Thirty years from Tiananmen

Ti-Anna, Tiananmen Square
Fatherless, freedom-less
Our lives are not massacres
They are privileges

For whatever language we speak
We know the pain of loss and
The burden of duty, calling us, in a thousand ways
I, don’t have the heart to understand

Some things, about this divided world
That rules in treachery, in forfeit, in slavery
We are the children of a mile end of destiny
It reaches out to us, like the warm mist

Of Taiwan, or the valleys of farmlands of China
But we are not those places anymore
We have defined geography and hope
In new ways, with humility and the burden

We are not fanatics, who can be
Absent from our own families
We still must live, we still must love
Not only an ideal or a place or a privilege
But ourselves, the way that makes us most human.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/episodes/inside-these-walls

 

Ti-Anna Wang

There is a daughter who speaks about her father
As democracy once spoke for the people

Who are not deficient
They are not absent from their freedom

We live for purposes
And dreams like Chinese democracy

We were not born this way
We were moved by the world

To speak about injustice, human rights violations
We witnessed sacrifices for unspeakable courage

We are not martyrs, we are still fathers
Though imprisoned we dwindle in time

That spirit lives on like 1989
Whispers that China will shed One-State party rule

Warnings that the U.S. will reinvent tyranny
We are from both worlds, hospitable and ruthless

Male and female, politics is in everything
There’s no escaping corruption, revolution

Law, and the will for freedom is a will to power
And freedom is never free from inequality

There is no promised land of perfection
Only rudimentary ideas of what should be

There is a daughter who speaks of justice
And I cry for all the ways which we are
Enslaved, imprisoned, not free.

Ti-Anna, you are not a dissident
You are the heir to the new world
And it speaks Mandarin, and it’s free
Free in a patriotism of being global citizens

Free in the hope that our lineage leads
To a place where there are no dissidents
There is no abandonment, only people
Living and loving the only way they know how.

The white globe glows on

We will all tremor in the future
And there will be no mistaken escape
No sense of time after apocalypse
What a strange and magnificent invention
Is the prophecy of our own death
* * *
We exploit so much of what is given
Only to be erased by time’s earthy hands
Forever and for good, cheers to our stay
We who were braver for the failures of our fears
* * *
There’s no comfort in tomorrow, if you know
What is to come, there’s no dawn to sooth the ache
Only the exquisite dream of utopia
Whispers from the Upanishades, of all things
* * *
We will love the future, even if it won’t be ours
It’s better by far than loving the past
The past has its own authority over us
Which we cannot yet control
* * *
We live in sketches that wish to be real
In simulations of quantum entanglement so elegant
The white globe glows on, humanity is a wounded woman
Obliged to accept her role in our decay.

These are the letters of my life

These are the letters of my life
Wretched and nude, wandering and alone
Nobody will open their seal of discoveries
Only I know the contents of my cells
That begged for purity in such a polluted corrupt world
* * *
Hardly even I could find a speck of kindness
In the abyss that separated us here
Only for instance, the smiles of others to each other
Were the letters ever answered?
I don’t remember, I am no longer me, no longer the writer
* * *
I only hope for little things now
For nourishment, and survival and sanctuary
But even these things, I don’t find so easily
Not friends, lovers or helpfulness along the way
I’m vilified by the same people I seek to help
* * *
Ready to feel the doom from my own hands, like is my custom
The unanswered letters gather up in me
Like memories of reaching out for nobody
The universe didn’t hear my call, my acts were too small
* * *
One day I shall reply to myself, glad and grateful
Though I once thought that day was near, now I am unsure
The world collapses upon me like speckled seasons
I am an endangered species to myself
* * *
I long for things I have never found
I have no proof they exist, in me or in others
There is no glimmer of honesty honest enough for me
No spiritual fire that washes me clean once again
* * *
Only the regret of living, only the guilt of wanting
Only the desires that lead yet to more desires
There are no great cities left for me
But the landscapes seem heavy with time
* * *
I am joyous for simple things, because
There’s nothing left of the illusions we used to hold
Those treasures like the burning sun on youthful skin
It’s gone now, as I rediscover myself alone.

