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Why must I tell you this story, O little one
You’re just a bud-of-a-girl, who knows nothing
Now you are full-faced, bright as sun
Now you open your skirts pink, layered, brazen
Suffering is alchemy, change is God
Now you droop your head, heavy with rust
Sit, contemplate, what did Buddha say?
Old age, sickness, death, no one owns eternity
Detach, detach, look away from the sun
Let your petals fall aimlessly
Don’t despair, little one, we are done
One child has brown eyes, one has blue One slanted, another rounded One so nearsighted he squints internal One had her extra epicanthic folds removed One downcast, one couldn't be bothered One roams the heavens for a perfect answer One transfixed like a dead doe, a convex mirror One shines double-edged like a poisoned dagger Understand their vision, understand their blindness Understand their vacuity, understand their mirth
A lament for Don (1958-2011)
Gaze gaze beyond the vermilion door
Leaf leaf tremble fall
Stare blankly at the the road's interminable end
Reduplications cold cold mountains
Long long valleys broad broad waters
Tears are exhausted now shed blood
Deep deep the baleful courtyards who knows how deep
Folds on folds of curtains
Gates trap infinite twilight
Walk walk through waning meadows
Steep steep toward ten-thousand Buddhas
Knuckles blue on the balustrade
In the land of missing pronouns
Sun is a continuous performance
And we my lover are nothing
Yellow gold is meaningless Learning is better than pearls A woman without brilliance Leaves nothing but dim children You can hawk your gold if you’re hungry Sell your mule when you’re desperate What can you do with so many poems Sprouting dead hairs in an empty coffin * Lotus: pink dewlapped pretty Lotus: upturned palm of my dead mother Lotus: a foot a broken arch Lotus: plop and a silent ripple * I hum and stroll And contemplate a poem While young boys are dying In West Darfur I hum and stroll And contemplate a poem While young boys are dying In West Darfur
I bathe my television in total attention I give it my corneas
I give it my eardrums I give it my longing
In return I get pictures of girls fighting and men flying
and women in big houses with tight faces blotting down tears
with tiny knuckles Sometimes my mother calls
and I don't answer Sometimes a siren sings past the window
and summer air pushes in dripping with the scent
of human sweat But what do I care I've given my skin
to the TV I've given it my tastes In return it gives me so many
different sounds to fill the silence where the secrets
of my life flash by like ad space for the coming season