The Midnight Stone

It's the Midnight Stone,
The kind you get when you live alone.
Fancying darkness beyond a lamp,
You question your castle's foundation in camp
And breathe the oily midnight damp!

Three Thirty, Sunday

When I let it go off and out my mouth
In the weary sort of way the coal burns,
The smoke erects in space long monoliths
Bent with intent at angles, then turns,
Like a sodden mind that spurns.

Restlessness

I drink a drink of ale
And then of liquor:
To smoke does less
To move the timeless ticker.

I was going to write a poem beside the sea

I was going to write a poem beside the sea.
I was on my way, I was there.
My thoughts were collected, prepared to put on paper
Something slipping, some sly remark.

The Ocean lapped my tears into the broad pale expanse,
Upset my stance, and demolished me so far beyond the shore
It was all I could do to be consumed.

Cambodia

Smoking Out the Back Door at Night

I recalled what made poetry true,
(A genius may have alighted my head)
It wasn't design askew
But a deliberate confusion that led.

Where Does my Lama Go?

I cannot stay here at the monastery.
The renunciate's life is in secluded mountain retreats.
And wherever I find that silent cave,
It will not be home.

The home of the yogi is the Western Buddhafield
When he has quit samsara.
It is all to spread Dharma as long as I breathe.
It is all to roam.