This Possession of a Life

I am waiting for a feast that never came
It never arrived and I’m sick of waiting
I’ve been so patient my entire life
Loving a thing that was never meant to come
* * *
It kept me hoping that things might get better
A house of windows, a reply to a heart-felt letter
Never read, a vision never truly disappearing
Of what we thought was the meaning of our lives
* * *
The feast that I am waiting for is impossible
Our masks postpone it indefinitely
Empathy is imperfect and desire leads us astray
And I never was very good at finding common ground
* * *
It’s below zero and the chalk of my poems has run dry
For a good few more than months or years
All the celebration in me has died like an old flower
Into stains of history and a corrupted Earth
* * *
We burn ourselves up in our brief conquest of life
Like a lover, we squeeze every ecstasy from their
Shuddering bodies, every last drop of intensity
We beg for something so totally fulfilling
* * *
But the feast was always a product of our minds
The prize was only a figment of our imagination
The union and sex and spiritual rapture only petty symbols
Of all a human being can do or feel or have.

The After Memory Feeling

For once, I will be left with the shock
Of having lived, and loved in vain
In a series of lives that I was cruelly spoken to
Where even my beloveds, would push me away

* * *

I will not settle after death, you know
I will move from star to star, crystal in hand
Shade of all the eyes I have loved
And it will be perfect then, to die

* * *

And I will not regret suicide, not regret suffering or any meeker joys
The rose spells do not forgive, we only forget
Our hearts will, I Swear it, resemble the torn pages
Of memories, drifting apart barely

* * *
Remembering the taste of our sorrows and failures
That will be it then, a sudden departure
The lift of the blue flame that bid us farewell
From deep inside our dream, I will not have won today
But it will be the end, and all ends taste the same.

The 10th Day of Trials

After a black day, there is no forgiveness

Only the solitary confinement of our mind

And prayer, I feel the little warmth of my hands

Not that I have skin, only a kind of soul –

 

•                             *                         *

 

It’s not what I would have expected, blank

There are no keys left, no passengers, no partners

Only the brevity of this, the journey that felt like nothing

That sounds that led to the sound of falling rain

 

•                                 *                               *

The way I fell asleep to not hear or hold my own tears

There are no pockets of music, of pillows of love

Only maybe, the sound of myself breathing, the beat of seconds

I lasted as long as I could, given to foolish courage

My calm was a kind of white shade, the devotion for other things

 

•                                       *                                     *

 

That I myself possessed, it wasn’t that I felt no hungers

For the wider world of experiences, but I couldn’t afford them

I had my obsessions and inner dictates to attend to, and they were rather considerable

The movements and acts of love, they were silently expressed in me

But so passionate, so invisible, so faithful to their course

That I could feel them embrace me like their own curse.

The Betrayal of August

 

Fire-flower, there is a sweetness in your cruelty
The abused becomes the dispossessed
The martyr becomes a sadist, I saw it though the colours
Of your ember bows, the way you’d turn, night into day

There, we are all rogues, swash-buckling heroes
Where even the victim in me can repose at the feet
Of another abused child of the world
We are not equals in the games of power

I am not a man, you are not a woman
We are only mythologies, projections, illusions
Fire-flower, I taste raspberry hiccups
When I think of you, the fruitful vulnerability

Of your moods, where like a jungle of helplessness
Is born the more severe and thwarted beauty
An artist needs to suffer to possess their genius
Like a naked child wanting to become somebody

Fire-flower, there is no pain in your adornment of betrayal
When you expect the dog to bite, the wound is cute
The nature of narcissism is entirely predictable
In the traits that define our social norms

Even the women are not truly rebels
They already fight too many battles to disobey
Their sense of pride and back-water morality
Art is not like that, it’s wild and ferocious

I am not a lesson, and you are not my teacher
You are a stranger that I know so entirely
It would shock you if you knew, my deep understanding
Of your own pain, mirrored back silently at you.

