Abe Lincoln once turned to somebody and said:

Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead?



There are three tiny deaths heads carved out of mammoth tusk

on the ledge in my bathroom.

They grin at me in the morning when Im taking a leak,

but they say very little.



Outside Phnom Penh theres a tower, glass-pannelled,

maybe ten meters high,

filled with skulls from the killing fields.

Most of them lack the lower jaw

so they dont exactly grin,

but they whisper, as if from a great distance,

of pain, and of pain left far behind



Eighteen thousand empty eyeholes peering out at the four directions



Electric fly buzz green moist breeze

Bonecoloured Brahma bull grazes wet eyed, (gazes??)

hobbled in hollow of mass grave

In the neighbouring field a small herd

of young boys plays soccer,

their laughter swallowed in expanding silence.



This is too big for anger,

its too big for blame.

We stumble through history so

humanly lame

So I bow down my head

Say a prayer for us all

That we dont fear the spirit

when it comes to call



Sun will soon slide down into the far end of the ancient reservoir.

Orange ball merging with its water-borne twin

below airbrushed edges of cloud.

But first it spreads itself,

a golden scrim behind fractal sweep of swooping flycatchers.

Silhouetted dark green trees,

Blue horizon.



The rains are late this year.

The sky has no more tears to shed.

But from the air Cambodia remains

a disc of wet green, bordered by bright haze.

Water-filled bomb craters sunstreak gleam

stitched in strings across patchwork land

march west toward the far hills of Thailand.

Macro analog of Angkor Wats temple walls