I wished a wish
upon a star,
a wish so small
on such so far.
I won't be sad if
it does not come true,
to have is a wish
is something too.

Tonight,
I must go.
I was almost sure I belonged,
But how many more years
Should I tell myself that?
Memories of those
Long happy nights,
Make me think
What use is it to reminisce
What I, alone, can remember?

Tomorrow,
I will go out
As if nothing is amiss.
I have done so before,
But half-heartedly.
I listened closely
To see if my absence was noticed,
I had found no murmurs
No stirrings,
Not even an insult
Or a condescending remark:
It was as if I had not left at all,
And with a bruised ego,
I found out that I never had a place here.
So I rushed back
I worked hard
I did my best
And yet
I am ready to leave again
And the taste of the midnight air
Is the still the same;
I will not be missed,
Nor shall my effort be remembered.

I will be back, someday
Maybe 10,
20 years from now.
Will you wait for me?
If I silently let my years pass
And let time
Harden my fingertips
And wrinkle my face
Will you all of a sudden
Remember the passion
With which I was embroiled?
When I return
Will you welcome me again?

It’s not as if I want to go.
I must.
Like most of everyone before me,
I had found what I loved
However,
We are much too fickle to love.
Where I lack in conviction
I am sure to make up with time lost
Wondering how it could have been.

If you had ever been left behind,
Or are trying your best to move forward,
I am sure you understand
How much I want to chase you.
If only I could be happy
In your pursuit.

I will always look for you,
You are the poems I’ve committed to heart,
You are the plays that I had practiced in my bedroom,
The speeches I memorized and picked apart,
You are the sonnets I’ve tried to write,
You are the long letters I’ve never finished,
You were my sole frustration for most of my life,
I was obsessed with you,
Yet I have nothing to show for it.

I will always look for you,
However, you cannot look for me.
I will not be anywhere
But here,
Far back
Looking onwards, from the past,
At the back of your neck as it smudges in the distance
With falling leaves
Rain
Petals that lost their way
In an August gust
And the horizon
That blurs
As the sun sets.

Goodbye, goodbye,
I love you, I love you,
Perhaps I shall see you sometime again
But not now
And not ever with me.

Why the obsession
of not experiencing pain?
So what if all that I do
or try
is a futile effort?
Pain is reassurance that
I am correct in my feelings,
and rare proof
that connects me
to great poets of the past.

Everything in my life
is filled with a lightness,
a brevity,
I do not take anything too seriously anymore.
All is as it should be,
just as my pain should strike me bitterly,
my affection will act to unburden me
of emotions too heavy to carry in secret.

There are only dire consequences in loving too little,
One can justify the suffering associated with loving too much.

What would a good man do?
Surely
more than I,
no?

How do I reconcile
longing and
moderation?

To see something
that I covet
given away so freely,
as if nothing,
is maddening.

Oh, how cruel!
It only matters who,
not how.
In such matters
merit is not determined
by pain.

Alas, I suppose.

I am stuck in limbo
awaiting tragedy,
as a leaf awaits a gust
to tear it free from its branch.

I am shrouded in stillness;
a blissful peace.
I will look back on these days and think
"I did not know what I had"

Not far from now,
life will twist into a cascade
of irreversible losses.
I can feel it stirring,
an everlasting sorrow,
like the wind kicking leaves at my feet.

I will change forever.

If I am to be lost,
then let it be;
I shall be as
a grain of sand
in the currents of the ocean.

I reach for words,
to claw back from the depths
of a terrible
listlessness.
But I cannot find them,
I cannot even write.

I wish to emulate
the chirping bird
who sings freely
amongst its peers.

Too often
I am caught up
in which words to say
or the placement
of a line.

Seldom
do I actually write
what I had felt.

I think again of a dear dying friend,
Whose life has been lived and is now going to end,
I wonder what dreams that she still had to meet
And of all the promises she cannot keep,
And locked away somewhere, inside of her deep,
Are there still some secrets that she alone keeps,
I wonder of promises she cannot keep,
And burdens that she insist she alone keeps.

