Author: poetryfest

a sophisticate
the girl with the cigarette
she drops ash like tears

Chinese philosophy is of profound significance,
Every word contains an abstruse construal
For example, the word ‘progress’ embraces:
A walking radical, followed by a well.
The meaning is to step ahead and jump into a pit [well]
That’s progress!!!
’T enunciates the consequence of progress is:
Trap yourself in a well
And then get desolated from the world and beyond
As a frog at the bottom of the well, or rather ‘dogmatic Ye
Lang’.
China’s real estate industry has prospered so greatly
This is a touchstone of Chinese language philosophy
of ‘progress’
The quintessential model till date!
The higher education sector has also advanced so significantly
Other industries shall have to wait!!!
The ancient glyph is from ‘隹’, which refers to a bird.
The essence of ‘progress’ in traditional Chinese
Indicates: move forward and move upward
That’s the meaning of progress
Known to me to date!
Once I asked my most revered teacher:
“Teacher, how is this progress?”
Teacher: “Well, I’d speed up my efforts to improve you
Make you step into well is my solemn responsibility too
When you walk out of it on your own, then you’ll succeed.”
My teacher has already left for heavenly abode,
But now I could guess his such a recondite meaning, so deep.

May God be our witness to the love I hold for you.
A love born from pure innocence,
Where time vanished as your soul danced with mine.
Through your brown eyes, you saw me—
My flaws, my softness, my scars.
Your wisdom poured through me,
Your voice still echoing in the chambers of my mind.
The world faded when we laughed like children,
Moments now written among the stars.
Your music, your language—our cultures entwined
In something holy.
Tienes mi corazón.
Can you hear my cries?
They say fairytales aren’t real
But mi amor,
what else could you call the time I spent with you?

Attachments
If a girl sends you
a song and you don’t listen,
you are in trouble.

Hands
Drove to the salon
for a manicure, just to
be touched by someone.

Gladly gave you my life,
Like you’d given me your hand.
Laced around the blade of the knife

Indistinct, our blood mingles.
A Tragedy, they say, offhand.

The only speaker of a language unfounded,
A couple months of fluency
Deigned to echoes of anguished antiquity.

Now, I cannot talk to the girl I died for,
Only the manic wake of our suicide pact.

A second body beheaded, a phantom limb pain.
A gunshot wound to a chest that belonged to you and you only,
yet still wasn’t yours.

Every intensive surgery, every attempt to erase it all is wasted,
A pathetic copay to your apathy.

I find myself right back at what I told myself was the end.
What a mockery, isn’t it?
What kind of an end is it if it’s the starting point of my realization that I will never be able to
bury what I like to think of as dead?

I said, “Knock knock” and you replied
By asking who was there.
And when I said, “Banana here,”
You said “Banana where?”

Again I said, “Knock knock,” and you
Were trapped in paradox
Banana round and round and round
From hat down to the socks.

Again I said, “Knock knock,” and you
In paradox were trapped
Banana’s what I always sang
Every time I rapped.

At last “Knock knock” and you replied
Frustrated with the joke,
But orange you glad that I said “Orange?”
The paradox was broke.

He sat upon the window sill.
The morning sun made his fur glow an even brighter orange.
Oh, to be an orange cat sitting in the sun.
I envied him.
He had no worries or fears.
He only had to sit upon the window sill,
Observing the birds and the squirrels,
And taking naps in the sun.
I put on my work boots with a sigh.
The orange cat didn’t have to go to work.
He could sleep all day if that is what he pleased.
I envied him even more as I picked up my keys
And headed out the door.

you sometimes said.

We knew about your aneurysm for the last
twenty-five years, that bulge in your heart

and chest that could swell with blood,
and like a balloon, burst at any time,

killing you in less than nine minutes, you explained.
They told us it was inoperable.

So there was nothing for it but to be constantly afraid
or forget it and live, which we did,

while it ballooned beneath our radar for years.
Until last fall, when your legs and arms began to swell

–even then we did not realize that this meant
your heart was failing–

but there was to be no quick death.
as your heart began to leak blood

into you lungs and chest,
releasing the pressure but slowly smothering,

choking you,
and so your swollen aneurysm grew,

in the last weeks,
like a foreign body,

–yet also a living part of your heart–
until it carried you breathlessly away

in the middle of the night
and you left me on the shore

of a January morning,
alone in the early mourning light.

this morning waking up
seemed to me to be an
impossible task.

but now here i sit
at my desk looking
out of the window
joined by little lavender
who nestles herself atop
my books
tiptoeing through The Divine
Comedy ever so studious
just like mama honey who sits
peeking through the wilted white
roses i refuse to abandon.

together we watch
as darkness clears
and streams of pink
and orange and gold seep
into the sky
like sherbet or watercolor
freshly applied to canvas.

i sip my coffee.

honey lifts her head
over the mug to breathe
the bitter nutty scent
and lavender follows suit–
still learning
how to be a cat
how to be a human
how to be
a living-breathing-entity
with eyes and ears and
thoughts and feelings and
still learning
how to cherish every
moment she is offered
like the sky,
this sky,

which now has faded
colors in a cotton
candy embrace
blue-purple-pink
supported and uplifted
by timid yellow who has yet
to raise her head.

but she will.

and we will be here,
at this desk,
when she does,

waiting.

waiting and demonstrating
how to be.

– s.b.