Ode to My Passport

Ode to My Passport

8-14 -15-13

OH not-so-golden-ticket to freedom
I don't know where I'd be without you
Actually that's not true
I know exactly where I'd be without you

but I don't know who I would be

Because of you I have discovered
more of who I am
And I found that definition
supersedes and transcends
home sweet home
overbearing barrier codes
or flagrantly self-serving flags

while still taking a little from each

Traveling has stretched my mind out
It uncoils my conditioning
Has shown me that we are all cocooned against our will
The more we are taught to ignore our wings

The less we navigate our bodies
away
from the comfort of the chrysalis

OH weathered flipbook of worldly administrative wonders
because of you I am a stamp collector
but I use them to mail myself around the globe
And though I've only been to 11 of the 196 countries
on 4 of the 7 continents
those fractions have made me whole
a more human being
I realized the lines inside my head that seemed
to be sensible borders
were cracks
causing crevices in my understanding
Keeping me from connecting
with the universal parts of us

OH magical object in my life
that isn’t really magical
since it’s just a little leathery booklet
that nobody can even read
The fuller you get the more fulfilled my life becomes
You are like my portrait of Dorian Gray
but you keep me young in the most beautiful way possible
by conjuring my spirit out its shell
to dance the flamenco with flamingos in Brazil

Okay
I haven’t done that but…
it sounds fun
Sounds like a good example right?
I could do that if I wanted to because I have a…
Never mind
lemme try again

OH future tracking device for the NSA
You keep me young in the most beautiful way possible
By conjuring my spirit out of its conical shell
To dance on beaches
Jump off bridges
Float with rivers
Cave open caves
Hike up glaciers
Chase down penguins
Fly off motorbikes
Sit on the ocean’s floor
Swim through a crowd of sweaty people
Pray for a “real toilet”
Succumb to pristine chapels and beehive malls
Climb ancient history to watch the latest sun set
Love a people or a culture I would have never known
Laugh with children I share no words with
Hang motionless by a rubber rope
in the middle of a canyon
like a spider from its web

That’s how many of us are now
Spiders dangling from a thread
looking up at this marvelous creation
going, “Huh, look at that.
That looks pretty cool.
Wonder where that came from.
Maybe I should go check it out.
Naaaaaaa.
I’ll just hang out here.
Gotta save some money anyway.”

 
All of you too averse to traverse our private speck of universe
for longer than it takes Venus to run around the Sun
I beg you to reconsider
Go sit with the beggars in Cambodia
Go meet the thieves in Rome
Go eat the strange food of supposed strangers
and taste their native tongues
Fill your pupils with all this colorful disco-ball
shimmers and shutters with
Our world is not what you think
It is incredibly what it is
And there’s no way you can
wrap your mind around that
until you have unwrapped
the scar spangled bandages
banded over your eyes

Once you do that
you will behold from such great heights
You will know nomads
and bond with vagabonds
wherever you may roam
You will finally understand
as you gaze into our existence
that this is our Never Never Land
But you should never say never

 








 





OH hallpass of safe passage through airy ports of absurd security
I want you to know
that I never get front row seats at concerts
but I always get a window seat when I fly
because every time I look outside
at the endless supply of beauty
known as planet Earth
I count my lucky stars
in the nebulas of citylight
in the clusters of cumulus cloud emitting iridescent white
To be here living is itself
an Ode to Joy
And I am thankful
that like the clouds
I am caught
in an invisible current
carrying me out
to see

All the pictures (except the first one) are my own and were taken in various parts of Thailand, my home for the past 7 years. God bless it! 

Strongmen

11-1-2004

This guy I work with

“He’s a house,” as people who flit around his porch light say

A giant    like my brother, 6’6” and wide like a flag       thick like a pillar

Probably rips phones books like muscle-Ts        just to kill time

Too big for his own joints

Walks like Frankenstein’s monster

Works security here

Would’ve made a great bully

if it wasn’t for that goofy smile on his…

Might not even shave yet

Face of a little boy with a caterpillar        tickling his cavernous hand

Only this big kid is kind of dumb               you can tell

a little Lennie       and I suddenly wish my brother      was dumb

Here     this spitting image of his senior photo

is standing in front of me        grinning    like he smells candy

or a cheerleader      named Candy     and my brother    with all his brains

boxed    in a surly scowl       is sitting behind bars

he can’t bend

_

Sticks & Stones ~ The Untold Story

 Down below is a video of my latest performance, which was on Thursday at The Opposite, supporting Bangkok Poetry. 

