Cracks in the surface of mountain soil
open and let greenery rip and despoil.
Shred and tear through both rock and stone
to make room for a growth, at last all it's own.

From both base to summit — Olympus to Wutai
it's time spent well, time spent to defy
what once was rigid, unmoving and strong
to crumple bit by bit into a breeze-laden song.

But the mountain doesn't wail, and neither will it fall
for the mountain is not worsened by it's transient shawl.

Cast your leaves, trees unfettered
autumnal colors inked with a crow—
like my heart it's wing beats go
and leave me but just one feather.

These winds will do as a parting kiss,
but don't cast down a shadow gloom.
For you bring back the flower bloom
and you'll come with to reminisce.

Keep in mind, my jet black heart:
You are not just subject to the storm,
you're wing and wit, Olympus born
and our embers always kindle to a fire start.

Who'll keep me warm, when you are gone?
After snowfall,
who'll sing the mornings sweet songs?
At the end of it all,
when all's said and done, will we still get along?

The hardest time might not be all the frost.
Maybe it's our autumns,
to swallow our pride and sit inside with our loss,
waiting for blossoms.
But we've to plant them ourselves when uprooting dross.

And the birds will come home, at long last, to nest,
and flowers will bloom,
while I sit and I wait, heart longing for rest -
that can't come without you.

Your eyes like falling stars, cascade
down, chasing Summer's drifting flowers,
their crescendo, with the breeze will fade
upon a wind-swept dance in this final hour.

And I saw myself in their somber drift.
Surrounded by the blooming scorpion grass,
I sank into the deep sea beyond the cliff
as each wave hammered a nail in my casket.

The briefest of drownings broken by a song
as a nightjar cooed from the dying laurel
in a perfect nest where his melody belong.
While my heart lapsed: yours felt immortal.

It's halt dismissed at the winding of vines
as your fingers are mine lastly intertwined.

Stone set—
rigid and cold and held in it's grip
but I thank it's hardheadedness for supporting me now.
Snow blistered—
stained and splayed by sanguinous touch
but I still smell the fresh falls and frigid boughs.
Breath panged—
quick and shallow with chill lingering on lip
but it's just stuck in her lungs, and like limb will, too, sever.
Teeth grit—
lockjaw keeping wound fresh in the clutch
but I savor her movements, her words, now more than ever.

If I could rip out my lungs here and now
to hear one last time sing like a songbird,
I would die just for that tune.

In debt, I still spend more heart than allowed
and if you're not in pain, why have I incurred
such a darkness under new moon.

But every river at last, must flow to an end
and while my heart bleeds out just like one,
there is nothing for you here.

Ramshackled veins, I feel each one of you rend
as I play pretend this will simply be done,
put to rest, not realize my fear.

You don't quite look like you as your eyes cloud
and like when you couldn't speak, I can't find words.
And all the sterile tools and the palest off-white room
could not make me immune
from the way the walls closed, like a casket. In on me too.

Tens of millions, like each star in the sky,
were the blades of grass that swayed the valley
like a wave in a storm thrashing side to side
buffeted along by this ennui-draped gale.

A far-drawn wind that I know all to well
fluttering, fluttering. Given up only in part.
I've spent every sad song for Summer's farewell
so Autumn may come and stab deep into my heart.

My eyes rested on the dew while waiting for sunrise
as if some sort of light or warmth could rip me
from these tightening and tightening thorn-ridden vines,
as if respite would make up for a heart sunk at sea.

But for every constellation that faded from the night
I saw through mountain jaws into brightest light.

White and undriven — the billowing drifts
the spring it buries does not yet know
the beauty it carries beneath the snow
to shine upon the world — to merely exist.

To be such a flower, nature's delicate gift.
I relish their smile and call out to them so
but is it macabre to smile when their petals blow?
To look upon their death with the same rose-tints?

What would I give for such simple design:
to reach to the heavens and flower just once
and then to pass after my first occurrence,
to not weather the woes of repetition and time.

Or the rose-tint is as good on theirs as on mine,
maybe I, too, will have a charming last pulse —
like a falling of petals, like a crescendo and crux
and all at once, like leaves it will fall, all my malign.

Entwined hearts in a tomb of
ten-thousand dahlias,
heavy breaths like each their last
reach longingly aloft.

Unlike every choking vine
that digs entombing claws;
their winters spent together
tethers their hearts to clouds.

It's strange to say:
"Paris is for lovers."
Considering love has shipwrecked me.
Here in Barcelona.

It is a long walk.
That one has to take.
There's no map, but lots of directions.
From Barcelona. To Montmartre.

It's not quite apt
to fix everything.
But perhaps it's at least content.
There in Montmartre.

I saw great shade-casting green built upon pines,
like statues ripped the Earth stretching up to the skies.
Never could you reach, and yet you live to try,
But the heaven and the Earth seem lovers by design.

