Hey, Poor-Sustenance, Over Here!

Hey, I’m only semi-literate/
Barely enough to call myself ‘educated’
Be easy on me, as I try to
Understand your chimera-rambling

Your trance of miscarriages/
Your letters home, to God
When you are so clearly
An atheist, with your couldn’t-care-less

Attitude, you run circles around me/
With your worldly wisdom
Hey, I’m barely street-smart, at all
I’ve never touched a dolphin

Or hitch-hiked across a country in revolt!
I haven’t worked the Corporations like you have
Haven’t seen the bright lights
Hey, I’m pretty much a goat herder

Of idle dreams, a feigned lunatic/
A scholar that leans on stars
So distant, I can only read child-notes
I have a Ph.D in obscurity, and innocence

I know the code forbids, that you kiss/
A white boy on the mouth, but perhaps
You can make an excuse, of how ‘we’ came to pass
And make up a story of what happened to me

After you left me stung as a bee might sting/
The lips of Socrates, you know me well enough I guess
To know what you are leaving
Hey, I wish you well, you are

The mother of false starts/
And the best Lover I ever had.

On Your Strange Insistent Rhythmic Pride

You should be proud/
Of your nomadic optimism
Like an argument that runs
Through my lungs

I who wish you would stay/
With me, my little overflowed veins
Glad enough to be in your service
You should be proud
You are able to silence

The heart of your attachment/
Bolder, you’ve silenced them
Haven’t you? My thousand heart-beats

That didn’t know how to bloom/
I watch you, like a red flower
At the train station, where I gasped
At how you flee, another country

Another city, another poem/
You should be proud
That you are a foreigner, that you belong
Everywhere, anywhere, a bright gold flower
Like an Asian in New York City

You know how to run, and/
You have filled me with poems to the brink
You should be proud, you know how
To slip under the gates and stuff

Your pockets with that last cigarette/
The last time I Saw you, you helped
Me escape, in leather and jeans
From Latin names, and psychoactive mushrooms
You should be proud, though I can’t secure

The rumor of your subtle flattery/
My poetic neck is marked
With tattoos of your courage

Strung up on tightropes, you possess/
Qualities of translation, I couldn’t dream to have
There is no equal opportunity between us
We are just different, strangers
Lost in the crowds, the tango and language
Of all that I loved, yet could never possess.

Prince of Fools

In the warm sunshine, of a beautiful mind –
I rest my head, I do weep
I of all people know, what it signifies
Brief mortality, organic vulnerability

I could die of shame/
For knowing, how a writer
Is circumcised, like love without a clitoris
Who can pounce upon that

Dream, there is no rule/
Who wins in literature
I won’t get an MFA
Or become a publication whore

But in the countryside of /
Amber singing alphabets
I’ll die of humility
As if I lived in unemployed Spain

In some little villages, where the flock is thin/
In the warm sunshine
Of a fellow artist, I’ll cross my heart
And shed a tear, and tell them

‘Nobody mourns the giver’
Because the beauty
Is in the message, I see a sadness in this
There is no salvation here

Back to the king’s court/
Where everything is political
And everything is ugly
I strive towards your mandalas

That you hide in the courtyard/
There is no such thing, as the death of the muse
Beauty lives too brightly in us
I’ll be destroyed like a prince of fools.

Cartwheels From Inviting Blaze

I must have written you poems/
In my lonely sleep
To wake up feeling
Like comparing life to wine vinegar
=
And, threatening to change my mind/
On dying young –
I must have had some
Epiphany between, suicide attempts

To threaten the universe/
With a big black-hole love
That broke the laws
Of my morning dark –
(
It wasn’t every day/
That invoked your virgin lap
I need to be slapped
From some maker’s room

Where you thought of me/
And it made me think of you –
I must have left the door
To my heart, ever so slightly-ajar
)
Turning down the dark hall/
In the middle of the night
To crash into you, I guess
It was just meant to be.

