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Plum Garden

For Boris and Miona
 
They find a garden lush with plum-air scents
As spring sun filters through the dew-dust leaves
And subtle sighs arise while fruit ferments,
For Eden enters Earth when minds conceive.
 
Within the garden deep an oak tree grows,
Preserving plum and fruit from sudden squalls
With roots that sink in soil where winds oppose,
To keep the flowers fresh as flurries fall.
 
Emerging from primordial chaos fair,
This Earth now holds the veins where plum wine flows:
Though autumn atrophies and winter wears

Sparrow

The sparrow
Sings like a song
In a dance of life
Between the light
 
And she moves closer
As a shadow, a flicker
Mixed with the green
Of a willow tree
 
The fog rolls in
Until the air is full
Of her breath, lain dormant
Upon my neck
 
And my skin awakes
As dawn begins to break


Little Red Peach

Red as a peach with a smile on her face,
Face with a smile as a peach in her place.
Willow that hangs and shakes its drapery low,
Low is the willow that hangs as wind does flow.
Waves the blossom as wind and hair entwine,
Entwines the hair and wind, this blossom of mine.
Roams the road as the moon sinks west,
West sinks the moon where the road roams best.
 
 
After “Reckless Spirit” (Barbarian Bodhisattva) by Liu Dao (1511-1598)
 

The Knots of Desire

My voice is broken, wounded of thirst.
Alone in the valley of silent echoes,
I lie behind a wall, immersed
And torn between the clashing shadows.
 
My voice is broken, wounded of thirst.
I sear through the metal of your skin,
Immense in the timeless night and cursed,
Disturbed in the chains that wear me thin.
 
My voice is broken, wounded of thirst.
The fire that melts this stone to glass
Turns liquid like a wave, submersed
In the choral song of love’s last mass.
 
My voice is broken, wounded of thirst.

A Chance Encounter

By chance I saw her at the corner
Of Fifth and Forty-Eight;
The crowd moved past, we talked at last,
And smiled as on a date.
We planned to meet again sometime
Or talk at any rate,
But the number she gave I failed to save,
As charm’s a poor cousin to fate.


Escape Fantasy

The smoky mist is wide and deep,
The wind’s a child awake from sleep;
A mother bear with baby cubs,
I watch in love through tangled shrubs.
 
Now wandering, I chase the clouds
Up here, away from city crowds,
But still I think of you that day,
Your eyes a lake, the moon at play.


Sweet

Nothing is so dear, a noble warrior said,
Than glory bought by armor pierced in blood
Amid the cries of those who’ve fallen in mud—
For what is life if honor’s been left for dead?
 
Emaciated, poor, or stuck without life’s luck,
It’s to the bold and daring that the world goes;
Whether in women, war, or what ambition sows,
With courage alone we come up from the muck.
 
Some say the day-maker rises with the sun
As the lord of night shines down from the moon:
For all that’s fire, a life without water is none,

I Love You More Than All the Windows in New York City

The day turned into the city
and the city turned into the mind
and the moving trucks trumbled along
like loud worries speaking over
the bicycle"s idea
which wove between
the more armored vehicles of expression
and over planks left by the construction workers
on a holiday morning when no work was being done
because no matter the day, we tend towards
remaking parts of it — what we said
or did, or how we looked —
and the buildings were like faces
lining the banks of a parade
obstructing and highlighting each other

The World Is in Pencil

— not pen. It"s got

that same silken
dust about it, doesn"t it,

that same sense of
having been roughed

onto paper even
as it was planned.

It had to be a labor
of love. It must"ve

taken its author some
time, some shove.

I"ll bet it felt good
in the hand — the o

of the ocean, and
the and and the and

of the land.
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