tsai . poems : copyright © 1987-1998

A Poem for Gabriel

Sweet cares wind my heart towards yours.
            I'm not too simple, and you, your tears flood even onto my dreams.
The waiting for our minds to be one is infinite.
            But you play our romance with tender rage and thought.
            I, though, am sometimes umpire, frequent to judge.
Do I battle the desperation to be right with desiring to kiss sweetly?
            I sit honing my faults with reasons, stabbing flesh upon
                     flesh of devoting tides.
            You surprised me with your pure gratitude of praise just because I said,
            "Wait 'til after rush hour."
Coils of graceful livingness unwind the conch of unrequited concerns.
            I reap a healthy mound of resenting whenever I see blindly.
            You, your toes are even clean.
Why is confusion so precious to a blind heart?
            Fortunately, you listen.
            Every time you confess to love, I believe you.
Thousands of butterflies ripple the sky
            when you stroke my hair.
            Even when loneliness gazes out
            you trouble your soul with mine.
Do you know I love you.

Fortune's Fortune

Fortune wanted his destiny told
so he stole the global stores
of crescent, crisp, paper-ensouled
golden, ochre cakes.

He broke and ate and blessed each strip
that guided him to his fate.
But after reading every tip,
he sighed, irate and bored

What do I need with savvy advice
with promises of health, wisdom, and wealth?
Such vapid nonsense given to entice
me into a tunnel of sight and scope.

Before I will to retire my aim,
I'll search the land for methods more sound,
and if I find one true to my game,
immortality I'll give as recompense.

He scoured the earth with a purpose clear,
eyeing tea leaves, globes, and sand,
Selecting numbers, elements for the seer,
he hoped for answers bound. 

But Fortune's fate is to find his fate,
for things named shift and change.
But in the nameless resides the weight
of the Way to mysteries untold.

To the Man Who Sees Beyond the Sky
for Gabriel

Visions of the visible invisible
given only to one with sight;
memories of once pristine mind
blessed to him who guards his insight.

Days upon days of endless horizon
unknown endings calls for once brave —
for feet to tread the firmament,
but lightly, careful not to disturb the grave.

Beyond the sky sheer madness lies
                few can stand its heave-ho sway —
a land of fire all blazing blue,
                few can feel its blustery daze.

Why with heaven so clear and cool
men choose to fulmine thunder and light?
Why with earth so warm and moist
men construct hard covers of night?

To the Man who sees beyond the sky
who shares the dream of truth's lunacy,
to this man who dares to question the winds
of whim, may his way be men's prophecy.

Leaving Home

Each item must be chosen carefully;
each sock potentially can actuate
its rotors of familiarity,
disgorging pre-thought patterns that don’t wait
to be justified.  I am simplified.
'Denied my full identity,' I cried.

Each guest who enters in my consciousness
sets unknown fences of boundaries I am not
aware.  So when I step over the duress
of conformity, I mar the safe; they blot
me out with silence.  'I am simplified,
denied my full identity,' I cried.

Each dusk, in prayer, I touch gold air and breathe
wet fire.  I swim in land and walk on water.
Sometimes, I hear a fading, broken wreath
of light and rain.  Once, a dove fell, I caught her.
She rested and sighed, 'I am simplified,
denied my full identity.'  I cried.

Line

When I'm serene, gently searching my mind,
I think of Wordsworth, of jeweled Vale, its slopes,
its stars, its wind and moon.  I picture measures
that drip of poise, shimm'ring with clear design
where unobtrusive function words are sieves
in which caesural thoughts are caught by lines.
Such classicism of form.  But then, the present
pushes himself on me, so redefining
my ink's stance.  Debating whether the culture
of Haydn or that of Schönberg should be
my line's time, jarring my mind with extremes,
I churn the use of meter, constraints of form
with being compact; of using repeats, sequence,
and rhyme with being unique into a batter
of mode.  So I model Coleridge; his voice,
urgent, demands my anxiousness and triggers
a pulse of mute unsettledness.  I wait,
expecting not to expect his next twist
of departure from rhythm.  Taut, the words
are puritans; their clearness commands change,
and from the past, I am the line to be.

Hûo-Qì 1

Cankerous ulcers in my mouth
are growing.  Sores that numb my tongue
and paralyze my speech derive
their strength from surfeits of vital
fire-air that upset the poised
enthalpy within my water
and blood.  Thus lush fruits as litchis
are avoided.  They are hot and
will further inflame blood with fire.

To rectify my imbalance,
I consume edibles of cold
nature to reduce that fever
in my blood.  Cabbage, cucumbers
and winter-melons squish and squelch
in my bowels.  But I always
have too much air and too much fire. 
Rivers, mountains can change with ease,
but my temper will pass unmoved. 2

1: Qì can mean gas, air, breath, spirit, morale, and (as used in Chinese medicine, philosophy, martial arts, etc.) energy of life.
   Hûo qì literally can mean fire-air, its two most frequently used meanings are: 1) internal heat (as a cause of a disease)  [A term used in Chinese medicine.  When in excess, this internal heat can cause internal disorder; the disorder can manifest, e.g., in the form of canker sores in the mouth.]  2) anger, temper.

