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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

love worth

I am drawn to the moth
like it is drawn to flame.
And why? 
How will I not be in love
with its love?
It kisses death like a lover.
On its belly with a mouthful of dirt
it dies first as a caterpillar
and after an unimaginable flight
it gives up its breast 
for a single moment
with its beloved...
a moment
that you could measure
in the span of a single heartbeat.

Fishing

In the predawn, a baby is heard crying.
The soft glow of lamplight complements
the distant white starlight, as secrets
and intimacies are cast out 
into the sky's quiet expanse.
People meet in dark alleyways
bump into each other 
in unexpected corners
coming together slowly
coalescing under candlelight
sometimes appearing a bit strange
a bit, surprised, in each others company.
As the sun warms up the distant 
horizon into a dark gray
they make their way to the docks
walking tall in darkness
huddling under what light there is
hearts quiet in their noise
feet shuffling their way onto boats
boats rocking out into the cradle of the sea.
And all along the shorelines
the yellow glow spreads outward
and the people
they cast out their hearts like bait
on double pronged hooks
waiting for a bite
trolling for a shudder-
a shake of their line
something, anything
to beat the tranquility.
*
For years, I have enjoyed 
the catches of my heart.
For years, I have tried
little by little
to unfasten this heart 
from these hooks
to little avail.
One day
I will let go of my line
cast myself into the water
and the rust can take the hooks
and my heart can seep into the sea

Monday, December 27, 2010

last night in Mexico

There was the night
clothes strewn by the shoreline
sandals neatly neglected
and the moon
blinding stars
and the stars
kissing the night sky to life.
There was the quiet surrender
of jagged seashells giving in
to the cool sand beneath
and waves
rolling over one another
in their haste for the shore.
There was the balmy breath
of a night breeze
the lull, the clarity of no speech
and the roar of the ocean's soul.
***to be cont'd

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

oneness

Let's make a fire and purge our "I"ness;
This is hell.

Let's create a garden and be one;
This is heaven.

Fuck heaven and hell
in the end, there's only oneness.

So come, sit with me now
there is no later
and if tomorrow comes
this moment will have gone.
There will never be a presence
quite like this one
right now.
Take my hand
close your eyes
let your heart bleed into mine
let my breath seep into yours
till we don't know who's breathing
and which heart is beating.

Monday, December 13, 2010

inbound

I want to place that holy pedestal,
the seat of the heart
on the highest mountain top,
the most distant star.
These shores, I will race through
laughing,
like it's a dream,
until I find the most remote
unreachable place,
and there, 
will I bleed my heart dry.
There, on a bed of hidden nights
and secret gazes,
I will lay a spread of sincere tears.
Intimacies and half-loves
I will forsake
as dust kicked up on the road
to that final doorstep.
There, I will wet lip with heartsblood
and speak its innermost secrets.
There, only there,
I will open the floodgates
and cast my heart out to the wind.

confessions p.6

I dictated myself to ignorance,
running madly along the shorelines
of separability.
I gave up the empty potential
of my hands for pebbles, seashells
While the stars bore down
on me, laughing
at my grasping, my excuses.
A rose petal kissed me hollow,
and I burst, like ash,
whirling with wonder.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Halves

I've had seven homes in the past five years,
and seven more in the twenty before that.
I've moved halfway across the world,
given up a culture, language, and world,
not once, nor twice, but thrice.
If home really is where the heart is,
then like the scattered pieces of my heart,
one half of me is eastern, the other western.
One half, the lover in my mother,
the other, the fighter in my father.
I fit somewhere in the contrast
between tears and laughter.
How fitting, that every part of me
should be so entangled in dualities.
***
But what do I know,
I have yet to live half a lifetime,
I have yet, to live, half a moment.
What I do know is that I am
neither this half, nor the other.
I am neither my mother, nor my father.
I am neither eastern, nor western,
neither a label, nor a description.
The whole of me is indiscernible,
but it is something
beyond halves,
beyond words, names,
and the tug and pull of dualities.
***
I am being taught by contrasting dualities,
by means of opposites
and these wings disguised as halves. *

*Rumi excerpt: "... teaches you by means of opposites so that you may have two wings to fly"

Where I'm from

Have you ever had a scent seize you
as it laughs at time, at space
and throws you down a maze of memories?
To a place far, far away
one whose name has been effaced.
For me, that scent has always been
fresh fallen rain
mixing with that precious dirt.

