In the Snow

In the spring why
must we die?
I think
we were made
out of snow.
Moments preserved
in every flake
of every mold.

Memories melt.
Insensitive sun.
In the slush
sinking....Who's who
in the ocean?
I'm palpable me
A frozen smile
in the snow.

Story of Buck

Up close he looks like a bereft cowboy
Waiting his turn for some more campfire beans.
Except Buck is in an institution,
both hands on hips posing in line for pills.
No rope nor gun, and not atop a horse,
No cowboy boots, neither donning a hat.
Still Buck had been a true cowboy no less,
Who'd owned some sheep and cattle and a ranch.
But then one day his soft reflection asked:
Oh Buck must we eat flesh, must we not grass?
So Buck let the ranch and the livestock go,
And grazed each day along with cows and sheep. 
But soon the land owners restrained our Buck.
They dragged him to the doctors; shackled, tied.
These days you won't see Buck out in the field,
But here surrounded by the walls—sans glass.
So now snowed into sanity, Buck sleeps.

Truth Is the Lollipop

They toddle; how they fall!
It snows; in Vancouver.
Space tightens; times too slow.
Grownups grimace; kids glow.
I've heard myself titter.
But why could I not stop?
Freedom is a tyrant
for the hungry thinker.
Seeking manna I’ve failed
to read the child’s answer:
Truth is the lollipop.
Recall when you were small
and when a severe hail
meant hard candy for all?
The sun is out, the snow
at last started to thaw.
This time I do not think.
Could be the little things.

Barbed Wire

imprisoned by taX that falls like aX can't relaX
when my faX like some broken saX about to climaX
beeps as I speak with my eX oh I miss seX
she was a foX and yet here I am filling her boX
with her things the bronze oX her blue soX
the detoX pills and a picture of her in tuX
the X-rated flicks we bought that couldn't fiX
it was too compleX like tears for kleeneX
like this accursed taX papers and my old faX
machine that spat another siX pages into the miX
the barbed matriX tightens around this phoeniX
inside I hope I rise anew from this jinX so sphinX
please speak a paradoX and help me out of this boX

An Inland Taipan

My heart’s floundering

I feel it recoil
An inland taipan
Can be forgiven
Could I forgive you?
Something in me moans
Bleeding something folds
So it must be fed
The stone-eyed in you
Slithering empty
In heart dry of red
Now a frozen fort
You take extra care
Ones like mine are weak

You never mean harm
As there is no you
But empty craving
To bite the living
Life that flattened you
So now from down there
We are all just boots
Might step on you thus
You must be lethal
If you want to live
So I tell my heart
Its petals folded
Tale of the taipan
That ate a woman….

It's Not Easy at All to Give Thanks

It's not easy at all
To give thanks.  You recall
I'm sure the day you sent
Me, this heavy present
You wrapped in skin and woe—
With nerves you'd tied the bow!
The day you sent this I:
Unknown, unasked, from high;
With fury, fear, and shame;
With grief, torment, and blame....

The vacuum cleaner drones
And fills the emptiness
With dead skin cells and waste.
This old vacation home
Is where we'll house the guests
This Thanksgiving. What's more,
A child who coughs and spits
Who laughs for no reason
Looks up at me, says thanks.
I don't understand you!

Patterns

For years I
people like me
very young and old
the sick and the dying
the scientists and priests
the nurturing and the kind
the lonely and the slaved
looked inside and out
to discover and
to decipher
patterns

I don’t
know why
they all needed
to solve these patterns
myself I know only wanted
to stop the crying
wishing that
I was never
born

Haiku

I free my macaw
It knows my ancestor's ghost
That palm smiles and cracks

Hands Full of Rocks and Grapes

I came back home with grapes and rocks.
Some smiled, I saw some too who frowned.
The grapes I picked up at the store.
The rocks I found along the way.
Perhaps some looked and thought: What for?
With hands full of assorted rocks...
But why that plastic bag of grapes?
What plans he got for these today?
For certain not to squash the grapes!
To play with rocks while eating grapes?
To play with grapes while eating rocks?
Perhaps this man is far from sound:
There's not a reason, we are sure,
To carry home those grapes and rocks.