2: A modified version of a Chinese proverb: jíang shán yì gâi bên xìng nán yí, which literally means "Rivers mountains easy to change (or rectify, transform, correct); original nature (or character, disposition, natural instincts, inherent being) difficult to move (or alter, shift).  The word, gâi (to change), is normally used to describe people and the word, yí (to move) is normally used with objects. 

No Wonder

Did he have any nicknames when he was young?
Yes, he had a few growing up.  What were they?
Tîe Tóu, Dà Tóu, Zhang Pàng, Nán Guài.1  No wonder?
One day, he was dribbling a ball with a group
of boys.  The ball was accidentally thrown
at his head.  He received a bruise and, a name.

                               • • • •

Come on, Da Tao.  Let's play some ball.
Try to keep up.  You're lagging behind.
Pant, pant.  Ruff, ruff.  Haw, haw.  Come on.
Come on, Da Tao.  Here catch this —miss!
Leave him alone.  (What did we do?)
If he wants to leave, he can go.
He tagged along.  (Let him go home.)
Enough, he looks upset.  (Go home.)
Da Tao, catch this.  Ha, ha.  (Sorry.)
No wonder his head's so big.  (home. . .)
His mother probably . . . Enough!. . .
. . . dribbled him on the ground . . . (I'll go. . .)

                              • • • •

Home —I'm safe.  I tagged you before
you touched home base.  Did not.  Did too.
Did not —Girls, be quiet.  (did too. . .)
Your Dad is trying to rest.  Go.
Don't bother him.  (what did we do?)
(always needs to be left alone)
(yeah, always to be left alone)
(always 'resting') (yeah) (no wonder
always so crabby; he's always
waking up)  (yeah, no wonder)  Girls!
Call your father.  Ba ba2, dinner!
Come on, Ba ba.  Come on.  Wake up.

                              • • • •

What else might he have received besides this name?
distrust    isolation    despair?
Perhaps, he had those already.  But silence?
Silence, too?

1 Tîe Tóu means ‘iron head’, Dà Tóu means 'big head'; 
  Zhang Pàng means ‘fat Chang’;  Nán Gùai means 'no wonder'.

2 Bà bà means 'daddy'.

Gift

The daughter is studying math in her room.
Her eyes float in silence, entranced.  The womb
of stillness buoys and numbs her thoughts.  She blinks.
A snake of linking numbers coils and slinks
into her mind.  Controlled, she knows her world.
Her mother raps on the door.  She hears, hurled,
a response from within, Later, not now,
but enters with blunt force to disallow
the daughter's wish.  She holds, then casts a gift
on top of the girl's books.  She drops a swift,
imperious, Here —for you and then turns
to leave.  She glances at the gift and turns
a page.  I didn't ask for it.  It's so
expensive.  Please return it.  Mèi1will know
and scream 'not fair'.  The reasons for such need
to reject her gift wrests her calm.  Her greed
for preservation sparks indignant wrath
to erupt onto her.  You have no path,
no thanks, no reason2.  Don't take it.  I'll give
it away.  The fire will fade; land will live
in waste.  She was prepared and she, controlled.

1 Mèi means little sister.

2 The mother is using the word Dào.  Dào can mean (1) road, path, way (2) channel course (3) way, method (4) Taoism
  Phrases that use the word dào:
                dào dé means morals, morality, ethics;
                dào xiè means to express thanks, to thank;
                dào lî means principle, truth, hows and whys, reason, argument.

Watermelon Days

Catching sunlight between my fingers,
I sway to a mental gait,
while squatting by the window.

I watch a chipmunk, who’s chewing something,
peek out from a fresh hole,
where my mother’s tulips were once.
A metronomic Andante sets yet another
dotted-rhythm day’s tempo.
And as this day’s continuo
progresses from tonic sunrises,
dominant noons, to tonic sunsets,
its improvisatory realization
is as harmonically closed
as the previous days’.

Aimlessly strolling out of my doors,
splashed with soothing soft winds,
with unsyncopated steps,
I stumble, land, crushing
melismatic geraniums,
recently planted by my mother.
Intent on a recapitulation
to my indoor haven,
I cadence deceptively,
resting on the woodchips
by the flattened geraniums.

After a sunbath,
I amble back to my niche,
of feigned zephyrs
gently blown by a machine.
Cool and comfortable,
I entertain the idea of a repeat,
another excursion into the heat.
But, I languidly reason
since yesterday’s events were strophic,
today’s, for contrast,
should be through-composed.

So absorbing rainbows into my sockets,
I daze to optical stimuli,
while slumped by the t.v.

Mother

I dance a torpid march around the urn
of coffee and cream.  I hear her fireside glow
of cool blue chatter; she brands my ears with burn.

Times past, I chiseled marches out of a churn
of consonance and dissonance.  On toe,
I dance a torpid march around the urn

of coffee and cream to see if I can earn
a praise of pleasantry from the worn foe
of cool, blue chatter.  She brands my ears with burn.