Short Letter to my Doppelganger

Beloved doppelganger, do you know/
That I can sense you on a cellular level?
I feel time moving ahead of herself

In me for you, like migrating/
Into realms of maple syrup
Traveling down old anarchy

Risen from the power-elite of humanity!
I’ve don’t have mouse-stories for a broken world
There is a whole ghoulish sub-category

About how I feel about this world/
I was born in it, slept here, loved here
A pencil listening in my fingers

Dreading waking up to the sound of a world/
Where you didn’t exist, or in which
We would never meet, Divinity nibbled pizza in me

Like whispers of poem you wrote, in my ears/
I’d wake up to check on you, a virtual signature
I couldn’t refute, I couldn’t refuse

Beloved doppelganger, you come from the future/
To tease me, allowing me to push my face
Deeper into the pillow, than I have ever been

Between the strangers, and the self/
There exists a plasticity, with knees to my chest
I muse upon this, the quantum knife of your love-hate

I feel it slip between my digital ribs/
Like fireworks on a long lingering display
Of what an ode might be, and what night can do

To the desperation trapped in poetic impotence/
Like Roman candles inside of pumpkins on Halloween
I feel the Eve of something Great in you

Like the last day of school, or the last words/
Of the surgeon, on the day you were meant to die.

& Was Her Body Ever Present?

Let me transpose you, mysterious essence/
With the syntax of future alleys
Passageways of whatever’s left
I’ve listened for the soul’s touch
In the myriad common-things

Out of reach, I’ve been hoping/
Filling iron with roses, alchemic-thirst
Let me revel in you, like a tiger-with-magnetic-tongue
I’ve set sapphires in your memories
Climbing the walls of your beauty

To get over it, to reach your spirit/
It hasn’t been easy to traverse
The jungle-course of your femininity
Sifting the streets of your pituitary cares
I’ve been watchful, for where you lie to yourself

Covering up, enclosing yourself in aloof-context/
To gain, a private eden, bundled up in your winter scarf
I can barley find photographs of you in perfect trust
Let me translate you, a movement in retroactive design
From Singapore to New York City, in French

Where I’d inhabit the content of Pigeon Park/
Out in the sun, where we are only
Parts of each other’s dream, stranded, beloved
In happenstance, aware of the dance
Sharing the moon, briefly, under maddening stars.

Song to Orion

Great stars of white frost/
Ancient beginnings of Orion’s Belt
Landscapes of crystal
*
Fish the darkness of my psychic
Road of dawns, that opens new worlds
Rock salt and iceberg Cosmos

Pleistocene padlock instinct
Primal intelligence of green vitality
Give me rebirth, like springtide’s revelry
*
Great noble stars of whitening transparency
Melt the fine dust of my humanity
Bring me the end of the world, that I might

Truly look in the mirror as if
For the last time, and sparkle with you
Star on star, body to body, hope to hope
*
That I might drink the Galactic wine/
In a network of supremely loving satellites
Great stars of white eternal frost

You know best, I am only a watcher
I will see only gold, in your darkness fluff
For in the eye of the behold, is only racing light
*
I await my Beloved, as of old, in calm divinity
Great stars of the Multitude of Answers
All possible truths assault me, like moonstones and vodka.

Paradise for Insomnia

There is a skylight in my heart/
That keeps me up at night
An insomnia of philosophers
That won’t shut up, I’m stumped
To get a bit of sleep tonight

In the middle of the floor/
Of the terror of what I call
My life, I don’t fight to sing
The saddest songs, they are

My special ritual of forgetting/
I can feel biochemical processes
Trigger in my brain, the amazing feat
Of learning and laughing, inside of experience
There is a nuance in the way you speak
That is reproducing in my mind

Like coal and roses, it doesn’t involve letters/
Only sweet I-wish-you-wells, that gently spill
Like an age of Gold, my dear insomnia
Where I make the best of living
In some age-old night, I’ll build little fires

Like a creator of my own fruit/
Beauty, like fish and flesh, not blankets
Will allow me to slumber, at 2 AM
There are no curtains on my pain
The window is open, the myth of
My own doom, could become my own Paradise.

