White Horse in a Black Storm

I am aroused by your happiness, he said

To the woman in the torn jeans greeting babies

On the northern most tip of hope, she sprang

 

 

To life, like a cat in motion beneath the yellow-combed leaves

It was an eventful day, where a lady might become President

But he could only feel the electric current

 

 

Like warm bread rising for Hae.mi, a flood of fascination

Turning exquisite costumes of Autumn, undressing them

In the mouth of faith, that can only taste one thing!

 

 

The ocean memory of hair dishevel, salty lips

I’m aroused by the way you walk, your addicting optimism

Your platonic truth, bursting through like liquid laughter

 

 

Breaking down barriers with charm, skipping over awkwardness

And burrying into the self-forgetfulness of intimacy

I’m so hungry for you, I’d let the white arrow run through me

 

 

As I prime the memory of your future with your own goodness

Silence prefers the passion of shadows today

The mischief of delight walking naked in your eyes.

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.

Having our Times

The clouds on their blacks lay
Trumpets of the rounds of time
They brought thunder, lightning, dance
Not with vengeance but industrious

Angels near, time playing clown again
Settled for a bask in a golden sun
This was Earth, proud and indifferent
Extinction was speaking to God

The last night and smallest of things
The awful leisure of the years given
The sense of nearly infinite renewal
In our absence and in our cleansing

Planets had a kind of intelligence
Unopened to the divinity italicized
Of what it means to be sentient
The responsibility it bears, the human sign

A fear that urges the soul to live
Out its design before the play of the body
Is done, And not spoons, playmates or
Holidays can save us, we all have our time.

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.

some stars

Some Stars

These are amazing, each
Fleeting with the light of each other
As a performance in the night
Arranged by chance

Floating like trees in morning
To meet as far as the eyes can see
As far as things can travel
Exploding to tell us that

ii

Life is everywhere
Something so simple
Like oceans or trees but more distant
Gazing into history with a chorus

Of smiles and a canvas that
Felt like the face of eternity
Placed in a puzzle of so many pebbles
As to dance by the waves

iii

In the sunshine, moving slowly
Across the skies with their
Own accents, own astrology
An astronomy of amazing indifference

Fortitude, prophecy, design
Intelligence in a quantum physics kind of way
These are joining a neighbour or moving
Towards a friend, and does it mean something?

The way they double up, have baby planets
Disappear, we may touch, love, explain….

Loving poetry, like a body of love

Loving poetry, like a body of love

Each of us have tasted
In ecstasies of stealth
Forever hidden alphabets
The fruit of dreamy-knit language
The stars that grow on words
Forever to be partially hidden

In the author’s mind
Tonight she lies
Naked and resembling

A word made fresh with a gesture
Of a symbol of a dream
That shares a secret gleaming
For those who know how to hear
That tattoo of wisdom
That little totem of care
Crosses the lyrics fragrant
With the pulse of beauty
Loving poetry, like a body of love.

Wish

Wish

I kiss thine eyes with my soul
With mystic empathy mine
But you do not look or see me!

Ah God! If I might once again
Feel the dreamy youth of feeling purely!
With identity projected, in wondrous joy!

The old-time longing for unity
It’s thrill is still in my cells
Like a circling memory of oneness

My whole heart leaps nearly to you
There, but you do not look or see me!
There is no method to convey sometimes
The inner possibility of energy
The old-time agony within my soul

The hush of alienation, loneliness
An eclectic talent for feeling separate
If only to magnify the unity-of-all-things
I kiss thine eyes with my private feast
A light blur stirs for thee from me

But you do not look, you do not see me!
And I was in my lonely light, with frenzy begging
For faces of the spring, for golden
Words spoken to me, as if I had
Thought poetry at the ocean side

For a lifetime of romantic depths
Without the shudder of youth
That passed so quickly, I am getting old.

