| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | for my father | | Time: | 01:24 pm |
|
| like
any small thing:
a flower opening to bloom
and unable to die
the weight of shorn grass
a slipper lying on the street
that youthful, smiling face
and
you are a slow-growing pine tree
you are an ageless mountain peak
I call your name
though my heart cannot speak | whispers: whisper to me   |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | nihilism | | Time: | 11:01 pm |
|
| I don't know how to write poetry
without
being specific.
I could say, she/he (specify Person, identity
indicate gender, Existence or
lack thereof) did _______ (specify Event, time) to
____(who? You?) but then
I am saying
too much.
I can't write poetry without giving
bits
of myself away.
I could
paint my portrait done in
da Vinci oils, with
all that I have
given away.
I could say, I am
drowning
in despair and un
happy,
all that
melodramatic
crap but
what's the point of poetry
then?
So instead I
say,
islands twirl a single
north star sways in the
wind airplanes
and trees roar
high above my head and I am
meaning,
goddammit god
dammit I
like to play
guessing games so
here is
the challenge -
translate for me,
this:
Sand and stone
as you thunder on, and
I did not sleep at home
that night. | | whispers: 4 echoes of the wind or whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | pilgrimage | | Time: | 12:08 am |
|
| half-stilted and wandering
unnamed vagrant:
your shoulder blades
the canvas of your back
is a canyon
is a georgia o'keefe painting.
these fingers sink into
untouched snow
and your bare skin
is a steady heartbeat
don't dare breathe
don't dare linger like a thief
I come crashing down
and the dream that awakens me
can hardly staunch
the memory of your easy leaving. | | whispers: whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | 9:15, the sunday that ends | | Time: | 09:17 pm |
|
| There again, is the sound of ships
in the bay.
Night comes late these past months
so I delude myself into
thinking there is the freedom
of abstract time.
There again, is the disconnect.
Wires, pills, a body separated from mind,
like the red scar on my knee,
shiny pieces of skin, wired by nerves
and dissolved by invading flesh;
it refuses to heal.
Mingling and dancing like sunspots on water,
my thoughts, too, fly away from me.
Balloons in the air, trees on the rooftop,
it comes to me in flashes of dizziness,
pixellated lights, screens blurry with black
and white. My eyes, those traitors,
they too, refuse me.
Don't say it. If you say it the spell
will break. More than anything,
it is that which keeps me
tipping forward, leaning by a draw.
Hover, and I will say the words.
Say them across a universe.
And I will breathe for you, swim
to you past a narrowing strait.
Like the wind who howls,
ever narrowing, ever receding,
and still I am in a room
that hears nothing. | | whispers: whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | Manual | | Time: | 11:00 pm |
|
| If anything, torture manuals are
the least subtle of written script.
Break here, hold fifteen, these
are words universal. It hits with
the impact of a fist on launch,
clear, explicit with meaning, the
violence and broken passion.
Poetry, they tell me,
is about subtlety. You don't ever say
what you mean. You hide it,
suppress and oppress it, a slave
public to ambiguity, instead. "Find your own
meaning."
That is
your job. Understated, terse,
loop and circumvention,
the message is to waver unclear: Take it for
what you will. (Be an enigma.)
This, I have heard
a hundred, thousand,
thousand
times.
It is
what they tell me. I pretend I understand the
masters
and clumsily hide my own
message in twenty-
two uncertain
lines. | | whispers: 3 echoes of the wind or whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | Afternoon sleep | | Time: | 08:34 pm |
|
|
To walk through a plaza of sun and voices, like in movies
with slow-mo and too much blur, it happens
as thus: On an overly bright day I linger
on this path. Here I sit, this bench
with bees beside me, curiously as
normal. "Come, walk across this page
of poetry. Pass the time
with me." I am almost
not afraid. Fairy tale mist - this heat
is too real to be thus. And like someone who,
as if dreaming on a faraway ship of
flowers and fruit, I too, realize my
folly: We have our own paths
and we find our own journey.
