Love for the Inconsiderable

GREEN

2010-02-25T23:06:00.000-08:00

GUILT

2010-01-11T02:46:00.000-08:00

It lies on a pebble by the
Sea cliff at noon, it stays
Insecure before my
Khaki mountain boots.
A hawk swoops, lifting up
Black dreams of the night.

PENDANT OF OUR MOTHER

2010-01-05T01:48:00.000-08:00

An overlooked corner, a little path to a dead end full of life (Bali, Indonesia)

MOTH PLAY

2010-01-02T10:00:00.001-08:00

On an orange road too late for cars
(too early for others) they glided,
moths freshly morphed from Bordeaux bottles.

Whatever light was home. Lampposts
playing the sun, a hired taxi’s headlights,
red and grey pollens from a cigarette.

She ascended the bergamot steps－
what’s under her dress lured his muscles
to a trail of perfume mixed wine.

It might be wrong to hold her waist,
a crime that required his head, yet he could
just afford the pain of one severed wing.

She stopped at the top and allowed
words in gibberish to cross their ears,
from her smeared eyes to his nostrils.

They could have touched with feelers, they
chose miscommunication and feigned
catharsis in customized ways.

He was no hero, she never the one to be saved.
It’s an arranged meeting: two pairs of papery wings
drenched in a pool of depressant, struggling to fly high.

BORN IN THE EIGHTIES

2009-12-31T00:58:00.000-08:00

A MOMENT OF SATISFACTION (FRAGMENT VERSION)

2009-12-10T01:36:00.000-08:00

Leaves from the same bough curl
with the same angle, flashing good youth
in a 4-o’clock sun.

No better than litter, some lovers are
never pleased with a shared fate settled.

I split a bagel and hand you half
of what used to be so important
－it holds us no more.

Aren’t these pigeons lucky pecking
now savoring what they don’t deserve?

－their moments of satisfaction
－ours to be remembered.

ABOVE THE LOWER SOULS

2009-10-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

MY CATS & ME

2009-10-20T04:29:00.000-07:00

Fathering two cats in a Hong Kong flat
blurs my stand on space with questions
rising from my living room, bedroom,
toilet, nowhere－nowhere else for the cats.
I pile and push away the magazines,
and part the files to make a possible way.

Step by step, no rest, I work
myself to a poor monk made of mud.
Wobbling with eight paws,
I try to cross
a river of junk.

POINT, PICK, PAY

2009-10-11T05:35:00.000-07:00

SILENCIO

2009-09-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

CITY MOTIONS

2009-08-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

Stuck

Four wheels on the road
four more four more and four more
rocks that barely move.

Free

Buses
Squirmed in Hong Kong
Look courageous, almost
Heroic－saving pariahs
Like me

As planned.

People

At night people drive
through a country road a tree
a stone to the pit.

N6

2009-08-02T22:11:00.000-07:00

under an afternoon
lamppost labeled
N6, we gathered
like no others
for hide-and-seek.

i was “it”, always
counting by the pole,
one, two, peeking
over osmanthus
bushes, ten, twelve.

right at twenty i
started to sprint,
twisting shoulders
(but never yours)
back to N6.

under an evening
lamppost which was once
N6, i return
like no others
for your whereabouts.

i am still your “it”
even i lose
count at the dead
center of this
mystic city.

twenty-one years
i wonder if you
have hidden well
and gone for good
reasons, far away from me.

SOME MEANINGS

2008-11-05T05:51:00.001-08:00

I.
Somewhere around Valentine’s Day
You got married in a café, cheers,
Fake champagne in plastic cups.
Twenty one years,
And you were halfway there.

Life is meant to reproduce and be
Reproduced as you two make love
Happen in murky hours.
You complete your meaning－
you will get a son or a daughter,
both or more in four years time.

Congratulations, you will know
One day they will talk back,
Hack off the doorknob and walk away
as something else.

II.
Without you I choose to marry
My black ball pen every morning.
A wedding band around its shaft, once
The feather of a quill. No diamonds.

Life is meant to manufacture lies and be
manufactured by ink on blank paper.
Day by day I create meanings, alone－
I get a plot, characters and dialogues,
the more I write, the more I get.

Pity me, before all flip fictional,
The only thing I snatched in time,
Tension from tearing pages,
Pieces falling.

Some meanings,
Some meanings, some
Meanings, yours are not mine.

HURT

2008-10-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Flip-flops ignorant of others’ feet
press on flat sand and sling his life
worthwhile on a sunflower towel.

So alive on a Sunday afternoon,
bottled beer by his beard, burning up soon.

Slid away from her ice fingers
he checks his list: love songs, a torn novel,
a brown t-shirt, girls in bikinis.

It takes the fuss to feel the peace, it does
take her to feel diagonal.

"Frigidly", the final word he reads.

Pages crinkled, he dives and sleeps
through past actions, conversations
in the best water, only awakened by her art
of cutting scars, from the heart

to the waist, on the right, lightning in the cold.
What else can his soaked t-shirt hold?

Out of her sea, he lets his skin
snooze on the biting sand and begs
to be tanned a little bit longer
until nothing flips, nothing else flops like him.

PICK THEM UP

2008-10-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

My fringe was a hiding place for thoughts
mingled with rain in these five days.

After all, curly hair was the root of all
problems, tissues of bother,
some strings of faults no one would pick.

Over my head, they were those ink leaves
of a writing willow, sprouted to follow the south-
easterlies and the snail clouds of June.

The lengthened twig had been twisted once
in spring, bleeding out buds and glory,
the color of the midday sun,
the size of a thumping heart
in a thoughtful tree, sadly, no one could see.

At the end of the day my head bore grapes
that bored the rest of me to the ground.

All fallen, the unwanted pearls
rot in the mud where someone lowered
his knees, his back, chest and forehead,
knucklebones in the dead dirt to pick them up.