On nights such as these

 

 

Graceful one, I am thankful for your skill in celebration

I’ve lived through you in a few short days

More than I have myself have lived or loved

 

I who, can never be a Mother or a friend like you

Hae.mi, beloved and always, the dark sweaty leaf of time

Is thick with longing in me, I sleep only to dream of you

 

I fill my heart with gratitude, only to learn the lessons of your sweetness

In the flower and in the heart of people

There’s no color that truly fades away, only transforms

 

Graceful one, with open arms I have found some solace

Hae.mi, hospitality of warm wet tears of belonging

I never knew or owned, the long rains fall provoking my mortality

 

I’ve lived in thirsty hours watching you, like a piece of youth returned

I who, can never be a Mother of a friend like you

Hae.me, betwitched and so completely filled with the nectar

 

As I sleep in isolation, my consolation is your freedom

My tenderness, is mirrored in your independence and success

My joy, the sense that you have transcended dependency  in others

 

Autumn nights have taught me this, and your deep acceptance.

I have promises yet to fulfill as my heart blazes by the seashore

Hae.me, why do you stalk me as the rice fields stalk the harvest?

on Being Other Centered

I scarce esteem the business of a name
Time and being, too closely knelt –
To be somebody is surely
A bondage, as a play, the debts

Of somebody else’s keeping
In some spaces, imprisonment
With other co-conspirators, sweet
I scarce esteem my time on the Earth

Less with my comrades
Few and far-between though they call –
Bring my past despair, those
Bands of spice, talks or reckoning

So I may take flight from these
Boundaries of sense-in-pain
For consciousness is thus sandwiched
Between Eternity and time, and others

I can do without time and Eternity
Enough to be at heart with beloveds.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/In-The-Pouring-Rain-403324988

I Dreamed Living Moments of You

I really did love you in a sense
Afars, fellow citizens, passerbyers
Would be friends, fellow students
Bustling colleagues, strangers on the street
.
Old people trying to walk
Children laughing with their parents
Young woman in the metro
Looking at her reflection –
/
I looked at you all, with unfeigned interest
Studied your stages, passages, patterns
Myself a poet among so many who
Truly lived, by being, exempt from watching
.
I really did love you all in a way
Non-intimates, in your pleasant varieties
Though I could not melt your woe
With any common and good relief, I was there
.
Dreaming next to your solemn and candid moments
The two of us are dead now, it happened all so quickly
What I learned, was in fact, to survive you
That only love mattered, that universal sympathy.