Plus-One

This last Sunday I was the plus-one
So self-conscious I was half only 
Sam was there too although minus four
Saw him tear up back there on his phone
Phil was there plus two little ones
Who added up to pure shrieking fun
Tim was plus-one too but a new one
She used to be my one and only
Tanya a plus-one but all alone
Her partner as always a no-show
Chantelle for a change without her wine
Since her plus-one was zero point one
Zoe with another handsome one
Rated him of ten a twenty-one
The night was long and the maths confused
Ate and drank so much I left plus few
Yet I felt like a big fat zero
At home crying hard in the mirror
But next time there I'll try something new:
I'll count only me and only you

New Things

Once a year the rain
rinses the urn of our sins
Inside new things grow

The Kohls

Let's put our heart and soul 
In carefree cruise control
Now let's go for a stroll
Down this manicured knoll
Oh their tottering foal...
Look how beautiful!
We must have reached the Kohls
I hear their rock and roll
See salad in the bowl
Patties on the charcoal
Let's kiss and pay the toll
So here's our casserole
To make your table whole 
Oh let the good times roll! 

All I Heard

There once was a little word
who loved to fly about
a town which oft was dark
though rarely lights did flash.
One day it saw the light and flew
from the town, but then was lost
inside another maze of flesh.
It fell through a hole and broke
But all I heard was someone spoke.

Happiness

True happiness is shy.
You need to be gentle and soft,
sincere and kind,
because happiness can always tell
when people demand its presence
only for selfish pleasures,
and when they genuinely wish
to welcome happiness home,
and honor their dignified guest,
with care at home inside their heart.

Happiness is pure and simple,
requires only that you meet
its soft presence with yours.
Happiness will silently sit,
caress your arms that long
have held heaps of hurt within.
Happiness will sing,
perfume the glory of your being,
cool the treacherous loathing within
with every flap of each wing.

But only if you care enough
to invite happiness home.
So open your windows at night,
let this shy presence now glide in,
unseen by the glaring daylight.
Listen for the soothing sound
of it preening its feathers,
consistent as breathing,
or the calm regular beats
of peaceful open hearts.

Feet

I hear between you and I

explosions that wail
that sting the skin like hail
griefs crystallized in time.
With my fingers sense
sympathy’s frostbites
mutations of distance
carved into the hearts.
I see myself but only
with your eyes falling off
the Earth into the clouds
pouring into oceans
sinking down a million feet….
Oh how I miss hearing
the sound of your feet….

Bygone Flames

Bigger than The Big Bang
its glib tongue still garbled
through history and sense
That cryptic cry of clang

So seemed to me their flame
Parents who bore us first
Was it of love or lust
Designless or with aim?

Yvette and Val

Yvette and Val were left behind.
Yvette was blind
but Val was brown
and new in town.

Yvette turned Barbie for the night
and stood in light,
alone near Val
her ghostly pal.

Alarming masks appear and fade.
She's not afraid,
been touched before.
She shuts the door.

Longing's Song

I'm the catnip's scent
I'm the purring sound
In pursuit of lust
I'm the feral hound

I'm the rhyming source
I'm its ceaseless caw
In the timbered heart
I'm the pouncing maw

I'm the empty tick
I'm the timeless hell
I'm the drowning flesh
In the wishing well

I'm the grasping want
I'm the craving tongue
In abysmal lull
I'm the longing's song

Craving for Peace

Of late and when the world's asleep
I've got a strange craving for peace
And sleepwalk down so late at night
My fingers still groping for light
And if a plate inside that fridge
Oh even if it's just one piece
One taste of it could make me weep
It's scent would float as if a bridge
Above ripples beyond my sight 
To where no word can stand for spite
To where no fear or fight can creep
Nor crazed turbulence in the deep

My doctor calling me "addict"
Prescribed a diet very strict:
No peace at home even outside
No peace especially at night
But healthy dose of grim conflict
It's tough love for this peace addict

Frankenlines

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass
I'm addicted to my own hopelessness
I can connect nothing with nothing
I have been half in love with easeful Death
There is no place that does not see you
You must change your life

Night Air

Physicians used to smoke  
endorsed cigarettes and coke
Scientists believed in Vulcan
drank radon water back then
but warned folks everywhere
Beware of the night air!

