it may happen one day but not quite yet

one day, i will refuse to eat anything but ice-cream

i will forget my name and why i came 

even forget my granddaughter and my pets' names  

everything but your love will be lost, but not quite yet

simple peeves like losing keys are common

did i take my pills and where are my glasses

on the tip of a tongue like a tourniquet

everything will vanish from my mind yet…

do not bring me down with a condescending frown

for forgetting the world or what is new in town

i won’t make a sound when the agent comes around

or make knowing me something to regret

for all the ignoring and turning of the cheek

to let what is nuclear from the family seep

or fall into the sinister hands of a creep

from me recklessly? Not quite yet

it is oedipal to bite the hand that fed

be it clenched fascist or utterly red

loose lips that sink ships  to an untimely bed

will cease to babble as soon as i am dead

for the lost minutes turning joy into blame

or wrists that are sprained by mailing my name

get over on me now but do not regret

it may happen one day, but not quite yet

July 29, 2018

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

on a clear Taichung night in the month of ghosts

on a clear Taichung night in the month of ghosts

Perseid stars can be my lovers

high from a mountain looking up

or from the River Han above her

lights are few there and the sky has plenty

along the bike path of drunken dreams

heavenly perpetuity can cloud my mind

radiating Perseus constellation in streams

a crescent moon will have set

favorable for midnight fireballs

Han water flows under Swift-Tuttle

a most favorable forecast for all

on August twelfth i will grab my tequila

ride up and away from town

with bottle raised high multi-tasking

for what i seek shall be found

she is done with her lover in the night

though i could make her stars warm

why would she not share life’s mystery

remaining unconscious through the dawn

when i arrive upstream i will pour the bottle

into the dorsal spine

resistant to a night of crawlers

with spray so they will be kind 

when i ride home wobbling

looking for the front door key

she will not see me returning

from eternity

July 28, 2018
www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
Purchase "Unnatural Beauty; Poems from the Han Riverside" here.
 Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

the family gathers over the rainbow of Taiwan

the family gathers over the rainbow of Taiwan

high above the yellow horde proletariat of Hualien

black undertones of misogynist blame

privileged drifters' vengeful claim

permitting posting on their page for distaste

left on Taiwanese lips for the dismemberment waste

surely it was one of the sick Taiwanese men

and not one of the colorful among them...

democracy replaced by vague consensus

backpacking new-agers shouldering expenses

smoke screening cigarettes allowing pretenses

banned canine unleashing exclusions

for the primitive pleasure of field defecation

a tax and fee free squatting vacation

leaving jet fuel traces in the wake

leaving litter and bitterness in what they take

leaving the urban world for squalor

should visit a ghetto and leave a dollar

or better yet school young innocence

on how to survive without paying red cents

instead of banning this brother for suggesting

it is better to learn survival than to be guesting

off charity and a collective pot

that ties societies into a knot

my green lovers of natural flow

sans raw meat that the paleo know

shun me not with your rainbow pout

come back to reality and work it out

July 14, 2018
www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
Purchase "Unnatural Beauty; Poems from the Han Riverside" here.
 Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

wishing it would rain

certainly i would ride into a downpour
enduring pelting on my head
knowing a child waits to be inspired
and i am the agent of that inspiration.
drenched i would accept the outer shell of wetness
when warm and dry the love inside them blooms 
grooms them into lovely humans
for others to embrace
yet for ridicule i would stay home
knowing it might sound quite strange
wishing rain would change my mind 
whip the wind  and come what may
when all to gain would be the same
no benefit from dishonest business
engorged with greedy ulterior purpose
learning language to succeed 
not for moral foundation 
not for the golden rules 
but for the cloudburst of sudden storm 
on pilgrims' wandering salvation
the clouds that hinder obsession
remind them comfort for righteous exists 
around billowed clouds of heavy moisture
incipient destination for ambitious men's torture

July 3, 2018
www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
Purchase "Unnatural Beauty; Poems from the Han Riverside" here.
 Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved

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.

 Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

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

record 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.

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"