And as I age in confidence, I yearn
for applause to tug against past’s toll.  Though,
I dance a torpid march around the urn

of judgment, I am praying for a turn
in understanding, weeded, with love’s hoe,
of cool blue chatter.  She brands my ears with burn

as she, with listless eyebrows, rejects a fern
of peace.  I hear the ghastly caw of a crow.
I dance a plaintive march around the urn.
Of cool blue chatter, she brands my ears with burn.

Title

I used to spend whole days of sapphire gold
rendering my name: a listless rambling cursive,
a dignified print, a fierce neurotic scrawl —
all a mad tracing of my plots of comfort,
circumscribing my anxieties so to
discover one that identified my soul.
I would consume repasts of Hecate’s night,
inebriated on the opaline moon,
in search of the echo of my voice: aural
shadow of the ineffable Spirit’s glint,
melodious outpour of the still stirring
once stored in my heart’s mind while within the womb.
But I never stumbled onto that one
signature of enlightenment nor any
reflected utterance which proclaimed, “I!”
Cramped, stifled, generic— I’m trapped in the margins.

At the fringe
of the precipice,
a cast-iron fence
girdles the cliff,
warding off grief.
Pandora lavishly whorls,
a blur of elbows and knees,
senselessly exploiting the space.
Free to scrieve and reel without worry,
she burrows her light feet into the ground
without care.  But as she curls along the plateau’s edge,
the enticing Unknown draws, lures and mesmerizes
her saucy curiosity, driving her to innocently clip the mesh.
She begins to clip. (Ka-tong)  Driven by unknowns,
she clips (Ka-tong) and pulls and clips. (Ka-tong) 
But the gaps grow on their own, (tong-ong)
becoming swirls of unbounded space,
a wharf for the insane, and, little by little,
(ong-ong) encumber her fevered
savageness.  Inaugurated,
the religions of skirting
taboo thoughts begin.
She twirls, now,
a huddle of arms
in the center,
without reason,
amnesia possessed,
afraid of falling
into the open
grave.

Genesis

When you go outside and play,
consumed with thoughts of wild fun,
squeeze his hand; take care of him.
When he falls and cries of pain,
hold him, and though he might feign
wellness, remember his tears —
for you are your brother’s keeper.

And when you’re among people,
keep in mind that he is you,
a being of dignity.
And when some others single
him out with cruel words, smearing
his true worth, please remain dear —
for you are your brother’s keeper.

And when you walk down the street,
engrossed in matters so dear,
ignore not the abandoned.
for when you shut your mind; knit
your concerns all of self-yarn,
you forget to whom you are bound,
for you are Thy brother’s keeper.

Pán Gû1

In the beginning, sheltered in an egg,
the universe of swirling dark and light
nursed Pán Gû in visceral bliss; each leg
of his formed the cytoskeletal might.
Then, unawares, he stretched, breaking the tight
womb, releasing his self and matrix through time.
He groped for form and grabbed a handful of night
then pushed and heaved, as if in tragic mime,
the heavens from earth, the perfect from deformed rhyme.
And after separating yin2 from yáng3 ,
he laid himself to rest, and his sublime
decay became earth’s visage.  But the pang
of labor is unacknowledged when things opt
to disobey.  In dark light, the apple dropped.

1 Pán Gû, in Chinese mythology, is the creator of the universe.  Like the phrase ‘once upon a time’, the commonly written phrase ‘since the beginning of the world’ or ‘since the creation of the world’, zì chóng Pán Gû kai tian dì actually means since Pan Gu separated (or opened) heaven and earth.

2Yin can mean: the feminine or negative principle in nature; the moon; shade; hidden; sinister; secret; of the nether world.

3 Yâng can mean:  the masculine or positive principle in nature; open; overt; belonging to this world; concerned with living beings.

The Red Chamber's Dream1

I have diffused onto a dried rose in the shade of caked aged blood.  The brittle petals eagerly drink me in preserving themselves with my watery salt.

I am her life's last tear, her final payment of gratitude.  Like the others before me, I am formed for his sake, to glorify him.

We were all shed in obedience to her for him.  For him, we were all drawn from her deep, indelibly heaven-stained roots.  Each of us were numbered, each accounted for.  None were trivial; all were necessary to complete her resolve of sacrifice.  For every drop he gave, a tear was owed.  I have been chosen to come forth as the last one, the one to mark the exhaustion of her sorrow. 

But as I expand with her grief, encasing her iris in a glistening shell, I swell with unquietness.  Realizing my life was not my own, I begin struggling to remain, to live against the will set for me.  And while clinging to her eye, my own weight rips me away from her.  As I descend to the red mortal dust, and she ascends back to the heavens, I become the omega, the alpha — I become all the tears.

