For His Majesty Rama IX

I dressed in black

for the midnight flight

and black was all

I packed.

to join the reverent

mass convened

in love and sorrow

for the fallen king.

Lancome and Prada

vanished from

the giant screens

above the plazas

and the small ones

on the Skytrain.

Instead they streamed

the solemn funeral

procession as

the golden royal chariot

bore the golden urn

to the golden crematorium.

And the people clad in black

gathered in the shelter

of the lotus-crenelated walls

of the grand palace

watched and wept

in the morning

sun and shadow

as the chariot

pulled by two hundred

men dressed in red

rolled so very very slowly,

sadly, to the final site.

By dusk, the black tributaries

of mourners had swollen

through the streets

and alleys to the parks

and temples, the squares

and monuments, the streams

became rivers pooling at the places

where they waited for hours

to place sandalwood flowers

on the ceremonial pyres

in honor of His Majesty

and his life.

And I thought about

one of his projects

that we had visited

a few years ago,

where coffee and melons

and cucumbers

and other good things

had replaced the poppy.

A rainstorm had suddenly descended

so we dashed under a shed

and watched the rain

bounce like diamonds

on the pavement.

And just as suddenly

it stopped and steamy vapors

drifted up into the trees.

He was a kind and good man

dedicated to his people

and they to him.

my favorite images of the king

are the one where he

was playing a saxophone,

and the one with his faithful camera

and his finger poised in thought.

another tale from the trash bin on the corner

He's standing there.

next to the trash bin on the corner.

unsteady, kind of shaky on his feet.

breathing through his mouth.

Worn out jeans.

rubber-handled pliers in his back pocket.

flipping through a magazine

resting on top of the bin.

One page at a time. quickly.

turn turn turn. lick a finger. turn.

his hands tremble badly.

he struggles to turn the pages.

keeps at it. every single page.

until he gets to the last page

and puts the magazine

back in the trash bin.

He walks across the street,

each shuffling steps a pain?

barely makes it before

the signal changes.

I want to know what magazine

was so compelling, what feature

was he searching for?

so i retrieve it and have a look.

The cover's gone, but i turn the pages.

An ad for Kohler fixtures.Subzero refrigerators.

a story about a Japanese-style house

in the mountains of North Carolina.

Leviton smart lighting controls.

a glass house floating above Silicon Valley.

a window that incorporates a fireplace.

a young woman dressed for Vogue or Cosmo.

The footer on the pages

identify this magazine

as the September/October 2017

issue of Dwell magazine.

Eeny meany miney mo

The finger of catastrophe

and miracles is playing

eeny meany miney mo.

Itchy on the trigger

or teasing with a tickle,

the unsuspecting

never expecting

to be torched

or tossed or spared.

Prayers on the wind

climb high with the embers

hoping that God remembers

that mercy sometimes

requires a finger on the scale.

what you hear

all the lyrics

that i hear

now sound

apocalyptic.

but when the sun

hit the poplar trees

this morning

the wild parrots

screamed as usual.

for them i believe

it's a chorus

born of joy.

to us it sounded

like a ruckus.

the calendar

feels like a clock,

the unimaginable

coming round and round

at the stroke of midnight

as we begin each day

in darkness, waiting

for the dawn,

in faith that it will come.

and the light will shine

on blood and flowers,

and sparkle on the waters

and the towers

of this new babylon.

Baby things

The cold silver night

shone on the bars

of my infant crib.

A junebug clinging

to the window screen

had a change of mind,

and flew across the moon.

The cool pillow warmed

beneath my cheek.

The world was still too new

to me to easily fall asleep,

but even junebugs

go somewhere to hide before

the burning Central Valley

summer sunrise.

On the phone lines,

so high above

the clothes line

where Mommy hung

Daddy's shirts and sheets

a pair of mourning doves cooed.

A squad of ants

picked at the remains

of a snail,

it's doomed trail

from the night before

still glistening

on the coarse grass

that tickled the soles

of my bare feet.

Mommy dropped

a clothes pin so I seized it,

squeezed open the jaws,

and let them snap shut

on the wilting blossom

of a dandelion

decapitated

when Daddy mowed

the lawn the night before.

The doves perched on

the phone lines cooed

and I cooed back, in thrall.

11:48

She's dressed for a morning

as cool as her childhood

village in Shandong:

warm trousers and a jacket

zipped up to her throat,

floppy-brimmed hat pulled low

over her bob cut silver hair.

Picks through the corner trash

receptacle with her practical

cotton garden-gloved hands.

Underneath the discarded leaves

of an office rubber tree plant,

she fishes out empty Mountain Dew

and Red Bull cans.

He, a white gloves firm lawyer

or hedge fund manager or CEO,

waits at the stoplight in his Bentley Continental.

Peers over his cheaters at her endeavors.

Guns his gleaming anthracite coupe

up the hill to take lunch

or treat himself to a nooner

when the signal surrenders

to his desire for green.

She crushes the cans beneath

her drug store athletic shoes

and stuffs them into a thirty gallon

woven plastic bag.

Redemption pays a nickel apiece

or by the pound. Twenty years

from now -properly invested-

she might have enough to buy

a Bentley for her grandson

to drive in her funeral procession.

what breaks sometimes can't be put back together

the piñata burst.

dumped the sweets

on the patchy summer lawn.

lay there. untouched.

growing stale day by day.

the gay wrappers faded.

the red turned to orange.

the green went to yellow.

all the blue was gone.

and I could never get them

back inside the broken shell,

no matter how I tried

to heal the tissue

once it was torn and frayed.