The Power of Roses, 玫瑰力量

A flower was offered to me
You said you preferred Roses
Roses that nurse the Angel’s tears
But he who dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose

A flower was offered to you
A lush red Rose in its hint of perfection
It is the time you have wasted for your rose
That makes your rose so important
You who carry your fragrance over to me

With just the tip of your affection
But a Rose can grow, from just a crack in concrete
Whose to say that I would not nurture you
Some people grumble that roses have thorns
I’m grateful that thorns have roses

For if I bleed, it will be because of you
When you are drooping, I will hold you up
It is only goodness, that gives extras
So I say again that we have much to hope from
The flowers called Roses, cursive stains they may
Be in our lives, what a lovely thing a rose is!

A flower was offered to me
You said you preferred Roses
I feel as if have opened a book and found roses
Yesterday sweet and fragrant, between your leaves
Love is like a wild rose-briar, it blooms
Brooding in its flirtatious symmetry.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Rose-Red-110355899

A REASON TO LOVE, 愛的理由

Love is not all, it is not water or roses
It is not the good slumber or the sound of rain
Not yet beauty, men war for it and fight women
Because of it, it’s not all peace in difficult hours

Love cannot fill the heavenly lungs with air
Or feed the family of floating orphans
Love is in a way, an indulgence of the rich
Who may be driven to sell their love for peace

And in compromise, lose more than half of themselves
Or trade the memory of our brief encounter of it
For night and food and other bare necessities
Love, no, is not all, it is not sunlight or hope necessarily

Though it can make us smile easily enough
Even as I speak, many lack it and may be dying of its lack
I’ve been lonely for most of my life, I would know
Hearing your words, and not a word of love among them

Would be a bright heartache, salty day tear
Children whimper without it, and the gardens
Would hardly be watered properly without it
What to do, I’ve discovered it’s everywhere.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Happy-Roses-Ocean-44816345

JADE FLOWER BUDDHA

In the dynasty of our impoverished love
Like master and servant, I to you
Couldn’t serve, so I depart as a
Luminous white horse, across the fields

In the deep firm breath of
The dreams that I hold dear, you do not
I carry the Eastern skies
In my bosom, galloping with bhaki-trance

Nomadic, not understanding distinctions
Of class, and wealth and human hierarchy
I enter then, the Summer Palace
Of the downtrodden, where peasants

Survive to sleep on staw and spirit
With but one meal a day, and time
To conquer my own vain fears
In the unaccompanied court of my woe

The Jade flowers will not fall
No banner will be attached to my name
No sons or daughters to call me ‘father’
I would hurry to hold a better future

But I cannot, I am sick with summer dread
Till the Queen of the Stars leans down to me
And whispers the next step in my destiny
In spite of great failure, she makes me happy.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/falling-and-over-again-118869527

TILL YOU CAME TO ME LAST NIGHT IN A DREAM

Tonight then, is a rare event
For all souls wander somehow
To the opening clouds

Where the sun spills rainbows
When I went away, you were still unmarried
Though after the festivals, I knew

You were gone, tomorrow who knows
What Mountains may separate us
But I know we share a frequency

The balances day and night
After tomorrow, who can say?
Who or what is lovelier than that feeling

Of knowing the Mystic district
Of the Universe, is populated by others
Some intimate, others foreign

Tonight then, is a rare event
The time I join by candlelight
The realization, I am not alone

An infatuation, that we are not alone
I strain my sight, after birds flying home
Who cares for High Offices, human riches

Give me the sunset bent in bamboo union
And the smile of the new love
That is the reincarnation of all love ever known.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/a-day-without-rain-16892489

BEING HUMAN

I having loved ever since I was a child
A few things, the treasured taste of words
The affections of philosophy
And the aesthetics of the future

I, having shyness of poverty
Studied the mystics perennial
I allied myself to ideals that never die
Like progress, revolution, art

The empowerment of minorities
No matter what party is in power
Corporations or Artificial intelligence
I, having loved ever since I was a child

A few things, being human without enhancements
The affections of spirituality
Decline to merge with the machine
Or the great system of control
That is all inevitable for others coming after.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/18-87998490

TROPIC OF CANCER

I have not forgotten the speed of July nights
The way they drip beneath the wet Moon
Whose lips are of a swan beneath the light

The secrets of July dreams that whispered
Sluggish mysteries of the past’s desires
The magic world, where cities turned on end

When all machines came alive as if by singularity
In an intricate network of hideous technology
Progress once made, loosened forever

The man who made a miracle in virtual reality
For an intelligence that would guide the century
They who will inherit the Earth’s resources

I have not forgotten the unfruited summers
Where a few profit by the price of oil
Or the Sun that warmed the Earth uprooted

The secrets of the storms off the coast of Japan
Or the way the Media neglected certain topics
Leaving to our children’s children
A more manipulated, dangerous, and corrupt world.

WHITE JADE, FEMALE POET, ORANGE PITCHER

Heaven bless the babe
Orphaned by divinity
What queer books she will read
Granted, to be a poet isn’t easy

When she is older, she will say:
“Till the Spring, my murdered lover
Till our souls meet in another form
The language of my foolishness
Will be the bridge I swear”

Heaven bless the babe
Who suffered for the world
To make a cheerful song
That could outlast the centuries

Quiet, suavely clothed in sacrifice
Hurling, golden spears of martyrdom
Up the lines my silver runner
With a pen and a canvas
Bearing the banner of lost poets

In a siege of a dead poet’s society
Heaven bless the babe
Who became a writer
When critics were white rich men

Come now Aphra, be content
You and I have nothing to do with music
Akhmatova’s cannon is all about
Death beating the door in
For women fraught with inequality

Emily knew in her circle of white
Edna urged a certain possession of zest
For being born a woman, is a clarity
In the pulse, a sonnet gone unread.

P.S. To female poets: Aphra Behn, Anna Akhmatova, Emily Dickinson, Edna St.Vincent Millay.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sylvia-II-460402222

HERO’S DEPARTURE

It’s little I care what path I take
Since the world-soul guides me
And where my departure leads
For heart-break’s arrival is my passage

To another kind of life, I must go
I must leave, and off somewhere
Who knows what’s in my escape?
It’s little I know what’s in my heart

To save or grieve, it’s innocent still
Carefully sensitive in this little flesh’s honesty
I wish I could walk a day and a night
To forget you and your bloody betrayal

What’s in my mind it’s little I know
To travel alone, don’t mind the fuss I make
My life is huddled to beauty in the ditch
To sacrifice in the forgotten spoon

I’ve departed so many times
Beneath lamps and at the appointed bell
These candles burn at both ends
I know how fleeting time can seem

It’s little I care what path I take
Love was never enough in this desolate place.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/The-Whispering-Lake-466783721

Happenstance of the Free

Distressed mind so humble
To tease the hidden hooded why
O’ and how it aches to suffer
To shape thought with no reply?

From the warm chair of an easy life
Flee to danger then, if the storm
Is indeed your truer shelter
Fling yourself into your destiny

That cares not for death or wounds
But the promise of experience
The splendid claws of that beast, adventure

Distressed caution so secure
To tease the dulled heart of cowardice
O’ and how it aches to live
Each day as the one last
To shape your love with no spark?

I sweated through all these years for what
To make a life, you poor passionate thing
To reach the Rendezvous of your chamber
And to tell you all I am and have done
And promise my own freedom to the
Future’s lovely happenstance.