Masks of Liquid Fire

Lost Inès, fire-bells, storm pixie
How quickly the lightning succumbs to the flesh
And hope is squeezed so silently in our chest
That light, doesn’t flood our vision, but warps us
With a kind of fear and anxiety

Won Inès, there’s no winning in the tragedies
There’s only ambiguity and doubt and fear
The kind of thunder that makes you climb under the bed
Or paint in the closet, or immerse yourself in the unreal

Creator Inès, there’s no season when beauty dies
Because it dies each day and in every person
As we decide to label them something, to limit their light
We kill our dreams to manufacture new ones

Cowardly Inès, there no one left to run home to
Not the night of courage, or the love of art
Not even they can save us, we are just that
Solitary bandits, cats and ambitiously warped

Memory Inès, there aren’t rooms I can go to
Only drawings, a canvas of your success
Where I’m reminded of the days of summer
Where the Eclipse held the potential of everything.

For Cheeks of Taipei

In the whirlwind of chance there’s a play

The chemical bath that is my holy reset

A midnight’s prayer of my yellow parade

Inès in the dark, magnet of the Lion’s claw

 

The trance that is our solar eclipse

Waiting for Uber until there’s no recourse

But to burn the bridges we ourselves had made

The Shaman sport of festive waiting

 

Along the margins of rebellion and sensuality

Where art is a life well spent, risks taken

Through rivers of blood, thirst and bruises

We remain true to our heart’s thwarted instincts

 

That dive into dopamine’s fiery embrace

Where time is obliterated in a seizure

Of all the passion we had saved

Where we wash ourselves with our own invisibility

 

To awake with skin as thirsty for summer

As the light of our planet’s parent sun

Who must feast on the idea of hunger

Waiting for the eclipse that ends all suffering.

Sunlight lifted with Her golden fingers

Hae.mi, as the golden sun interlopes
With the falling snowflakes, I see the destiny
Of how to trust the universe
It’s a woman who teaches, it’s a man who obeys

Like a lullaby of sweetly flowing years
“Trust the universe”
“You will be happy”
The nations can rage on, I do not care

Friends and lovers are free
To call my bluff, I enjoy the calm
Of solitude, the way the harmless hours
Merge into the sea of experience

Hae.mi, we do not need much love to survive
Only one drop of truth in our hearts
To believe that anything is possible
When the sun is low, and I am a colored singer

Who can hear the charm of the soul
It does not matter if I am simple, poor, barren
The world is wide, it extends to all people
I am a servant of the universe

With or without my consent, I pray at the chapple
Of her designs, and my tears are pure gratitude
There’s nothing left when memories burn away
Only beauty, only the inquiring mind

Of one for the many, of light for its unity
Of darkness, for the bird islands of life
You are as much alive as you dance in my cells
There’s no need to possess, when bliss is a substitute

In the meditation of our lives, art reassures us
That our suffering has spiritual meaning
The same mist hangs, as in ancient times
Your human eyes, pieces all that I am
To see divinity in a human form, is its own reward.

If Loving is Destiny

These poems mine, created early
Are nothing but the soft sense of gratitude
To life, what offered us so much!
If we took her for granted

Let it be known, that I’m drenched in dream
That I hadn’t known of your art yet, Hae.mi
I hadn’t felt your little joys
As a kind of graceful thunder

In my world of watching the eyes
Of human beings doing what they do
These poems mine, are reflections of nature
That drop from fountains like

Our toes wet in the dew, this living
Is so beautiful, even without possession
The feelings melt into a cohesive whole
Integrity with identity, wishing with hope

Touching briefly as light upon branches
Making love with a spiritual connection
The poems, on youth and ruin, are fading now…
I am nothing but a spy upon your divinity

Set in your beauty, hungry for your soul
Ready to deeply bury myself in your goodness
With the water and bread, with you as the last drop of honey
These poems mine, they just whisper

And there’s no grave to them, only endings
I’m talented in endings, as I am a decoration
For the muses, to life and all that we can never touch.

 

Photo Courtesy.

Motherhood is the only Truth of Life

Hae.mi, every verse is a child of love
As I watch you with your child
I think upon the qualities of your womanhood
Your ancestry and your design upon time

The heart as a gulf, and a bridge and a blessing
I who have experienced so little true joy
Can admire the cherishing of a maternal love
That exceeds in brightness and in sport

The spring’s treasured moments of a young mother
I watch you with your child, as I would the stars
Or holding the Earth in my mind as I would
Imagine life caring for all the galaxies

Hae.mi, so when you think of me, remember
I die at dawn and daybreak, every day
To witness your majesty as a woman and a mother
With no decisions and no receiving, I’ll carry on

So as to die with the morning and the evening
We might support the future in a familiar face
Like your son or the billions of lights
That swim in the hawk-like night

And the swan-like soul of all living things
Those eyes, a little bit like our own,
Those hearts, that feel and hope and love
Like we do, Hae.mi, that is your gift

That I can love you like a father who watches his daughter
Taking care of the world while she travels it
In the years and greetings and journeys
Given to her, and what will live on in her sons

In his daughter, who will one day become a mother…

 

Photo Courtesy.

