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.

February

It's almost Valentine's Day
have I ever told you, every year
it makes me want to puke?
the grotesque hearts pasted on every restaurant window
and the rotting roses black along the edge with their ugly thorns
clawing out every vase
I wish worms would eat them all. I do.

People walking around parade the girl or guy on their arm
each proclaiming in fanciful gestures
eat this: loneliness. Eat this.

It is not
that I don't believe in love
worth celebrating.

It is just
that if hearts could be won by
dying flowers cut at the waist
and chocolate hearts hollow in the center
then
I don't know what is what.

Only this.
Loneliness is a dark long corridor
and it is too deep and too black
for red tinsel hearts to shine through
It is a long walk down
a long walk
Narrow--like the infinite gap between bodies in heat.

Now walk in a single file
to the silence that burns like anger in the depth of your being
and turn to smile at the boy next to you
kiss his hand
and tell him you love him.

Yes, I have grown old

yes, I have grown old
always without knowledge
I watch a child friend of mine turn woman today
and am reminded
that my own stillness is but a relation
to the speed of the world external
from which I had quietly slipped myself
like an envelope
like new skin,

and the ghost of my younger confidence
is a whisper in the wind--
what I hear against the last drops of rain tonight
rapping softly on the window
trying to get back in.

The moon gapes like a wound tonight, a gash
in the sky
it is the fog drawing its silver screen around shadows of trees
it is all effects, but I thought
again
of you. And how it was all effect; but the moon, it still gaps
like a wound.

Your Big Day

Today, as I laid in bed, watching the dusky blue, the last of the day
seep through the black of the curtains, illuminating the world with its dim mysterious rays, I wondered
Has it been ten years? Since we made up guessing games
who will be the first? we asked.
and ten years hence, some of us had moved, some passed on, some no longer close friends in the truest sense
has time been kind to us all?
Have we found ourselves, are we proud of our callings?
I told you I cried when I saw your email. I was not exaggerating.
Yes, I did cry.
So, you will be the first, to walk the aisle.
Life is full of mysteries, and I guess its equation will always be one more of questions than of answers
But, the question we threw into the future ten years ago, today, has revealed its answer
Is that what life is? This sowing of a seed, a question into the future?
Will what we have buried with our hearts one day, twenty years down the road bear fruit?
I hope so, my dear friend, I hope so.
And as I watch the dusk blue deepen, and the world transit from a dull day into a brilliant night,
I think, so this is time's gentle and subtle movement across our lives
I hope whatever the future hold for you will be as brilliant
and I will memorize this shade of blue
no, it is not a color of sadness, or the forlorn,
it is the color of questions answered and promises fulfilled, it is a mild hope of foolish girls that had been blessed
I will memorize this shade of blue
and I will bury this trembling wish I have for you in this fragile hour of the day
watch it wash into the dark of a new night
bury it deep
before I turn on the lights.

someone else's sad lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines
the words
are not mine
how they caress this still night
equally cold, and, hollow
of the stars, the white moon
and treetops
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
these words are not mine
it is my disease
to crave that which does not belong to me
so that even my sadness
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
even my sadness
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
I borrow
someone else's
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
it is better that you are someone else's .
Sadness,
when it's mine like all these words I have
ring false
I am not someone
who can write sad lines
I can only taste tears
The same night whitening the same trees.
Ah. yes. I taste tears.