Sunlight lifted with Her golden fingers

Hae.mi, as the golden sun interlopes
With the falling snowflakes, I see the destiny
Of how to trust the universe
It’s a woman who teaches, it’s a man who obeys

Like a lullaby of sweetly flowing years
“Trust the universe”
“You will be happy”
The nations can rage on, I do not care

Friends and lovers are free
To call my bluff, I enjoy the calm
Of solitude, the way the harmless hours
Merge into the sea of experience

Hae.mi, we do not need much love to survive
Only one drop of truth in our hearts
To believe that anything is possible
When the sun is low, and I am a colored singer

Who can hear the charm of the soul
It does not matter if I am simple, poor, barren
The world is wide, it extends to all people
I am a servant of the universe

With or without my consent, I pray at the chapple
Of her designs, and my tears are pure gratitude
There’s nothing left when memories burn away
Only beauty, only the inquiring mind

Of one for the many, of light for its unity
Of darkness, for the bird islands of life
You are as much alive as you dance in my cells
There’s no need to possess, when bliss is a substitute

In the meditation of our lives, art reassures us
That our suffering has spiritual meaning
The same mist hangs, as in ancient times
Your human eyes, pieces all that I am
To see divinity in a human form, is its own reward.

Little Stars in Water

 

Look into the sea, Hae.mi
Do you see yourself reflected there?
All the beauty of the world

The shores and the stars are silently praying
There is a wide open ocean
In your heart, with waves to play

As the seasons of our lives part
With bounty and prosperity
Like how your son asks questions

Vigilant of spaces in the dark
You are the dark unknown of winter
Where everything is lost in the journey

You are the freedom of childhood, reborn
You are the fragrance of salt in a world
Dry and barren, you are epiphanies of

Art, in a world of cities and riots
Beauty, in a world of so much laughter
Water, in a world of timeless thirst

Hae.mi, the way you look at your son
Is the miracle of life for me
The silence and the sand
That encircles the world with a smile

And for that, I have only calm gratitude
Well-wishing, a treasure chest of goodwill
And tears salty like the biggest ocean
A universe so pregnant with love.

Isn’t It

Haemi’s heartbeat is listening to the Autumn dew Listening to breathing with the warm sun softly nestled On the branches of our healed hearts Where there’s no poverty in loving And no boredom in risking the gift of sharing Where …

I Went to Heaven with Suffering, but I Lived

Photo courtesy of Thon94rt

A little madness for the end of Summer
Is wholesome even for a beggar
The start of the end of climaxes

Where experiments felt like a dream
And life had no soft distinctions
Only dramas that became less fashionable

Fashioned by these candid hands
Where I blush in solitude for my losses
A little crazier than before

A moment lost on the edges of lifetimes
The soul condemned to be a guest
With undisputed rights to be nobody

And fame for the fickle food of anonymity
There’s no scrutiny like self-judgement
No following like bleak humility

No embarrassment like the obliteration of need
When you as a person begin to dissolve
Remember what madness taught you

The hosts depart, the friends depart, the lovers too
But some things can be treasured

In the adventure of the self
In the bleak individualism of perishing
To passion, a broken mathematics of faith.

Last Gladness of Stars

Image courtesy of Natalia Drepina.

Although only with breath, I breathe
And only with mortal love, I feel
What is beautiful, let that be my good

What is true, be it right at the time
You who judge me, let me not
Accuse myself of knowing anything
What cannot be said, will be wept
Though I alone search the poets

From Sappho to Auden, be it clear
That although only with prayer, I prayed
Gratitude was not my abundance

Delight was not my possession
Freedom was not my virtue
I could only love best, in words
Words that must remain an evil illusion
Words that never reach their goal

Art that never could profit me truly
What I loved, remains unseen
All my giving was a farce

And my glory was a kind of boredom
In writing more naked than the flesh
I never found my last resort
Or a heavenly kingdom in the future’s vanity
Without warning as a whirlwind

I will die, and no one shall remember of forget
How my life became my own, in slow immaturity
The limb-loosener will take me away

And I will be lost to this world forever
As if my value was in happening, or dream
There is no beauty that endures this species
Only that which reincarnates on all the worlds
There is finally, no place for grief
In these houses of stars which serve the muse.