In Winter, Merits have a Woman in Mind

Listen, Hae.mi, there are no paths closed
Between you and I, where optimism points her passion
Where the door is to the universe
This is not the time for prayers

But the time to act, my lovely field
Where I play in all that is Heaven
O’, I’ve known thee in thy dress of whiteness
And in the tempest of thy insomnia

The league of ours is beautiful
Based on the soulful arts, and
I feel as though I’ve not seen the last
Of your smile, in my poet’s arms

The sacred sacrifice of the bard
Is not nearly over, the muse bends
In a festival of tempting destiny
Such being the idol of my consumption

To the beauty I know I rest in thee
To the wonder and harmony of all that’s good
Hae.mi, the secret entrance to your life’s totality
There are no citizens or policies there

Only the abode of ritual and sweet shyness
The last warm flesh of hope and gladness
And all those things not native to me
That you possess like jewels, fruit, perspective

An abundance of so much radiance I keep
Following your spark for a hint of the luminous
And at the court of your entrepreneurship
I’m firm like the dawn of the world

For your sunsets and miracles of action
Your nurturing of the beauty in all of us.

Photo Courtesy.

Her Gratitude Tasted

In palaces of fire and water,
Hae.mi, how does the heart not lose herself?
When from rim to rim she squanders her beauty
In the pangs of gorgeous motherhood!

And it arouses me, because we stayed at home
Where roses meet their blowing end
And fragrance falls on thirsty lips
By gates of Eden, erect and wet

Our first elation met vaguely understood
Beneath the mirrors and hunger of our youth
Not all in world I have despised
I, who could not have who I desired most

Beneath friendly fire and blossoms of the misunderstood
In winged freedom’s last designs
Where I touched beneath your skin
The kisses have no names that you can utter

The pleasures have no shame when
Each to each are wed in friendship,
And obscene gratitude, and a lifetime’s ache.

Photo Courtesy.

Soni’s Hour to Rejoice

“I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth.” – Women Who Run with the Wolves

Family, love, adventure
My skin breathes sunlight
Like women, who run with the wolves!
My heart beats stardust

Turned inside out with love
For creation, and our journeys
We who spell sacred syllables
With our blazing thrilled minds

And identity cascades in gratitude
With optimism, shining as the sun
A golden halo of all we have become
Family, love, adventure

More than thanks giving
My heart bleeds promise
With a hunger I cannot contain
For bliss, rapture, synthesis

Where we are the Earth
Where we came from, the lineage
Of so much destiny compacted
Each week is an ancestor’s mood

Each whim, a thread of Gaia’s moon
My soul contains all cosmic ingredients
Laughter, seduction, poetry
We’re like lost gifts completing each other

Where it’s not about being whole or strong
Or simply the attainment of goals
Security is following our intended course
And who’s to say what failures

Can teach us the most about ourselves
Family, love and adventure
I bounce like a nomad through the years
A boundless unfurling of miracles

A scriptive love of my own fate
The lyrics I was born to sing
If only at the center of my loving
My ability to create hope in life
And my duty to serve a higher truth.