 The poem is old but I've never performed it before. As I told the crowd, I wrote it in university for an assignment. I read it to the class as a part of the assignment, but this was before I was aware of or into performance poetry so I definitely didn't write it with this art form in mind. But once I got back into it these past two years, I started going back through my older stuff looking for pieces that might be somehow WORK as a live performance. This is one that caught my eye. I added it to my list a few months ago, and even recorded an audio file (as I do with anything I'm getting ready to perform) and occasionally listened to it in the playlist to start the long process of internalizing it. Because it's written in blank verse, these poems take time. But if you can start puttin little pieces in your head well in advance, that can make the crunch time (when you  know you NEED to have it ready) go a lot faster and easier. As it was with this poem. 

I've been thinking about performing it lately. It came to mind as a possible foil to the poem I did at Bed Supperclub about kids. Before I knew what Junior wanted me to do exactly (how much time/how many pieces) I was preparing myself for any possibility. So sticks and stones were on my mind. 

But that night only called for one poem, so I put it back on the back back burner. And then when I got word of the next poetry night--but only after someone nudged me when I said I wasn't sure if I would do it or not And I WOKE UP--then I finally thought about what poem I would do. I could've done the Montecristo kids poem, but...I've already done it twice now, and three times in a row.......kinda makes me turn my lip up. I have issues with repetition. Even THOUGH none of the people from the first two performances were probably even at that poetry night....it bugs me. Maybe it's cuz I think it's bad for the poem. To use it so flippantly. Like it only has so many uses in its life and I don't wanna use them all up too quick. Does that make sense to you? I really have no idea, but that's kinda how I see it. The more you use something, the more you see something, the more you are exposed to it, the more it loses its power, or its power over you. This isn't true for EVERYTHING, but a lot. I'm probably being overly cautious with this particular example, but...there is more to it than that as well.

 Anyway, so yeah, I didn't really feel like performing that poem again so soon. Which brought me to remember the poem down below. And as I soon as I thought about it, I was like, "Alright, cool. Let's do it. The time has come." And I started practicing it like a week in advance. Even changed a few words around and ADDED a whole section to it. There's a verse/paragraph that wasn't there before. I had the idea to add it months ago and it still appealed to me so I did. It's a pretty cool performance piece now. Very solid in content. And, the performance of it itself went down really well. They seemed to really like the piece. And...I messed up a little bit, but no biggie. When you mess up on a light poem, it's way more forgivable than when you mess up on a real serious or heavy poem. Speaking for myself. Even though I changed the pronouns to you for some reason. But yeah, it was cool. 

Check out the video, lemme know what you think. PEACE!

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Sticks & Stones:

The Untold Story

 

 9-24-2002

                                                        “If he only knew now
                                                                                       what he knew then”
                                                                                                            -Eddie Vedder

I remember a time
  when the word “play”
   wasn’t sexual
 and “fudge” 
was as close as I got 
     to the “F” word

  It just 
   felt 
  wrong

I remember a state of mind
  in which it was logically possible
  to jump out of tree
   while gripping the thin plastic handles
     of a white grocery bag
  and parachute 
             to the ground

  Only after the sudden landing thinking
    “I must not have been high enough”

I remember a place
   where my imagination
     was my imaginary friend
   and I spent the whole days
     outside trying to keep up
         with him
  as my real friends and I
 blew things up
     with rock grenades
 (sound effects included)
 and fearlessly
       shot ninjas out of trees
    with lethal guns made of
          sticks, toilet paper rolls
and electrical tape

  We were fighting for our lives

But I know now
we were fighting
for our childhood

I remember my friends.  They were brothers, Franky and Marcial.  They lived up the street, and I played with them almost everyday during the summers, yet the only memory I have of them being inside my house was for a birthday party.  The acre of land around my house was enough. That land was ours.  The trees, dirt, and dry, brittle bushes, were so rich and fertile, we planted our imagination in them everyday and grew battlegrounds budding with forts made from the trees’ discarded skin.  It was magical.  Sometimes when one of us had to go ask permission to go to the other’s house, which ever two stayed behind would close their eyes and chant, “I hope he can. I hope he can. I hope he can. I hope he can,” until the other came back with an answer.  And every time we did that…it worked.  It never failed us. The tighter we squeezed our eyes closed the better. “I hope he can. I hope he can. I hope he can. I hope he can.” That was how powerful we were.  That was our magic.