1 The Red Chamber’s Dream was written by Tsao Xue-Chin.  The story unfolds with a fairy tale, literally a tale about fairies.  It begins with Jia Bao Yu, a minor fairy in the heavens, who waters a flower everyday.  Extremely grateful for his faithful service, the flower resolves to repay every drop watered by the fairy.  Circumstances change such that the wish comes true.  In the tale, the fairy and the flower descend to the earth, otherwise known as the ‘red dust’, and become human beings, but both are unaware of their past lives.  They fall in love.  But in this love affiar, Jia Bao Yu causes Ling Dai Yu, the woman who was the flower, tremendous distress and sorrow.  And until the day of her death, Ling Dai Yu would constantly be shedding tears for or because of her lover.  In this manner, with all her life’s tears, the flower repays her debt to her waterer. 

A Few Lines for Him

If I stand in front of a window
facing east, and the sun rises and rises,
and the light pours in brighter and brighter,
I'm really standing under a sunfall.
And as I get sunnier and sunnier,
drenched in sun, until I couldn't be more drenched,
my insides begin to fill up with sun,
until I'm breathing in light, drowning in it.
And as I drown in light, beautiful sunlight,
my heart is fully at rest.
For I experience drowning in light
every time you embrace me
as I swallow your life.

An Ordinary Day

She inhales — all at once — sucking in
the aromas bathing her senses.
She begins — softly, assertively,
controlling the release of her breath —

an ordinary day.

She’s whipped awake by icy electric
lashes of water pricking her lids.
Rubbing away the stingful pinches,
she slaps on lather from ears to toes

in ordinary ways.

The cavities between seats are filled
by latecomers; she watches, indifferent —
Sunday church, fellowship only
on Sunday. The pulse of her breath fades —
sustaining — anticipating some-
thing different. Hi, hello, how are you,
I’m well and how are you, and onward.
But, hush, the sermon’s about to commence.

The language is but ordinary.

Resonant, the sermon’s a tuning fork,
struck by oaths within the pastor’s throat.
Seized by these vibrations, she desires
to understand what pitch is in phase

with this ordinary day.

She hums a rare contemplative hymn:
Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner. . . .
Released from the grip of the day,
she exhales what remains of her breath.

A Story

He sat at the desk, his brows immersed in thought
while I watched him painstakingly compose
a story.  I had a question I wanted to pose
to him about how to construct a wrought
idea on paper and as I pondered and sought
appropriate words to interrupt those brows
which my own resemble, I pretended to flip and browse
through pages of his manuscript.  This caught
those brows in consternation and he brought
the pages out of my hands and into his lap.
I shuffled out of the room, gnawing a lip.
He sat at the desk, his brows immersed in thought,
and now I join his club of crotchety brows
asking still my questions consumed with hows.

The Round Table

Against the bluster from the sanctuary upstairs of an elder’s mellifluous praise to an omniscient God, downstairs, they sat, twelve babes of sense and soundness, quietly eyeing me with awe and pity. Wee human knights of the great table, they listened deeply with rue to the frail, but stately announcer who recited my suffering. 

“Everyone, please listen.” Not a soul tinkered or toiled to draw attention to itself. “The reason why Miss Emily was not here last Saturday was because of her grandmother...” A weighty stillness settled onto the mighty table of ethereal souls. With solemn eyes in one accord, they motioned to her to continue with my tale.

“Her grandmother’s liver was not well, and she was in the hospital...” The dire word, conjuring thoughts of needles and sickness and foreign smells, brought forth hushed eyes and widened gasps and crinkled brows. With dread, they listened to her final sentence: “But the doctors could not make her all well...

and she died.” How terrible her words were to these novices who only felt life. One sojourner of blond locks to my right, a mere six springs, with magnanimous grace, gently placed her sausage fingers and palm on my sloped shoulder, a gesture of noble humility. Another placed my sorrow on his soul, bowed in grief with bitter moans.

Then one, with authority, poise and vision, boldly confronted her peers, “Maybe, we can do something for Miss Emily now.” The council of supple hearts and soft lips, eager to bless, eager to honor, looked to this seer for guidance and relief. “Let’s pray for her.” With pure faith, they concurred and with tongues divine, donned heaven’s raiment.

They prayed aloud, with heads bowed in respect; I watched in sacred bliss with my heart afloat. My sadness leaked out of my tears as I sat ministered by angels garbed as children. Though faint, I could hear the sermon upstairs, but the message of the words was at hand in the glow of their simple words and whispers, on the countenances of these wee ones.

From the lips of infants and children, You ordained strength because of your enemies, to silence the foe and still the avenger 1 The refuge of the weak, You will destroy the shroud that enfolds all people, the sheet that covers all nations; You will swallow up death forever.2 Whence comes the divine? What is man that you are mindful of him3?

1 Psalm 8, verse 2
2 Isaiah, chapter 25, verse 7
3 Psalm 8, verse 4a

Her

Blessed am I.

I have a link,
a grasp on love
through Cybele.  Once,

I showed her a gooey mud pie
in a dinted tin camping pan.
Claiming it was rich dark chocolate,
I feigned eating bite after bite.
She trusted me and ate a mouthful. . . .

