In Need of Angels

I suppose, I was never the root of everything
There’s no golden women in silver mirrors
It was all in my mind, that smooth paradise
Where I loved life more than I knew how to show

And calling down the long echoes
Of the longest sleep, I existed with struggle
My time-travelling was imperfect

My heart knew not how to open
I suppose, I walked a lot of paths alone
And my dreams became my last illusions
Because they were all that I had left

I had no music, only stray words
Accounts of creatures that had impressed me
Planets, suns, bathed in the futurity
If Reality is the beginning not the end

I never walked into that universe
Where everything was new again
My haunted hope was never incarnated
My slow motion moments never felt pure

Like an evening that evokes a violet ray
I was the last white light of something inside of me
That wanted to escape how notes fell in August
The harvest days were coming, and I was
More in need of angels than ever.

In Times of Trouble

I know what my heart is like
It’s everything and everyone
Dying inward for a bit of belonging

Hoping to touch a bit of life
For the sake of being reborn in identity
In sharing experience and tenderness
Was it for this I once uttered prayers?
That I should retire alone the years?

Bear me a crown of golden foreverafters
Love is the gold gown I’ve worn
In good times and the bad

If I grow a bit bitterly on life’s low shrub
Do not say I knew not flowers or
That I did not give everything
To the ones who truly mattered
Spring on horseback, Autumn on these lips

I knew and loved all that I could
My thin fingers lifting bright threads
Of music from the clouds

I know what my heart is like
Eun Ji, don’t you? I won’t sit smiling
But I’ll listen with Dandelions
And some brief word from you.

Eve of July

Eve of July

July again, on the river of summer –
I know it will go quickly, convergence
Of time and pleasure, a harsh sort of journey
Through courts of privilege and hours of poverty
I’ve tried to flee this place, the emptiness
That is the climax of nothing, the void

A weight of the superficial and human fading
These masses don’t realize it yet, what’s happening
July again, and I’m walking along the channel
With a body of water and searching on both sides
For something more, I’ve yet to find it hanging
Moving closer, I squint in-between the years

That were supposed to be my prime, I’m humble
Having suffered the droughts and debts of our times
Though in this simplicity of endurance I remember
Evolution, like a thick soup of eaten stars
Light spraying the darkness with hope
Glowing like a pocket of unlimited vapour
Forming planets, binding unanswerable questions to matter.

Ocean Weight of Summer

The beach glows for a new world
Even though it’s been the same
With pale skies and Moonlit frolic
Of waves that are the measure of time

Our bodies were there beneath
The gulls, the sound the ocean makes
A soft rumble of sea-shell air
The hollow night exhales its mischief

It was all just a canvas for our experience
The crabs, the palm trees, the way
You wanted to sail to the end of the world
Light chooses us and the beach teaches

Us nudity and not to look and how
The sun teases us as our skin changes
With her copper pressure of tangerine smiles
Watching people until there are non

Left, the oceans have always reflected
The punctured stars, under a boulder of June
Ready to sip July champagne, all too soon.

Titled Below

Endless minutes of the present

On the eve of my eulogy to Spring
I confess the white silence
Bathes me in its engaged purity

I am a bud of a soul like a leaf
In time, with me till the end
Of all age and breath and lyrical insight

I do not deserve the light of Summer
Let others save themselves in rapture
I will drown in dead silence

Until there is nothing left of song
And all the poets that were part
Of my underlying thirst and condition

Will be unread like grains of sand
That were once diamonds of my consciousness
And so the Earth takes back

All of us each to our rest
I am humble to the facts of life
If I did not see much of you again

It was not that I did not think of you
Only I was embarrassed by the
Blueness of heavenly stuff I had become

And nothing much, in the material world
Seared by something of your likeness
I had become used to darkness & solitude.

