An etude in misplaced desire

To His Mistress the World Going to Bed

I have no license to touch
Your soul, if a soul had qualities to touch
No permission to enter your sanctuary
No heaven’s zone of glittery
I have no intimacy of the variety
That which my state could renew

No pass into the beauteous state
Of harmonious chime of feeling
I have no novelty in this condition
Of incessant repetition
Only hopes and sensations private
Like an imprisoned youth in an older body

It’s hollow here, beneath this flesh
This kingdom called my life, the sameness from
I have no insight into the women
Whom I admire, I used to have female friends
For they go on, like a lifetime of having children
Becoming full with roles

But for the men, they are wild in another way
Hair in their destiny, alone in their temple
Of peculiar tastes and defied responsibility
I have no license to touch these lives
Who are so full with duty, so unlike my own
We cannot truly coexist, only perhaps

Exchange a passing smile on our way
Until I labour, I in labour lie
A foe of women, a foe in sight
And I only have the power to observe
And it’s a hollow temple
Not to be able to touch the world more.

Spring is Coming

Earthly Interference

The mind is an unforgettable red place
For dictions of Spring
For the rigid dreams of youth

That comes to fruition
Years after, with great sacrifice
I am to loving art as

The sky is to the rain
I carry it in my heart
But it only runs through me

In a downpour of my festive passion
In cycles of my famine and desert
The mind is an unforgettable red place
For faces I collected along the way

For intimacy never truly won
Only intimations of what might have been
This flickering hood of flame
Reads for the shootout to theory and practice
All that stood between us…

Envious of Asian American Poets

Envious of Asian American Poets

Of course, this minute
You are giving a speech to strangers
About how you’ve lived and held in your arms

What it means to be an Asian poet in America
Or how to rinse red ginseng
From your beautiful mind

Through pulling all-nighters
Next to your laptop somewhere out there
Of course, we are all connected

This minute, I smell the fragrance
Of a little bead of perspiration
That dripped from your brow to the poem

That isn’t really a poem in front of you
It’s your literary masterpiece, but
You don’t know it yet, it can take

Your entire life, would you have guessed?
You couldn’t live with
A hundred unedited poems in your mind

You held them there turning them over
Like the word salad
I’ve become to expect from you

Diva strums the periphery of pop-culture
Diva interlopes with professors
You come from a more graceful stem

Than I do, tell me what you wanted
Out of all of this, the chorus of godliness
In decay, the beauty of sacrifice in tough quarters?

I would have seen it all with you
From your eyes, had I lived remotely
Near Vancouver, but I didn’t have the courage

To translate the world in my poems
To eat red peppers with friends
To bawl my eyes out at readings

But I’ll weep not unlike you have
And translate the pillow-talk in my head
For the quadruple platinum lyrical love
That professes to come from my heart.

Congress of Red Mouths

We were all lovers
At one point or another
We all met behind ruins
And stared at flowers in eyes

And briefly became somebody else
In the unity of our flames
Our desires burned like youth
In our chests and leaped

Like breasts unearthed and dreams
Plundered and fantasies enacted
We were lovers to someone
And we gave our hearts, and cheated

And in the hot ovens of our exploration
We came upon beauty and nudity
And clasped the sweet merchants
Of sex, at some point or another

A history full of poems and lyrics
Of ancient knowing, instinct even
We were handsome bastards
And luxurious ladies, we were

The landscape of bosoms and blossoms
And it was fun, and easy to find
A richness in the company of gender
Flirtation with ecstasy boasting bitten

And unpairing passion like a fruit
The most natural fruit to be eaten
And tasted and treasured forever
The foreign district of erotic tongues.