Black Waters

River run
Down the mount
Let diamonds pour
Cleanse the fetid pipes
Where black waters roar
Past the ponds
Where mallards glide
Forgotten mounds of rocks
That fade in the sun
Purge this human waste
Chase the swell of rats
The jellied fats
Of nameless fish
Feces and filth
roaches and tortured ants
Evil and pestilent guilt
River run
Into the night
Of my days
Erase
All this

Luckless Hands

Could you let shine
that which you never held
deep in your chest
kindly caress
in every hue
you never felt
from luckless hands that you
were never dealt?

It's Humid Out Here

It's humid out here
Economies always collapse
We smoke to pass the time
Far away lion cubs practice their growl
High above vultures hissing and they grunt
I can almost feel the fire ant's leer
guiding my bike faster past the tents
When the vultures land guerillas come out
It's the sun or shame inviting me to melt?
It's an aged cacao tree that I've hid behind
I think I taste a bitter kindness near

When the Boys Said to Her

For I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae  
hanging in a jar
and when the boys said to her 
"Sybil, what do you want?" 
a word was heard: "liquor."

The Whys

Do mulards know the whys
of what's been prescribed,
That daily
gavage?  Do

we?

Darkness

This evening the dark undressed
I saw the darkness drunk
sprawling upon the lonely streets
and lined with bones that never sleep
I heard an infant gasp and scream
By windows saw the darkness crawl
knocking against the stars that groaned
I saw some falling and some broke
But then I heard the darkness retch
I heard it pray night long for death

Bull Shark

What you need to know:

I am a bull shark.
What you need to feel:
dread (and only dread),

when my jaw muscles
twitch, crack turtle shells.

What I need to know:
Why am I afraid of you?

Why the Two...?

Why the two feet?
To kick yourself.
Why the two hands?
To shake our own.
Why the two eyes
that can't reach?

Shore at Night

I saw with my own eyes
the moon
decapitated

The head floating on waves
so black I thought I'd seen
the world in mourning

I too saw luminous eyes
cloaked in ripples of dark
out of respect for the dead

Seven Seas

Can't recast the past?
'Course you can!

Caught the whale
Cooked and et

If Love

I sometimes wonder if love
detests itself.  How else
explain
its sole
fixation on others?
Perhaps if love could love
itself
we'd suffer
less

Old Me

Why must we grow old
Why has fear taken hold
The dread of timeless loss
My searching eyes look
Just like the old me
The curly haired little boy
Dazed by the tiptoes of beauty
That took refuge in his innocence
And bestowed upon his fleeting being
A longing sense

Neon Sign

I write poetry for appearances' sake.
But though the phrases sweat
the feelings one might have felt,
they're the neon sign in front—
I keep the goodies stashed in back.
It's not you but my own self
I've failed and long misled:
Aching emotions can't be kept
nor driven out in verse—
as if an evil curse—
unmet, unfelt; unwept.

My Cells

My heart must play the drums
My breath an ancient flute
My creaking joints join in
I sometimes wonder if my cells
Could hear it all
Would they 
Enjoy this symphony

Shifty

It's safe
you can be
soft around the thorns
of shifting hate

Wait

Wait for it

Wait for it

Wait

The snow

Will melt

If you

Would Wait

No Simpler

Everything should be made,  
professor Albert Einstein averred,
as simple as possible but
no simpler.

I'm fond of your chubby dimpled chin
Delight in whispers of the scent of your skin
So much is lost in reducing all that's true
to only I love you

Fool my Heart

I shut my eyes
trying to fool my heart
that I'm fast asleep
But here they come again

Creeping out as if from under
a shut door into the moonshine
swelling out like diamonds into the dark
one and two and then a trillion tear drops

Disgraceful

Sex
An exercise
In disgraceful pleasure

Horizontal calculus
Integrating the area that pulsates
Beneath folds of sensitive skin

Myriad sweat drops that march
To the sound of heartbeat drums
And sultry gusts of breath

The hoarse-voiced commander
Again and again shouting orders:
Pleasure!  Pleasure!  Pleasure!

Aidos looked away from her body
Her teary eyes had just glimmered
In the cracked blood-soaked mirror

The Law of Conservation of Love

My eyes rained upon the sheet last night,

smudged my formula of Xs, Ys.
Emotions make a shameful mess of things,
I thought, exhausted cried myself to sleep.

