take flight with me before the downpour.

Waking Up

I open both blinds:
Pull them up on morning light,
Like water, lifted from a shallow well.

I welcome night’s end:
But still, still, I dare not keep
My promises to an unwell future.

Flash-and-Dash

Waiting for the green man
To walk the walk,
I stand striped from below
In the dry shadow of my umbrella.

Neighbors drip around me;
Crossing the lines
To flash teeth in selfies.

And, when he walks
In place, in a place
Perpendicular to us –
We rush to him,
Full of thanks and wet habits:

But lonely as arrows
Without targets.

Separated, by Calligraphy.

Your brush strokes –
Elegant, poised, impress readers
With fluid wrist dances.

My penned lines:
Ugly with meaning.
Smudged, they leak at their stops.

Sound of Musing

Your voice is something that makes
more than a noise.

Your vocal vibration
delights and annoys.

In silence, your mouth still steals
a mountain’s poise.

Multi-Asking

Questions parents may ask
Their offspring.

Often in multiples of many
Until emotions run high.

Are indefinite answers
Any better than silences?

I ask on behalf of others
Too busy to bother.

Attention Booked

The reader steals
Words: first the title
Or the author, then
The quotes and the blurbs,
Perhaps even sampling the first page...

Entertained, the thief loses, and buys
The book: gripping words blur into
Paragraphs and chapters,
Until the reader is stolen
By the book...

Son’s Parting Song

My mother’s hand wanders straight with her thread,
Sewing my seams echoes my faroff tread.

Step by step her fingers walk with stitches,
Unraveling my travels with needles.

Spring sunshine in her eyes wishes me well,
I depart, clothed in my mother’s farewell.

- I used a Tang Dynasty poem as inspiration for mine.
- Here is the original poem, 遊子吟 (Yóuzǐ Yín), ‘Song of the Wanderer’, by the Tang Dynasty Chinese poet 孟郊 (Mèng Jiāo).
- 遊子吟 (Yóuzǐ Yín) is poem #45 in the 300 Tang Poems.

《遊子吟》- 孟郊

慈母手中線，
遊子身上衣。
臨行密密縫，
意恐遲遲歸。
誰言寸草心，
報得三春暉。

Equals

You’re not my distraction. You
are not eye candy for my gaze. You’re

not the minus to my plus. You
are not the cause of my racing pulse. You’re

beautiful for you first, and you
are worth loving on your terms. I’m

not your subtraction, and I
am not part of your equation. I’m

not your opposite formulation. We
are tropical islands without quays. We’re

not together on this ocean, but we
are not traveling alone at sea, are we?

Is That You Or Me?

A statue dances
in stillness. Yet we
see the dynamic

of a potential
movement and feel it
deep down in the bones

of our brain and our
perfect memories...

Is that me in you?
Did some artist freeze

me in stone, in bronze,
in sand, in rusty

iron, and steal my
humunculus soul
to make me dance on?

Thanking You Today

For the music of your voice,
The noise of meaning,
The silent purpose of sound -
Your comfort and my company.

For your open heart,
The slow and steady beat of truth,
The fast and furious race to love -
Your smile reflecting mine.

For your thoughts,
The attention paid in full,
The depths and the details -
Your sentences start mine.

For your memories,
Mostly the good over the bad,
Mostly of friends and family over strangers -
Your embraces complete mine.

For your presence,
Limbs and digits all accounted for,
Origami valleys and mountains folded-unfolding -
Your divine wind calms my night-soul.

Pure Pollutants

We toxify the air we need to breathe with burning plastic kisses,
With the heavy metal hug of plumbous, and the lightness of coal dust
Like diamond glitter tickling like a Tiffany heirloom in my throat.

Cement dust is a certain particulate matter I use to build
A house of pain in our chests, and I prefer them all to hurt in no particular order.

I inhabit an OMG zone at ground level among other organic combustibles,
Reactionary explosions in your lungs when the mood suits me, and when it doesn’t.

I suffer from an addiction to sulfur, to the musical flow and hiss of lava,
And the sweet violence of the volcanic - some ashes for the ashen.

There’s the tree I planted, twisted into leaflessness, made out of thickened air.

There’s my car idling at the green light.

There’s a slow extinction building for us.

I feel weak without the air filter of my spiralling curls, my own twin horns.
When they grow back I’ll add my tail and a new bident
Before the final feast of tainted fallen flesh commences.

Life

A breathing into.
An exhaling of sound after.
A dance of bone marrow within.
A familiar face in the window during.
A pursuit of happiness for.
A fluid drumbeat of red on top of.
A ratio of destiny to serendipity onto.
A slow burn of growth through.
An articulation of self to self to other regarding.
A desperate triumph notwithstanding.
A kiss from the heart as far as.
A making of more life despite.
A retirement of dreams about.
An exit out of.

Returned to Sender

Boomerang words thrown at the target,
Licked and spat
Flat on the page -
To be held and put in their place.

I write them in a letter to my love;
I send them slow like a male, in the mail,
In the belly of a snail,
A beast carrying post to the past.

She’ll smell my cheap aftershave,
Remember the expensive red wine she spilled
Into her mouth that night,
That night she left the bottle empty.

And she’ll remember the gentlemanly pecks I gave her cheeks
With aloof lips (dry and disappointed),
And maybe she’ll forget the unfriendlier boyfriend
She dumped me for.

If only she loved the caress of my words
As I do, as when I say
I do (I really do),
I will carry her over

But she returns all I send her,
Not even an echo whispers from beyond
Her final resting place:
The unmarked grave

Of our divided past.
A locked mailbox sits within a rock -
My messages are tangled, bent and broken
In the untranslatable wreckage of her car.

Never Too Late

Do not be afraid
To stop at the sign.

The signs might be many.

The many signs may say stop
But it is you that finally decides:
Enough. I am done. I rest.

I will stop doing what I'm doing.

Life, Briefly

Like a comet traveling

The brevity of its own oceanic
Reflection, rippled by the night’s imperfections,

We make waves in time - moving
Towards the darkness of a private extinction

In an arc gone too soon, too far,
To be seen, and then, to not be.

Dust to be Dusted

We are all Dust waiting for the touch of the Featherduster.
For life sweeps the lucky ones gently into Dustpan purgatory,
While the unlucky are sucked through the hell of the Dustbuster.
Life finally places us with all the other Dust in the Dustbin.

Some finer Dust escapes into the Sacred Gardens,
To paradise where weary allergic angels tread
Under Dusty Halos, tethered and tame as camels.
Most sneeze once with a Bless You, Brother,
Some curse in silence, smiling holy smiles of eternal penitence.

The Master Gardener uses all the Dust in this Desert,
Watering each soulful dune with her tears -
She prays for another flower worth saving from the mud.