In Times of Trouble

I know what my heart is like
It’s everything and everyone
Dying inward for a bit of belonging

Hoping to touch a bit of life
For the sake of being reborn in identity
In sharing experience and tenderness
Was it for this I once uttered prayers?
That I should retire alone the years?

Bear me a crown of golden foreverafters
Love is the gold gown I’ve worn
In good times and the bad

If I grow a bit bitterly on life’s low shrub
Do not say I knew not flowers or
That I did not give everything
To the ones who truly mattered
Spring on horseback, Autumn on these lips

I knew and loved all that I could
My thin fingers lifting bright threads
Of music from the clouds

I know what my heart is like
Eun Ji, don’t you? I won’t sit smiling
But I’ll listen with Dandelions
And some brief word from you.

I Said Farewell to the Spring

I Said Farewell to the Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return?
Do you not know I am devoted
To the Spring, her muse leaves
Little open time for leisure,

If leisure be called art
Then I am in pleasure
With the hot sun on my neck
Eaten by mangoes of life

With a full cup, strewing flowers you know
Babbling, not quieted by the redness
Of life, her femininity of shinning confidence
To what purpose, April, for thy sweet command?

My white candle skin burns
On both ends, for the puissance
Of the knowledge that time runs out
The years of bitter loving remain

Loving so much the beauty of this world
As if stricken by the golden bugs
Who in their immortality shall out live us
It’s morning now, and I’m alone

With her jewelled crown, and what little
I have left of the renaissance of youth
So intimate has the Spring
Become to me, I am in love with love

And in love with life, more than ever
Emotion brimmed to the top
With tears for sonnets and silence
And how we will all vanish.

Of herald wings came whispering

Time does not bring relief, it begs
For change, like a butterfly in July
The old snow melted from every
Mountainside, but who’s to say

How tall the grass grows
Heaped on my heart like layers of years
Only love, with the shrinking of the tides
Can ease the pain of separation

And now, I am determined
To be the gladdest thing
Under the sun, to touch a hundred flowers
With light that begins to show

The clime of summer, the power of Autumn
My soul can split the sky in two
And arrange the face of God
In my future’s make, with a pinch

Of East and West, no wider
Than the heart is wide and wise.

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Herring-Gull-Wing-Detail-467038412

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

Like an Ancient Gesture

Love is a state of mind
The ancient secrets of curiosity
That when a heart is young
There is no shredding or fading
That Rose, which sips

From eternal fountains dear –
Never in the world shall I lose my trust!
Oh, me, to be invaded by the Sun
And all that is green and raw and new
Love is a state of mind

To be young and green and open
As a bright flower to the smiling day
I choose once again the sunlight path
To my fate I make the ancient gesture
Of delight suddenly burst into tears

Of the gifts and weaving of a day
A day that was our life, who of us cried?
For the acceptance of a joyous life?
Love is a state of mind
There is simply nothing else worthwhile to do

That when a heart is young
She finds a way to love eternally
Since love is a beautiful energy
And the giver receives so much gratitude.

Photography Courtesy: http://browse.deviantart.com/art/20-000-seconds-378375442

Gaya’s Peril

I have heard a strange voice
In the heat of Noon
Felt the call of wakeful night
Heard the sunset, felt the wind at dawn

I have felt the chill of darkness
That is now a blessing
A Great Voice of love –
That is a cloak from terrible fear

I have felt the Dawn birds stir within
Wetting the pillow with tears
I felt the dying forests somewhere fall
I have heard a strange voice

In the ocean’s sorrow
A shadow of cities as far as my eyes can see
Their tops were in another world
Unseen by land animals

That ventured dangerously into space
Where no wood could venture
A terror of the skies, with laser beams
This conquered land, unprepared for plastic memories.

Alas, Thou Art Flown

I know a hundred ways to die.
In each season, I look anew
A scavenger that possesses nothing truly
They call me clingy, but I do not cling

To the spirit’s freedom I belong
Not love or duty holds me here
I know a hundred ways to live
In breaths of wonder, horseshoe wants

Walking a bridge, from girl to girl
The melodies of the Earth are soft
As wine from these grapes
As my return to the infinite Source

I know a hundred ways to pray.
Unshaven, hopeless, anonymous
Barely able to find shelter, friendship
The food for my spirit’s make –

I know a hundred ways to say goodbye.
Defiled, depleted and forlorn
Forward, in level flight the night propels
Me a better man, I am not sure

I know a hundred ways to love.
The chalk of toxic trampled grounds
Cities where I made my way, jostling doors ajar
People I grew old with, until Spring’s colours swallowed me.

Many a Bard’s Untimely Gifts

My heart is what it was before
A place that treasures from afar
To mirror goodness, with dreamy ambiguity
I have no sense, but alms of love

I am internal spring, in all four seasons
I water love and it turns south
A stomping ground for weary travelers
My heart is what it was before

I light the lamp and lay the cloth
For picnics with Beloveds, some of whom
Leave before they take a bite
I loved the beggars that I fed

Because I knew what it meant, to be hungry
I set a bowl before their step, and cherished
Them, before they found greener fields
I watched them prosper, and hint at leaving

I scattered crumbs for their departure
My heart is what it was before
The guarding source, the smile that saves
I know the coming and the going, intimately

Of seasons and lovers and friends
People seek plots to flourish forever
My heart was not built to last forever
It was made to scream to God, enjoy nature’s fruit.