*******

I was born in a beautiful cradle
of ancestry, culture
a bedrock, a treasure house
of humane wealth.
But the clash of beliefs
the bitter taste of dispute
and a history of foreign exploitation
has made men of cloth
into ragdog generals
who enforce Orwell's 1984.

Where I'm from
it's custom to hear of a cousin
an uncle, disappearing
for having a tongue
and for daring to use it.

My father came from a family of seven brothers:
wrestlers and revolutionaries
who lost one of their own in battle.
I get my strength from my mother, her sister and my grandmother
who raised a university professor and a teacher 
but had to secretly sneak her two daughters to school everyday. 
I am a child of the revolution
born during war
laughing in the playground
of my mother's kindergarten
laughing
as I pointed up at the sky
while air raid sirens went off
and jet fighters flew by.

Trying to be heard
I've stalked over stifling walls
felt them close over me    
as I was discovered
like a common thief.
[For holding hands
I've ran from men in berets
their boots pounding on pavement
as I swallowed my own heart.]  **Needs revision

Imagine:
having two scheduled times
to use the washroom each day
in an isolation cell for thirteen months
at sixty-five years old
your family, unable to speak
even in their own home
house raids and wire taps.

There are welcoming ceremonies
for freed political prisoners
more joyous than weddings
more melancholy than a funeral.
For the rest
there is absolute
silence.

*******

..I think I write poems
but there is endless poetry
that beats in the hearts
of those in dark, quiet cells
which will sometimes never be heard.




.

right now

Tonight I feel it stronger than ever.
Tonight I will not put up a fight.
Everything I've ever wanted,
everything that I could ever want,
is present in this moment.
There is nothing, that is not here
right now, in this instant.
What did I do to deserve this?
Oh let me give up everything,
that takes me away from this.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

This moment

dec 8 entry:
If the smallest thing were to change in the course of this mutual history, in another life (or another dimension/universe or whatever you want to call it) this moment would not even be taking place.  And that alone makes this moment beautiful.  And there are infinite possibilities in each moment, but it is this particular one that is unfolding right now...continually unfolding like the blossoming of a rose, or the exhalation of a breath.  This moment could have so easily been eclipsed by the mountain of what-could-have-been or what-is-not.  And that too makes this moment all the more beautiful...in a way that is both fragile and frail, even in the face of the harshest illusions and realities.
Even [the] death [of moments], with its inevitability, and its embodiment of the utter lack of control, adds to the beauty of this moment.  Whoever equated control and the lack of it to right and wrong?  And why did I believe that-even for a moment?
Death is like the yin of each moment's yang.  Death is nothing less than life's Lover...it is that unparalleled artist that makes the most vivid canvas out of even the dullest colors of each unrepeatable moment.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

passing reminiscence

My feet moved, but i did not
the ground gave 'way beneath
reeled [me] into vast distances
[i was] stretched, heated, blown into
pieced apart, in and de-flated.
Many faces were cast upon me
and for every person
I fulfilled a different role
they know the "moving me"
strangers all they may well be
there is nothing to know
but that I do not exist
there is only
the memory of you
and your movement.
That memory dances,
hiding from articulation
words are too cold--too lifeless
for your description
like trying to contain
the universe in the alphabet
when the only place
it has ever fit is in the heart

Monday, December 6, 2010

the unbroken

In the dark, it awoke,
before that first thought.
In the dark, something broke,
and from what broke, something spoke,
and what spoke, said that which broke,
and the one that awoke,
are just parts of a whole,
and what is whole can never be broken,
even in sleep, waiting to be awoken,
even in winding layers of dreams,
what is spoken, can not be unspoken,
and that which is unbroken, can not be broken.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

knowing nothing

I know nothing of beauty
so let me know everything of ugliness.
I know nothing of love
so let me know the ins and outs
of hate and indifference.
I know nothing of ease, and release
so let me know the ways of struggle
till I no longer need to look for peace.
I know nothing of this instant
or this eternal moment
so let me know a lifetime
of time's subtle passage.
I know nothing.
Look at me looking for lifelines everyday
clutching at crutches
haha haha
I know nothing
yet Nothing does not know me.
But someday it will know me
better than I think I know myself.
One day, Nothing will turn our pages
and every single insignificant detail,
 neglected letter and hidden word
will coalesce into
a story so ...
an entire universe was born for its telling