Billowing clouds, feeding roots that build shrines
that I won't live to see completely arise.
For my own pallid self - or for beauty - heart cries?
They stand so stoic and draped, in flowers and vines.

As I'm lost in the calls of the overhead crows
rained in each fluttering fall of feather delivered.
Drop. Like my once-glossed eyes emptying this soul
and my weighty life into the likewise sobbing river.
Casting out, casting off. Isn't it the same as to sow?
The river does not pause; why then dwell on what differed?

The sun feels colder as it shines
through this aging stained glass,
decorated in such inspired design
of stories and heroes now-surpassed.

Such a glimmering lens standing vast
consumed my eyes while the smoke
swirled up and rose to climb past,
to choke the sun out from that window.

Two ravens, with my heart, sink low
to perch upon weather-worn pillar;
the winds carried them, as I overflow.
Drowning in my my own burgeoning river.

It's only myself, to myself, I've reviled,
draining out my heart, I wore the saddest smile.

Now heaven does not seem so
close, never singing, yet—
I'm putting will to whetstone
while building on regret.

White feathers
stained in sanguine
hold wind's hand
till bathe in the stream.

White tails
and feathered song.
Ambivalent doey eyed.
Does natures charm extend to mine?
A part.

A sad visage — is it that leaves cannot hold snow
only roughened needle may cradle it's cold crystalline,
a fresh-blossomed love as lost as the calypso.
God's chiseled sculptures cast out, serpentine.

The somber minuet, glistening à pas menus upon her face.
Dizzyingly fluttered through cusping sapphire lens
each tuft, each dune of wind-sculped embrace.
Do you know even your warmth harkens her ends?

How could you? Lovingly, lost under peaks of heaven.
Heat of helios as your reflective love soon parts —
no fault of your own, nor allowance of concession.
It was too bright of a burn, your blazing hearts.

Alabaster draped darling, you hold on so tight.
I promise, I swear, birds will sing of your light.

Soft hands from a horizon I don't know
Flit small tufts of shimmering white sea
And gingerly test the bones of each tree
To - or from - a world I'm too scared to go

There's a warmth set inside here that imposes
That I reach not past the glass and open no door
That I break not the paths my heart once bore
But my garden is now frosted and I've only corpses of roses

The crackling hearth whistles, snaps and proposes
That I settle my regrets and wrestle no more
Renunciate the whispering wishes and settle my core
But is this warmth just a trapping as the door slowly closes

The frost looks not biting, not sharp as my woes
And the roads look not traveled, not as worn down as me.
But the snow has kept falling, unbounded and free
And I've wasted these moments, too, lamenting my throes.

Bury me down,
deep in the ground.
It's dark and it's cold,
for only the Earth to hold.

Bury me there,
for it's only fair.
As she promises spring
and winter she brings.

She's too much like me,
cycles of winter, you see.
Down, I should be.
Too deep to become a tree.
Too shallow to freeze.

Bury me far-sent,
for the sea to lament.
She's a beast left to thrash,
she'll take my body to crash.

I write poems and cry,
I sing out to the sky,
and she billows her wind
and cries, too, over my sins.

I'm too much like her.
And it's too much to endure,
the storm that I've spurred.
Wash away - habitual poseur,
drown them now - my life's saboteur.

A sea so still, where waves don't crash.
A balcony
The moon won't see.
A hearth alone, that won't make ash.
This still from which I must be ripped.
Instead I pray
please take away
my thoughts, my heart. I lose my grip.

It felt as if I was endlessly careening.
Spiraling downwards among ripping winds;
my eyes helplessly watched everywhere I'd been
float upwards like they were only a passing dream.

Breath too bated. Choked throat. Unable to scream.
Lethargic and spent, nerves in rapid descent
with hands, white-knuckled, too cold to close when
threads unraveled, began to come apart at the seams.

Springtimes's last blossom is always just as sweet,
even if it's the harbinger of flower's final fears.
Let me land among fresh dew to enter listless sleep.
Like the petal fallen from it's tree I'm now-incomplete,
cascading to a callous ground as winter's jaws near
knuckles too used and weak, to grip what I must keep.

じゅんしゅする
どろ-だらけ-どう 。
やま いたむ。
--
Junshu suru
doro-darake-dō .
Yama itamu.
--
I am complacent to
these muddy roads.
The mountain sighs mournfully over me.

A spring breeze rolls with fog through the forests
singing through a night that seems endless.
Dead flowers, unbeknownst where wind sends us
can't help but falter beneath blown torrents.

You were beautiful, sculpted like marble,
then given an eternity in spring.
How nice to not know what frost will bring,
freezing petals, a dying ensemble.

You couldn't help but to only murmur
despite how badly you wanted to scream,
eyes glossing over, they no longer beamed.
Your hand, like your heart, losing it's fervor.

