In 2002:
Husband
I have peace when we are apart.
When we are together sometimes I have peace.
When we are apart I dream about seeing you.
We lay down and dreams have us.
And we forget to talk, just quarrel.
So we think this is where we are,
what we have, and how it goes.
My wounds open and close,
but you never change in my eyes.
Young & Beloved
Oh pardon me, beloved one,
I was young and spirited.
A collection of ideas,
intense feelings that scared me,
all I did was having them up in my face.
Things up in my face,
I thought I was not giving in.
Pain is a horrible way to live.
Memory comes to conceal it.
After all these years, all these years,
My dreams glow on children's faces.
To Have Something
Young man wakes up at 5 in the morning,
says today I got to be somebody.
Got to be something, be discovered.
Be a man and stand on my own feet.
Got to have something.
There is a voice in my head.
fly like a seed in high wind,
---would I have a soil to land?
And who are they out there choring
"You gotta take it easy, man."
She wakes from her sleep crying,
Sits on her bed till day breaks into dawn.
Too much passed she just doesn't care no more,
Out in the back she heard birds singing.
Got to have something,
There is restless in my vein.
I can hear the beating wings of the hawk,
As it soars in to the sun --- where does it belongs?
And who is that that keepings talking,
"Sis don't take it too hard. It's ok, it's ok."
Is my life really a mission,
Or is it all the meanings in life?
Should I just hold on to you babe,
Or is there yet another flight?
Under the sky I close my eyes,
one step forward, two steps forward.
Teen Trauma
It is a feeling I can't describe
--- it is like fear, that I'd never survive.
A cloth of shame, to wear around all day
among beautify and laughing owners of my skin.
It took my years,
those I'd come to fancinate.
And therefore got itched to my dream,
unsatiated for more bleeding.
Anakin's Song
The music
The trumpet
The Drum beats at the execution.
If my heart would be quiet for a moment,
That moment would be for you.
I can't not-be, so now we have lost,
And I will take all that you have to give.
Crying
And I looked up and see,
along with the sunlight on the ocean.
Like dust my days fell down ---
There he was, my very loving one.
And so all the time I thought I was lost
was wakening from a dream,
He was there to have found me.
Suddenly I wished, I wished I were
younger, prettier...
and my tears started to fall like rain.
The Last Day of July
This poem is written after watching The pillow book by Peter Greenaway
Last page turned
I'd pack all my words
into a strand of hair
your hair.
Shadows escaped your mind
your lament has no host.
The world once spoken
is lost, for fear of knowing.
What was silent is now in retreat.
Nothing was marked from the beginning
Except for love.
Sojourn
My translation to Echo Ying's poem in Chinese
Stepping out of the subway
Into a rampant Indian summer.
People lit up their cigarettes,
Or took out their cell-phones and dialed.
[Just�like�you]
It still took one minute
And twenty-five seconds,
To cover the campus shortcut,
Thinking about you.
In this metropolitan flooded with
Friday-night-bar-pickup-lines,
You plainly obscured away,
In lavish complexity.
As lavish as Our Love,
Lost in Chinese and mandarin.
It sang like songs and psalms,
And rhymed like hymns and hums.
Outside my window is the exiled world,
Into the past is where I can find you.
The Reality and the Illusion
Lay equally apart.
(An extent and a liaison.)
(Now and then I strain to forget.
Then and now I pine in remembrance.)
The mountains pull back to the distance,
While Youth keeps waning away.
Strange Time Remembered
Small child on dancing elephants,
Going down the villege lane in big parade;
As the night comes to claim all colors,
I catch the panic and strain to flee.
Monster rides on high wind across the dark sea.
Time to duck in the shales and be buried deep;
Or join riot in the Hall of youth and fury,
And partake the communion of the unholly.
I put my judgement to the stand,
and call for Him who holds Eternity.
Of all I was made the accessary of this crime
in the attempt to wish away my petty existence.
Sing low sire, thy comfort song.
Thy children run off, they're off to chase the giltters.
Who would Thee gather and who would Thee seek
Under the shriek of monster on dark horses.
Fifteen Years Back
It was when we shared dreams
And flew on our bikes.
I learned to look at your laughing face
when streets flew by in a blur ---
Before we had the accident.