After anger rips into our mouths
leaving an aftertaste of dislike,
requisite is a dab of duteous prompting.

Once, she was so angry with me,
she pushed me into the porcelain sink.
The dentist sanded my chipped front tooth
and said, 'Lucky, you've over-sized teeth!'
She was Gen Pì Chóng1 and I, Jaws.

Though monstrous expectations
sunder our attitudes of love,
divorce our natural unity,

we're kept together

by gargantuan
mounts of effort
required from both,
given often
a smidgen out
of phase.

But when attitudes of love
are gashed, chucked under the bed,
abandoned with tumble-dust weeds of
incurious I-Don't-Care indifference,

timidly, with shoulders scrunched,
chin tucked between
prayer-clasped fists,
mouth puckered-parted,

Friendship
waits patiently.
This child of Love
turns away
from its
self.

I love her.

Asymptotic Woman

I relish the pace of earthquakes,
the tautness of fierce wit.  Lusting
to draw out nods of praise, I seek
to brand my eyes with bold, new conquests.

But I who scurry to make events happen,
desire to know what it is like to be
reconciled with my passions.  For when he
pulls me aside to tell me he likes me,

or when she informs me how proud she is
of me — except for my stretch of lips and
blinks of reciprocity — I remain
impassive, unaffected and alone.

But on Sunday, with Han-lun on my lap,
her parents to my right, and we, embedded
in a body of families, welcome
baptisms of faith, professions gone public,

on that seventh day, my battles with toil
cease, and as the realm of my control lies
within avowals of sublime forgiveness,
a sanctum given by the Son of Man,
I accept my circumstances with peace.

Forbidden

For just one night she may prance around
uninhibited by the limits
prescribed for one bubbly six years old
For tonight she is a garnished ghoul
plastered with mucousy muddy paint
dripping with gooey gummy fleshy gunk

Do I frighten you

she greedily grilled
With a tepid, but favorable nod
her mother blandly gasps in feigned dread
The hunched fiend scampers onto a chair

Tonight I the Ghoul Defender of the Lollilopists
will destroy the spinachliver lovers of the world

Forecasting imminent doom on all
who continue to harass the Ghoul
then maligning all vigilant nags
she springs onto the counter heedless
of the unsuspecting box of eggs
A slimy shower ensues where her
delightful giggles sketch the backdrop
to a ghost raising screech erupting
out of a trench of thunderpeal shouts

Forbidden Out

With rebellious waterways streaking
hope thwarted cheeks of unadmitted
defeat the little ghoul cries all night

Sometime much later, she reflected.
Engulfed in her arms was her own child.

The Sacrosanct

I tell you that I’m mad for I deny
the nature of the living. A neophyte
to veiled sects of sacrifice, I belie
my savage soul, base reason, for I fight
the instinct to defend. A cordial knight,
instinct with flattery of plated gold,
casts gossamer shadows upon my rational light.
His singsong wraps my soul, and my soul mustn’t fold.

I wander with his words that petrify
my thoughts. His tales transform the truth to fright,
not because the truth sprouts into a lie,
rather, the lie sheds out of truth. Polite
and stiff, I used to be under the might
of my savage soul. Now he coos; ‘Behold,
I warm your coolness and mold it with carnal delight.’
His singsong wraps my soul, and my soul mustn’t fold.

I listen to his speeches that untie
his gnarled ambitions, themes of recondite
substance, yet declared with spurious, awry,
and depthless grasp. He boasts how kind, contrite,
and humble are his deeds, but parasite
he is through verbal chivalry. I sold
my first-born chasteness for mundane and sacred insight.
His singsong wraps my soul, and my soul mustn’t fold.

I am the worm after the storm. I pry
the swelling earth apart and escape the plight
of inundation. Now, in the sun, I lie
exposed, pregnable on the dirty white
concrete. As shadows return to the night,
I descend back into my soul. He told
me he loved me with lies. But with his stories so bright,
his singsong wrapped my soul, and my soul did fold.

I’ve told you this to warn you. Spot the blight
of sacrifice. And as you near the fold
of age and shed youth, preserve truth’s skin so tight
his singsong won’t wrap your soul. Your soul mustn’t fold.

Nap

When I was ten, the summers glistened with play,
where minutes clicked like pools of marbled glass
and hours were dressed as black cubes speckled white
which domino-toppled one upon the next.
When valleys, hills, and lakes were holes of dirt
and ant mounds next to puddles.  War and peace
were idle games of boredom used as space
to fill moments laden with laziness.
Time to time, consciousness was squeezed from eyes
wrung dry by sleep.  I slumbered; fancies packed
my death-state visions, trapping images
of reckless stunts and hikes to cocoa ponds
to drink the milky chocolate ambrosia.
But now I fancy having leisure time
and time to lie, guilt-free, with my sweet sleep.
For now I spend seconds impatiently
awake and restless, waiting for summer to pass.

Sestina

Cicadas drone in stillness as I weave
a basket out of paper clips.  My dreams
interrupt my wakefulness.  In a sleep,
I let a dullness entrance me.  So green
and siren, it deadens my wits to lull
my thoughts into semi-cohesive worlds.