Perihelion Interior

 

O exhilaration and exhalation this is my madness

My delight, my intuition of unknown substances

With the sad splendour of helplessness

 

I will be reborn soon, into a new body

With an experience as pure as this

Peace stands with the variables of brilliance

 

We do not know how to accept grace

The transparency of our finite thoughts

The immutable facts of our disintegration

 

Death is an embrace of something cosmic

I do know struggle against her cold neck

There is a motion of silence that spills music

 

And I feel it growing like a being

In me beneath the weight of spirit and matter

I am a joy that knows all creation there

 

My hope is not my own but I partake in life

Momentum, a voice of at the edges of oblivion

Where meaning was all the smiles we had

 

They were metaphors, and women, and sunshine

And that’s all the gladness I possessed

That’s the beauty that possessed me and it was short.

E.J’s Trip rope

 

 

 

 

Eun Ji, how does a poem grow

From your shoulders as the years shine

Like a woman’s sadness that shuffles as it aches

Or elongated moves from man to man

 

In the cold months of identity in elegant death

I’ve watched you across books, speeches,

Highs and lows with hair hung in confession

And I’ve seen the fun house of your erections and

 

Encompassing many kinds of awareness

I’ve seen you cry in a poem

And I haven’t a clue what the end-game is

Nor how far we can push language at its brink

 

Or what gamification allows us to sing

When all the trees have been downed

And all the books have gone unread

Drowned in a sea of screens, lives churning

 

From reality, waiting impatiently at the

Digital timelines, tunnels into simulation

Eun Ji, will you even remember the syllables

That stretched your heart to your cheek

 

You were mad with the ocean once

And hearing you speak Korean, I felt landlocked

A permanently strange indentation in your psyche

You would never feel, you suspected it was

 

A native part of your own psyche, and I was just

The circus-gear of your imagination

An opened mouthed and clumsy sport gone unwhispered

No, I was the whisper of hypnosis that dilated

Your hardy gone funky work ethic of verse.

Sermon Beneath New Stars

 

Yet, love, how I identify with you
Love on fire for humanity, for a collective survival
And therefore if to love can be a desert
The water is everywhere, people are

All around the virtual taverns, the city streets
The country roads, the planet twinkles
The stardust clovers, the empathetic telepathy
Of our lives that all have a common origin

Love is the grand unifier, the unity
That never sleeps, that walks all roads
That cradles hope, in all seasons
Over all obstacles, in all hearts

To bless thee, and to console thee
From that same love that vindicates all effort
From that grace that perpetuates all glory
Love on fire with a faith, that cannot be quelled

That is the fate of trusting love, God accepting
Nature yielding, time withstanding
Immortality calculating, AI supporting
Death moves not this, nor I, if self is lost

Love is transcendent to self and that is me
I am that, and eternity has her recipe
That gives meaning to all the paths
For time and space abide by her
And her law is effortless, spontaneous, creative.

Created By a Touch of Doubt

 

Today the air is clear of everything, for
It’s a brand new day
And I am everything and nobody

Just the way I like it, grand and serene
Anonymous yet friendly, my sense
Is honed to innovation and the future
There is nothing I crave from biology
Today I am older and younger

Than ever before, wiser and stronger
As if none of us had ever been here before
Today is the day of my realization

The singularity in me reaches its apex
Let me be the intelligence of my soil
Let epigenetics of my choices wash over me
In a hush, a quiver, and a whisper
Of all the people I have been

A sovereign ghost of a life, that cannot
Stay the same in such an inscrutable world
I’m blotched out beyond unblotching
And in sync with the universe beyond dying.