Before we parted, before I
Offered incense to the dead all summer,
Knowing I would not see your face.
Before I took it as my defeat.
There were no granting,
No seeking after. We walked to the park,
Letting on we were someone else.
And I wrote you poems on pink cards.
I rode myself home totally numb,
Unsure of what to think of
What you had said to me.
It all happened fifteen years back.
Message Board
Wrote this for the Prose Board on bbs.mit.edu on Oct. 7th, 2002
A scrapbook.
A palette.
A window to millions of windows.
An incense burner to my moon godess.
Dings of a bell.
Ticks of Time.
Mimes under the spotlight.
Lions and carcass in Serengeti.
Trinklets
Diamond
The lakes are places
You hold your treasures.
Time passes.
You pause the flow,
And let every ripple
Shimmer in the sun.
--
Onyx
For days on end I�ve labored,
And crystallized the shadows before my eyes.
I have it in the palm of my hand,
A dark gem, pulsating, pulsating.
And I offered it to him,
Who turned it down.
�But why,?I asked in tears:
�Why would you leave me in the wilderness?
Crouched and pinned down under your hand,
Or taste the bile of my own bitterness??
My displeased lover frowned in Silence.
All night long, I clenched his worn garment close to me,
Delirious in his scent.
Ruby
Thought I was in exile,
But I am on his planet.
Thought I was locked outside his room,
But I am still in his house.
Thought I was dreaming in my sleep,
But I am holding on to his love.
Scenic Drive, NH
Oct. 19th, 2002
Shooting through in thy tunnle of creations,
On straight roads and broken lanes.
Thine heart of gold moves with me
At eighty miles per hour.
Thy autumn entourage, dabbed in
Rouge and bronze, line up in reception.
Thy streams, cold and rushing
through huge rocks taut and rough.
Thy milky mists, waist belts,
wrap around the groins of whirling mountains.
And through these thou solicited me,
nd' taunts me to draw fire in rain.
Jazz
This is done after Billie Holiday in the afternoon, a tirade, and estella7 her post on the net.
Slow melody and microphone
Tapping in silent undertone.
Cigarette smoke up a ladder,
A black and white era
In a dark corner.
I in my believe take it for granted.
*sad smile*
Think of it as worthy as real.
*sad smile*
Willing the fire, as I aspire,
But life is the truth.
She gathers up her plum feathers
Like a seabird landing on water.
Night's fallen on Saine River,
With saxophone sweetly lingers.
Blossoms for Treats
I
With each dawn comes the completion of a dream.
The collection is steadily growing.
Petal by petal
A flower opens itself on the stem
Letting in sunlight, revealing beauty.
(Knowledge over ignorance is bliss.)
What good does it do
To learn in winter
The rites and rituals of springtime
But to illuminate them in high contrast
Against black?
II
Exactly the meaning of flowers
Is that they can bloom.
Sad flowers, wild flowers, clipped cultured flowers
Laughing in the face of silliness.
There are oceans and hills and fields of them giddy in the hall of Spring
III
Let the flower bloom, out of portion
Just a bit, me think it�s a sign from the little gods.
It runs around lose, throwing up hands,
Ridding us of blame for a brief moment.
IV
I tour about in a gallery of Invisible Flowers.
Because they are invisible,
People study them.
Until they are made to be seen,
Blown up in magnitude many times,
The details are full of symmetry, shockingly so.
Those who study them put themselves in the seeing.
Through their work I become another eye.
This eye is the same as all others,
Drawn to the beauty of unseen flowers.
V Uh-uh, I won't tell you how this gets here. :)
It�s the vintage brew over the years,
Now I, too, can smell the sunshine over Aegean Sea.
Those crazy years, with costumed people on the street
How you had grown into an older boy,
And carved your first poem on a stone tablet.
Lover's Wish
If so you wish, I�d
Paint you on the canvas superstitiously
Like a priest tending to his table of burning candles, I'd
Don you in a holiday�s gown
In lacquer wood shine and fill each pocket
With sweet smelling mirth and butterfly wings.
I would do these, oh yes, with the pride of a mother at her son�s wedding.
Or if so you wish, I�d be a granite rock,
Unyieldingly stand against winds and sea waves.