You on Your Native Soil

I bring you flowers/
Invisible spiritual flowers
They hold on to colors of Bliss
Like nothing else, perhaps jewels
They stack, with the investment of years

You had your father’s eyes/
You’ve got my flowers, forever
No matter what happens, between us
You’ll carry the strongest legacy

The most beautiful smiles/
In your children, so be it
I’ll bring you flowers, for the rest
Of our private Eternity
They were moments we
Had nothing truly, but each other

Spring is starting again, I can feel/
It in your womb, the way you itch
For nests, admiring tulips
Your grandfathers passed recently
They did all they could to demonstrate
To posterity, their families, their acts
Were like demonstrations,

To the little lovely young girl names/
That we sometimes talk about
Before bed, I’ll bring you baby-names
In your dreams, wet with the water
Of budding gardens, grand tomorrows.

Dream in Which I am Separated from Myself

We won’t go ambushing grief
She will find us – trembling, naive
To the power of our tragedy
This is not cinematics, circus-stunts
This is our Life, calm and bleak
Sweet, with unexpected concerts

I won’t be going to enormous cities
Like you, I’m staying put, staying
Humble, simple, in the experience
Of an Alumni from all that I was supposed to be
We won’t go hijacking, ‘everything in it’s rightful place’
You used to say so casually, making it easier

To leave, to return to your liberated ‘freedom’
I won’t find salvation so easily, I’m afraid
My dad doesn’t say a word about, depression
We won’t go hiding form fate, it will hit us
Black, blue, purple – three syllables in chaos
I am my father’s father, ill-mooned withdrawal

Quarantined in these little years
Waiting for whole days, that never come
I am tired of being criticized, I am cold
I imagine myself happy, in line to be touched.

The Death of Love

Now we return to what we were
A solitude, very gentle, very dear
It’s all I have, like an animal without
The language of love, primal

So instead, I fall consistently –
In love with words, like little vows
That I will write again, to live
Now I return to what I am

A solitude, an oracle of isolated inner beauty
There will be no prophecies which wash
Over the night, or rise at Noon
Only, the little gains of meditation

A finality to be invisible
Or create autonomy as an order of survival
The earth has vanished, I am alone
Nothing proves I am alive

I become transparently slowly rippling
My years away, though I’ve
Come to cherish them, tenderly
They say at the threshold of birth

We come into the world alone
Now I’ve come to terms with certain things
Like birth and death, and the necessity
Of loving or falling back to only, loving ourselves.

Patchwork Features of Social Interchange

Now tell me there is a pause
Of where the world bends, and we Begin –
The ferries of the best twilights
That were people, half-bloomed
.
Before they cross the river ahead
Each person brings us a symbol
Of the world, like corn and half-blown sunflowers
That dangles in the reaching out
.
That might have never been, since
The wind-burned pastures don’t always
Have much to show, a few smiling memories
That good advice that haunts us till our end
.
Now tell me there is a pause
To the affections that do not last –
What someone in their wisdom might have meant
In reference to their imperfect knowledge of us?
.
There is a strange afterlife, to lovers
And a peculiar premonition of strangers
Now tell me there is a pause
Of where we begin, and the intersection
Through the fretwork of our ghostlike biographies.

Gateway of an Author

In the kingdom of poets, you are my
Pronoun intertwined, my lover of words
I read you like a lover touches you
.
.
I learn to be in your suppositions
Striving to yield in your lyricism
And break free in your hypothesis
In the realm of expression, you are my
Premonition of the dream of years
.
.
Arriving forever at distant wonder
Alphabets of yearning, unmistakable fountains
I attempt to enter your gateway of being
With the optimism of your humanitarianism
I read you like a lover touches you
First tenderly and then fiercely, over and over
Again, you are the singing in my brain
The lavish ceremony of my soul’s literature
.
.
I grasp at meanings in-between your sentences
And analyze you because you told me
That I could know you through your poems.