I even remember one time where we wanted to go up to their house so I had to ask permission but I didn’t wannu cuz my mom was in such a foul mood that day that I knew she’d say no and then just by being near her I might spontaneously end up in trouble. But they really wanted me to come over, so I was like “alright, I’ll go ask but don’t do it, don’t do I hope he can.” Cuz I knew it wasn’t gonna work and we were so amazed by this power’s existence that…I didn’t want to break it, and if there was anything more powerful than our collective hopes it was definitely my mother’s anger. And we really only used it in the most urgent situations, like…a new toy, and that day wasn’t anything special so I didn’t think it was worth it. So I was like don’t do it, and they said, okay, we won’t. So I went inside and asked my mom and was like Hey mommmm, do you think I could go up to Frankie’s for a little bit and she said…“Sure,” and I was like !!!!!  but I couldn’t do that so I was like 0_0, and kinda slowly backed out the door and as soon as I got outside I ran like crazy to Frankie and Marcial like OH MY GOSH, YOU GUYS, YOU WONT BELIEVE....and as soon as I got over the hill I see them sittin there…

“I hope he can I hope he can I hope he can I hope he can I hope he can…”

It worked every time

I remember when they moved.  I remember thinking how strange it was that families would just “move.”  It made me happy to know that my family would never do that.  I knew we weren’t like them.  We would always live in that house that we moved out of a year later.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t know I would never see Franky and Marcial ever again.  I didn’t know what we had, that we were magicians.  I didn’t know that power would weaken like the bite of guilt hidden behind each curse word, or what “innocence” even was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I'm not sure exactly when this was, but it is the house that is in this poem. I took this pic the last time I visited that town in...late 2004/early 2005, somewhere around there.  When we lived there (15 years earlier) it looked so different. Grass in the yards with climbing rose bushes and various other flowers and small trees. Quite beautiful. But at least you get to see somethin of what I'm talking about. I still love that house. Still wish I could teleport it, just like I did when I was a kid.

Intersection

4-2-09

I went to the street side
before getting into the car
to gather my bearings
which had been turned around
in this part of Portland,
like the bookshops were magnets
toying with my sense of direction.

I looked down the long, dipping road
looking for recognition, a mountain, a sign
to tell me which way was right again.

While stretching my eyes
and insteps out as far as I could,
a voice came to me from nowhere
and said “oh good, you’re crossing the road too.”

I wasn’t. For a second
I almost argued with the air,
a misguided ghost.
I wasn’t going to cross the street,
I thought.
But I knew better than to beg
to differ with the universe,
to tell it I was not what I was
like I knew better.

Behind me I found an old woman
leaning into and peering down
the somewhat busy street
(like it was a manhole, open and ominous)
before she looked to me and smiled.

As we crossed side by side
she told me how she was struck by a car once
while crossing a street and how it drove
a nervous streak into her legs
that she had not been able to shake.

And that’s when it happened.
That’s when it hit me
that I was “here for some reason.”

Although my west still felt oddly north
and I did not know where I was
in relation to the stars, the fates
had appointed me a pinpoint appointment

that I kept

close like a compass

for the rest of my dislocated days.

Chutes and Ladders

"The cure for pain is in the pain." ~ Rumi

1-25-12

There is a bigger picture

We often think we got it all figured out

like we're looking at a board game

and can see the next logical natural

inevitable steps and conclusions

but then something happens

and we find out that the picture

is so much bigger than what we thought

At first we respond with fear

and maybe go through all the stages of loss

but if we can make it through all that

without holding onto too much of the darkness therein

we often find that the bigger picture

isn't so bad

It may even be just what we needed

to become the greatest version

of ourselves