Dear, you will soon forget me,
You I shall ne’er forget,
You’ll find new loves for old ones,
For me love’s sun is set.
New faces soon will greet you,
You’ll choose yourself new friends,
New thoughts you’ll get and haply
New joy to make amends:
While I in silent sorrow
Life’s joyless way shall go,
And how I love and suffer
Only the grave will know.
For no reason she refined the stone—I laugh at Queen Wo.
This led the idiot into the land of dreams.
All fight to admire the one napping by the peonies in the spring breeze,
Who sympathizes with the one sick in the Xiaoxiang Pavilion in the autumn rain?
Alone embracing this inextricable bind, a love for eternity
Hard to dispel this desolate feeling, lines of tears flow.
If you don’t believe that all beauties are ill-fated,
See all the ready-made patterns and stale compositions customarily left behind.
When your eyes go to bed worn out
with so much unending waiting
when the smile once more comes back to us
and vital still between us
by that time
over there beyond the old oak tree
in that street which my dreams keep watch over today
together we will remember
we will talk of the smell of weariness
we will retell each other the war.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 80th birthday.
Ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i’d kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter
You to jones beach
or maybe coney island
or maybe just to my house
lyric you in lilacs
dash you in the rain
blend into the beach
to complement my see
Play the lyre for you
ode you with my love song
anything to win you
wrap you in the red Black green
show you off to mama
yeah if i were a poet i’d kid
nap you
I press my head down
It’s the result of insomnia oppressing me
I press my head to you and to my miserable memoirs
The night is pressing me too
But I’m so tough
Now it’s the sound of your scream coming
And there is blood
And there is the smell of tear and tear gas
A soldier is pressing my head down by his boots
Someone is pulling the trigger
Now there is a gun between my eyebrows
I feel the blood pressure in my head
The cowards have run
I press a cold hand in my cold hand
Someone was calling my name all the night
I feel the pressure of a lump in my throat
My throat is wounded
And I hear you screaming in the ear of someone who is all dead
I feel the pressure of life
And its wounds
And its marks
And I feel the pressure of the graves upon the solitude of dead
bodies
I press my fists to the wall and I swallow my cry
You are still screaming in the wild howls of the wind
I press my head down
A vessel is pressing a nerve
And I press a bottom to flash my life back
To go back to a scene where I’m opening a window towards light
Where everybody rise out of the graves
Where I hold a warm hand in my hand
And we are laughing in our homes and in our rooms
There I hear the sound of peace
And my heart beats normally
And that’s a better day with a green background
Fair children of nature! a fragrance is round them,
Derived from the parent who first gave them birth,
And who, in her ceaseless affection, hath crowned them,
The simplest and sweetest adornments of earth.
In shadow and sunshine they blossom and flourish,
On high, hanging cliff—in the forest’s deep gloom;
The wildest of mountains their loveliness nourish,
And dark, hollow caves are their cradle and tomb.
But e’en as we gaze on the flower, ‘tis faded—
Its beauties are fleeting, and live but a day;
Too quickly the leaves by death’s colours are shaded,
Till lowly it droops its fair head to decay.
‘Tis an emblem of life, for an infancy’s hours
We know not its thorny and dangerous road—
Our tears fall as lightly as dew from the flowers,
And leave the heart gay as if ne’er they had flowed.
But when the rough blasts of misfortune assail us,
Or frosts of unkindness fall chill on the heart,—
When friends we have loved, in adversity fail us,—
‘Tis then that the tear-drops of sorrow will start.
Too often, alas! the bright visions we cherish
Of friendship and faith, fade away from our sight,
And the fond dreams of hope in their infancy perish,
At the withering touch of ingratitude’s blight.
My father is “having fun”
cleaning the floor
he uses the plugged in sink as a bucket
wears rags on his feet
and shimmies to a cleaning beat
he asks me to read the label
on the bottle for him
he wants our floor to shine
and laughs when (surprise)
it does
this is how I will remember him
moonwalking across our kitchen floor
rags under his feet
“that’s how my mother taught me”
he says
“but I never take any note
it takes me forty years to do what she say”
Written on wind or water
Word is flesh. Soon or later
Flesh must speak in tones
So dark they pierce the skin.
Stigmata are not revealed
At such times: There are wounds
A Thomas would not dare
To plunge his hand within.
Earmark me images
speckles pretty
with the tears of a child
open windows and summer
approaching
ominous air-marked with the first green
leaf
over-turned poems
forgotten
mouths tinkling humor
pages rustling
soft
sensible shoes
cushion/support/words
they unwind me
orange and gray laces
you/me entwined/separate
swirled
ice cream hinting the weather
may soon be
warmer
We present this work in honor of the Buddha’s birthday.
Listen, faithful Tibetans!
I am merging with the fundamental, the ground of all that is—
physical pain and suffering are disappearing…
The son, the inner elements of my body,
is reuniting with the mother, the outer elements.
Her physical remains will disappear into earth and stone.
The compassion of the Guru has never left me;
his manifestations fill all the world and call out to welcome me.
This wild lady has done everything;
Many times have I come and gone, but now, no longer.
I am a Tibetan wife sent back to her family.
I shall now appear as the Queen, the All-good, the Dharmakaya.
This self-sufficient black lady
has shaken things up far and wide;
now the shaking will carry me away into the southwest.
I have finished with intrigues,
with the fervent cascades of schemes and deceptions;
I am winding my way into the expanse of the Dharma.
I have mourned many men of Tibet who have left me behind—
but now I am the one who will go to the land of the Buddhas.
Poets Corner 