A thousand flowers will consume your grave
and you'll die, never finding what you crave.

Thrashing winds weather worlds to dust
and purpose fades to wanderlust.
Pillars of salt, clad in rust.
Is it sadness found?
Gripping chill cuts to bone through flesh
To ignite memories afresh
To spark the nerves, throw and thresh,
Is it rancor grown?
For years and years you've built this shrine
You've watched the sun set endlesstimes
Vigneron, blind to his own vine.
To lose it all; at last unbound.

It's the rising of sun on Summer days
where mature branches loll over the vale,
mist like a sea, letting only the boldest
of mountains to breathe above the waves.

With each sway of every frail arm,
made a dancer in the wind's soft gale.
roots dug and redoubled by the sun's kiss,
but it's liminal here, before Autumn's harm.

Do you yearn for the Spring-
for when it all was in bloom?
Is it depressive to think-
of the impending frost's gloom?

As the mist now settles,
choking out my view.
As heaven's frost petals
will soon do to you.

I'll leave, yet I'll return,
a thousand times to this place
each day, each of us a bit bigger.

And still I'll never learn
quite how to grow and to face
my own winters with your vigor.

Cupping the stem, I raise my blade
to snip off the young bud.
For all the sun poured to be made
I still slice off and toss to the mud.

I cannot say it was for your good,
pruned so that the harvest
might be as vast as it could,
till then neither of us may rest.

Fall tree, more beautiful undraped-
Barren form, just as you were shaped.
Frost bites, tearing green - you escaped.
What you've become can only grow.

As you die, you'll be at your crest.
For every year you spent in wrest
You may go to your roots, appressed.
Shreik once last so the wind may blow.

The ground will creak and wind will howl
as your roots are shucked among growl.
Year and year towards the sun you prowl.
Icarus, in the shade you sow.

Too late for us both to ask aid,
too late to tell you why I stayed.
Too soon, for me, to find new shade.
I'll lie with you; as one we'll go.

As ripples brush upon the rocky reef
your eyes swallowing the light of each star,
cascading lines of deep ebony mar,
subversive painters showcasing your grief.

Wings never clipped, but promises unkept
tore your heart from you, hung out not to dry
but sadly to, instead, be crucified.
Cornered at last, in helplessness, content.

You were never abandoned by heaven;
all the sadder that they just didn't care
like a storm rolling upon a fledgling.
An apology too much concession
I felt no satisfaction nor despair,
indigo tides at your neck now welling.

There's a brook to which
my heart is tied.
Speckled reflection where beauty hide.
The threads with which my mornings stitch;
water's response to a golden finch.
My mind as slow as the creek does crawl.
These moments with which my life does spall.
Amongst the cold, the crisp:
a gifted bliss
that in these words I meekly scrawl.

Soft - the doe
And jet black crow.
Carrion bird of sorrow and woe
may pick at bone and viscera sew.

But nature's beauty makes two wed
not despite but because of that thread.

ι άνεμοι πλένουν τον καθαρό αέρα της θάλασσας.
Ο ήλιος πλένει φωτεινή γλυκιά ζεστασιά.
Πλένεις όμορφα τραγούδια αγάπης.
--
The wind washes the fresh sea air.
The sun washes warm radiant rays.
You wash beautiful love songs.

If I could cup the sun
I would hide it away.
And if I could steal the moon
I would never let it free.

The gardens of the world
can become withered and gray.
And the ancient waltz can stop,
the crashing dance of the sea.

If just for one moment
I can see in your eyes
the shimmering lights
as from beneath the night sky.

Such a height to fall from grace —
O pray and hope but don't cry, child
your once-soft hands will tame these wilds,
as your arrow will find it's place.

Each moon glows with the hum of home
as the lone fire sings back with crackled hum.
A heroes journey is about who they become
and the paths they pave from once unroamed.

Amid woods frozen in woe
the weakened elk's velvet
drapes sanguine to stain the snow,
no solace in this shade.

Green grass grows where
Leaves once fell.

Even the greatest trees have
Scars unquelled.

Each autumnal passing gives
way to a swell.

So fear neither valleys nor
mourn for a knell.

Isles
Careening masses of of basalt
Indignant - they reach up
Like arms stretching
Towards
Billows
Of amber cloud
That dance like irises
Finding not what they sought but what
They love

The sun still shines through the cold
and I still wear myself to the bone,
for iron and steel can rend my flesh
but in the end it will bend at my behest.

Swallowed down into these sickening depths,
like a ship too bold for the seas it sailed
before falling, living out hundreds of deaths.

Harrowing, is having a heart that has failed
in so many rights, but still has to beat on
and be beat on like the rocks that waves bewail.

Naive and emboldened you tied your own millstone
and now I can feel it all, your panged breaths.
Shallow and sharp, weak, and like you, all alone.