A promise of peace and of present pain felt
To dissolve in the dirt of the Earth is fulfilled.
The living are dying, but they shan’t forget
Of friends whom have left them before their own end,
Of friends whom they cherished and loved till the end
With only condolences left to extend,
I think of once more of a dear dying friend.

A flower
that blooms
before a drought,
will wilt
without having
lived.

To think of you,
is to have such
thoughts.

It is a dance,
A longing
Set to the rhythm,
The nuance of
Furtive glances,
Unspoken words,
Chance encounters,
Innumerable coincidences
And a terrible solitude
Of the soul.

As these things accumulate,
It begins
Like embers given life
By a soft breeze.

But the second it is touched
It turns to sand
And slips through
The cracks of the heart.
One figures out
That something so fragile
Cannot exist.

During the shooting of
Fellini's movie
8 1/2
he had a sign that said
"This is a comedy",
to remind the actors
that it was all a farce.

I feel that perhaps
I am sometimes misunderstood.
All my emotions are tempered,
I exaggerate only for effect.
I can pace myself
in both happiness and
misery.
Should I, too, hang the sign,
"This is a comedy"
on every poem I write?

The subtle turn of neck
Exposed skin, collarbone shown
Shoulder, slender, hand, in air
Slight smile, red lips
Dimples that crunch the corner of cheeks
Crossed legs; hairless
Soft ankle, gentle foot
The arching bridge
Of the sole
Timid fingers, curled
Ready to point
Ready to pluck
Heartstrings.

Company; friends
Distance
It is unfair.

I think I would understand
If it were outwardly cruel
But such heartaches speak
In quiet undulations,
Hard to catch inclinations,
A half-moment,
A heartbeat,
A second too late to take back
The things you did not say
When they asked about
The weather or your new shoes.

The shoulder shrug
The empty bus
The hands held
At a distance
Amidst crowds
For anyone to see
It was enough to make you think
Why be so honest
How can someone be so brash
Without saying a word.

It comes suddenly
After it’s easy to realize
They never looked
They did not listen
Or even read
It did not occur because
Value is relative,
It does not matter,
People are busy
Although you may write.

she would not look me in the eyes
as i pretend to be
the person whom she coveted;
the man she used to see

nor night or day, will I think less
of her as time goes on
yet he remains inside her head
from dusk to break of dawn

perhaps, i think, in solitude
she will move on from him,
but it is i that she neglects
and leaves upon a whim

one day he showed up at our door
much to her surprise
and outlined our last couple days
before our grand demise

who would have thought that she
would try to run away
and have the courage to **** me
on the exact same day?

alas, ‘tis not a fairy tale,
she would not get her way,
for the same day that I had died,
she, too, would pass away

our daughter whom shall wake alone
when the night is done
in shock will find the corpses of
her beloved ones

what will she think of this mess
when she looks down to see
the blood and her lifeless parents
engulfed in tragedy

you see, the man who had shown up
dropped by to say hello,
my wife, who still had loved this man,
did not want him to go.

so that same night, she called to me
and said she would leave soon,
to pursue the man who had left,
under the the naked moon.

i tried to talk her out of it,
But she would not listen,
and as we started to argue,
her tears would then glisten

in rage, she grabbed a nearby knife
and lunged at my bare neck
but in the process, fallen down
and missed me by a thread.

at this time, she had broke down
and would not stop crying
then turned the knife onto herself
and died where i was lying.

I took the knife, and turned it to
myself as i had sobbed
Would I let my wife go alone
To Hell? is what i thought

But is it not somewhat funny
Attempted homocide
Turned tragically into what was
A double suicide.

The midnight air
Tastes as it did
Years ago
When I first arrived.
Now that I am leaving,
It feels as if
I had never been here at all.

Sometimes
we have no choice
but to express ourselves
terribly.
That is why
there are so many poets,
yet so little
worth reading.