The Earth Has No Lovers Left

In the garden of my mind
I hear strains of rare music
It’s not the pungent quotes of the young
It’s something else, like the

Philosophical banter of a true friend
And how unlikely an embrace it is
To listen to that silent music
It’s not like the stroke of birds or cats

Not like the worrisome tone of human beings
It’s evening set in her recurring majesty
That! Never truly gets old somehow
In the garden of her mind I find

The walls of beauty, revealing luxury
But I sit and ask myself how profound
Is it, what is she missing in her cocktail of
Yearning youth and burning ambition

I think she’s missing a spirit, a skirt of soul
I cannot judge, but I suspect she’s dancing
To the beat of the world’s drum, some hyper
Post-modern standard of perfection

It’s the famed and over-used contemporary tango
And it’s the voice that rings out on all sides
But that’s not the beauty I adhere to, nor
The values that secretly quench me

I’m more attracted to an altruism
The way a cat embodies the sun of morning
Stretched out and like a kitten again
Purrs their grey eyes into the distance

Where life is a meditation, and youth is just
One asana, in a long sequence of fire and prayer
There aren’t any lovers left who can save me
I’m on a one way course to divinity

There’s no taxi where I’m going
There’s no snare yet available quite like God
O’ and the universe, if I can’t have love
I’ll drink the Earth into her cosmic underwear.

Notes from the Future Underground

(Love letters to Asia)

I snow dive into you
Like the air of Autumn beating
Against your chest, the yearning

Of youth that is no longer young
Trapped in an aging body
My face knows no mercy!
I am the dove of white stitching
With a heart for a stranger’s smile

I’m an open lake of enigmas and
Surreal plaything of golden leaves
If you wish to, look into my eyes

There is nothing but guarded purity there
An endless array of ideals before sunset
I’ve cherished things and people
I will never meet, never see
But simply by knowing they exist

I am made more noble, more caring
About a world that shows only
It’s rough underbelly, it’s trials and stupidities

A civilization so vulnerable that believes
Capitalism will last forever
But I see the cracks in the system
The memory of corruption bare
And I will not agree to disagree, I will fight

For a revolution if need be, while I am young
Chilled and numb, I will not take
My place among the profiteers

Who joyless create a dead world
I drink to my soul, with the straws of eternity
And have distance foundations in my view
I strategize with machine learning paradigms
For more than flowers of written down words

I strive for an Autumn of convergence
That won’t be attainable until many years from now.

P.S. Instagram is blocked in China.

It’s only natural

Your heart and my heart
They are not strangers my friend
We have met before, many times
Across the tenderness of the wayward sun

I’ve known you at dawn
I’ve known you in sunsets
While our minds are tourists
Our hearts were conversing

Not like lovers, but like seekers
You can run from anything dear
But life is where we meet
In the filled closets of our lives

Stupendous and terrified
Temporary and mortal, so vulnerable
I recognize it all in your eyes
I’ve been catching happy viruses from you

Out in the stars, laughing at how
Remarkably contagious all good things are
Where our spirits kiss in the moonlight
That’s where I want to stay forever.

Lyricism Wrought from pain

And in this time, of my material poverty
I’ve come to realize an important thing
That I have no riches but my spirit
No prosperity like the kingdom of my own thoughts

The love of the universe
Trapped inside of me, so innately
Yes these must be wealth enough for me
Not friends, women, comforts, luxuries

Can compare to the range of joy
That sets its bounds of beauty upon me
In the cosmos of my heart’s secret place
I also like most all that comes

And least of all, all that goes
For change is oft too unpredictable
To draw the sunsets from my mind
Or write a golden lines that stands

As the best, of my unoriginal mind
Life is but a thought, sailing in breath
A great league of breaths that hushes
Over everything, beauty breaks the heart

In the right way, even as we
Found more joy in sorrow than
The reverse, tonight is wonderful
Tomorrow is profound, and that my dears

Is the hidden love in creativity
That the heart knows the songs
The music it must make, not me, not I, not we.