Who Came Sure from a Sea of Light

Who Came Sure from a Sea of Light

O’ the silent stealth of wind
And the transparent cool glance of green
The chide and call of open sky
The pass of years in the bright and brave
The natural, and useful elements
And water and where all doubt recedes
In time’s incessant lack of memory
Where subject disappears in objects
Recurring objects of glorious liberty
And channel of the soul
That washes the body and a life
To streaming rings of sun
And cells of gold for the immortal estate
And the spirit hiding behind the veil
Of a lifetime of walking the path.

to my children’s children

The future influences the present just as much as the past.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

on the plateau of high-summer
we discover true signs of life
in the heart-beat of cicadas

in the sun among your sisters
in the heights of kites and populars
something is left there
among the gazing at the stars

walking the dawns of our
luxuriant wings, the creatures
we are still of stone and sling

still yearning for the green fields
tortured on the wheel of existence
we climb the decades like machines
only to enter another night

another Auschwitz, more human morbidity
but in elegy and idyll, there is
perhaps still some clear presence

of our innate goodness before
we are corrupted by the world
our souls still dreams possible mercies
still hovers and hangs over

elusive faiths, temples of art
myths of empowerment, elitism of free-will
not all of us maybe, certainly

only a lucky few, but that’s enough for me
we will still be measured
by descendants, like relics of ancestors
our mothers sacrificed for us but

rejoiced in life’s offering
the time of wisdom is nigh, our metamorphosis
where then, everyone is along

at the heart of the earth
ready to love the star-mangled hours
without contempt for the ruthlessness
of the universe, or the wickedness of man.

Photo courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Policko-471650926

新品種 (new breed)

i

I heard your voice today again
In a Minor Key, speaking about how
Autumn disinforms the past
What’s realistic fantasy?
Rust. August. Musts…
Summer still invades my body
With an angry sun filled

ii

To the brim with mangoes and cherries
Caught in a feeling of immense
Tenderness, at the dawn of the longest day
Vocalizing forbidden syllables
To the Ever young, the youth whose

iii

Sensual materialism is a caress
Of how my body cells revolve in unison
With the whole universe
I heard your voice today again
In a foreign language, who knew it
Would become my bilingualism

iv

When time and space cease to exist
For me, our bodies in time will sleep
Side by side, for a year that felt like a century
-This flash is all we know, it happened
Taking on surreal forms of mysticism.

熱

i

Enter high summer, longest day!
This higher summer we love will
Pour its liquid light and make us forget
Light-memory erases dark-fantasy
Straining against our veins
Of sunburnt epiphanies and
Skin-cancer worries, and wrinkles

ii

That climb the wrists of time like Dragons
Night frost that barely is brisk enough
To welcome Autumn’s strange roses
These fields have time to grow rich
Like a vibrant testament to our
Continuation among the weeds

iii

Ready to crash into the parade
You who think I find words for everything
Don’t know how loose I am from words
In the Indian Summer heat
You for whom I write, June Bugs…

SUMMER

Summer was another country of forever beauty
That stretched out with a touch
Of air on flesh that was lighter
Than the sweet approval of the Trees
For the light and the breath that was the light

Tasting the sunlit juice of forever beauty
It felt like Spring had harvested
An outrageous beauty of
Landscapes folded in a surreal single voice
The music of a world of forever more
That seemed to adapt to everything

A dynamic return of the divine metropolis
Summer was the Capital of everything I knew
From the fragrance of flowers to the
Moment’s spell of where Spring first became Summer
Summer kept a hundred candles lit
Each time I stepped out into the Sun.

Monument of our Entry into Summer

Our summer Monument had no form
It was our love at the end of July
Not four-sided or stiff, but with soul
For the two-thirds against the sky

Our summer Monument held our lives
It was our hope, at August’s narrow start
The view is geared, the care is destined
To come home to a beloved ornament

Over the edge of boxes, like change
Dances the perspective of another gain
Now can you see the monument?
Transparent but with long petals of tenderness?