Blooming into Native Serendipity

(Lost in Gaia)

I love you for not knowing me
But echoing me, like some stranger’s lost invincibility
I love you for your kindness
In the same sorrows we have all fled

Like youth’s retreating eyebrows
Like songs we used to sing
I love you for your no tomorrows
For your doomsday moods and emotive vitality

For your hairy shadows, and Costa Rican reunions
I followed how the healers move the mystics
Just today, as if it was a story I was familiar with
I love you for being in love and falling

In love with something bigger than yourself
I love you for your storytelling and your
Witnessing, the quiet birth of the apocalypse
Of every blue moment entombed in rapture and in awe

I was captivated by your Venusian fertility of art
And poetry and the musing of eternal questions
I love you for loving deeper in sweeter tones
Than I found use in doing, after doppelganger loneliness

And Aspergian humility, I played in shadows
I love you for not being there, when the divine stood on
Inside of me like a flame always glowing
I love you for your absence, for being

Especially preoccupied with your own drama
For your personal story of mirroring and copying
The feelings we all had all long, they still seemed
More blessed in your company

Somehow more vivid on your face
In your essays up the Western coast
Entwined and enshrined, I love you for the book of poems
You told the ocean you’d share with the world
I’m still waiting for my copy, by the way.

What BAE really Stands For

(before anyone else) = BAE

Mni Wiconi

Your art is my art
On a sea of dreams
On the petal of a flower
Seen before through many times

History repeats all mystics
Forests rejoice in their coming
Your art is not about how many people
Enjoy your work, it’s about

Your heart on the display of discovery
At the beck and call of
Some secret of your spirit
At the mercy of some

Deeper feeling than you cannot contain
That buds from the silence
And gives in to the melody
Behind the vibration of everything

There’s no trading honesty in this world
Our anxiety and vulnerability show enough
On our skin, we cannot hide it
That’s why, your art is my art

There’s no homepage for holistic healing
It’s born from our journey and communion
With each other, all seekers
I can’t seem to master the art of timing

To be able to find you at the right moment
The years and decades will go by
And I’ll still remember you at twenty-four
The way your hair flew to sunsets

And the moist neediness in your speech
It was in late Autumn when you went west
Where I dug up a piece of your wildlife heart
But you had already flown
Like a swan into the night

And not even my eyes that had bathed in your sunshine
For a spiritual moment could find you
Through that rush of ginger and turmeric after-taste
Like incense, you had escaped all definition
Though the impression struck me as something subtle

The leftover from a life left behind
Of meditation or even caring about chakras
Through still I can say, “your art is my art”

Water of life, tears of loving
To wash the dust of daily living
From our souls, where we were adopted
And where we departed our most beloved ones.

If vision was the art of seeing
The goodness in others that was invisible to others
I imagined you could see right into me
And it didn’t matter you were miles away

Love of beauty was a taste
And the creation of art was a kind
And our art sometimes protected
Sometimes procrastinated with our mistakes
Those were the feelings we treasured the most, in fact
You always had him, before anyone else.

The End of Desire 2.

It’s clever not to desire, isn’t it my friend?
Our worldly duties no longer
Feel weighted like fate, like we once felt
Tied to roles and roses and houses

Let’s not follow authority or impulse
But find the listening actions
The lifestyle that doesn’t inhibit

The world-soul to act through us
We were never going to be anything
But the destiny we had consented to live
The smiles and misfortunes

They were all intended
And in our grace and simplicity
We found a kind of poise to

Succumb to who we were, like sheaths and bodies
That we knew we would outgrow
To be attracted to this or that seems
Only to obey some instinct of nature

That is not false, only artificial
Desire wasn’t the bar, but it was superficial
It wasn’t the kind of skill that led us

To revelation, only repetition
Revelation wasn’t only to repeat
But to learn to be a new person.

The Chant Goes On

What you love, you become
The dream of being is identity
What you feel, you attract
With the whisper of the cosmos

Always around you nurturing time
What you imagine, you create
In the Tao of sense, there’s only the future
A living universe intersecting

With every part of you, a thousand
Times per second, you are energy
Happiness does not depend on circumstance
It is a gift of perspective

There is no path to happiness
No escape into pleasure
No particular opposite of suffering
The experience is paramount and important

What you love, you will become
So learn to love the highest and truest
Of what you are, let your love encompass
The whole world, so you will not be small
Or live smally for yourself, and be miserable.