Poets are Wild Roses

Eun Ji, whatever our souls are made of
Would’t it be nice if hers and mine are the same
That we embody shared attributes
She’s more myself than I am

What if that which hugs the seas
Hugs us in our deepest heart
The sacred reason for our lives
Is blooming almost constantly

We just have to listen to its spark
Eun Ji, I bloom almost constantly for you
And you won’t see the flame
And you won’t feel the nectar

And everyone is invisible sometimes
To that which most matters to them
As stars to the sea, as green to the eyes
And sunlight to our human cheeks

The our of our everafter draws closer
And I’ve never craved friendship
The way love introduced me to
The wild rose-briars of elements of poetry
Poet who are too bright for this world.

As all the earth is holy ground

I dream of you to wake the soul
A soul that dreams of remembering
The future while we are still young!
I lock my door upon myself
That I might write the most beautiful books

Better by far you should read
The eternal present’s experience
Than follow in my footsteps dear
The silence is more musical than any song
The goblin market of our mind is dreary

Say then, that your heart is like a singing bird
That forgets not to smile, and the world
Like hope trembling, will smile with you

Unsure of the hurt it caused you
But grateful for your attendance just the same
Do not take your injuries so personally
They are but the foam of the ship
Upon which we travel through the night

Of choosing love not in the shallows
But in the truest depths of the deep
Where my heart is breaking for a little love.

The Talent for Lying

To be truly curious
It will take all of your heart
To listen to people and to question things
There is nothing revolutionary

Whatsoever about it
It’s the natural state of being human
You must write, read and live
As if you knew nothing

That you might explore
Every point of view
Every frame of reference
As valid, every formulas as good

Until there are no more words
And no more self in what
You have found, then tell yourself
The meaning of life

Lying is done with words
And also in silence
The world lies to itself everyday
To perpetuate ignorance

So that some might profit over the many
Poetry is a concentration on
The ultimate relationship
Of everything in the universe

With itself, the self that is only a half-truth
It’s the connections that are beautiful.

Stuff We Learned

Eun Ji, if people forget what we said?
I don’t mind, I just want to open my eyes
With my soul, for a day
Make people feel the flush

Of love’s light and the costs
Of living for a better world
For no price is too steep to pay
For that, we have to live by those voices

That love indeed recognizes no boundaries
No barriers and we write to leap fences
We celebrate with our lines full of hope
Cascading for an open heart

Racing for an open mind
We write to lift the veils from our own eyes
That we might see others as ourselves
And decide not to be reduced by our tragedies

And grow from every encounter
And innately feel how everything in the universe
Has a rhythm and we are a part of that
Eun Ji, how easy it is to accept

That we can be changed by people
Permanently, by the quality of their tenderness
The strength of their values and convictions
It’s time we no longer apologize for who we are.

The Last Poets

The Last Poets

Between the potency of existence
And the silence of the soul of love
The voices that speaks is poetry
To look at the world the way
A man looks at a woman
With hunger and a vivid appreciation
For nature’s prosperity

The voice knows me
Like the way a ghost knows its shadow
Time riots in the music of my dance
Every generation I shall lend the voice
And poets will become the lover
I once was, carrying on the tradition
Of making light of the hidden beauty

Until you write so beautifully
The inside of your mind
Becomes a reflection of heaven
The heaven that belongs to the future
And the poetry of the Earth is never dead
I get a little poetic sometimes
When I realize we are perhaps

On the way to extinction, after all
We have become the alchemists
Of our own evolution, like the mother
Of communism, art can get lost
In translation, and even poetry can
Die, the literature of a more romantic age.

On Being Conducted

In the sympathy of the Absolute
Mozart or Shakespeare didn’t know
How beautiful the categories
That makes a heart full with her genius
Or how a person can fly inside
In free-associating with our highest destiny

Sometimes we just follow whispers
And hit notes of mysterious Poetry
Or find a beautiful day to make music
And in the solitude of an ending meditate
I remember the feeling of internal seekers
That always wanted me to push on

And the petitions for more revelations
From the internal holy ghosts
I remember how certain emotions
Evoke a sense of wonder and how
The miracles drove me to visit the spot
Where God stood on his heels for me

And I felt the full gravity of time
And philosophy insisted to meet me as my guest
In the simplicity of what I believed was destiny.