                         • • •

Toy trucks, teacups and trees — immortal worlds
of childhood where faith and trust lace to weave
inspired ambitions, where courage can lull
frustrated minds to ease and peace with dreams
of daring adventures and heroes, green
with youth.  Such are the worlds we put to sleep.

For we lose our youth, fearing the mortal sleep,
and we gain old age in search of safe worlds
which promise to immortalize or green
our withering souls with comforts that weave
around brave struggles and passionate dreams
for paths of temperateness, hushed like a lull.

We long to wake in that still, eerie lull
before the tempest of death, yet we sleep.
We slog through worries, unsloughed, yoked with dreams
untried.  But, come home and return to worlds
of simple wonders — a newt in a weave
of tall reeds, a child’s blush, naive and green.

Time's breath of fire, raining auburn on green,
quiets summer minds to a reflective lull.
During our autumn of suspense, we weave
gossamer thoughts in our moments of sleep,
a miry fusion of disparate worlds,
of false realities, truth-bearing dreams.

                         • • •

Three hours have passed.  Returning from blank dreams
of nowhere, I watch a ballgame on the green.
Four boys about six imagine that the world's
eye is on them; only I and the lull
of day marks their game. . . My foot's gone to sleep.
The rain comes down, crisscrossing like a weave.

My grandma used to weave a tale to lull
me to sleep.  I would then fabricate dreams
where worlds would always be vigorously green.

Steadfast

There was a certain chase,
or shall I say a race,
between one rabbit and one turtle
that dealt with a subject quite mortal.

Human fallacies personified
by a hare with overbearing pride,
who enjoyed a little nap
before he ran his last lap.

Symmetry

A tide of dew creeps over Day
                and soaks the morning’s sand.
The seconds, Lethe’s trickles gray,
                absorb the toils of man.
And soon the blazing chariot
                of Leto’s son displays,
The power of the Heaven’s brat.
                (Niobe mourns her graves.)
Of Dawn and Vesper’s shifting bounds
                the plots are one, made two,
Like sea and land, the struggle’s grounds
                are fences of construe.
Awake, asleep, in bliss, in grief,
                the hours are unfair hosts.
(Isosceles of Greek belief
                has Scalene’s humble toasts.)
Yet Scalene’s perfect crookedness
                is balanced at one point.
And cypress-tapered stateliness
                is random at close sight.

For time like space is average-based
                where length can balance parts.
So, truth and lie are both well-graced
                with one another’s hearts.
Reality and dreams compete
                exaggerating strife
To fashion Beauty so to greet
                the symmetry of life.

For Gong-Gong1

The greatness of your soul lies in its measured beat.
Its even, gentle chime counters erratic trials,
grave woes, so deftly plucked by callused thumbs of grief.

With flint-glazed eyes, chiseled cheeks, brows without a crease,
you stand erect and stern before guilt-bodied shame,
only bowing to honor the righteous voice of grace.

With silence, you’ve suffered, though intimate with joy,
not blaming an other for weakness human in kind,
nor excusing yourself with motives sound yet void.

You run not to slander, gossip, false hope, foul plans;
you crave not glory in wealth, advantage, sharp wit;
you leave a legacy of stillness and command.

Your loss exhumes a memory of contentment’s peace,
of whiskey, peanuts, baseball in mid-afternoon,
legs crossed, reading with ease, living life at wisdom’s pace.

With jeweled smiles and simple charm, you capture time
and enchant faith, forestalling fear and anguished thoughts
which haunt the souls who question their lot with mute pride.

I, though far away, have lived in your heart of gold.
Your loving kindness, your honest mercy have sown
a seed of wonder in me; I miss you Gong-Gong.

 

1Gong-Gong means grandfather.

The Sill

The sun’s rays are slow in reaching her sill,
but she’s not bothered by its tardiness.
Nursing the narcissus by the shut window,
she feels the moistness of the cold, damp soil.
In the shadows, she lives, from sun to sun,
a living phantom of hopes stale and cold.

As she gropes for the watering can, a cold
sweat comes upon her.  Leaning on the sill,
as if it upheld the weight of lost sun,
ruined splendor, she recalls his tardiness,
his nonchalance, her brave despair, the soil
of her injured pride — fire without a window. . .

All’s evoked by the can’s rawness, a window
to wounds, a touch condemning her to cold
remembrances.  She left her native soil
for his.  He found her sitting on a sill,
eager to be led, for the tardiness
of love weighed on her heart.  He was her sun.

Now permanently exiled from the sun
of youth, eviscerated by the window
of time, she shuffles with the tardiness
of death, waiting for rage to die.  A cold,
dissonant howl were his eyes by the sill
as he silently casted her off as soil.

She had given her trust only to soil
her heart.  While tears watered her wrath, her sun
of sorrow shone blindingly on the sill
of eclipsed remorse.  Staring out a window,
she had seen him give daffodils on cold
days to someone else without tardiness.