Auto-poetry

the poet is a faker
to be a voice among the crowd
the poet must approach magic
To say what the crowd would imagine

without used words
the poet is a faker
who’s so good at his act

he even fakes the pain
or becomes the pain
of the fact of creation

an introduction to the human condition
the poet is a faker
and those who read his words
participate in the autopsychotherapy

they will feel in what he wrote
the substance of pain healed

and that is the beauty of
performance, and that is the
final confession of all art.

Questions in morning

Is the rain naked
When she washes the streets?
For spring and flowers
For returns of prosperity

Is the snow cold
To visit the earth?
The wet dark earth
That has nothing to give
But shelter and a place to land?

Is the rose afraid of being seen?
With her lips turned into petals
And the moist dew
Clinging to her wings?

Does the heart regret to love?
That caused a woman so much pain
Is there anything in this world sadder
Than the old man pursued by
Only bees, without belonging?

What Scientists forgot to tell you

A star-inspired self-help poem:

What Scientists forgot to tell you

Love is a state of Being
You can enter that place
At anytime, at will
Like going into a blanket

In your mind, or discovering
An ocean in your heart
It’s where we came from
It’s the loving source

So don’t hesitate to try
The excise of goodwill
Your love my friends
Is not outside, not some
Pillow of a person or

Maternal or paternal figure
It is deep within you
The mystics said that
The saints said it too

The prophets hinted at it:
You can never lose it
It comes with you
From life to life, because

Our souls are made of it
Our psychic beings
Shine with it, it is the
Only actual substance

In the universe, so when
You ask for love, remember
For a moment what it is
You are talking about

It is not dependent on
Some other body or external form
Bu tis a choice at each moment
A compulsive unity of everything

That does not think in terms
Of duality, like success and failure
Or other human attributes
Love is a pure state of giving
It is the urge to do good
Stronger in some, purer
In others still, so embrace it.

Cup of Sachitananda

The cosmos has hid
divine herbs in our dreams
and one day upon
the west river we

shall all awake
to see truth, to live
in the light, and

in those blue flames
of the dawn, hope
will no longer be necessary

and faith will seem immature
for supramental identity
will be self-evident

alone, spring’s floods will
drip the bliss of worlds
and the grace will overwhelm
any circumstance of fate
by the ocean of poetry

in the forests of prophecy
on the beaches of mysticism
the Tao will reveal herself

to our mind like a sponge
of all the secrets of the
universe and synchronicity

spellbound for consciousness
as a boat drifts to the sun
creation and the great observer

will meet, and we will forever
be left speechless with the awe
of laughter empty of anxiety
and understanding mingling

with a pure love for all things.

To Creation

If yet I have not all thy love
Remember this, I was born
Into your world, strange nature
I breathe, because of you

And your Deare evolution
I shall never have it all?
Being poor, and who made me so
And all my inner beauty is yours

I have nothing to bargaine with
Anymore, time can have me all
I have no great goals for my
Lofty mortality, “it is what it is”

So they like to say, I am tree, river
Stone, and just a bit of flesh
That grew in your womb never
Saying oaths that others do

If yet I have not all thy fortune
Let me be as you intended me to be
I can only love so much, do so much
In the fragile state for which I live

My remaining days, there are no letters
Like my genes to bring me home
Home is the planet I live upon
God’s riddles are for the absurd

Faith is not the kind of jewel I wish
To store in my brain, fruitless hope
Nor was any return love vowed by thee
Life does with me what it wills

I am as a fish in a polluted sea
Or as a tree in the last forest
I am as a world in ruins
For the sake of the greed of a few

Men who could not win your love
Any more than I could make the
Universe be aware of my existence
Love is for those whose hearts are young.

Variations of a beauty lover

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.
~ Allen Ginsberg

I’ve made liquid nicknames for
the incomparable feelings of Earth
the peculiar surrealism of suffering

a dance of cycles and poverty in seasons
and prosperity in that experience of lack?
organic and passionate, thriving
in pure obscurity, that is the dilemma

there is no fame in doing what you love
only the pure satisfaction of being
connected to something larger than yourself

I’ve made friends with stars, books
as if I could plagiarize memories
like some ethical problem of the future
you tell me beauty is copyrighted?

