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Yuka Oiwa Sep 2017
There is a threshold at the heart of a peach--
between the wooden pit and the golden flesh of fruit.
There lie a few red, raw strands that are, impossibly, both.

The Pit [Endocarp]: Birth/Death.
The most treelike part.
Bark balled into a fist.
Inside hides the genetic beginning and future of all peach trees.

The Fruit [Mesocarp]: Maturation.
                  The delicious and beguiling, round flesh that attracts those who will scatter the seed. It tastes of sweet summer months.
Grown to be devoured,
the fruit is an ephemeral sacrifice ensuring the seed will find soil
take root
and make more of its kind.

I feel as if I'm at the red, rimmed divide between the two.
There is still so much bark from my parent trees at my core, yet I'm starting to soften into my own shape.

I know there will be a feast or a fall in these coming years and both mean a survival (of sorts).
Forgive the state of this first draft. Comments and critiques welcome. I know it needs watering.
Yuka Oiwa Jul 2012
I lay the paper on my tongue
and let the ink sink
into taste buds
so that I can recall
the poems when the need is dear
and the light is gone.
I've been storing up poems in my mind for a long time. I think it started with Lewis Caroll's **Jabberwocky** which my mother taught to me. From there on I choose my favorites and recite them until my voice is raw and the memory rawer; until I can't forget. I'm storing these for worse times, although in the meantime they are still a comfort.
Yuka Oiwa Jul 2012
Ears are closed shut
    shutters drawn no
    sound comes through to glance
    upon the floor.
She speaks
     every detail tangled in nets
     upon nets of
     sentences
dumping themselves on patient ears
though patient mouth is silenced.

When the lips can come through the
     wriggling words
    The voice can not
    penetrate the closed windows
    glancing off
    and falling into the sea.

The receiver slammed down
    a slap across the face
    miles away...
    she keeps talking.
Written February 2008. I'm still trying out different ways of formatting it and would love suggestions.
Yuka Oiwa Jul 2012
The blank page
smiles, beguiling
crinkling up lines around her
beseeching eyes, behind the grin
you see her boredom for
such utter emptiness upon her.
She calls sweet nothings to
the pencil
as he stands at attention
waiting for his commands
before he crosses the field
leaving a trail of bent stalks in his
wake.
An eraser follows leaving bits
of its skins as it slithers across the trail
undoing the marks on the land.

When work is done
soldier, snake, lovely lass lie in
the grass as the moon rises above them
and the words fly up to the night sky.
Written in September of 2007. It was an imagining of what writing could be like close up and imbued with a sort of magic. The page is the lady, the soldier the pencil, the snake the eraser. I realized afterwards that there could be some biblical connotations with the man, woman, and snake but writing this at age 14 it wasn't on purpose. I do think the poem, as any poem, can mean so many things to so many people. I'd love to hear what you perceive when you read this. Thanks.
Yuka Oiwa Jul 2012
is starving
it knocks on my head
throwing thoughts of food
everywhere.
I pick them up
my mouth filling with
longing.
Hunger
hollows my stomach into
a bowl ready to be
filled,
smells become as clear
as water
filling, overflowing my senses.
Hunger leads
to food and then slowly
disappears
bit by bite
it tips its bowler hat

            *"Till tomorrow"
July 2007
Yuka Oiwa Jul 2012
We've carved a whole in this Earth
and lined it with lead,
put up our walls of wires and thoughts
till we trick ourselves into thinking that this cold depression
is the world all around.
We see the life beyond
yet our gaze is distant
our blood kin forgotten
in new ties forged from iron and gold.

We've carved a whole in this Earth
and now it's filled,
the billions huddled in the orb of metal.
Can we find balance or will we just roll away?
Fall down the hill of reality
and circle lost in infinity?
2010
Yuka Oiwa Jul 2012
I know not
the language of love
and so I stand
mute
lost on the first word:
Courage.
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