Life Armour

 

 

 

Xiao Wei, flee into the western horizon

I will not find you, I cannot

Go too far from where I am, my heart

 

Has no courage for risks or a sacred recess

Into the wild, I am a tame overshadowed thing

There is no goddess in my alley

 

Only the dark, and the damp

Upon the altars I’ll be the settled leaves

In graceful goblets of my fate

 

I’ll be, the one that watches you go

Through the glad festivities of a woman’s life

To build and caress and multiply

Xiao Wei, do we only desire normal lives

There is majesty in duty I suppose

 

Though as in the old days I have wept

For sameness, wept that I was different

Though all life is invocation

And one day I’ll have to finish innovation

Over being a role, a pillar, a nest.

No Remedy for Being Human

We couldn’t contain the sunsets, or
The sunsets were lost on us
So stranded were we in our personal tragedies
We didn’t stop to let beauty matter

Grudging and thin, we wanted
Our place in the hierarchy
The artificial world we created
Inside of nature, unnaturally warped

By being a consumer, by exploiting others
We didn’t have the time, or
The sensitivity, to let the light in
The swirling colors, they

Existed outside of our ambition
Our pressure to be respect-worthy
We weren’t artists, we were just people
Trying to be normal all the while.