Strange Foreign Beauty

Silence is a little thread that binds the pages to a life-

closed book of chapters, passages, remembrances,

acquaintances, wanderlust, transience, oblivion. No one

speaks about the truth anymore. About

 

long hours. Segments, anecdotes, soliloquies,

echoes, nuances, ennui, memoirs, silhouettes

of things and places. Sights and sounds.

The mind and senses in harmony. Strange

 

foreign. Beauty hidden in a labyrinth frozen

in time. Never to be opened for a reading

and not for sale. Summer, winter, spring.

Fall.

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For The Ones We Left Behind

Think about the pen and the fingerprints

romancing in the glistening dust against the sunlight.

The faded photographs with watermarks

of remembrances salvaged from the past.

Brittle to touch and slowly turning to ashes.

 

Think about the bookmarks of dried rose petals

and the faint smell imprinted to the pages,

rescued from the years of forgetting the ones

that mattered most. And the dreams that never

meant to be owned like the earth where I stand.

 

If the promise of coming back becomes a distant memory-

counting each sunrises and every new moons. Let hope

travel its feet while I sit beside by the window waiting.

For innocence will turn my graying hairs to white

and youth will leave me like the wilted leaves of autumn.

 

The season changes and they say time heals every wound.

But the scars of our love-thorned lives remains relived

in our book of days. I wish the summer winds will carry

the ashes until forgetting. I wish sleep will banish the things

which I failed to tell you when you left me. I moved on.

 

I have written letters with the pen until it dried out of ink

I have recorded our memories for fear that it will be lost too.

And my waning mind gave birth to words I have bookmarked

with fresh flowers that blooms from the same earth I will lay

with my dreams. I am not afraid anymore of the longest night

 

until tomorrow.

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Fresh Fall of Snow

No one is sitting on that bench anymore,

to watch the seagulls and the moonrise.

 

Where colors slowly buried

into its empty space. A hairline

in the horizon separates

the dream of summer.

 

No one wants to be sitting there

among the leafless trees, alone

abandoned by autumn.

 

There were words

etched on that bench.

Names of people

and the symbols

of their endearment

disappearing

in the fresh coat

of winter. 

 

No one will sit on that bench anymore.

 

Only snow. The frozen tears

of heaven and the silence

they have left behind.

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Watermark

We abandon the place

after the flood. When

the alleyway became a river

detouring its natural course

meanders into two directions-

separate

 

until that gap

spans the vast expanse of the land.

Wider than the ocean,

for years now.

 

Long pauses between seasons.

Winter. Spring. Summer.

Fall. A silent  rain

muttering through the night

whispers becoming promises,

dewdrops of tears in the dawn.

 

Time have weathered

this young couple’s portrait

left hanging in the wall.

Silhouette and shadows

in muted remembrance

among traces of dry mud

and moss,

 

mildews

eating up the torn

and brittle edges-

the vows to our union.

The floodwater left

its ugly stains

of pain. Unreconciled

 

between two people

lost in the randomness.

Of things. Searching

to belong in another’s embrace.

 

Which can’t be found

 

even if the storms

have finally subsided.

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Lukewarm

People may need. Two different things:

A warm blanket on a winter night.

A cold water on a summer day.

That was easy.

But the book says otherwise

that people need three,

actually.  A companion.

And this, I can’t hardly achieve

without a sacrifice.

 

Lukewarm

 

in a room I shared with another.

Living thing.  My search for warmth

is in its dying. My search for coldness

is also in its dying.

 

So I wake up

each early morning turning off

this machine-sucking

life of the other.  In the comfort

of my own breathing.

 

Hoping that the easiness

will boil down

into two different things:

People may need.

While warming winter.

And cooling summer.

Without you.

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Vignette On Yesterday

There was a time when I thought happiness

was infinite and the night full of stars.

And I have my way of keeping track

each day written on a page. There was a time,

when the breeze came to my sails

as it float away myriad of dreams-

like kites braving the sky.

And the harvest is here,

filled my basket overflowing

of summer fruits in its season.

 

It was a time of plenty

and a time of tender love

when every prairie blooms

in the suppleness of spring.

Basking to the sun’s golden stream

into the woods by the mid-morning

when I endlessly salute those fine,

bright times rejoicing.

 

But like butterflies flutter their wings-

yesterday is a maiden whose beauty hides

by the moonrise. I sit there by the terrain

watching the sunset. When the light

of the day were torn pages into pieces.

In the autumn,  like falling leaves.

Sadness came. A blight of the winter

and the frost became cobwebs.

The winds now, they sing a dirge

slowly becoming whispers. Yesterday

walks away silently, weeping like a lady.

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Reflections on the Puddles

The earth became

a lacerated vision

of shallow heaven,

after the rain. T’was

a parting time,

a moment lost

when the big sky

agonizes over

the summer sun.

 

And how the  bamboo trees

sadly waving goodbye.

And the monsoon winds

blew gently,

creating ripples,

mirrored patches

and misty glimpses.

A sea of blue.

 

It was all-

in the photograph

capturing puddles

reflecting clouds

travelling by.

It was all-

that I keep

as a remembrance,

of a big sky

hoping for the sun.

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