Fountain water splashes echoes across the koi pond. Clever Great Danes bark their hello, jump into the air to chase after chew bones anxious for a moment of attention. Sultry trades shift manila palm branches nod their approval. Plovers march across manicured lawns searching for tiny morsels, recently back from Alaska. It is late afternoon-…

Frankly this opinion comes at midnight to a dark blind man with a hearing aid, plunging off the edge of a cliff. I would rather eat a rancid piece of meat. You are a viper, slithering along the bowels of the earth dragging the feces of dead rats on your underbelly. Your venom is cold…

We get plenty chickens over here. They like play “chicken” with my car. Sometimes they take off wings flapping, like one jet. They like race with my Huyndai. They not so smart. Bumbai they going lose their tail feathers to one pupuele wahine stay Kahaluu.

I can feel your saliva dripping onto my big toe. Belching as you lean against me satisfied as I rub your neck massaging behind your ears. Staring into the distance breathing in the neighborhood listening to the sounds of the valley. Wednesdays Thursdays and Saturdays are big days in our datebook. Me–stuffing gray and blue…

Dedicated to Neda Agha Soltan who was murdered in Tehran, Iran on
June 20, 2009

"Orchids, ti leaves, and plumerias all craving for my attention."
"It dances, like a fairy, to the music of a million flowers."

Night falls the air is stagnant and sticky with white gardenia, stephanotis and pungent citronella. A fountain sprays into a koi pond and echoes across the valley. At the appointed hour a silent bufo army advances, each to their own predetermined spot. Out on a lonely stretch of road beneath the glow of a street…

In the corner of my eye is a thick hedge of yellow hibiscus and three papaya trees plump with golden ripe fruit. Four graceful palm climb along the shoreline watchful, their fanlike fronds bowing in the wind. Where are they? Perhaps they are lurking beyond the horizon. The common mynah would know. Suddenly it looms…

Senyru

A response to the last renshi. This one line kept buzzing around in my head about ‘nasty girls like wasps’. I wrote it down somewhere and it has finally found a place in this poem.