Five years in between

What is the maximum distance from which you can love a human being?
Answer: less than a millimeter. And without a name.
-Lars Gustafsson

I knew that you wanted to say more
I ignored you
deliberately
and laughed loudly so you wouldn't have a chance,
not to say more
I know you wrote about me in that poem
so I chose not to look at it
After all five years is a long time
Long enough to make a city unrecognizable
and the old places
familiarly strange

There is a maximum distance from which you can love a human being

it is not 8490 air miles and
five years in between

writing with a red pen

That exhilarating feeling of
f
a
l
l
i
n
g
comes so easy
so easy.
It is in small
scrawly
words
It is because you wrote with a red pen.

All that we are asked

For Chunhui

I heard, you are unhappy
so I looked high and low on youtube, for songs,
because they say music soothes the soul.
Then I combed through words of poems to find something that will comfort you
sometimes words are so frail, and our experiences so hard, full of shapes jutting out
I found nothing that will soften our falls in life
the thing that jabs is still there, a thorn caught in the flesh
and sadness seems to permeate everything.
I guess, I want to tell you, that though I can't find the right words to cheer you
today when I jogged around the lake, the sun setting over the dusky sky
fog rising up over the water
I watched the dying light burn up the crown of trees
gilding everything with that flame
and I thought
everything is worth it, our pains,
all for moments like this
as I grow older, I begin to think
these are the only moments of greatness we are capable of
we are not asked to give anything, all we have to do is
to witness the richness this world offers

then just as suddenly darkness onsets

whistling down the wind

Though her jesses were my dear heart-strings, I'ld whistle her off, and let her down the wind,

I made a promise today to forget you
forget the inventory of the things about you I have kept stocked for too long
the way you hunch over peering out into the dark road at the wheel
the way you hold your pen, half loose, tilting at a wide angle, as if
the lines they form on paper came straight out of a fine line between the shoulder and the pen
the piece of driftwood I saw that you must have seen some beauty and grace in
out of a wide expanse of sand, something ordinary must have moved you
wiping the evening dew of the windshield with a pack of cigarette
all these things
I promised to forget

I must have loved you even though I'm still to prideful to admit that it is possible
to love someone you don't know
it's hard not to fall for an illusion when it fits my own
but I must have, and in ways must still do, if I still keep this list in my mind

I should have thanked you, I would have liked to
if I had a chance, I would do it properly
say the words
because you took me aside and gave me the best thing that anyone has ever given me
you told me I was good
and I, for the first time, believed it.

I have never believed in compliments even though I like them
because they have always been mere civility, but when you told me
you thought I can do this
I believed you.

And I have never looked back since

Sometimes, I think that is what love is
all it is, is just one moment
when everything in your life changes
branching out in a new direction you have never seen or even imagined
it is just one moment
when you see yourself and the world you inhabit in a strange new light, as if someone has given you new eyes

Every thing I will ever write from that moment on will be a lovesong
to you, and myself
and I will never forget that
the moment you took me outside the class room and told me that what I have offered was good
and that I can give something of value

so I will forget the regret and all those other things
but never what you, in your generosity has offered me
what was true, or false, no longer matter
because I have taken your gift and made it my core
It is a strength I have found that I will stand on for years to come
even after the list of you have become things beyond memory
what you have given to me will stand, the bedrock of my core and of all the things I hope to come
where it will flourish and blossom, a fount of a gift that will live on and give
over and over and over and over

Happiness

is a box of wife cake brought by hand by a distant friend from Hong Kong smashed to pieces then a walk in the rain behind a boy sing-mumbling off-key on his way home and the sprinkling drizzle coming out of the blackness golden confettis in the lamp light

secret of stars

There are days of drudgery dragging on by foot minute by minute.
then there are nights like this
when my hands turn paper

past the Bart station
at the intersection of the lights
there the 280 stretches on endlessly into the night
wave after wave of lights gleaming red then gold
like a tide

the cafe semi-dark, lit by garden spotlights and the word cafe ruby red
the seats in shadows of quietude, of conversations now calmed to a silence that radiates
past the bend
for an instance
no cars came
only the sudden unfolding of stars, a studded veil of heaven's morse code in diamond light
there was nothing to decipher
only this inexplicable beauty and the trembling of my heart

I picked out the brightest star through the vein of winter twigs on the brink of life
and thought of the world as bursting with secrets
how I wished you happiness at that moment.
right then it was not a shame to think of you

and this quiet night throbing with promises. the knowledge came with such clarity
my heart shuddered,
that happiness, is a moment of darkness
behind which the meaning of stars is suddenly revealed
in all
its inexplicable glory.

no ode

Why am I so lonely for companionship that I will look up random strangers and envy them?

Sometimes, there are voids inside that even the best stories, no matter how beautiful the language, just won't fill.

When I was young. I thought

This feeling will go away when I find someone. Besides you don't care when you are young

all of life's possibility stretches out endlessly.

But now. Even the best of words won't console me,

Nor the moon. Nor the night. Nor the distant sound of laughter

This cold night.