The Taoist poets

The Taoist poets

There is some hour, where our minds meet
Like boats floating in the same sea
We see the foam and sky
The learning hour, our heart of poetry
We were not predestined to be saved

By literature, the low-bending weight
Like water, the fruit, the crowds in our womb
Our brain was another light, a bright sunrise

And it would not last, the high-time
That was the hour, when we left
Our writing in the sands
The law of our blessed ways
To follow it like a river

Up to the fields of green
The author’s paradise, is when
Kindred writers meet and talk a little

Our ears are more thirsty than our hearts
For new words, vocabularies, expressions
The seashore was something we invented
To become a journey to the future poetry.

EYES

I don’t know the etiquette
of how eyes meet or for the first time
if they sparkle especially or

if I wore glasses the first time we met
I know I saw you with my intrinsic
looking as if I could pierce
your inner beauty, nor am I biased

I don’t know the business of eyes
beauty has been so over-rated
for so long, thanks to an evolution

but I know the last time
I look inside my heart, you’ll be there
with Asian eyes as deep as
India, China, Japan, Korea

so distinct like laughter of another culture
i don’t know the etiquette of eyes
but mine are drunk brown

not twin-cold blue or milk of salt
but chesnut-star, desire with the tip
of reaching across the universe.

Photo courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/The-Night-s-Eyes-II-129117202

Angelic torso of a poem

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
~ Pablo Neruda

I am the lotus on the menu
of soft and moist poems
that flow and swirl around the fireplace
by the window breeze, in rapture

for doctrine-dreams docile to divinity
the boundaries that have none
and peace that is washed on the nape

of your neck, the nouns-cherished like
flower breath, fragrance at your bottom-lip
hope heard like a photobomb
peach lyrics of vocal charm of forever

friends, spirits, pleas of narrative
that cuts to the heart of all experience
festival of physical discovery

in a maze of mantras, verging on light
the language of folds that covets songs
lyrics that is not spelled, silence that is not
empty, leaves in motion like verbal-dance

faith, in an avalanche of anticipation
that’s poetry, clean and with soft foundations
firm at the summit of her storm-blooms

perpetual attributes of sheltered stanzas
sweet as the taste of a lady’s geography
whose distance is as quick as summer
and whose memory lingers like youth

delicious to the mind, that drinks symbols
the hemline of all dress, words, clothes, books
the last formal invitation of literature.

Poems to Utopia

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
~ Plutarch

I cannot mistake poems
For my children, they are
Applications for the ability
to feel completely alive!

And I know it, to compensate
for days when I can barely
be fully productive, why
I cannot often celebrate

Looking at alphabets in a new way
Wrinkled poems lost to notebooks
mandarin glyphs studied fullheartedly
i cannot marry art, though it’s not

for lack of trying, hoping after
orgasmic quotes, divine lullabies
whine in me, divine mouth
of foaming ink that devotes

so many of my hours, so much
of my time on this planet.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sangklaburi-471314522

THE DAWN SINGERS

After all these collisions
with the abrupt license to write
these dreamy plagiarisms
as if words belonged to a mouth
the month of poetry became

a lifetime of habit, a sport
of inarticulate genius
of hope strewn in museums
blue transparent halls of journals
I still mutter quietly

spells for sweet memories
grasping at disappearing truths
i contemplate language, the soul
of symbols, the spirit behind a tongue
the last word i said

The word is Yes, yes to
white fragile voices
that linger for a while
these lyrics that spin
until loving is not enough

it must be written down
as if for eternity
the profound nature of saying
I will live forever trapped
on a page for you or nobody to read

smuggling lanterns as ancient as the seas
across the myths I once believed
were real, the news of my country
the land of my being
and the solace of my art

i’m proud to be trapped here
soon i will no longer have a voice.

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.deviantart.com/art/dawn-46952780

THESE ARE THY WONDERS

how fresh o lord is your morbid flower
that plays with spring as in a dream
and returns in so many other colors

only to redeem the world with fragrance?
how strange is the land of evening
beauty so strange to reincarnate flowers

to which all grief melts away
in a garden of lush belonging
that says: “this too can happen on the earth”

like snow in may and blooms in december
i should suggest we learn a bit from flowers
how to act, to smile when the sun comes out

and to rejoice simply by the effort it takes
to say hello, to another down the road
these are thy wonders here, the pleasures

which run fast in paradise, for petals
and the dew, for flowers can wither fine
there will be another, after this shower.

SO MAKE THE MOST OF THIS

We were tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth
About the reason to stay alive
But we looked into the fire
And we saw each other
And the sky went warm

And our lips grew cold
The sun dripped emerald
On our morning lighted cheeks
And our hearts, were the places
Where people came and went

Like gold in the trader’s hands
We were tired, we were very merry
We loved the beggars that we fed
We had gone back and forth
About the sincerity of our altruism

We cared for what we had to say
In our silence that blew neighbours in
And we looked into the afternoon square
And we saw each other there
And the sky went wet

And our mouths opened for the rain
We were like children, dancing
Our hearts were what they were before
We closed the windows but could
Still hear the birds, from scattered

Crumbs upon the sill, the hours raced
We were tired, we were very merry
The loveliest lies of our lives
Were in the end, what we cherished most.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Pandora-s-box-466251807

BARREN AUGUST ASSAULT

I

To what purpose, August, do you return?
Beauty is not enough, I’ve noticed
It has died in your heat, I know
The climax of summer is false

II

I prefer in-between seasons,
Spring & Autumn, so much more soul!
Of little leaves, and old blooms
I know what I know, Summer is a vacancy

III

Cactus of the Earth, Eaten mangoes
Buried dreams, empty cups
It’s not enough, that yearly you do this to me
Promise me flowers and leave me with

IV

An empty feeling in my gut
Weedy and insecure Sunsets
Ragged flame of burnt-out hours
Blessed heat, but not bright enough

V

For my blood, liberation in perishing
Every bed so narrow, every friend departed
I have forgotten how the frogs must sound
The summer silence is little solace

For a life caught beneath savage beauty
Timid inequality, squalor, nights without dreams.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Mysterious-Evening-467231904

The Death of Roses, 玫瑰之死

It’s July, and the world smells like roses
The Sunshine is powdered goal
My gladness can carry you
Don’t you know my sentimentality by now?

Crimson and sensual, likes splashes of blood
I shall end my life in Rose petals
The months you tended me
Your hands grew roses from my body

And I became, someone beautiful
In your expectations of tasting
Sweetness in everything
It’s July, and the world is good near you

Like a woman with untidy hair
The bouquet that was our affection had
Become messy, passionate with a fragrance
For an obsession at the garden

Of growing hidden buds, that might at any moment
Bloom, ready to die, is there anything as
Romantic as roses on a grave?

The point is you can turn my grief into love
You, like the rose are helping me find grace.

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

UNTIL BIRD-RACKETING DAWN

When night comes back
Back in black with her Royal dreams
Death with lift us all apart
Though aging does that just fine
Our wings of where we
Once flew, the sunlit open skies
And when red breaks out

Blood-dropped Sunsets spill
Across the ancient Lullaby
Of the setting West alongside
All that we once held dear
That nightlong spin on Time
Peels the stars from our rooftops
A canopy of light-hunted mistresses
All screaming the same name, LIFE.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/dark-bird-450866660

CALL to POETS

The Festival has a unique theme this time, poems about poetry, do you have any to offer up?

It’s one of the most decorated topics so if you are up to the challenge:

LINK

http://www.writerscafe.org/contests/Wuji-International-Poetry-Festival-IX%2A/49886/

Theme is Metapoetry.