But you were shining, like this heat
on my burning neck, and stung me.
And I called you torturer, but didn't believe it,
couldn't see the reflection of what it meant
in those beckoning eyes, half-lidded
and lying.
Now staying in this heat is a mirage
and speaks to me. "I am no liar."
To hold fast is to stagnate. The bees
are gone from here, off to
drown in a dream of ships.
Parasite in the lung, blackening and
blossoming welts. It is midday
and the heat consumes.
I hasten, I linger upon this midday bench.
today i read Yehuda Amichai. reading his poems i feel so frustrated by my own. :<
| | whispers: whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | China. | | Time: | 09:19 pm |
|
| The strangest thing: you are looking at old baby pictures of someone, it could be anyone, and it strikes you. That picture in the living room, wearing a blue red green knitted jacket with your cousins and grandparents. The faded color, that curious tinge of vague memory—it is all there, all for the taking in your head.
You want to go back. Things are becoming too familiar over here. Too familiar, too senseless—and why can you almost taste the city, the rush of bicycles and cars zipping past, the taint of bitter longing on the tongue? | | whispers: whisper to me |
| An hour ago
the trees, whistling
and shaking:
the wind, the wind.
And the flower petals are
whirling with
delicate violence.
Taking its time,
scattering to the
ground on a subtle
rhyme
and
You are
chilled to the bone
fingers numb thin shirt hiding
nothing past whistling of
wind and peach blossoms are
meeting the ground.
Darkened blossoms and
darker pink:
the rain, the rain.
They are fat drops
pattering and
slipping drooping trees
and a blank sky.
The murmur of a strong wind
or the heater acting up again
but you can't tell.
Scattering peach blossoms.
Dark stone paths.
A tower clock sounding.
Past the howl of
twisting trees, maybe
there is
the sound of freight ships
in the bay. | | whispers: whisper to me |
| Wake up from sleep
eyes fuzzy as if from crying, reborn.
Outside the trees are blooming
purple or pink I cannot tell.
Spring blossoms are
spring blossoms.
The wind is at times strong
the sun sharp and clear.
Low soulful voices from the speaker,
music a husky vibration against my ear.
Haha and with this poem, it seals my conviction that I really can't write poetry when I'm happy. But I am. :3 I've been feeling overall really happy lately. And I have letters sitting on my desk, ready to be sent.
There are so many people I love! And aren't love and hugs the best presents to give on Valentine's Day? A lot of you I can't hug but I am shipping my love tons at a time, over to wherever you are. You all know who you are. Sending you all my love, my happiness, my peace, my hope, all of these, all to you. ♥
Okay, I'm off! | | whispers: 10 echoes of the wind or whisper to me |
| I love you, he says.
Did you know
I loved you?
I.
A dream.
II.
It catches you while unaware.
You could be washing in the shower or
drenched from the rain and catching the bus.
And a voice with his face
with those words that never happened
speaks.
III.
Stop this rain.
Stop. | | whispers: 1 echo of the wind or whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Current Music: | Amy Winehouse - Love is a Losing Game live | | Subject: | no. 14 | | Time: | 10:56 pm |
|
| I think I counted wrong but
a persimmon has a six-chamber heart
and I'm listening to Amy Winehouse,
fingers itching to paint the things
that dance endlessly in my head.
When I saw Rothko the first time
in the life
I blocked out everything inside
the elegant men and women in couture
talking intelligently about this-and-that
painting oh I see and this here
and young hipsters aside
distinctly awkward and singular
in persimmon
colored tights matching with no. 14,
opaque to luminous orange on
museum white.
San Francisco at night is nothing like
Los Angeles.