Sudden flowers lapse

Sweet one, I’m so foreign to your luxury
I have no interest in champagne
I’d much rather an outstretched soul
The speck of birds in a silence of intimacy
I’m quiet like that, in awe of the little things

I’m the initial letters of lost fingerprints
A cherished voice that can disappear
As soon as I came, free in the watery prismatic white-and-blue

While I’m filled with glowing tributes
I’d rather live a lonely maturity today
Than always hoping for solace in the long journey
A bullet of delight, in the middle of the night
Nature’s beauty spilt in Korean-Portuguese

I know the flower’s life, the ocean’s beauty
The blue, to blue-green to olive set of a woman
There’s no margin for error in the feminine mystique

The years of mating, the search for experience
And it hurt to feel your singing flamencos go
Your wet destiny of the rumor of the sky’s thousand lips
Reflected in your bottomless feelings and charms
But with time, salt and whispers, I’ll forget you

Savaged by the carnivorous impulse in my hope
Where thirst is never enough, and in the calculation of time
I’m not immune to the fragrance of the distant pollen
That beckons me indignantly across the fields

Sweet one, I have no energy for anything but
The sudden flower of reciprocity.

Little Stars in Water

 

Look into the sea, Hae.mi
Do you see yourself reflected there?
All the beauty of the world

The shores and the stars are silently praying
There is a wide open ocean
In your heart, with waves to play

As the seasons of our lives part
With bounty and prosperity
Like how your son asks questions

Vigilant of spaces in the dark
You are the dark unknown of winter
Where everything is lost in the journey

You are the freedom of childhood, reborn
You are the fragrance of salt in a world
Dry and barren, you are epiphanies of

Art, in a world of cities and riots
Beauty, in a world of so much laughter
Water, in a world of timeless thirst

Hae.mi, the way you look at your son
Is the miracle of life for me
The silence and the sand
That encircles the world with a smile

And for that, I have only calm gratitude
Well-wishing, a treasure chest of goodwill
And tears salty like the biggest ocean
A universe so pregnant with love.

Say Hey Ocean Storm

Ocean there is no battle but love
The search for love, and fight for love
So when I wonder at your beauty and innocence
I cannot sustain myself on salty water alone

Though I be by you, come from you, watch you
It’s rare that you let the sunset down, into you
And I like it when it rains on you, Hae.mi
It’s “okay” to be like a storm

Chasing the horizons, I know how wild you are
I know your feelings on humanity, your need
To discover further facets of creation’s diversity
Ocean, there is not battle here

I am like the moon reflecting the tides
I pull you down to your naked rush
Until your luminosity is reflected in me
And there I don’t need to find you anymore

Since you will live on in me, like a beautiful nest
Of experience, nothing like experience,
The ocean’s beauty does that, it impresses with
Lessons in humanity, precision of passage to freedom.

On the Flight of Desire

We are organs of each other, feathers of tomorrow
We share genes like hairs of our forever
Mutating to the timing of us

It’s not choice, it’s attraction
It’s a thrill of fantasy caressing reality
Hae.mi has a smile, I know it without knowing it

When she wants to repeat a moment
That felt like a bit of forever
Lost in the joy of now, a murmur

That’s all it took, all it takes, sometimes
When we look into the skies, we know
Nothing lasts forever, and it’s good

We are organs of time, breathing colors
Exploring the senses of beyond senses
And rejoining in the emotion of immortality

Hae.mi had that shaman side, she’d say the most
Philosophical things, at the oddest times
A bit like her son, he played games with destiny

We are silver fishes, that don’t swim but fly
It’s not choice, it’s attention
We attain the repetition of the essential things

We are delivered into silence this way
With the feeling of tomorrow
Being something we can’t live without.

An Ocean of Stars

The ocean is a great intelligence,
It’s feminine, wide and free
An earth-soul shelter for our freedom
So when we reincarnate, we have something

To go by, stars in the milky way
Our galaxy of sensitive pulsating, Oh Hae.mi
I feel the stars calling me by my name

Si-in sees the ocean’s beauty
Si-in reads the woman’s magic
Si-in feels the shores wealth

The ocean has led me on into the Earth
I have no time to be unhappy
No time to say the sky meets the ocean

At some point, Hae.mi kisses the horizons
But that is not my job, I write
You course in my blood, my blood of the ocean

Shadow dancer, and strange, Si-in leaves into the inside
Without a care for convention, softly entranced
To the rhythm of her voice, that’s kindness

On the lulling roof of waves, below the
Throng of moonlight, that’s peace
A freedom of stars reflected on water

For so many miles in the half-dark
That’s creation right there, Si-in knows
Hae.me, our legend has a brightness

We’ve made stories between the waves
We must not lose faith in humanity
Humanity is like the sea, said Gandhi.