Simply beautiful

Simply beautiful

How often have you told me
Sweetheart, that honesty is the
Highest form of intimacy
But I’ll tell you the story
Of how the sun loved the moon so much

Because she represented the night
And his opposite and because
She died every night to
Let him breathe, honesty is then
Also the attraction of difference

My desires are honestly different
To your own, so don’t think
I don’t respect you if
I pursue what I desire in this world
To offer up my mortality to the Gods

Or to get praise from this transient audience
Doing what we love is its own reward
We are not all made to have children
Or find stability in this lonely world
To me, simplicity has always been

The last sophistication and
The one I could afford
So living imperfectly
I found my perfect expression
Of myself – to do what I love meant

I would exist so at least
My inner beauty began the
Moment I decided to truly be myself.

Who Came Sure from a Sea of Light

Who Came Sure from a Sea of Light

O’ the silent stealth of wind
And the transparent cool glance of green
The chide and call of open sky
The pass of years in the bright and brave
The natural, and useful elements
And water and where all doubt recedes
In time’s incessant lack of memory
Where subject disappears in objects
Recurring objects of glorious liberty
And channel of the soul
That washes the body and a life
To streaming rings of sun
And cells of gold for the immortal estate
And the spirit hiding behind the veil
Of a lifetime of walking the path.

S e c r e t s of S i l e n c e

S e c r e t s of S i l e n c e

The ultimate tragedy is not to live an uneventful life
But to be oppressed by noise
And never know the dearness of silence
The good friend who never betrays
The love between the words

That is the poetry of experience
It does not require to be bullied into commotion
It can be introverted and define itself
Without judgement or explanations
The ultimate tragedy is then

To live in the constant self-ruminations
That does not shut up, projections and various falsehoods
Silence is freedom, never forget this!
Silence does not lead to God
But to the stars where silence is in the light

In the way life forms on planets and takes
Millions of years to mature
Silence is then the miracle of waiting
Of being patient until decedent divinity
We must not take sides, silence

Is the pure neutrality, the great objectivity
That won’t follow littleness of selfhood
But rather the great Mother
The thoughts that turn back to the Ocean
Where the human heart is not broken

Into a billion ideas and condemnations of right or wrong
Silence is to follow your nature
That expresses an inexpressible music
And has a darkness of adequate instinct
Silence is better than nearly all words

Than the idea that words and labels can save us
Words only ornament and elaborate
But never explain, they cannot do that
But silence can, that is why it is ancient and sought
By the seeker who knows that truth and beauty are illusions.

We Can Make O u r L i v e s Sublime

We Can Make O u r L i v e s Sublime

Sweet soul, in mournful numbers
We dwindle like a lost tribe
With the beauty of dead slumbers
And life’s earnest poetry to dust returns
In our voices that will not climb

The days and decades to come
Our psalms to beauty
Will not say \time is fleeting\
Art is long and love endures
The past lives in shadows here

In our heart that holds the mystery
Of all that was great and all
That can learn and labour and wait
The poetry that is the true music
Of the human spirit pursing itself.

untitled but for poetry’s page

Poetry is its own best audience

Poetry is a daily practice
I don’t consider it particularly artistic
More like the spirit of language
Doing therapy on my brain

This is your brain on poetry
So I’ve transformed down the years
A few thousand poems are like
Little green eyes smiling

Like leaves bursting with wind on a tree
Next to your room, close to your soul
Like the ocean in the background
Holding all myth and legend

And the whispers of love that can
Absorb an entire lifetime
Like the memory of romance when
All romance has died long ago

Poetry is a meditation
Of how indebted we are to nature
And how gratitude never runs out
It only returns again and again

Like clouds of delight
And stars at twilight
Money is a kind of poetry
In the extent it lets you live and do anything

Through for inner freedom
Poetry > money in its simplicity
You can take it anywhere
And it will be guaranteed to still possess you

Embrace you, ravish you with
The adventure of time and delight.

