Price of Poems

Price of Poem-Making

They say art is the greatest escape
Into the right hemisphere
Some do not find their way out
From the dream, and poverty

I can relate, to how
Writing is a compulsion
With a high investment fee
It’s time spent in freedom, however

A necessary joy of thought
It’s contemplation
As a pioneer, one part philosopher
One part, entertaining

Poetry is not a recognized art form
It hides behind the scenes
It dribs and drabs and drags
On the alt circuit, mostly unseen

Literary journals are not read
By many people, though strangely
Poems summarize the human condition
Better than fads of music, trends of painting

Glories of architecture, marvels of dance
Better even than the twisted sense of novels
Those characters are all but forgotten
But poems never die

They float on the cosmos of the web
In archives of portals of the ancient internet
Where nobody goes anymore
In the future, poems are spoken not written.

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

On Your Strange Insistent Rhythmic Pride

You should be proud/
Of your nomadic optimism
Like an argument that runs
Through my lungs

I who wish you would stay/
With me, my little overflowed veins
Glad enough to be in your service
You should be proud
You are able to silence

The heart of your attachment/
Bolder, you’ve silenced them
Haven’t you? My thousand heart-beats

That didn’t know how to bloom/
I watch you, like a red flower
At the train station, where I gasped
At how you flee, another country

Another city, another poem/
You should be proud
That you are a foreigner, that you belong
Everywhere, anywhere, a bright gold flower
Like an Asian in New York City

You know how to run, and/
You have filled me with poems to the brink
You should be proud, you know how
To slip under the gates and stuff

Your pockets with that last cigarette/
The last time I Saw you, you helped
Me escape, in leather and jeans
From Latin names, and psychoactive mushrooms
You should be proud, though I can’t secure

The rumor of your subtle flattery/
My poetic neck is marked
With tattoos of your courage

Strung up on tightropes, you possess/
Qualities of translation, I couldn’t dream to have
There is no equal opportunity between us
We are just different, strangers
Lost in the crowds, the tango and language
Of all that I loved, yet could never possess.