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Luke Young

United States of America

Mere & Child - Penny Howard

Luke Young comes from Turtle Island (North America) and is of Native American extraction. He has spent most of his life in Asia traveling and working.

For days and days the termites hatched

               From the wood workings of this old house

Their hum rattled against the tiled floor

                                       Reaching for the open air

                                       Following the outside light I guided them to

By shrouding the house in darkness

As they inched over the floor

Frogs appeared from the damp underbrush

       Licking up the weak

                       While the bats and swallows dived low over the house

                       In and out of the rippling insect cloud

       For a moment my house became a feast

       For a moment the frogs we hear but seldom see

               Station themselves by the door

               Knowing we appreciate them

               Knowing they are welcome to our house’s plentiful feed

The Boeung Kok 13

  Voices sang to sands

           Without placards or protests

  A simple lament of land lost

   Livelihoods crushed

   And homes churned into rubble

  Until violence arrived on motorcycles

   Machine guns, radios and batons

     Caving in faces

      Breaking lips of song –

  Dragged to a judicial hearing

Without delay

  The verdict was set

Before they arrived

  A life of cracked concrete

And dark blue uniforms

Their new home:

  Prey Sar Prison

Gunbim

Small hands of different sizes

The little ones in the early stages of their time

Press against mine

On the eternal stone wall

Silhouettes and shadows of the legends of before

An imprint of all that lives

Sharing existence

Created from existence

A planet of life

The littlest one chasing a tree up its first leaves

Where the wind crosses earth

In each sacred direction therein

Edudi Uliyesdi (Grandfather Cactus)

Tranquil rising visions of the night

Met the full moon shrouded in thunderheads

And soft flashes of untouchable light

I closed my eyes in greeting

Opening them again

To look upon hot coals and licking firewood flames

Closed again

The vision appeared:

A city in an eternity of black

Twisting roads fading from a distance of nothing

To skyscraper city center

It was all dirty

Gritty

Absorbing

As I took it in

The city changed

Into a gnarled angry and bruised octopus

Side stepping between the earth where it was a city

And the heavens that it was struggling to get to

It was attempting to climb from this plain

To the next

High above

While stuck in between it began to show marks of a beating

Mocked

   By a large cymbal-monkey with blood trailing out its nipples

And no cymbals in its hands

Grinning wickedly

Shaking ridged arms back and forth –

A question came from the void

“What will you be?”

I felt the implications of struggle and torment

“One of selfishness, distraction and destruction

Or will you choose peace and alignment?” –

There was no source to the words

But the black consuming eye of the octopi

Never blinked

As I blinked myself back

To the far off Thunder Beings

And a cool gentle breeze in the air

With eyes open

I knew my choice had been correct.

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