This morning I upped and killed a lost fly.
I don’t care, I don’t believe in karma.
Life’s unfair, I’ve nothing left to lose.
My heart sleeps, my eyes are red but dry.

Tomorrow I may wake and slowly rise
and desire to, or consciously choose
to believe in the conservation of love,
to trust that love is never truly lost.

And later when my hair is grey and white
I may kiss an adrift fly, apologize
to life at large and my own injured heart,
that I doubted the invisible formula.

It's Easy

It’s easy to sing and dance
It’s easy to hate and cheat
When your shoes are
your own feet

Stardom

I sometimes wonder if the weather
knows of its boundless fame down here.
Weather is talked about everywhere,
Day and night, winter and summer.

Weather could start a fashion line,
Walk the red carpet, promote some airline
Posing in the skinniest of Calvin Kleins,
Hear them rave “Weather looking so fine!”

Weather could write a book or sing a song,
Endorse a politician, be a sex symbol in a thong,
If woman, or if a man, look ripped shirtless and strong.
Be a role model for the children and the young.

Along with Jennifer Lawrence and George Clooney,
Weather could star in a summer blockbuster movie,
Or be spotted by pap going out with a certain celebrity…
If only weather knew how predictable things could be!

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the coins
that were in
your piggy bank

and which
you were probably
saving
for a bicycle

Forgive me
they were delicious
so coppery
and so cold

Forgive me again
this time for pulling your leg
Truth is that with both our coins
I’ve got you that bike my boy

Cool

Undecided the fan sways,
facing me then looks away.
Like sun and shade (in reverse).
Crawling up my fingers first,
the calming cool parting the warm,
round my elbows, up my arms,
massaging my neck and cheeks,
breathes me in, as it creeps.

Office

I’ve no office of my own.
No walls. Roofs. No machines.
No fancy bi-weekly checks to sign.
No sick pays. No deadlines.
No pens. Staples. Wastebaskets.
Have no forever-ringing phones.
No office politics. No gossips.
No vacation pays. And that's just fine!

For I write on elephant ears
with a scented aubergine ink
from sweet juicy blackberries I eat
I gossip with mockingbirds and cranes
And when sick I sleep under the rain
that cools my burning sweaty forehead
In the scent of hyacinths I get paid
in stocks and lilacs and peonies
I've no deadline since when the sun sets
the starry night is just as open and pleased
to shine down and caress me with a breeze
I sleep where I live and live where I work
surrounded by myriad office-less livings
I hear the cicadas and crickets singing
and see the sunlight and shadow's artwork
and feel the leaves absorbing the light of day
and giving us life without receiving a pay

I like it here

Four Haiku

#1
Seeking the famed sun,
fell off a fifty-foot cliff.
Rain-scented sandstone.

#2
My eyes turn cloudy
Our aging tree in the sun
A sour apple drops


#3
Rats chase each other
One stops and looks back at me
Black eyes in the snow


#4
Crunch of gold and flame.
Do not walk on dying leaves!
Autumn wind circles.

One-Man Restaurant

The nonstop clank and jingle of dishes,
some being washed, some breaking in the kitchen,
some exploding by chairs and drive us almost deaf.
The mathematics-professor-now-turned-chef,
burning the lamb, knocking over the kettle,
sweats buckets into today's special,
his nose wheezes like the whistle of a ref—
his soul longing to flee, possessed by the devil.
Turns waiter, serves, then talks to us of women, 
now sitting next to us, of being Christian,
of his youth in his homeland going fishing
for compliments from the ladies in his church,
and tears up and his lips quiver and says, Hell!
Gets up, hugs us, begs us to come back again.
We leave complaining to each other, but then
can't wait to go back there again and again. 

Paper Tooth

She made a paper tooth for grandma
with plenty of gold and silver glitter.
What gaudy thing! grandma said, bitter,
as if expecting the tooth to have been better,
not flat, not a child's gift, not yet another thing
she has to smile at, useless as her own sweater,
as her own memories; her bones.  Her heart.

Time-Out

While we spoke of our losses,
of jealousy, hate, of troubles,
you looked out the open window—
as if to force a time-out
from our timeless squabbles—
to watch the rain-soaked boughs
heavy with kiwi blossoms.
But I was watching your face,
glowing against the hot rain,
your tear-filled eyes seeking
some cool hush beneath the bolts,
some dry patch in the flood of pain.