Mother’s D a y

Mother’s D a y

Thank you for bringing me
Into the world, Mother
My soul was built upon your love
My spirit blessed by your protection

I trust the world because of you
And claim special joys
For my descendants because
You loved being a Mother

With love and tenderness
That I might multiply it like beauty
In the Universe, and find
Respect and cherish women

More so than all other things
My Mother, you have always been
Like a dear friend, and have allowed me
The freedom to be myself

And in that freedom the Earth-mother
Has spoken to me, of what I need to do
To contribute back to life
All the labours of love

And all the sacrifices
To fight against cold fathers
And the rules of this world
Who hoard and profit while we struggle

These corporations who have
No ethics, barely any authenticity
Towards giving back, community
Thank you Mother, for making me

A feminist, in this world of Patriarchy
Where men exploit women
Rather than learning from them
And fault them for wanting so badly

To have children, like you did Mother
A good mother is irreplaceable
Somebody who is right for the job
It’s not everyone who should be a parent

My mother is my spine, keeping me straight and true
My blood of spiritual minerals
Making it run rich and strong
She is the beating heart of our humanity

Our guide to dreaming water
Our guide how to love ourselves and each other.
Mother, you filled my heart in the first place
With so much goodness, I am kind

A bit each day, like speechless gratitude
That purifies all it touches
It was you who taught me most
“We find ourselves in the sacrifices we make”

That love is to enjoy giving
More than receiving, it is true
The hope for altruism is still strong in me
Because I had a mother like you.

Further reading:

Millennials opting out of Motherhood:
http://mic.com/articles/114040/for-young-women-not-having-children-has-become-the-rational-decision

The KissKiss

The KissKiss

There are days in clumsy brightness
We ask another to come to us
And we are open like a stuttering pearl

Ready to be taken by life’s immensity
And in that wonderfully stumbling
Sign of our vulnerability and desire
We find the ache that
Always only guessed what it needed

We find intelligent conversation
Of body and mind, and soul even
If you believe in a soul, I have one

It’s rather kind and likes to watch
The days go by in a zig-zag of newness
Seeking distinctly different ways to learn
From others and experience humanity
Like the way you smile more if

Our eyes meet a certain way or
The way you get soft if I touch you
In certain places, there are days

When I wait for you in my mind
In the anticipation of being with you
Like a spring that regulates my destiny
It’s not tactile, but intuitive
At regular intervals of my need for you.

I Like to Feel our Spine as One

I Like to Feel our Spine as One

Lady, if I could touch you with my mind
I’d paint you alive and shyly wanting
You would be long of soul
With eyes hard as love on fire
You’d wear silence as a dress

And nothing else, and hope for a shocking smile
Of the parted lips of time
Lady, If I could touch your spark
I’d be the warm glow of a tickling ache
That does not abate, but steadies with warmth

Gushing the garden-wall with after-thoughts
Or roses and our faces kissed
By the longing of impatience on the edge
Of passion so subtle it would be torture to endure
Lady, if only you knew the shadows

The clean dreams of love before we are doing to die
The galleries of faith where a woman
Can save, and these moments can empower
The sharing unity against all the futility
It’s quite a new thing for me
To have a body next to your body

To respond in your tangents of possibility
And shocking fuzz of parting flesh
Whose love crumbs are spiritual signs
And stroking cries break my self-limitations.