I’ve charted universes in your eyes
thriving with an open soul for higher realms
of wisdom, disguised as a psalmist

I’ve seen the vital sources where destiny
Is drawn like a paradox of passion
I’ve seen the gracious gluttony
where we swallow our fate whole

only to arrive at a kind of handwriting
of who we were meant to be all along….
I’ll just keep living in that funeral free harmony

of inner renaissance, the piecemeal moments
of genius, where I am in perfect peace
with my creativity, fatherless, childless
but free, with a right to personal magic.

Art Credit to: http://www.deviantart.com/art/mermaid-tattoo-469620382

The Sanctuary

it could be said Nature’s feet
are so vast, they stretch
from star to star like pillows of light

in a web of black-hole portals
star-gates as swift as one body
touching itself, a supernova
is her pinching herself

the cosmos as one body
love stretching as far as all life
that this entire earth is but

her field somewhere on her toe
and her view is as vast
as a river of stars, a forest of dark matter
her quantum sanctuary is secret

hidden behind time itself, made holy
by creatures praying and seeking
a cathedral where all souls go

when they kneel to touch her presence?
it could be said nature is open
mutable to turn into whatever form of God
the people require, in their evolution

one day an alien, another day a supercomputer
or myths and prophecies for our ancestors
or a convenient map of history, for scientists.

Poetry Deserves to be your Dream

Somewhere a solitary prisoner, like me
Begins to create the words of new dialogue
To appease some slice of soul
And if I no longer exist, you do

By doing what you love, writing
These citizens in private flight
A ritual of fire, guitar, tablecloth
Poetry is the easiest thing

It writes itself, like mouthfuls of sunlight
The poem creates a loving order
Executing words for fields of poetic justice
There is no room for nostalgia

Creation is a slave to change
Everything must yield to new worlds
And you know it as well as I do:
Every poem is fulfilled at the poet’s expense

Fountains of transparency, nothing like music
Will speak through my mouth, only
A sensitive center of a counter-point of blood
Where history woke to move, poetry came into being.

Art courtesy of: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Aqualegia-468477784

LISTEN, POETRY HAS A FAINT VOICE EVEN SO

I will put chaos into sixteen lines
And remember the effort hidden in alphabets
The flood, fire and demon of all words
The order of memory put to paper, pen, screen

The arrogance of feeling misunderstood
For all eternity, I will put these confessions
To bed, without answers, evermore
I will strain to invisible problems

And witness an audience of writers
Struggling to find themselves
Past the hours, in their earthly dreams
I will pet the anxiety of paragraphs

And etch them in the frailty of my will
Stitching with careful industry my loss
That I might recall my tragedy in lines
The laughter trapped in summer crickets long ago.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/–467093425

THROUGH SNARLING HAILS OF MELODY

I

Dear poet, with lost morning’s eyes
Don’t churn too much beneath
Stranger skies, I know you explore
The Sun’s tipped wet stones
With derelict markings for your
Blinded guests, dear poet don’t

II

Harvest beauty too colossal
That this world looks ugly
Don’t mine secrets so subjective
That shift as bright virtual dungeons
The solstice calls you, and I feel
An epic dialogue remains in your Heart
Hidden and partly unsearchable

III

You to whom I can only know
In your writing, whose date is limitless
Ancient with yearning, dear poet
Priestess of the imaged Word
Unfolding floating islands of light
Don’t weep with the hieroglyphics
Of the daunting night, but unbetrayable

IV

Reply to the future’s day, Farewell
To the new amazements born of other minds
A metallic paradise could never reveal
Your incandescent nuances of naked whispers
That fresh with faith renew our intricate parts
Dear poet, your throat is the bridge
Across lifetimes of the gardened skies.

GRATITUDE

Open-mouthed we cried for a
Baby-God, for a golden child
To marry the sunsets with the
Lands from which we came!