Last Fall

Leaves of saffron and marigold
mingled with canary and rose,
some shattered, some frozen
within the mud and early snow.

The scent of chilly air and soil,
the sound of familiar voices
rising up at once to a roar,
the feel of gloved fingers below,
all fused becoming something new
that grew more and more distant,
but she enjoyed her last fall; every hue.

Compassion

Compassion is not time
that passes without looking back
Or confused air
once a breeze and then the storm
It pours
not as water that freezes in the cold
It's not the sun when concealed
by darkness of a mindless cloud
Compassion does not cower
like fire in the downpour
Is not seduced by alluring words
Will not crumble beneath untold
unfelt sufferings of the world
Compassion can never be known
but from the experience of breath
through the revived reborn field
of heart that softly beats—
despite the ravages of time
howls of dolor
despite springs of agony still unhealed
and shattered memories that keep order
as fearful guards blocking the roads
despite the snoring snow-covered wolves
and homeless feelings running for cover—
having felt an openness and softened care
as if the city of heart is much much bigger
as if it's a room that welcomes and can hold
that and the breath and has room to shed a tear
as if the heart is vaster and warmer and wiser
beneath the damage and the falling snow
as if the heart is patient enough to wait
for blossoming spring and fruits of summer
But these are only words! 
Who could really know
why this time the breath had beamed with joy
returning all content
up to the mind from there

Tragedy of the Little Goat

The moonlit rows of roses guard
my garden's grace.  They taste so good 
to Goldberg's goat.  It coughs and burps 
and rams my door.  Gobbles my reds,
repays in dung.  The scent of stool
should guard my plot.  I shake my head,
I sigh, sit down.  But soon it's she
who turns and eats, my full goatee.

In My Own Bed

Sometimes I want to cry but I’m afraid
if I start I won’t stop until the whole of Earth
is filled and flooded with tears that hurt
the soil with salt that kills all trees and herbs,
daisies and gazanias, tulips and orchids,
and every heavenly stem of baby’s-breath.
So I must defend against destroying the Earth.

But sometimes I’m still more afraid,
petrified of something much much worse,
of shedding hot tears that always dry and fade,
of my choked weeping sounds that go unheard,
of roses that bloom, secrete their heavenly scents
just as before, trees that grow and folks who wed,
while I drown in strange tears alone in my own bed.

Woe.

I sing a sweet barcarole to escape grief—

its sores bleeding confusion, silence, disbelief.

Yes, we try chanting; airs afford us relief.

Thus men row; miseries ebb as harmony haltingly flows.

Melodizing is soothing. Mourners need a caretaker, however,

a spirit caressing and embracing humanity’s woe.

Because grief (a sullenness which protects, as heartland’s scarecrow

intends) when lingering, cuts—cuts, song's powerless to sew.

Discordant traumas painting a grisly show!

Melancholy dreams of reaching higher.

By contacting divinity, heartache generates

harmonic elixir of serenity. O God, vast Universe,

do allay the tide, so I, a crooner,

blissfully return amongst shipmates.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As an additional personal challenge to writing about the emotion of grief, my poem also corresponds with digits of mathematical constant, π/Pi.  First, the number of lines in each stanza is equal to its first few digits: 3.1415.  Secondly, and this was the most time-consuming, the number of letters per word, also correspond to the first 100 digits of π.  For instance “Woe” has three letters, “I” has one, and “sing” has four, corresponding to the first three digits, and so on.  Oh, and to represent “0”, I’ve used the letter “O” and words with 10 letters.  And here are the corresponding 100 digits:

14159265

358979

32384626

433832795

02884197

1693993

751058209

749445923

078164

06286

20899

86280348

25342117

0679

Forgotten Hideouts

We children hid among the rocks and oats.
We hid, behind the walls, our shameful parts.
Our frightened eyes we veiled with swell of tears,
Our hurts secured inside our padlocked throats.

And so it passed, the days and months and years.
But growing up so fast, we all forgot
The places where we hid our hopes, our hearts.
The pieces left: as rank as reefer butts.

The crumpled love letters and blood from cuts 
had dyed the grass beneath the lone bleachers.
We fled from all, but from ourselves much more,
Choosing to leave the ugly parts down there:

In bathroom stalls, behind the fastened doors,

In gyms, in Gale’s garage, never in class, 

But on the balding, moist, and yellowed grass

crowded with weeds.  Don't look, we're found nowhere.

