Ghost Realities

'Almost every reality you 'know' at any given second is a mere ghost held in reality'....

Vision, self doubt, "see" and "hear"...what makes you so sure they exist? Given the power and subtleties of our culture, our system, our mental mind makers..the learning devices our societies create..what makes you more than an effective learning machine?

The peer pressure, phony proponents, unrealistic stings of unreality, social cues and the compulsion to go along with the herd are far more valuable pressures than we think they are...so how are we natural? how are we free?

It's been said we are a beach complete with shifting sands and dunes...'After all what is our reality anyway? Nothin' but a collective hunch'..as Lily says.

I'm a beach.

i'm the metaphor at hand, a mismatched time honoured clock of misperception. I'm hypersensitive, bound by the norms with crowds of silent voices whispering in my ears full of indescision and misunderstanding...

the influence of the mob gone before..

I'm the fall guy of generations of mistakes
the crowing of a crowd
long bent and wasted, crowding in the collective mind

trick me and tell me it was a white car speeding by a blue house and maybe i'll say...um, yeah, it was going pretty fast..

and yet, I'm touching the void here
balancing out, aiming to avoid pleasing

almost...maybe not this generation..but maybe the next
maybe

For Santo

These streets are yours
the ground pounded by a thousand steps
I watch this red colored sunset through your eyes
A city tiger lost in the night
a house cat curled
on the floor
I shouldn't see you anymore
But blind
I reach
feeling for my heart
in your narrow streets
I'm full of you

Muko Muko Beach

Charlie and I have been travelling for a long time.
By truck mostly, whistling, walking, singing and winging it
Though our truck stopped in the middle of the night
there was light enough to see the love in their eyes
two small boys
lost in a sea of sand 
not sure whether to go on
legs too skinny to stand
a slanted tarpaulin hous
a wooden slat bed
just enough for us to lay seven heads

two boys

a lovely lady not their mother
food
storm
swim
lost undies

two boys

pure
love

My brother.
My brother who I am a part of and who is a part of me.. is here. Now.
If I could write how a soul who has known you through the ages makes you feel. To have the smallest, oldest, warmest part of yourself..appear... and make music with you.
it's bliss.

Ambient Hanoi

yo, yo, here we go
the Hanoi choir calls

Chicken, horn, baby, horn...
Chicken, hammering, car rumble...
Neighbours fighting, dog whine...
Oooh surprise... two seconds of silence!
Horn, chicken, dog bark...
baby, car..

On a good Friday karaoke, militant Vietnamese... "mot, hai, ba" floats to my ears.
On a bad Friday the cries of the dead in a literal seance, the screaming and wails assail my senses drinking quietly in third floor flat

After the rains, fat frogs chirp happily in my drain pipes
mad geckos screech fight, flight (or fall) on the walls
Water drip, drips and spatter in noisy luscious lines, running rivulets down my ceiling

In the soft afternoon, harsh voices swirl amidst the pigeons flatter flutter and the general wail of you 'sandwiches, hot cakes, fresh breads..and cake sellers, fruit ladies, bread men and flower ladies tune their vocal instruments to an ear splitting key..

I love the lazy ones with an amplifier attached to bicycle with the pre-recorded static distorting across the power lines into my window..
to my un-Vietnamese mind the sticky rice lady selling ang soi dah sounds like "Asshole Day, Asshole Day" over and over.

my ears have factored in the honking and disseminated it into nothing..constant honking for me is just fine.

Dog, baby, horn, car...

And so goes the ambient base-beat of Hanoi...and I live in a particularly quiet part of town.

Another

"What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it.

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself ~ and thus make yourself indispensable."

Andre Gide

Eve in the Treetops

Treetop havens, follow the flowers up twisted staircases to cosy home spaces. I like my head in these places, warm faces, cheery conversations of shamanic hallucinogens, perception changing fruit, Bolivian drum making, balloon blowing. Where can a soul receive more light than a place that when you enter... you leave.

Welcoming bowers, a sure cure for wintry chills. An event staged with an eyeline to the clouds. Get a heartfelt hug, bowl of mulled wine, homemade honey, happy bees and fill the air with the scent of a Peruvian vine. Glowing smiles, rugged up skin, here they come, one by one, kick off your boots, drop your gift ‘neath the didge tree, grab a djembe and settle for Christmas Eve.

Bamboo matted floors, drums and triangles, bells and melodic chimes, harps and rain makers, free-range gift exchange, international multilingual music makers, roll it all together and you’ve got a magical, musical time spender..high in the sky on a December eve.

** Merry Christmas **

Ode to Hanoi

Hanoi, Ha Noi...potent and latent, deep as lakes, veils rise from my eyes. Silken constructed, built up, rushing, pushing forward, flowing with time. An ancient, modern insatiable emblem of rough, rotten stomping capitalisation, a relic, a token of ritual awoken and breathing 2000 years in time.

Cracked streets, hugging heat, a sweaty drumbeat, the pulsating rhythm of this city of mine. A rugged hand up, a friend to cross the road, a small kindness, smiling disdain of this ignorance. A fast paced mad hattedness, desperate focus, demons for dollars, wealth on a backdrop of women with baskets, babies, work, hunger and history, crunchy French bread, intricate streets, thin buildings and a worship of the dead.

The evening falls quickly on rooftop beauties, coloured edges jutting towards the skyline, filtered yellow lights, green, growing hopes all dancing quiet and silent above busy concrete streets, cracked and hard, riding motorbikes rough and broken. A life of ups and downs, a series of near misses, close calls and above it all a hazy, thick sky enveloping a city propelled forward quickly flying through time.

Darwin Deliverance - Rambles in the Northern Territory

Hot heat, wild hair, a laugh, a giggle, a cackle or two! Peeking through the veil, peering through a small dry window, the Sun bows gracefully over the ocean creating a never before seen type of green which blends out from the fire-glow. The rainbow horizon ripples and spreads into the night sky. It bleeds into the red rock and soaks the moss green, swirls brown in the hidden waterholes and blends into the heart of the land.

My land, your land, awakened by the light from the hills, smoke on the plains, a blanket of sacred stars, timeless Dreaming spirals, drawn away into the dusty earth, the blues and greens, the cool tingling Earth spirits pouring into the rocks, trickling into the ancient lakes and rivers.

Give me Baz, Bazza, Barry, Malibu and pineapple and crisp calamari, travel-weary trekkers, spiritual talks, lush green rainforest walks, the hope of a perfect sunset and the hugging heat. Give me powerful waterfalls, deep rivers and lakes, connecting people, connecting life!