I’m sorry, forgive me, thank you, I love you
I cannot live without the topmost trust
That makes all sacrifice seem the most natural thing.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Untitled-389355383

These Lives were heaps of feathers

These words, stain our memories
With hope, like heaps of feathers
Pillows of forever, at the edge of the valley
Of life after digested tragedy
It doesn’t come easy, the expertise
Of knowing when to suffer gladly
And when to abandon oneself to joy
These experiences, like many flowers
Each month blooms to its own tastes
In the dry grass of summer nights
Humid and decorated with
The meaning we give events
I found you, like a “we’ll grow together”
Of how and when ‘forever’ begins
Clock-struck with a person, time accelerates
Love bears fruits like mangoes
In a tropical climate, everything
Tastes better, papaya gladness
Filtered through many doors, reduced by stars.

Photography Courtesy: http://browse.deviantart.com/art/Sunset-Bridge-in-Amsterdam-380622659

When Will I Be Able to Return

In late sun, the rivers and hills are beautiful
The fields talk of spring until summer arrives
Naked and lucid, like the blessed realms
The breeze behind your regard
Begs for sunset colors and the fragrances of flowers
The mud of our lives has thawed
As the river’s blue has a perfect touch of white
In the eyes of the soul grows riches
Beyond the daring suffering of our times
The Earth is magnificent and free
Unlike the slavish acts of men
I’ve watched the spring pass away
In another’s cheek, life has her own rhythms
I was always too young to discover them.

Taiwanese Summer, Part IV

When I indulge, it is an unspeakable pleasure
A delight claims all my thoughts and acts
That I become pregnant with curtains and bed-sheets
Your gleaming smile in the night
When I come to you, my lips pressed
To lotus-channels of desire
Beneath the dignity of your caress

I grew to resemble your wisdom
Your strength and purity I took into me
When we indulge, it is an unspeakable rejoicing
I have not the words to translate into Mandarin
Not the four-charter ‘wise’ sentences
Through songs of wings, chorus of footsteps

I would listen to the morning, and remember you
I would hope for the night, to see you again
When intimacy is a quest for forgiveness
Of all previous hardships, alas, I resign myself
To joys transfixed in pleasurable habits
To a new life of yearning and sweetness

The moon will glow like a white sleep
And our bodies will explore those lands hand-in-hand
You are the host in the paradise of heart
The spring wind that climbs over a dozen hills
Under the pillow of wild flowers, I see you with tulips
And imagine photographs of us over the course of years
A summons to the silent tongue of diviner years.

Advice from Creation

That strange flower, the sun
Just gave me word that
The world that I know is an illusion
She descended in robes of purple
To tell me in the loneliest air
That I am the listener of time

I watch it like a dance of a few leaves
Like a metaphor of giving reality
Its purpose, informing singularity
That strange flower, the sun
Gave me lessons in probability
The speed of light, fictive music

Most near, most clear exuberance
Heat, the clearest of blooms
The flame and swan-song that separates summers
From each other, like silver sprinkles
Of a few hundred dawns
That strange flower, the sun
Told me our imperfections were wrought
By common thoughts, and repeated actions.

Ballad to Half-crazed Summer

I am looking for Summer Nights
Where the moon will dangle these
Half-plucked eyes, with hearts thrown open!
.
)
As if, bright friends might transport
The rapture back into these Wounded Skies
I can’t ask for much, or maybe Everything
.
)
The eternal attitude of little human music
These yearnings which elevate time to Perfect Pitch
I am hunting Spring mornings for
.
)
The tried and true naked stones, that glimmer
The Sun’s best Intrusion of happiness
Where light is a bull-frog’s croak of oblivious motivation
.
)
Our bright flesh where there are no scars
I am looking for Mortal Embraces of hot July
Where I can let my expertise in simplicity go
.
)
Like a poem where words are said so beautifully
that I might as well be speaking the name of Love
That give themselves to life so intimately, we might
.
)
Silence the blossoms on all lips, to climb stairs
Outside Plato’s cave to the throat of outside innocence
I am looking for Salvation, on the fly.

