Poetry with Nate part 2

At first, I thought this poem was a bit too ambitious, but when the dust settled, I thought it captured a part of the essence of our travel quite nicely.

Pissing my Days Away

Standing over the toilet
Unzipping my trousers
And playing firefighters with myself
One last time
Before retiring to my tent
I stare at my reflection
Broken through the porcelain
By my waning stream and the waxing Moonlight in the night sky
Before realizing the duality of the moment
And having a good chuckle
At the old idiom
Where viewed through a certain lens
I might be described as
'Pissing my days away'
Sleeping in temples far from home
Unemployed,
Accepting alms from monks
Yes, its supposed to be the other way around
I'm not actually poor.
But Thoreau could've left Walden
Anytime he wanted
And Kerouac and Ginsberg
Did, in fact
First meet up at Columbia
And Orwell certainly
Didn't need his dishwashing job
To pay the rent
But today,
As I recall the large bag
Of vanilla wafers and lactasoy
Given to me
Like a sweet tooth on Halloween
I can't help but think
They were all onto something
And that all I'm onto
Is right there in the toothy grin
Of the old monk
With his warm heart
And simple act of kindness.
I flush the toilet
Noticing my reflection once again
This time,
A wink and a smile greeting me
Inside the reflection
Of the clear water.

Poetry time with Mr. Nathan John- Part1

I wrote these two poems shortly before meeting up with Colleen and Erin as I passed through NamNao national park in northern Thailand, one of the few places where one can still find wild elephants.  I didn't  actually see any elephants, but I wrote these  two poems about what I did  find during my time there.

Searching for Elephants

Eventually
Groves of bamboo give way to
Mixed deciduous forest
Broadleaves, reeds,
And palms
Different shapes for all the different ways to cook shrimp
Vines grappling with emerging trees
Breaking free from the  suppression
Of the canopy
Enacting its own functional chokehold from below
And from the forest floor,
Frogs crying out from the Nam Nao,
The cool water.
And all the while,
Providing the type of
Languid, sensory experience
That only a jungle can provide
As I struggle to interpret these signals.
While instead
Finding a brief moment of communion
With the lords of this realm

Trash Receptacle

In turn, footprints and bamboo splinters
Give way to the baker's dozen,
The thatcher's worst nightmare
And the dung beetle's fantasy
A clay oven masterpiece
That looks better and bigger
Than your first time baking a loaf
Of sourdough bread
Yes, I'm talking about elephant shit.
But I take a closer look and realize
Where this brick and mortar starts to crumble
I've seen this before, perhaps on a
Tour of a recycling plant when I was a kid
Or the side of a highway,
Any highway
The end result of a functioning
Trash compactor
And then I try to imagine
What it's like to have a lactasoy carton
And a black trash bag
Pass through my intestinal tract
And then later my rectum
And what exactly it means
To produce and reproduce
Shit
Over and over again