Undone

June twenty fifth, eleven pm
Rue St. Florentin
I will grin and close your eyes
the wind sweeping down my back.

On the dim-lit Avenue d'Iéna
save the few whizzing cars
no one but I will recognize
the moving shadow on your neck.

*

Fancies always larger than life
speckless and refined.
Desire, a most unfaithful whim,
is the scavenger in the weakened mind.

I'll keep waltzing with your spectre
you go back to sailing alone.
The real is not the real feat.

Open your eyes, ring the curtain down
deny me the feel of your meat.




November, 2008

Quasi-

You were sitting before me on a table
jolly and bright like always
and telling me what I meant for you
(how relieved I was)
until
something cracked,
you stopped talking and let die
the five seconds old word
in the arms of that uneasy look
you shot into my face
the wrinkles over your eye-brows
your stiff unpursed lips
and it all got bleary and churned
(your magenta lip gloss)
just as I was waking up
to a lightning-beaten morning.

Unburdening

It was the sooty half of one friday
in a room full of Daisy Buchanans
clad in their lavish guise
on a par with those pinup girls
sporting their frilly frocks
and sardonic smiles.
At the dawn of a curious feat,
in the middle of that ego jungle
I could feel the air thick with sequins
and fragrant human meat.

I saw her at the corner of the hall
dancing in her Dionysian ways.
I said:
Succumb to me, unwind your inhibitions,
take me to the dungeons of your soul.
But I cannot see the pores of your face.
Are you hiding yourself in defense?
Is it the makeup you wear
or the star-studded Venetian mask
of piety, chastity or innocence?

Will you keep telling me your candid lies,
shower me with tailored gestures
and whet my appetite for more of your flesh?
Now may I strangle your slender neck, miss?
Or shall I die with your sultry truth
revealed to me on a sooty night like this?

Les touchers oublieux

Les limailles d'or gonflent sur la mer,
et bougent avec la brise qui frôle la surface
en disant une chanson douce-amère.
Le soleil, lui aussi, remplit ton absence:
Sa chaleur frotte ma peau, tient mes bras.

La couleur du silence est cendrée.
Il tue les étincelles de l'âme, débilite mon corps.
Mais maintenant la mer m'accompagne.
Ses vagues frappent le quai, mouillent mes pieds,
et la brise, en me serrant, siffle encore.

Because She Never Loved Him

The girl with a slim frame
and denim shorts rolled up to her thighs
and a white tank top
was there on the quay at noon
standing by the river.
She slightly leaned her torso to the side,
softly rose upon her left foot,
puckered her lips cockily
and cast her eyes to the car
dwindling across the west bank.
Her hip in one hand,
and a cigarette in the other,
she narrowed her gaze,
crushed the butt under her sandal,
released the smoke through her lips
and walked away.

4 Elements In Nature Discovered by a Solitary Traveler

Down below the wind-whipped sky,
rafting inside the seething waters
between thumping valleys.

The Return

I hold my breath and clench my fist,
then I lift the iron bars of my pride.
A brazen gesture.
My heart is pounding
with a quick gush of wavering emotion.
I quit saving my own hide
as my coquettish lips go ajar
and release the long-shackled words.
I see you have not changed, my love.
I remember this ice-jammed soul
and the cyclical life of a diligent capitalist.
Twenty three minutes of small talk
and then your voice will be wafting
through the ashen corridors of my mind,
lukewarm and relaxed.
And I will take me to a brief walk
back in those days of two thousand and seven.

Only forgetting, they say, can treat
the wounds received in a losing battle.
But oblivion cannot undo the fact of loss,
hence oblivion is only a part of my defeat.

But shall I forget you, my love
when icicles will hang down the roofs
and testify dripping Time?
They will remind me of your frosty soul
and perhaps, they will numb mine too.

Oh tender waiting, oh my only love,
Time will be wearing out,
my love will be dying in its arms
and my last breath will blow out your name.
A brooding sea will damp my feet in the shore
but I,
I will not fear the coming of the tide now.

Heartbreak

Hazel leaves curl as they fall
and pile up against the sidewalk.
Abandoned walnut shells too
lie at the bottom of my feet.
I bounce to flatten them all
lest they be caught in the wind.
What a merrily crackling sound!

One day after a heavy shower
I was stepping on the walnut shells
for I loved so dearly
the merrily crackling sound.
And with the rain, all the snails of the hood
had sprung up above ground.

Crack, crack! I stepped on another shell!
Instantly I knew, it wasn't a walnut now.
Crack, crack!
My heart broke and began to wail
for my foot had just murdered a snail.

Cancer Series

Cancer in the House

(I)

The wind blew its way through in a fervent rush
and stirred up the marred papers on the chair.
The frail curtains could hardly resist
and the hinges gave in a little creak.
Dirty forks jingled in fear.
Milk bottles fell
and poured out their remaining white.
Something rough was in the air.

Up until then, I thought time was fluid
and I would know nothing of lull.
Now I was breathing out of life
and time halted its flow.

I held my body stiff and my gaze lowered.
Then I flushed away water and blood.
My thighs were in red,
my eyes a glistening wet
as I stood still on the bathroom sill
and feigned reluctance to smell death.

Cancer in the Wild


(I)


Earth smells of dewy timber
and of freshly trimmed grass.
The pink gown drapes down the weeping cherry
on a slowly passing afternoon in May.

I healed my wounds under the weeping cherry,
wiped the dew off my face.
"Be not ungrateful to heavens" mum used to say.
Gray clouds are home to rain.
The cherry needs it, I need it too.

Hope is nested in tomorrow.
And tomorrow will be budding again.
The dew kisses the timber,
weeping cherry wears the gown.
The grass grows, tilting in the wind.
Rain comes with dawn.

by David LaChapelle

HOURS

How could I not feel you breathe,
or count the flutter of your eyelashes
when your heart beats a slower pace than mine
beneath my shivering hand?

The wistful depth in your eyes
is telling me your virgin story
and I am lying here by your side
dreaming my jaded dream
that you be there for good
to soothe my ferocious waters
and dodge the unyielding course,
the arrogant manners of Time.

*

Dreams belong to yesterday
and seldom come to the fore.
Now I'm here by myself
with the unabated waters of my heart.
Your smell, long clouding your loss,
is hovering around no more.

While you -
are not,
I’m waiting on this trodden out porch,
rolling hours under my feet
as the clock tower across the yard
casually strikes midnight
singing for the death of the waning day
and for the dawn of just another.