I aspire to become
The person
That my dog thinks I am

There is a nagging feeling
that I cannot shake
which tells me
the last time my name will be uttered
by a specific pair of lips
is passing shortly.

Ka か
Ke け
Ki き
Ko こ
Ku く

I write,
Over and over again,
As if chanting silently
To ward off
Forgetfulness
And a growing sense
Of impending mediocrity.

I fear that I have been found
but at least I can I change my name,
but to those who know my face...
It is hard to do the same!

Today,
I fight irrelevance.
I wrestle with it
as one wrestles with
shadows or
the urge to *****.

I must admit,
it is an overdramatized,
drawn out tussle.
In my head,
it is as if the world is
collapsing,
memories reduced to
cinders,
my being
turned to ash.
But in reality
it is just another passing
of the day,
as one lends itself to the next,
the nights growing shorter,
all is well
it seems.

I cannot come to
agreeable terms
with fate.
I cannot accept that,
for certain people,
I have already lived
my moments of importance.

Each time I remember
the few fragments
of intimacy in my life,
I become less convinced
that I should suffer
in passivity.
There is a pang of desperation
reverberating in my heart
that moves me to action.

Somedays,
I wish no more to reminisce,
I say
silly things.
"I shall recreate my memories,
but this time with urgency,
vivaciously,
with life
and love,
and create from it
new memories that
I will struggle to believe
are mine."

I go out
and find no one waiting.
Had I not been here long enough
to have at least
one person
think of me?
Such are my thoughts,
as I look pensively at the moon
with memories of
a head resting against my shoulder
or conversations with
people whose names I have forgotten,
swirling in my head.

I have been called,
a few times already,
a hopeless romantic.
I am misunderstood!
First, I must ask,
what is it that I must hope for?

I strive for pure, absolute love.
Everything else is beside that.

I only want to love
for the sake of love.
I only want to express love,
for the sake of expressing love.

I do not hope for reciprocation,
which is what I suspect others suspect of me.
I am successful if I can express affection
in a readily appreciable way.
If I can express love,
I can attain fulfilment and satisfaction.
I need nothing more.

When given the choice
to treat a loved one with either
bitterness or tenderness,
must you really think twice about your decision?
Then at which point does what you receive in return
play a part?
Will you really deprive yourself of the opportunity
of giving love
if you receive nothing in return?

Selfishness is at the heart of entitlement.
To say, "I will not give if I cannot receive"
is the peak of entitlement.
It is natural to feel pain in the face of
total rejection,
however this is only the burden that you must bear
in the name of love,
proof that your feelings are steadfast and genuine.

To withdraw your oaths of affection
after the fact
is an admission to have never loved at all.
I must remind you that
your emotions entitle you to nothing.
We have no reason to be selfish.

Again I ask,
why deprive yourself the opportunity to give love?
Shall you really withdraw water from a beautiful flower
that blooms in someone else's garden?
If affection really drives us,
is the wellbeing and happiness of the person in question
not more than enough to suffice?

I find that in matters of pure love,
the self is rarely concerned.
The self is merely a vessel to deliver.
How is it that we have arrived at the notion
that is also a vessel to receive?

Alas, I do not mean to say
that we may only love one person in a single life.
The contrary.
There is always room for someone new,
and there is always room to give,
and to give freely,
without expectation to receive anything in return.
Would you not agree that this is the mark of
pure, absolute love?

The flower blooms
Without thought of whom
Is watching.
She will continue to exist
With or
Without me.

I am ashamed
To look my mother in the eye
And show her nothing
For the years of her life
Spent on supporting
Someone such as I.

I am rarely satisfied
with the words that I choose
to express myself with.
In the end,
I settle for an approximation
of what I had wanted to say.
How often do I find myself
falling short
of a truly beautiful sentiment?

In my brief life
I have amassed more years
Than moments
Where I felt
Alive.

To spend your spare time
On someone else
Is an immeasurable
Act of kindness.

How many times have I been saved
By a stranger
Who wanted to talk about the weather?

I feel nostalgic
For a long winter night
In Vancouver
Years ago.