And there's nothing left of you, nothing to protect
so for what it's worth: You've nothing left to reflect.

I would paint every color of every moment of the sky.
Each sunrise and sunset - each glistening moon.
But I'd never recapture the shine of your eye.
And I'll never not say: "You died far too soon."

Ice cold winds crashing upon
seas of chrysanthemums
while early dawn evanesces
to frosts's effrontery.

Sparks like stars reflected
in the seas of your eyes
painted drearily along
your placid expression.

But just like the bluebirds, you
will not always come back.
Swallowed deep by sorrow lest
I forgive the sparrow.

Whispering, through labored breaths to lonely tree
I painfully pour out the last of my heart.
While the dying breaths of the wind-rustled leaves
whimper back laments of their death. Do we have to part?

Tears, down a pallid portrait, lethargically seep.
Each one as impermanent as the piece that they paint.
In a ragged voice, I cry out for what I know I can't keep.
For what I know will break me beneath it's weight.

The river's run becomes stronger than my weakened breath,
who do you expect to comfort here, naive stream?
You sing with the crows and you'll sing past my death
but it seems very well, that you'll also sing with me.

There is a fading set of footsteps in the snow ahead.
One's path dying with each snowflake. I step aside instead.

Twin clouds
Sweet purity
Dancing twix winds of will
Among flits and flutters of hearts
Snowy

Snow falls upon
lonely heads with-

fires cascading among
the crackling logs like-

hearts elating at brightening
smiles that bring-

Soft warmth to cold sharpness.

Waiting around.
My hands are still, and my heart is slow.
My stars still here, but where will they go?
Coiling around.
My mind is numb, and my nerves as well.
Does this snakes meal, have will to yell?

Winding of calling shores, cresting waves crash amore.
Odes of wind, evoke my song, the sweet dark sea
May sing along, while bow and string cry out true-
My fluttering form dies every last time
I dare avert my eyes. Your form, pale yet divine.
Moon and stars, dance and shine, all the sky still pales.
Through all their beauty: I am captured by you.

The pale off grey looms far among the shores
Beauty in the way it so honestly treads
Earnestly disparaging upon all that it weds
It rips upon our world, more ancient than war

To carry ones self with such a meticulous pride
Such a power to crash, to rip and to rend
It encompasses all of a life, to give and to end
Threads such as hers: to which my heart is tied.

Where in this sea of flowers did you see yourself?
Climbing into it, you weakly pulled yourself into
the blossoming petals, too frail for what you must do.
You could only lie down, and cling to what you held.

You left your heart, long ago, in the mountains,
and I wonder if it ever realized that the soul
it was bleeding dry for had lost all control
and rose like roots, ripped, no longer grounded.

And the sea rose up to bury you with it's swells,
cold and ebbing — it couldn't mimic a lover.
But it was your only embrace in these last rites.
They had not an undertow to rip on what you dwell.
Alone and drowning in a sea you'd wished to discover
that it was in these moments you could see sunlight.

Oyasumi, ne?
The flower suffocating -
ice piling towards heaven.
Deluged in the driven snow.
She will bleed in Spring's embrace.



Sleep well, just this once.
The flower suffocating -
ice piling towards heaven.
Deluged in the driven snow.
She will bleed in Spring's embrace.

Great stretches of wisteria's shadow
reach longingly through an endless field,
towards a slow dripping skyline that seemed
so much closer than it would ever know.

The sun's now passed. What could you hope to find?
I'm helpless but to bask in flowering
petals, falling like brush strokes blossoming,
painting the wind that'll leave us behind.

I've only wanted to be here with you
but like winter will do to your branches,
shades of grey ennui weigh on my canvas.
Like spring and the wind, I will leave you too.

Of all shades you are, all palettes you bear,
this sad overcast is the last we share.

There exists no such kindness
To quite ever match the sea-
To bound bout the land
Threading stories and heart

Life and it's kingdoms
Wax and wane at her hand
A blink in her eye before apogee
What will we sing back when we depart?

Sing not anger in your last stand
Sing not of woes nor of sorrow
Sing sweetly back to the somber lady
Sing of the ways she adorned us in art

And know that together we will be
With her always - something grand.

Monsters are made.
And beasts are born.
But we - what are we?
Our nature torn.
As ancient and deep
as the ocean's great sleep
The sea - oh the sea.
Will swallow what we reap.
Boundless as sky.
Like a mockingbird wry.
Be free - oh be free.
Of what we men pry.

The sky's sad soul
Grey and overcast.
The bells now toll
For me at last.

The clouds weep
not once for me.
Shed no tears -
hang just misery.

To cast their shadows
they coo and croon.
Like mockingbirds
of long-missed boons.

Flitting away on
The Spring I lost.
Feather and leaf fall,
As I, too, exhaust.