Han River Poems

Saturday, June 23, 2018

little red hen's taste

i retreated from Brooklyn’s America

retreated from Taiwan’s Taipei

retreat from the Han River Freeway new

recoil to the last unobscured mountain view

call it passive aggressiveness

this holding back of emotion

or one more chance to get it right

before it starts a fight

give up romantic goings on

give up carbohydrates and wine

but give up smoking and drinking booze

gonna buy myself a pair of shoes

leave the toys for the rich boys

the ones that laugh behind my back

a man has more than poverty

losing envy has set me free

feeling like the bumpers in pinball

lighting up all the lights

flipping to save another play

an eye on the ball that ricochets

what gives my life a meaning

unloading treasures saved

grass smells sweeter after a trim

move it away from the brim

give it away before it is taken

but not to the monk that takes

none to the freeloader’s waste

only for a little red hen’s taste

June 24, 2018
www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Purchase "Unnatural Beauty; Poems from the Han Riverside" here.

Saturday, June 16, 2018

north of the southerly breeze

ah, to be north of the southerly breeze

to be invisible to ants scouting the bench’s eave

to have arrived at the place i am going

such pleasures as these

you will soon be knowing

understand why people watch a river

how one arrives in vehicles big and small

up to what they value

in the difference between hellish traffic

and heavenly bicycle path magic

i know why fishermen spend hours

in the midst of a morning lake

why golfers chase a ball to hit it farther

tee up on a manicured lawn

into eighteen holes all day long

i see tennis spectators, soccer fans,

hockey puckers and basketball suckers

living vicariously without lifting fingers

for anything but zippers

leaving the couch for nippers

every step along the way

engrossed with every breath i take

with moving objects getting attention

i quickly merge with that moment rush

then move on to forget it without a push

i follow the pixels on the screen

playing the same games every day

making new shapes from different angles

like Captain Pike, Steve Reeves and Hawking

without moving, mountains talking

like Einstein’s brain in formaldehyde

faster than the speed of light

as empty as a black hole

i know how it must feel

and meditate on the unreal

like the inner groove of Sargent Pepper

or Who’s Sell Out skipping mantra

record skipping mantra

i nudge my tone arm for awareness

the way my lover moves me

out of that familiar groove

to every song on every side

i have to do it, i cannot hide

children of the world have toys

possess and covert accumulations

but as sure as a diamond cuts through all

comic book heroes and Hollywood

become hollow as rotting wood

when the pen runs dry

i sit watching the river flow

when the end of the day arrives

i find my dusty red dream squeezed

somewhere north of the southerly breeze

June 16, 2018

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
Purchase "Unnatural Beauty; Poems from the Han Riverside" here.
Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

Saturday, June 9, 2018

ants from a lychee son

sitting by the river in its only dusky shade

unable to change the world that others made

like a son raised least he could eke out peace

living his life from a battered valise

filled with excuses having been said

and what i wanted to say instead

to a son too far to hear the call

flying high still a long way to fall

and ants at my feet, unrelentingly small

the ants from a discarded lychee

treading on my feet, up my leg

i squash them back

for giving me flack

for maybe a killer sting

that might infect me,
itch and swell me

mistaken as a lychee

keep its venom from our family

my wayward son sets in the east

far from a Formosan feast

where once there was a way back

now crushed on a foreign tarmac

but i must move on, i cannot remain

in this dusky shade overcome with ant pain

i must find a brighter bench to stay

from an inundated shade of swarming ants

though a bright son shines behind my pants

pedal onward the path upstream

leaving the spot i thought i’d like to be

sighting a cool gazebo with no treading

from a son who crawled around inside himself

then came crawling after me*

like ants from lychee on a trail of starving words

i am rewarded by the sweet sound of singing birds

what i would have missed if i had stubbornly stayed

to crush ants for the goal of a shade

June 9, 2018
www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

*two lines borrowed from Phil Ochs "Tape from California"

Sunday, May 27, 2018

last time i listened to Mitchell's Mingus

she was enjoying him so much

in brainwave synapses

i saw an expat that looked like me

peddling upstream
lamenting the progress of destruction

like constructing highways

over this Han paradise

so i came right back to the last bench

that has more mountain view and low houses

almost camouflaged by the greenery

and the sky obliged my thankful lungs

with puffy clouds and sunny breeze

far away from bold Taipei

the seagull song to jazzy town

a magnet for lusting capital seekers

Chinese unifyers and CIA creepers

one, oh one reason to say goodbye

so into Taichung i try
to regain the feeling

beyond ceremonious tea dealing

to an ancient house of poets

dreaming deep inside red chambers

before palace intrigue corrupts the need

for silvery springs green
into Mitchell's Mingus

May 27, 2018
www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
Purchase "Unnatural Beauty; Poems from the Han Riverside" here.
Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

Saturday, May 12, 2018

visiting a friend as the mind travels

looking into his eyes

that is where our journey began

a vagabond tourist in a humble abode

transported and landscaped

through tender loving messages
silly abstract humor

simple like an intercontinental emoji

of reminisced experiences

renewed, confirmed, giving solace

bridging the twain of strangers

once met and passed along

like traces of LED lights behind closed eyes

with kind internet words unforgotten

let's start a party of shared joy

mingling each other in the aura

called upon to chat

and stay overnight

maybe fall in love

with whispered words ...

i would live for that

to have you near

my witness of commonality

persistent peace neutrality

side by side around the next bend

say

let's do it again while we can

(for Jim)

Monday, April 30, 2018

the river flows same place daily

between windswept banks where brush grows

under swooping birds and meandering butterflies

a man sits on the same bench daily

arriving at the illusion of moving on

repetitively worn and being reborn

like grass that grows on burned out lawns

given storms to endure

downpours of emotion to ford

refilling the illusive river ashore

April 29, 2018

Saturday, April 21, 2018

on the other side of a twenty-seven mile wide mountain range

is a place to go where no cars and cycles buzz behind me

where the dusk heated sun does not touch my back
and polluted air does not burn my eyes

where the Pacific Ocean whooshes in my ears…

i can get there by dawn and sit on the beach

smell the salty air as the sun rises from mighty waves

stroll in water shoes across sharp pebbles

dash into a cool frothy force crashing upon me

there, over this mountainous Taiwan backbone

i could stay drenched in plum wine all day

women amused with my Mandarin mouth

women amusing me with their English tongues

i could do this

with karaoke nights singing to my fancy

but would i forget my wife at home

looking like something is wrong

i look to the peaks of green mountains

follow their curves through lush valleys

twenty-seven miles of tiny winding roads

upward, over, around, and down to the shoreline

with indistinguishable places to rest

and weeks if i wish to stay

with an iPod of twenty-five thousand songs

in a cold car with cool sound system

it could be years

if i do not miss home

up and around bends with streams and waterfalls

adventuresome companions and sweethearts

and my favorite noodles

April 21, 2018