Lady, if I could touch you with my mind
I’d paint you alive and shyly wanting
You would be long of soul
With eyes hard as love on fire
You’d wear silence as a dress

And nothing else, and hope for a shocking smile
Of the parted lips of time
Lady, If I could touch your spark
I’d be the warm glow of a tickling ache
That does not abate, but steadies with warmth

Gushing the garden-wall with after-thoughts
Or roses and our faces kissed
By the longing of impatience on the edge
Of passion so subtle it would be torture to endure
Lady, if only you knew the shadows

The clean dreams of love before we are doing to die
The galleries of faith where a woman
Can save, and these moments can empower
The sharing unity against all the futility
It’s quite a new thing for me
To have a body next to your body

To respond in your tangents of possibility
And shocking fuzz of parting flesh
Whose love crumbs are spiritual signs
And stroking cries break my self-limitations.

(lessons in Cognitive ecstasy)

Lullaby of a Lifetime of Living Bliss
(lessons in Cognitive ecstasy)

There is a cognitive brilliance in
Thought’s end at the edges of beauty
How the last colors spilled
In the pale air, the color of light
That drink o traitorous beauty

Again and again, so intimate
Like the breath of a woman
We knew that never seemed present

Only just around the corner, so
Indefinably alien and inalterable
The one our body and soul pitted
Time and space against, rubbing
For quantum moments in quiet nothingness

“Be self no more against the flooding dark”
Women whispered to themselves to be strong
But I felt the stars and worlds come alive

In the presence of women, like following my bliss
To the ends of the Earth, where would I arrive?
In the heritage of green that was once
An everywhere, that became a nowhere
There is a spiritual ‘must’ in

Thought’s end at the edges of silence
Where the spirit goes because it must
Like something homeless in the night

“Though but the world they say is mine”
Says the woman to herself, after becoming a mother
How the last colors spilled
In the pale golden air, the color of milk
Spilled like a last majority of bliss attained

That made the dust and journey seem to shiver
And how at our roots the violet seemed to burn
And love, how it was more thick

With stars than the fields with dew
And we felt the hours hold their summer-breath
For the sleepy fever of incredible joys.

D r e a m s of S p r i n g

D r e a m s of S p r i n g

O’ these unpermitted prayers
These poems of music welled inside
The tears of the heart of the brain

I wonton murmur dreamy my soul to fain
With averted eyes and heart-open wide
Not to humanity, but to the universe

I nurse my speech with the infinite
As a mystic cornered in a brutal world
That cannot feel the lapped tender light

May-time is here, grazing dreams
Of May-bushes that turn white to pink
I can scarcely speak of lyrics

Beauty is in the perfect sunlight
And happiness in the tips of the forests
The ocean that drives a sleeping wind

Across the fragrances of this natural world
O’ these unpermitted silent revolutions
What have we done to this world?

Where is the soft moss, the birds
The odours I used to know?
Drowsy with change I will have to wait

With heavy eyes and softer cheek
How to compose the perfect music
For such poor voices and poppied ears

Draw close the curtains to this place
I have branched evergreen in my veins
And sweetest tastes of the divine fountain deep

In my hopes for buds unseen
Wishes fading like the embroidery of rainforests.

A f t e r A l g e r n o n

A f t e r A l g e r n o n

O Spring what lutes heard in yellow
From the golden sighs of youth
Lost and drunk on lips and eyelids
That now have no remembrance

And how our sleeves beg for beauty
If not the Ballad of life once again
Or that flesh that dwindles each decade
Or skin that grows new lines and

Muscles that find in time little praise
Where went lovers and passion
Whose laughter and magic
Felt so intense as if a grievous thing?

O Spring what have you done
Under your breath to us
O smitten lips, O sinful having breasts
O erotic flattery and temptation’s bell

How the passage of her days
Have made us less brave, less apt
To carry our taunt flesh in raiments
Woven with the mirth of curiosity

So we must go on, in gracious last days
Remembering dreams of fair maidens
And flowers as if we lived yesterday
The gold raiment of starkest youth

And bravest obstacles to win a secret
In how we came and parted our loves
How we kissed, embraced and bowed
All our noblest parts bruised and soul-caught

Now we must take our marigold leave
From all these shelters and insincere hands
To let the love of righteous adventures
Find peace in the spoilt gold of our minds.