Protecting Pain

Her wrinkled ground of psyche bears
the throbbing spoor of savage wills

She seeks to gather fearless strength
and build from hate a bed of spikes

It's not the light but shades she wears
reposing on protecting pain

Her skin was charred and she was shamed 
for all and naught and for her weight

She sighs as though an offshore wind
and arches faced with faceless void

She loathes herself as storm the breeze
and dies at sea as squalls abate

So fear and hate coordinate
in a harrowing harmony

Centillion Ways to Die

Hospital, hospice, laid in bed,
On freezing streets, in fancy rooms.
In timeless spaces, sunless skies,
Cubicles, prison cells...and tombs. 
In front of judges, parents, kids,
Audience—friend or strange—their eyes
Still staring from behind the lids
That speak the feelings left unsaid. 
With prayers, with grating cries, with sighs.
Unseen, unknown; unloved, unwed....
By force or will, with guns.  In wombs
Of girls whose souls have parted too.
Kisses on cheeks and pale foreheads,
Holding of hands, and swallowed tears,
With lonely aches and greedy fears.
Mystery, grief...then peace one year,
as pain searches, with wings unspread,
for warm and kind suffering peers
to help release the inner dead.

Disaster

I met with Disaster along the way;
She looked about a thousand years of age,
And tall as mountain ash but blind and mute,
And nude, aside from diamond knee-high boots.

I must have met her many times in guise,
Perhaps with grief that hurts, with grim surprise,
I felt her in the scent of homeless cries, 
Or faint sadistic laughter of a brute.

I shook her hand despite the nameless rage
That wrapped my body fully like a suit
Of sweat and shakes shooting from wilted roots, 
That feast on acid deep inside my eyes.

Don't you demand from me consoling lies 
To help you sleep soundly beneath the skies
That birthed Disaster long ago one day,
And doomed us both to meet unknown, en route....

Gentle Touch

To write a poem feels as though a game 
Like hide-and-seek: To speak but make no sound. 
Winnicott said that it's a joy to be
Hidden, disaster, if you're never found. 

Meantime I hide behind the rhyme and feet,
And hope you love me or the game so much,
To step around the words and reach inside,
To say "I see you".  With a gentle touch. 

What I Want

I want the leaves to never turn
I want the terror on the run
I want the limbs of anger axed
I want my grief now kept in urn 

I want the leaves to never fall
I want the love to never fail
I want this love to come and stay
I want this love to be my all 

I want the leaves to never break
I want the tenderness immune
I want our softness always safe
I want our hearts to never ache

I want my life to never bend
I want my trees to never age
I want my time to never pass
I want my verse to never end

Shelter

I hear the termites still inside my dreams
An aged lady dusted of her sins 
It's summer when her pulses hush and slow
I grieve the shelter, home I'd never know. 

 

At Times

So if it's all your fault   
Then I am in the right
But then the world's unfair 

But if it's my failure 
It seems the world is fair
But I'm the one to blame 

If no one is at fault 
Nobody is to blame 
But world's no less unfair

At times the anguish wanes
The fearful guard relents
The world and I are one

At times I breathe the air
The air breathes me in turn
And pain forgets its shame

Safe in the Face of Visions of the Wild

May you one day be born and live and die 
inside a cherished flesh and soul and mind,   
in loving places too, in loving times,
while safely facing wildest of the sights;  
for life's a grand adventure, too the sun,
the seeing eyeball of the pirate who 
adorned in azure, swings his sword of lights 
at times with loudest of the roars
that daily spies your unarmed morning bed 
and yet you sail waves of drama unharmed.

Buried by the Shed

Beyond the shed and past the troughs, I shed  
dry tears synonymous with voiceless coughs—  
the music of the operating room,
where maggots swelter, born buried in work.
  
The past exhales as though a sour simoom
that scatters scabs of unrequited love
that choke as ashes clog the live windpipe,
or fast monsoon that floods the living-parched. 

Frankenstein

God had indited Shelley's eyes and she  
the shameless fiendish mortal Frankenstein 
upon the pages prostrate 'hind the door
the lashed lids agape as though undead.