My cousin promises to take me to Shanghai
this summer I keep it safe, that promise
but I don't count on it
I haven't talked to her for half a year.
the clashing of that city
the big streets and grey
a boy pulling down his pants and pissing
in the street
my cousin pulls me aside, grab tight to your purse
she says, and yells at me when I give to beggars,
and the motobike we ride through the streets
of Nanchang, thousands of traffic violations
cds and books breaking and almost falling from our
feet, how close were we to an accident
at past midnight I look down from the eighth storey
building with no elevators
and think why couldn't this be home. | | whispers: 1 echo of the wind or whisper to me |
| Doing the Angel in dance today
I break the little veins in my left hip.
I first hurt myself
doing the Pieta too.
Ari says, this is a move inspired by
Michaelangelo's--
and immediately I know.
The art and the dance sometimes
twist and paint themselves one,
the intimacy
of a piercing gaze
and the dignity of folded hands;
Raphael's Castiglione
I shiver I reach to the image.
He says once
he saw the Pieta and wept.
I move to the force of his words
try to tap my head to the ground like Ari says
remembering the solemn helpless form
naked and dying.
But it's all so graceless
as I tip my face to the wooden floor
keeping balance on the tip of my butt
no Mother Mary to cradle and hold me.
And I remember the first time so long ago
stepping into a dank vaguely unsettling
ballet studio, dark green paint peeling,
trim white dancing shoes, crying
when I couldn't understand the rhythm
and beaming when I did the perfect splits. | | whispers: 4 echoes of the wind or whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Subject: | Injury | | Time: | 05:55 pm |
|
| Realizing
how important dance is to me
when at this moment I can't
It makes me happy
It makes me happy
Not rehearsals
fuck rehearsals
I just want to dance | | whispers: 4 echoes of the wind or whisper to me |
| 残夢
心は閉め付けたと
いうわけではない。
準備のために。
否定なんて
しない。
夕べ眠らなかった
「窮鼠はチーズ
の夢。。。」
残夢だけ
であった。
窮鼠のようにも
溺れるだろう。
そして、
外へ出て
この大雨に傘なし
濡らされてゆく。
雨が降りながら
未練を
忘れるように。
Why won't the words I want to say come out right in Japanese. | | whispers: whisper to me |
|
Wake up dreaming.
Chest heavy, feeling a sack of bones.
Clavicles, shoulders, rib cage.
Jut out rusted iron.
Shame and fascination rolled into one.
Take for the plunder.
Lethargic sleeplessness.
A stormy fatigue and outside steady patter.
Slow strumming of guitar.
Elliot says, I got a long
way to go,
getting further away...
Drowsy notes creep in.
Grey sky outside.
The smell of wet asphalt rises.
| | whispers: 1 echo of the wind or whisper to me |
| | Tags: | poetry | | Current Music: | Vertical Horizon | | Subject: | Fleeting | | Time: | 02:05 pm |
|
| The only time I feel free I am dancing,
not that I like dancing.
Liberty what is the meaning of liberty my
professor asks us. Public, private,
freedom, be careful of this word,
what does it mean to be free?
Freedom means take away
until there is nothing but a single
minded buzzing,
when I dance.
Even when I sleep there is no quiet a thousand
bees squirm and quiver in the cage I have built
in the castles floating inside my head
until the castles crumble and only dust and motes of
dreamflesh are left.
And the bees still quiver.
And the castles are still left angry and
sullen, wanting for
the rebuilding.
And so I dance. Tick, tick, Felipe counts.
He will teach only one more day.
And I dance. When it is just breathe in, breathe out
turn right, lift up, turn and flick, lock, loosen, click
click,
click,
Felipe counts. I see a silver ring on his left hand.
I think of rings and weddings and marriage and
being forever with a person.
I dance.
I dance.
One hour and half a day,
I dance.
I don't think.
And a ship comes,
bringing the fruits of the harvest,
the silence of sunshine pouring over
stained glass windows in a
tiny dance studio. | | whispers: 2 echoes of the wind or whisper to me |
| |
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