Her narcissus is blind, (a tardiness
of blooms, she’s told), just leaves on fertile soil.
He said he desired children with her ... Cold
are his brow and his lips.  Glazed by the sun,
its oblong rays, the water is his window
to the sky ... No daffodils grow on her sill.

The sun and water collide on the cold
dark soil.  She stares blankly out the window. . .
He paid for his tardiness to love by the sill.

After the Sabbath
in honor of Satie and Cézanne
(after Chopin's Sonata in b minor, First Movement)

Heave oars of wrath.  .  .  pull
Heave oars of wrath.  .  .

                •  •  •

Heave oars of wrath through the
humdrum empty stares.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
vacant, dull despair.  .  .
Thrash at breathless passion;
thresh through false respite.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
lifeless, stolid minds.  .  .
Pierce the flesh of practice;
Sear the lust of rites.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
lips and tongue mundane.  .  .
Roar! sunk and swallowed spits of
rage, muffled power, muted
faith, tender, bald and toothless
Fate — Faith’s babe.  .  .
Awake, Faith prays.  .  .
Asleep, Faith sings.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
mindless, vapid cares.  .  .
Shriek! savage, beastly, woeful
cries, uttered from the crimes of
grief.  Stun, arouse the guts of
Life, Death’s hearth.  .  .
Alert, Death waits.  .  .
Alive, Death breathes.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
humdrum, dull despair.

                •  •  •

The heroes see the genius of it all.
They hear the rumblings of the morning dew
and see Egyptian eyes in Iris new.
The mounts wild emerge from the greed-green brawl
and yield to prism-palettes of minds tall1.
The diamond-souled seas kneel before the coo
of cuckoos, sublime warblings from ones who
farm from mists, ancient threnodies of thrall.
Against the cautious dumb, these pilgrims rare
rebel.  As blind to lies, as deaf to hell,
they fashion (inscrutable gamblers) faith
from folly, wisdom kept unfurled, sincere
belief from senses simple yet pell-mell,
and praise unearthly — Sabbath's day eighth.

                •  •  •

Heave oars of wrath through the
humdrum, dull rewards.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
vacant, mindless woes.  .  .
Thrash relinquished passions;
thresh the true from mild.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
lifeless, passive eyes.  .  .
Spy for caution’s trespass;
watch deceit amassed.  .  .
Heave oars of wrath through the
evil, common, plain.  .  .

                •  •  •

Heave oars of wrath.  .  .  pull
Heave oars of wrath.  .  .  .

1brave, courageous

Moby Dick

Hunt the great leviathan.
Own the carcass of the whale.
Seek the vision of a man.
Claim the laurel and the hail.

Monster grows from each mode nursed.
Guts digest in half and whole,
Epic, lyric, mores well-versed,
Drama, novel, film parole.

Foams awashed the Lyric ‘shore,
Dressed as Beauty and fair Grace.
Epic, near devoured in gore,
Conquered crushed his father’s race.

Hunt the great leviathan.
Own the carcass of the whale.
Seek the visions of a man.
Claim the laurel and the hail.

Mores, well-versed in fire, the smith,
Dropped, made lame, though not by chance.
From the split head told in myth,
Drama, armored, sprung to lance.

Chained to stone for mortal’s fire,
Novel, forethought, would not tell
Future damsel of desire,
Instrument of Fate’s own spell.

Hunt the great leviathan.
Own the carcass of the whale.
Seek the visions of the man.
Claim the laurel and the hail.

Wings adorn Film’s feet and crown,
Master Thief who heralds souls.
Comic eyes and tragic frown,
Bless Film’s face with cunning roles.

Cursed is Ahab for his quest,
Searching for the soul bereft.
Immolate the spirit’s rest
on a pyre of art and craft.

Hunt the great leviathan.
Own the carcass of the whale.
Seek the visions of such men.
Claim the laurel and the grail.

Snapshots

Of Encounters

I saw you stare with eyes so still and straight
     observing me while hearing my request
     if you possessed the Rebel's seventh's fugue.
Unannounced, you burst with lusty sweetness
     the joyful peasant song from the Deaf ear.

Of Estrangement

Laying in bed, fever aflame,
I grew so sad, watching you go
tending to men, lost in their pride.
Knowing your heart, quiet, but true,
I wait and bless, you, your desire,
union seared, art to deflect
Glory divine, beauty and rest.

Of Innocence

Forgive, remember past is still.
Be still: complaints excuses done.
Complete, not done, God is with Time.
With time, in time, we have to mold
one voice, a mold of humbled souls.
When souls are still, Time's mold be done.

Of Trust

The day you gave me Genesis
was clear and inarticulate:
no momentous downpour of hail
or luminous solar eclipse.
It was plain, simple and mundane
unlinke the subtle fetal forms
evolving out of the silence
you did not paint, but left undone.

Of the Red Earth

In the still life of the red earth
     by the peach tree he embraced her.
Sent through Time's fire as the sacred
     test of sealed faith, they were cast in
Deep in Time's voice, they heard Grief scream
     as their love tore on a taut thread.

