NHA TRANG I

EVENING NEWS

11 pm
cheap hotel soap
Japanese music on the TV screen-
it doesn't matter;
i don't understand what they're saying-
but i know.
all the guitars tell the same stories-
all white bedsheets hide the same stains.
i hear that New Orleans is sinking
in a sea of sorrow and salt
but the news was in French.
ou es-tu, mon chere?
winds from the oceans have
brought me wanderlust,
but this ocean is new-
it's still a couple oceans apart from
you.
ou es,
ou es-tu?

11 pm
Nha Trang

------------------------------------------

SOUL SEARCHING II

one hotel room
across the pacific
tell me what you are
searching for
and i'll tell you
what i have found

Nha Trang
9/1/06

Saigon II

A NIGHT IN SAIGON

the winds have
returned;
i have never known
a cooler night in Saigon-
such as this.

------------------------

ROOF TOP

are you on your rooftop
missing me?
cuz i'm on my rooftop
missing you

Saigon
8/27/06
7 pm

Saigon I

RECOGNITION

i know you;
i miss you
all the time
in my heart

i saved a space for you
under my skin
crawl back in here
when the sun is too bright
and when they say
too many things
you do not wish to understand
or bear to part with.

come back in here
when you are ready
to sleep as i sleep;

to dream as i do dream

Saigon
8/30/05

and you say sorry like the angel heaven let me think was you

i watch you
reach
from where you lay,
motionless over a pile of
trust i had
entrusted in you.

i hear something like an
APOLOGY,
but my heart begins to close.

those things are meaningless.
you are constantly sorry.

when i leave

i wake these days
to the sound of frost;
your smile gazes at me from picture frames,
pure and still.
outside the sun climbs the sky
and woos the east,
her blushing countenance watches traffic
head south on 270.

i know not the answer to life,
liberty,nor
love;

i only react to the world which was
given me.
your whispers dissipating in the night,
sharp laughter that calls to me
from behind.
Where we are and
Where We Must Go
still treads outside these highways,
leading east and west.
i know not if the roads will
circle back,
or break away.

i only know
the speed of your groans and sighs,
the void inside between
all these exits.

i wake to frost and
sleep to wind;
your voice curls up inside my pillowcase and
scratches softly at the window panes,
slowly stretching the night.

destiny

Zero 7 - Destiny

i
wake early to
catch the sunrise;
sip my coffee and
in between each swallow of
bittersweet rush,
traces of you stir from under the covers,
rise to kiss me and
retreat back to bed.

i cannot seem to remember life
before you came around;

those summer mornings
and winter twilights
that have marked routine to my
routines,
expectations to my
unexpected.

some days i miss you with an intense
voracity that
only the unknown could have
satiated -
other days i
take my coffee and
sleep past the sunrise.

other days i
dream of something else -
another world-
another life -
something only past slumber could
explain and replace.