Step into the train
as cherry blossoms kiss you
a fragrant goodbye.

On this day
we are pierced
by the screams
of a new way
to undulate
across
the river
of life.

I am bound to you as you are bound to me.
Have we become what should never be?
Trapped in your heart as your are trapped in mine,
it goes on and on - the passage of time.

Close the door behind you and count to ten.
Think of me and open it again.
I am chained to you as you are chained to me.
Is this the way how everything should be?

You are caught in this jail of which
I have built for one such as you;
spiked handcuffs made of solid lines,
iron bars wrought with poetry.

You shall never elude me as
you are caught in this jail of which
that binds you to a sheet of white
with only barbwire, words, and prose.

Trapped at the crossroads
We are caught in the heat haze
bound to each other

Bent over the stream
of laundrywomen drench
words that flitter to and fro,
rinsing and revising spoken prose
across whispered conversations

Fading away into the piercing gaze
of an endless summer’s haze
the laundrywomen have mastered
the art of washing the soul with only water
and well-meant poems as soap
as if it were the cloth in their hands

Grandmother,

           Do not feed me with the scent of tomorrow - it has a certain pungency that I cannot stand. After all, I am still full with the taste of this bitter residue lurching in my stomach left by memory.

Trees are in love with humanity.

they reach out to kiss our heads
with the tips of their browning leaves
while we like a vengeful lover
first kiss back with words
and then cut them down with blades

but someday we too will be cut
from life
and our concrete jungles
will fade into dust

only stumps remain.

A burst of color,
it is the flower of fire
painted in such gold
that scatters across the seas
leaving memories of sparks.

In a cold universe of stars,
I am just one of them, ever bright
However, I am born to lose my light
and crash through the dome of somber skies
darkened by the star's perennial lie:
*they have already gone silent.

I find myself
getting lost
within the concrete
that is cold and cold
resigned to white walls
while the worth of my words
are measured
in glass flasks
there is no soul here after all  
and I will soon grow
used to the blank stares
of mirrors
the hardness
of science

this time memories
of the sky
will not save me at all
from such a fate

In the garden I knelt as a young boy,
with dirt-caked nails that dug deep in the soil.
Searching for neither coins nor toys
that would take away my childish coils.
Instead I search for the worms and birds
Who whispered to me secrets of their tiny world:
that if you listened closely to the hum of the earth,
you would learn to fly across the universe.
Now I kneel before the ground once more,
grasping for the soil until my fingers are sore.
Even if I sit still and watch the flying birds,
I still cannot hear the hums nor the chirps.
            As I grow more but my days grow less,
            I cease to hear the whispers of innocence.