Of Tribunals

Choice was yours to stay or leave us
     I did not know why you took off.
Hazy were your reasons and guilt.
     Judgement staved; you came back for me.
Guilelessly, you confessed your love
     Purchased fares to Paris, France.
I repressed my unforgiveness
     riding atop your newfound faith.

The Pails

The day is done. The room is cleared and swept.
The frock, coarse and worn is well-scrubbed and wrung
to dry near the wood stove. Nothing is left
in this day’s thoughts, save the enchanting sun.

His headrest of buckwheat hulls is neatly hung
on a bedpost closest to the hearth. A board
of pine and raw wool enshrine priests undone
(whose spectral rites bring forth the nether bird.)

He gathers woolen blankets then waits. Heard
through chinks between the walled trunks is the strain
of a vesper antiphon, plangent and charred,
sifted from noon’s ashes as meal from bran.

He waits. Without proem, onto mercies green,
the rain whispers its lyrics to the night.
He waits. Waters gather into a train
of sounds: a hisses-hiccups-splutters-freight.

He smoothes the covers tucking edges in tight
and hums tuneless anthems of praise and psalms
before setting two more logs on the grate.
At last, he’s still, captive in mythic realms.

The druids of sleep using soothing balms
restore his eyes and breath then call her forth.
Devoid of day’s rhyme, Nefertiti helms
time’s passing, soaring deep to stir man’s hearth.

Unseen, she sets two pails on the taupe earth.
In one is water, pristine, icy, sweet.
The other is sludge, putrid, foul, of no worth.
A pole is nearby, notched and stained with sweat.

He threads with the pole both. With a fierce swat,
he strikes a fly dead. It drops in the stew
of rancid muck, loss, and wrath, in a suite
of fermented filth. (Refuse she will sow.)

The weight of both is onerous. (Both grew
when the fly fell.) He drains onto the soil
sludge; it empties. Yet, not falling below
the rim when drawn, water stays full. (Is it foul?)

At dawn, he wakes later than normal. To toil
by day, he needs not think. But beyond proof
in a place of counterfeit, phantom bowel
within a mind’s guts, to moil is not enough.

He sits, stares at embers and ponders. Off
on sodden branches, an owl alights. Its hoot
aligns his gaze to the patch of vines, all rough,
of wheat, all willowy, swaying uncut.

He sits, eyes shut, recalling her blue grit;
her firm grasp when she thrashed and milled the wheat;
her unyielding feet crushing grapes at night;
her pure mind honing him as a stone whet.

He utters her name; grief sinks as a weight
to anchor his thoughts: how humor left him;
how her smiles faded along with her wit;
how witless he was to her needs in time.

He kneels, cheeks raw from salt, singing the hymn,
(Have mercy on me), his palms toward the light.
(Lord), the incense smokes with the scent of thyme,
(a sinner), tears bearing faith on each note.

He sits and watches candles being lit.
He stands, hair draped as water runs through his gray;
(the fount’s icy). As wafer and wine knot
he hears: Do this in remembrance of me.

Life’s Sovereignty

Her name resonates with old world gentility, Margaret Fournier.
An unrecognized scepter, disguised by coarse thumbs and calloused elbows,
she bows her head for a moment, not to mumble or pray,
just to exhale,
before proceeding to pound the stains out of the lilliputan slacks.
Perhaps, tomorrow she’ll do something for herself....
A frustrated cry sweeps her fancies under her tongue,
she adjusts to the present.
She finds herself thinking – not about anything,
simply thinking – the hum of her imagination drones
an evanescing bass while a shrill melody
fleetingly wafts in and away.

How her heart throbs after it’s strained;
whether passion or pain, .
The rush of the beat echoes in the inner chambers of her ears;
the reverberation is deafening –
causing her to scrunch her shoulders
as if to shield her head from pain.
She wonders if in a humdrum life
without reflection, without notoriety, without cause,
nobility still resides.
Still, panic goads her inflated heart.
She knows she can not stop
living. If only her heart had bounds,
desiring greatness is to be like God –
and who is she? The hollow of life,
the source – maternal and cunning, female and shrewd –
an origin of humility, (of reception), of welcome.
Steadfastness’ pitch grates her raw, and yet,
she continues to love what is hers deeply,
to cry with her broken heart, to laugh when she’s glad,
to be a dinted cane for her crippled senses.
Her eyes shut, sour and fiery,
burdened by aspiring divinity.
How can she escape her mold,
the form of her knowledge, the dust of her wisdom?
She’s trapped, though mercifully by her soul’s intent –
to live a lifemoment of kindness.

Somewhere, in her memory to come, she taps her cane,
not just the mythological thrice,
but unceasingly until time ends.
At eternity, the cane cracks,
a staff of splendid regalia, emblematically jewelling forbearance,
a ruby of the feminine, is found in her open hand.
The traffic, subdued by the weight of night,
waves rhythmically towards and away from the window.
As the child suckles, craning her neck to chew his ears,
humming unceasingly, she lulls her insomniac mind to infinite rest.