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?

Spectrum of Glee

 

Reality disintegrates the fantasies of yesterday

Memories like the lightning, never to be turned on again

Seasons change their gloves

 

 

Smiles become familiar, not losing depth

I run to you ceaselessly, in the night

Where I have no spare awareness of where I belong

 

 

I run to your embrace, where the gorgeous stained glass

Of superficial time is broken, Hae.mi, where the artists resides

There I look for you in the canvas, there I spy you in the kindergartens

 

 

Where with moon sheaths and inlets of dream, I embark

Upon care, repeated in the lost souls of nomads, misadventures, that

Questioning feeling, have we ever truly been loved?

 

 

There are no deep roots in this world, only blood bonds

And the sanctuary of shared mind and heart space

There on the buds of time, I found Hae.mi, pure and sublime

 

 

Seasons change their cubs

Smiles become grave, wrinkles shine

And hair glistens white, I run to you ceaselessly, as if you were the night

 

 

Where I enjoy last comforts of the weary world

Where I entrust my vulnerability, my longing

For you, is the path of dream, the brightness of the rogue

Hae.mi, where the pioneers find, the last diamonds of life.

Jowangsin Come Near Me

I didn’t know Koreans had living Goddesses

It seemed strange to me, how hypnotic Korean sounded

Melded in a harmonics of prophecies, nothing felt

 

As divine as your laughter, Hae.mi, I succumbed to it

Making my heart panic in sweetness and with indecision

I no longer knew how to speak, but could only

 

Thumb your ears with heartbeats, blink with my eye-lashes

Upon your eye-lashes, like the velvet of holding hands

I dared not kiss you, as if wonder could kill my sense

 

Maidenhood, besides, you had no room for moistness

You had no desire for my warm hands to enfold you

You hunted, scavenged, made yourself one of the tribe

 

And seized me in a thousand places, all at once

Hae.mi, whispered nothings, and I believed her

Knowing she was the sap of Autumn’s bizarre chill

 

That feeling you get when you are paralyzed by beauty

Held down in a moment so intense, you cannot breathe

Your name is now oil poured out, my warming chest

 

Your gentleness was my last thrill, finally acceptance

Whose love would weep better than wine, I know

Hae.mi, you who sustain my taste for dripping delight.

The Ghost Dancer

Sleep Hae.mi, to rest your pulsating care

Where tears are for the past

Taking on an unsuspecting universe

I’ll see you thrive in independence

 

Comely with the rows of maternal jewels

Cherished by friends, beloved to strangers

Rest Hae.mi, from the wonder of it all

Where change is as lullaby and a signal

 

Of all that is yet still to come

Where a woman knows her art

And the hospitality of her own heart

And how much to give, and how much to keep

 

Festive Hae.mi, forgetting to eat

In a manic row with destiny

Faery fingers, soft platonic mildness

You are budding now, out from the mists of Autumn

 

Industrious, not wandering, thinking in new words

Where we can afford neither peace, nor ignorance in our dreamy lives

Hae.mi, the wildness of care, how well I know thee

To organize the mess of serendipity

 

To feed the bright array of synchronicity

Where on the floor of a nude sauna in your mind

I am brought to life for a few poems

To witness the birth of new beauty

 

Where your life borders gold with studs of silver

And art and technical proficiency meet

In your fate at the feet of your most puissant destiny.

Avantgardists

Triumphant, insatiable, adorable Hae.mi, I’m stupidly in awe

Of the flavors of your moods, each word, note, flower

Happy tear of motherhood, makes me realize

 

What’s really important, Avantgardists my beloveds,

Happiness is all that matters now, I love how women bloom

And blossom in their 30s, like Evangelists of heart-ache

 

And heroes of time, reincarnating all that’s left and good in humanity

It’s warm, like warm milk to the world’s wounds, Hae.mi,

The independent woman is a twilight of nature’s strength

 

That is an epiphany of all that was meant to be

Who nurture the most equal balance between

Work and play, optimism and endurance

 

As hardy as a woman, as eager as a child

As kind and patient as a teacher

Trained by motherhood to be brave.