Travel Instructions for Elmwood Avenue You leave the sepia light of the tea restaurant,lapsang and peony, earth and green twig,continuo of quiet human voices. Outside is rain, fat frying, damp exhaust, sputum,spit of tires on a wet street, brakes tunedto the pulse of streetlights: green, amber, red, green. You blunder, glasses fringed with rainbows,until your…
With the beginning of the new year, a brave AROHO friend made a commitment to write a haiku every day. She asked others to join her, and set up a facebook group, The Haiku Room, as a private place for all of us to post our (in my case, clumsy) efforts. The results have been…
The Inventor of the LuVailean Sonnet She was no Millay, my Great-Aunt Lucy, but she named herself Lyra LuVaile, Poet Laureate of Long Beach, California, and wrote a book in which she speaks familiarly of Stars, the Cosmos, the Music of the Spheres – subjects I might write about, myself, though not perhaps so familiarly….
Letting It Go I’m walking on my birthdayand this timeI’mletting it go. Headline!Waistline!Toe the line!Morning line! I’ve stopped stoppingat all the roads not taken(you know the ones I mean) because here’s the joke:every road is a dead end. So I’m just walking on my birthdayand letting it go. In my throat, regret.On my tongue, mourning……
Speaking of the Muse My muse comes up behind me and says Honey(she calls me honey)you don’t have a lot of time here –lose the pale Flemish bridewith the sidelong glances. She says Look! Here I am!Dappled with oceansfurred with green and gold –Honey, give me your full attention here! O she turnslight runs from…
In 2012, I had the great privilege of performing my poems with the celebrated choreographer and dancer Shizuno Nasu and percussionist Gene Tamashiro. The performance was titled “Dancing the Seasons.” Shizuno was brilliant and terrifying and moving! This experience transformed the way I look at “reading” poetry. See the video of “Spring”here…