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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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