4 a.m. in Tokyo
Are you awake
Lying in bed
Does
Your soul feel blue
Do you wish you had
Somebody
To hold
Silent
Listening to
Thunder ripping
Through the sky
Lightning
Flashes through the corners of the drapes
You put the book down and watch
Listen
Darkness overcome with light
Listen to the rain
Dripping slow when the
Clouds move past and what’s left is
Only memories of what you shared —
A summer storm.

Sometimes I don’t know what’s real
Dreams dusted with reality
Reality shadowed by dream
Like my shadowed room
Early, alone. Before the day
Things make sense — what remains of me
Walking from the dream
What spirit crosses
Thresholds from unconscious to pen
In hand;
Writing from a liminal space — do you hear me?
Are you awake? Is it me who writes a dream
Or a dream asking to be heard
Seen in words
Which can’t convey the truth of
This feeling; shadow and dust
Neither here nor there
What I can’t explain
Makes the most sense.
I just want to run
Endlessly
I becomes illusory the man
Seeking
Hides deeper from my waking state
Hides in shadowed
Thoughts, this woken
Beast just wants to know
Who’s there
We are mysteries —
Who you were predating
Life’s possession of your spirit
You’re nothing but
Unfolding
Is it the body or the mind
I long to find — where’s my
Soul;
Or a hand to hold warm
And feel in mine
Yesterday
Summer’s day I fell into
A festival — matsuri —
Slowly I tumbled beneath the
Melancholic sky
I felt alive — renewed by
Tokyo on a lazy afternoon —
Moss-covered trees green
Granite rocks below
Art hanging draped by others
Who too long to know:
Are we dust or shadow —
Shadowed dust, art a key
Which never rusts to understand
This waking state words can’t convey
Though art relates
Me to you and you to me
A foreign tongue
Calligraphy black and dripped across
White paper
Dancing in the summer wind.
I took my time; ambled slow.
Spoke to pictures they replied.
Getting older childlike. Engage the senses
Drawing fingers across wooden
Doors and emerald-colored torii gates —
I stopped looking for someone
Only me.
We’re on this earth
Just to be born. We assume there must
Be more
A reason that we’re here for.
We were born to be on earth.
Yellow lanterns lined the road, detailed in
Red letters, do they see me looking back?
Not fake
Nor am I fully me somewhere dancing
In between I stand in doorways
Shadow and dust I let my belly out
And float.

Nature itself is free of weight it simply turns.
You’re here to walk in rain with friends
To graze the doorways of ancient shrines.
Caught in desire, you wear a mask.
Obstructed nature dies, withers, reality must fit a certain mold.
You become a cog. An outcome.
Faces passing endlessly — is it harder to connect?
To see each face as a human being who’s been through
As much or probably more than me.
That’s the great mystery;
I accept that I am human — whatever I feel, whatever comes out, I accept.
I fucking honor what I feel. I won’t be afraid,
Because I’m human and what I feel I know that you do too;
The darkness and weird shit and
Inner gold and light; it’s all okay.
It’s gotta come out.
I drop my guard;
I see you, and finally
See me.