In The Center of the World of the Body Tasted

You fall from your body, in spring –
.
.
Like a shadow of unmoving patience
With virtues to name, your furthest points
the overflowing or natural erosion
The breaking point where flesh enters
Another state – stirring instincts of a million years
.
.
Your body aches, for a firebrand tongue of coolness
The firmament of male and female, ecstasy
The earth tremor of your buttock of green
A testimony of your solar jaguar eyelashes
.
.
Stroked not enough by time
Your orange cleft of midnight lunging
Transfigured by his spiral hands, encircling
Your caressed scents of lengthy slow longing
.
.
You fall from your body, it’s dusk
.
.
Fluttering like an unfinished melody
Between April & May, waiting and lasting
As a feast of unfolding horizons rushing
Towards music, festivity, orgasms of the house of wind
.
.
It’s not over, it’s just the black lips of the O r a c l e ‘ s beginning
Your juices are not overflowing, they are just incarnated in dream
Dissolving your senses like the buds of the lucid mouths of truth.

The New Girl

One month left, before summer
I feel the weeks before Flowers
As an epiphany of dead grandmothers
Lost love, the usual things, that matter –
My life is being swarmed by little necessities
The aches that creep, the particulars
That make the years blur, I know for you
It’s hard imagine such a day will ever come
So lucid with your youthful form
Bursting in on ideas, hitchhiking your way
To maturity, every word you say
Lives desperate in me, for unanswered clues
To the meaning of life, hidden in your smile
I haven’t yet organized your impact upon me
So I let it simmer there, while we study
The unknowable truth of why I crave
The Philip Glass shattering of the insides
Of hope, that I relive destiny in you.

Like the Last Day of June

Before you know it, it will be high summer
With blue shooting stars
At your fingertips
The air will smell pungent
Like wild mustard seeds

And it will be hot, hot enough
To stain your blouse with sweat

And you will feel warm and tingly all over
A hay fever of your femininity
There won’t be much to say
Not when we’re naked
On the last day of the jazz festival

There will be fireworks in another part of town
But in your bedroom, zippers will

Unzip, water against water
Skin to skin, before you know it
Evening will touch the last day of June
And you will whimper, and you will swoon
And I’ll be the one, stripping you
Your panties moist with excitement.

Not With Your Foreign Wings to Shelter Me

Beneath sentiments better left, unsaid
Untouched like some dead weight
Beneath the rubble-fields of battered words
That amount to little more, mere memories

They are not tangible, precious, or alive
But constrict me from the inside
Let them try to pronounce a winter of hurt
For a floundering of spring, yet to be

With fevered heart, let them melt away in summer
Clang shut eternal gates of love, forever?
Yet, for all that, trust shall come again, as ever?
With nostrils of bleeding gold, for rich rewards?

You will not appear again, with that dusty mantle
Of golden olive skin and pouty eyes
I am sick of dissipating you in mere fantasy
As blind as I ever am, a prelude and a requiem, or a preface
Where my luckless touches, touched a foreign woman’s shore.

Building Up Summer Afternoon

Summer idle, I can feel it now
The enormous backdrop of expensive
Experience, the shrill stillness
Between suntanned now
And spectacular discovery

I want summer afternoons
That schools me outside
Searching for an anonymous evening
The jazz festival of bruised hearts
Summer idle and tempestuous

With roses of women past their youthful years
Erupting into cheeks and friendly kisses
With strangers, I shall never see again
And sweat that pours from an urgent sun
The views with red jumping borders

And skin, indulgent Augusts and Julies
All those mixed emotions
How the heat can make you weak
Where it counts.

Eros in Retreat

I am waiting for my white butterflies
Summer’s babble of small noises
Where I can feel insignificant again
Behind crickets and proofs of God

I’m hoping that timely intervals
Will save me from this grief
Amidst the healing weeks
Of mourning and mornings

I have the patience of heart-breaks
That fly with delicate wings
Of youth’s love-sheath so tender
Bemused by nature’s glory

I am waiting for my sampled flowers
That have no flaw, but their unchanging beauty
That diamonds are only accomplished
After eternities, epochs long enough

That they forget what they once were
I am waiting for my single aims
To be accomplished in-between
The death of memories, it shall be sweet

To no longer recall who I have been
Or why art mattered, why love was cruel
And how the seasons fell, little squire anti-climaxes.