We cried for our Manifest-love
To be born into a better world
With short-comings and impoverished
We sought to be lifted by

An unknown dream, deeply familiar
And elusive, we gilded the fires
Of creation in our minds until
Pregnancy awoke us from our slumber

And that was it, the greatest day
At least, that is the part we most remember
The Times are Tidy when we feel lucky
To be a Hero for a day to someone.

A THOUSAND PREGNANT SUNS

i

Here is a map of our country
Our souls glazed in books, language, ideas
This is the birthplace of our truth
In the aristocracy of craft

ii

In the feudalism of art
We are like painters on caves
Loving our canvas, more than our body
Here is the map of our journey

iii

I drive inland over poetic roads
Every person is a character of my muse
For life and death, is finally the same
We dare not taste its water

iv

The battlefield is a myth, there is no
Right or wrong, only neutrality, nature
Creation, we became poets
To find our way back to the light

v

We wrote of the promise
Of a thousand pregnant suns.

PAUSE BEFORE DEATH

Death is the pure potential
Of a life to be more, to go Beyond
Anyone, still we meet God

Though if God be but not Immortal
But a cultural refuge, this must be
An instrument for our Creation

The longest enduring Friend
To hope, with faith, for a Future
That might evolve from our Pursuit

Itself, everyone, to be dissolved in God
The Galaxy that remembers
Ancients, inheritance, ancestors extinct –

Death is the pure potential
Glowing in the metaphors that endure
And Everything that happens
Should be perceived as a Miracle.

SPRING FABLE

Berries are sure to redden on
The body of whiteness, entry of Spring
White shadows will collide
Drunk with the juice of Moonlight

Life will explode from the bony Mother
Earth will weep rivers, fountains, lakes
Birds will build fortresses
Time will drag a harmony of balanced ruling

Promising a silence as deep as the source
Buds will drift up the Great goddess stems
Flowers will steer countries to sunsets
Blue water-mists will flash by naked

Startling fishermen, colors will
Taint the margins of everything old
Owls give way to Peacocks
Midnights to quivering fields

Berries are sure to redden
On the fertile mounts of Spring.

Ode to Rabindranath [Tagore] II

(Alternative title: Let us Not Pray to be Sheltered) Let us pray not to be sheltered For evolution teaches us Through errors, limitations, obstacles Sunsets after storms Appear more holy, so shall I learn from my tragedies To be fearless …

Maybe, Perhaps, O’ Alright

We will use the subtle color “maybe”
we will write magic like before “perhaps”
finally they, who said
‘We will be haunted by the greatest glory’

remembered, the fruits of their labor
under a blinding light of alphabets
the dreamers choose another reality
we will stay drilling our chorus

a neverland of birds, open palms, psalms
the clear water of fresh thoughts
that chime from the future-grafts
space-time collides with the landscape

of the heart, that spells a figurative unity
across our palette, template, painter’s reference
always a wider frame-of-reference
We will throw divine colors into the mix “maybe”

And love all those who cross our paths “perhaps”
it’s all we can do, they said
‘We will live as if, wildly haunted
By the greatest glory and miracles.

Art Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Rocamadour-Watercolor-For-sale-original-413027068

Script of Life

Where light the very nimble Gentleman
Through centuries of Noon, through youth
Please pray for children, not derivatives

For debt could scare the young
Where faith the very wise Elder woman
Through waters of life, do strive –

While it is alive, Life the lap of air
To breathe and Love, do dwell in blood
Love is like life, dust to chant ‘alive’

Where plants the Great Ancestor
Of all that once came from the Sea
Though Epic is our make, faster is our

New kind of Evolution, the speed
Of mind imprinting itself in the absolute
Through centuries of Noon, that shine

That the lover who occupies this house
Might lend himself to beloved Circumstance
To play a fated role, with a stranger

Were I compelled to build magic afternoons
I would inhabit it with Birds assembled
And writ upon the Door, our names in Mandarin.

Photography Courtesy: http://browse.deviantart.com/art/When-you-believe-380564229