A pair of gloves
Shared between
Two pairs of hands.

There is no warmth
Like the warmth
Of another.

While walking down a busy street
A light gust blows the soft rain
Beneath the guise of my umbrella,
Peppering my right cheek.

fellas
what's with
all the arguing?
words won't solve anything.
strip him down
and take his ****
and measure it by the inch.
that'll decide it.
beat the **** of them
and whoever
doesn't die first
that's who's right.
carve chunks of flesh
out of his arm
and make him dance
while he *****
a thousand pretty women,
just so he can show
how the facts are on his side.
let him pray to god
and ask
to **** every *******
who is different
and let god do as he does
as if everyone was a *******
philistine.

I walk through the years
Looking yearningly
At the reflections
In windows I pass.

I believed in her like
She was the woman I loved
Who told me that she loved me
Or
The suit and tie
Telling me that they would contact me again
After that last job interview
Or
The manager who told me
I did a good job
And I was indispensable

It would be better
if I never
thought of it ever
again.

Do your friends
Still talk about me?
I wonder.

11 years ago
I was walking on top
Of a small wall
Along the sea.

I tripped
And fell
And smashed the back of my head
On a sharp rock.

I came to
With my father and mother
Looming over my face.
Now that I think about it
It was pretty convenient
That they would find me there.

I have had a good life,
But to me,
It has been too good.
I have done nothing to deserve
Anything that I have.

I think back on that time,
Walking on that sea wall,
And wonder if the last 11 years
Have all been a dream
And I really am
Still by the sea
Seconds away from dying.

Rain pooled into a puddle
On the sidewalk as I pass
Reflects at me a distortion of
All the things
I should have been.

I love this book.
Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis Ferdinand Celine.
I will never reread it.
It was enough to read once.
I have tried rereading it.
I could not.
It is too tiresome.
I feel this way about so many people.
I think fondly of them,
But will not miss them,
Perhaps they think of me sometimes
And maybe remember me somewhat favourably,
But they will not miss me.
Oddly, I find this comforting,
Perhaps it’d be better if we forget each other,
So somewhere we can meet for the first time again.
I long to read Journey to the End of the Night for the first time again.

I am caught between
Two types of wills.
A will
To live
And a will
To be read
After death.

Each step
Upon the pavement
Feels as though
I am lightly tapping
The keys of a piano.

Each step I take
Is another note
In a clumsy melody.

For a second I am convinced
That there really is music
And now it is my turn to play.

If you forget, that is fine
We all forget sometimes
If you forget, that is okay
It's easy to forget someday.

If you remember,
Do you look back sometimes, too?
Do you remember,
I ponder.
Well, do you?

I don't want to tell her anything
That's what makes it fun
To have it all said in my eyes
For me,
That's what makes it fun.

When she looks at me,
I think I see
An angel in disguise,
But whats she sees
In a guy like me
Is nothing to her delight.

But that's okay
I don't care,
To be loved is not the goal,
To have her even look at me
That's what makes it fun.

To be read
In itself
Is a victory.

It is hard
To think critically
Of your own poetry.
It is difficult to improve
And upsetting, perhaps
When there is little success.

But, be calm
To have been seen
Is itself
A victory.

Even if I am a disgrace
I have aspired to be more.
If I never amounted to anything,
It is not my parent’s fault,
If my life turns out meaningless,
It is only because I am frail,
I was never unlucky,
There has always been someone helping me,
I am responsible for my own unhappiness.

The drizzling rain
Is of little comfort
But the soft pats against my window
Feel somewhat encouraging.
However,
The blanket of grey clouds,
Extending into the horizon,
Give off a sense of endlessness,
Such that the hopeless torrent
Of past mistakes
Will be forever present.
My life would be easy
If I could throw myself to the ground
And beg for forgiveness.
Perhaps someone should have been born instead of me,
But I cannot bring myself to say
That I am better off dead.

If I can live honestly from now on,
Even if I never amount to much,
I will have a live worth living.