WHY EVERYONE SHOULD WRITE POETRY

I’m my own utopia
In my Utopia, we would dream awake
Writing poems about each other

Speaking in whispers hushed
I could say out loud
That I felt loved without

Trying to find a measure
Or a reason to be appreciated
In my own utopia
We wouldn’t judge each other

But act as parts of the same exposure
To compassion, we experienced
Through years of living & suffering

In my Utopia, everyone would be artistic
Painting, music, dance would be
As common as speaking
Or conversing over the internet.

photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/utopia-133483723

STAINING OUR LIPS WITH PEACH AND NECTARINE

i

Lovers are like children lost in the garden
Caught in trust and fear and something else
Discovery two by two, mounting into blue
Negotiating a secret fringe of desire
And how the fountains bubble bright and clear

ii

And the world goes on, careless of her
Labelled afflictions, it’s life just so you know
Bright black and blue, exploration made difficult
By the mind’s apprehension, and caution
That strangles us to the bones, this monotony
Of Evolution’s tick-tack-toes against the

iii

Rising wind of our youth’s carelessness
Lovers you are so pragmatic, hardly even platonic
Chasing every last and wayward power
Because you don’t know what you want

iv

Getting older against an independence raw
Guilty of regrets you do not talk about
Love, it’s getting old that you were once wronged
Love is a holiday from the past, and if you can’t
Do it, this sunlit juice well, it won’t last.

Photography Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Heal-them-453231010

You Brought me a Smile of Clarity

It seem when you come in thought
I welcome you in
Like a mouth of nectar
Like a spiritual distance
Getting closer
Like a forgotten melody
My heart calls you
Between our lives
There is room for you
Here in the open-space
Of quietness, and longing
It seems there is a tingle
I am enclosed
In my awareness of you
Feeling you at a distance
That which creates
A strange proximity
And a shelter, or
An imagined intimacy
Tonight in this room
I’m more aware of you than ever
But, you are not here
Only a rumour, a whisper, an after-taste
Of somebody I barely know
I have thrown your blouse
To the floor, in my head
Like a gentle darkness
That I want to wrap myself in and devour
A blanket, or a feeling, or a sensation
I cannot tell what you truly represent
As a suite fantasy, a moment, a lost token
Of an experience of subtle exactitude
That my life cannot embody
That my youth cannot taste
I cannot lead you here
I can only hold you like this, in my mind
The sun will come through
The white sleeve of the plum curtain
And in your eyes, I know the sun will be gold
Folded, melted, like cotton drifting down
To the fountain of spring
And into your flesh, where the world
Is joyous, free, ecstatic
There is no longer room for my self-pity
I must discard it like an empty dream
Replaced by the gift of your longing
Poems held naked waiting for you, on the floor.

The You of a Secret Kiss, Like Stolen Bread

Someone said they had a word
For music of feeling, for longing
Sparse as the stripped light of youth

You are my bamboo grove
On a late afternoon, where I feel nothing
You are as a mouth struck opal

A divine surrender to infinity
Someone said they had a word
For longing, pure and simple

From the gulfs of crazy waves in rain
There is such stillness and movement
In my being, when I think of you

I believe your moist hands are
Like some indefinable South, some symbolic
Fragrance I cannot quite remember

Tangerine moisture and liquorish lush flavor
Some sensual spirituality for which
Invades my obscurity, like life to the artist

Like femininity to the protesting solitude
Of a monk, scholar, orator of surrealism
Someone said they had a word

For the breathless state of strange desire
Before sweetness, before thorns, before union.

Maybe I Loved You in Another Time

To the one offering the most
I’ll throw you with fervor
The intimacy channel
As if I were twenty again!
I’ll whisper to you my blond text

Barricade myself in poetry for you
Like a seasoned artist
In love with love, making beauty
For beauty’s sake, this
Petty song of my same-old revolution

I’ll call you the last revelation
Of my creation, mounting syllables
To suit your needs, to tailor your curves
In the alphabet of your most intimate voice
Like a blade of knowledge, I’ll cut you

Yes, like a young soldier dying
From neglect and love-wounds
I’ll tell you how I’m the lone survivor
Of too much will to love
I know it’s not really a news-flash

Simply, the price of delicate boredom
Strung out in a treasure vault
Of living in words, secluded form experience
To the one offering the most
I’ll give you this, melodies predicted

For the same reasons that makes your body
A womb I cannot intoxicate myself in
A period of mining your feminine sun
I have not the Venus laments left
To trick you into defiance of your self-defenses

So instead, I’ll wait for snow to cry
In April’s unrelenting gloom.