Sakura, and Other Poems for Sunny - 1. Sakura, and Other Poems for Sunny

and Other Poems for Sunny

 

 

 

Poem No. 1

A Sendoff for Sunny

 

Sonnet:

 

The way your hands would find my head to you

And want it as though never satisfied,

Thereby slaying what apprehensions do,

While caresses caught on my every side . . .

Yet age will snatch gone what you praised of me;

The moments take each part their due to them;

And the years creep on my discrepancy,

Grafting age onto what your praise did stem.

But if in nature’s plan, mistakes are made,

And this is but one of them, I have scope

To see sterility will not be laid

At Love’s feet who always finds child in hope.

Yet I will still recall those hands of yours,

Knowing where human glory keeps its stores.

 

 

Poem:

 

The first full yellow of Spring

has given itself to green

while blossoms surrender youth

for fruitful transformations

of the summer yet to be.

 

These with each other we saw

and counted them as they fell;

too soon to fall away ourselves

they watched you go from my side

while telling me what could be.

 

Now they all wait for the one

that will not in this world bear

a useful fruit of issue

but still better than the rest,

for every heart comes alive

for the length of time it lives.

 

I have squares to mark the days

and lines to tell me the hour;

until the day you come back

they will see my company

and beside me long for you.

 

I have the colors you lack

to witness what you’ve not seen

but they much too soon will fade

from wayward to a purpose

and create themselves anew.

 

What the markers cannot do

is see more than this struggle;

they can’t give me what I want

any more than bright gives dull

a rising vent to sunshine.

 

Can you love me well enough

to thus rouse a Spring in me;

big enough to flood you back;

sweet to the point of ever

being what you want of me?

 

Unlovely I may yet seem

but your love might be a sun

to hurry me to myself;

it holds me to pencil point

with leaves needing you to grow.

 

About me eyes are opening,

giving themselves to a life,

in eager hope of knowing

the light from which sprang their change

from darkness to certainty.

 

But can I love you enough

to there rouse a Spring in you;

big enough to flood me back;

sweet to the point of ever

being what I want of you?

 

 

Sonnet:

 

If I too easily ask for your love,

And you upon no grounds can confer it,

Then gone’s the promise of that vouchsafed love

By my lassitude and will to show it.

Though Spring by each drop of rain increases,

Scarcely can its value be seen in here,

Where this rendered fold of want re-creases

Old forms to fit new desires most dear.

But I want your arms to round me descend

And hold me like none the other mattered,

Where yet together we the Spring can spend

If love between us the ice has shattered.

For the next time I have you to hold me,

You’ll be surprised how well held back you’ll be!

 

 

 

Poem No. 2

 

Adrift with sleep between your arms

I dream of that love to wear like pride,

floating beneath your countenance strong,

between your arms and evening’s side.

 

Some wear their love like a passion

and too soon find it all worn away,

then in its loss, make an obsession

that the morning never finds the day.

 

Fools feel it something to command,

to deem order to blind confusion,

then grow to shaking their vacant hand,

pleading for its shameful retention.

 

But I twix your arm and dark night,

made drowsy by your firm correction,

can see myself in your loving sight,

adrift your love’s sweet conviction.

 

 

 

Poem No. 3

 

Sonnet:

 

What monument to erect in your face

That might outlive my wont of deserving;

To find in a ream of paper the space

To take this mute want beyond lip-serving.

Love me like Death will love me tomorrow,

Like that act of living could deliver

My soul from your hands into her sorrow,

Boxlike to be her eternal lover.

But who in my hereafter may I move

To make this day alive in every eye

Which might borrow my view of you to prove

That yearning fresh can find form more than sigh.

I love you, Sunny, and will not

live an afterlife of shame

For never having writ the word

next to your belovèd name.

 

 

 

Poem No. 4

 

What dictionary could tell it to you,

like all the words therein kept,

could sigh what you gave me

in the days we have just left.

 

So put Mister Webster away,

his legacy won’t breathe account,

with passion or fire sufficient,

to spirit how much you are loved.

 

If I were born without a soul,

and could not live long to devise me one,

then I’ll count the days and love I’ve got

enough to have lived . . .

 

if not forever . . .

at least a day enough.

 

A Thank You for Sunny

 

 

 

Poem No. 5

 

With boneless fingers, reach they yet beyond the grave

for that undecayed passion, never reached by what they say,

but whose smolder still lingers, grasping ever from night to day –

sweet stanching compassion, take me, as yet in death they lay.

 

Though all-conquered were, the flesh of their belovèds,

the same motives to them then, to longing Night’s encover,

where cotton or linen stir, but where contentment might hover,

moves the throb of my pen, and makes me of it its lover.

 

How can they yet live, though melted away are they;

what once beat them out a life, long past those summer days seen,

for they words this longing give, as Beauty consumed them not clean,

leaving thoughts to suffice, as the fuel for Ages between.

 

In the wont of it, shall I live to discover,

and I know it very true, but accept Death sneaks on me,

though alive I am and fit, always looking for it to see –

content to burn me through, that pyre will be the life of me.

 

 

 

Poem No. 6

 

How shall I live this love to prove

when by these tepid degrees,

some passionless toddler’s move,

one word to another but falls to these.

How shall I live my love in fact

when by timid themes I try

an inspired task, with insipid act,

as my vigor-less tune can only sigh.

How shall I live this love to prove.

 

 

Poem No. 7

 

Sonnet:

 

Crouching, creeping, old; rubbing plans together they

Brim with toothless mouths and screeching most odious.

They pass round hate from one till it torrents convey

And but whets benediction with blood-red malice.

Too cruel are you, how like to they can be

When one moment takes your blessing away

And the wide world forgets its memory

Of how little life we have used today.

Yet for the hags, one eye goes round from which they spy

All the horror they could only scheme to thus make,

And envy your only too invidious eye

Watching the love-hacking furor your spirits take.

But their hate is just their job

and Fateful benefice ‘tis,

When likened to the careless hate

your anger is.

 

 

Poem No. 8

 

Lost in thoughts of your caress

The afternoon creeps away

Seconds, the hours seem less

Till the evening hours cleanse the day

Of its purposeful nonsense

And I can find myself again

Lost in your caress.

 

 

Poem No. 9

 

Sonnet:

 

And so, how could I love you anymore?

If all the stars did join in for effect,

How could they add to my affections’ score . . . ?

This some lovers say to their loves direct.

From up ahead I see, from stile to stile goes,

She through the lonely world moving content

To watch one hand caress the head it knows,

But glides near to hear how much of it’s meant.

So I dull upon the floor wonder which,

The sun in my eye or the moon in sight,

Gives me the best estimable comfort rich –

A cold-glowing rock or my love burning bright.

But each evening finds me not as before;

She finds I’ve found I love you all the more.

 

 

Poem:

 

Whisper words of love to me

That I know I am alive

Hold the hand of me

That I might the night survive.

 

For how shall the morning

Makes amends if not so

I discover a deeper something growing

From the love you swear I know.

 

Whisper words of death to me

Of how they conquer all they know

And how by your love I’ll see

For us, it will not be so.

 

 

 

Poem No. 10

 

単語かいしたで,

まわがい いつしょうに,

のずむはなしたいが,

愛していますそ。

 

In borrowed words,

Mistakes included,

What I want to say is

I love you so.

 

 

Poem No. 11

 

When your eyes cast out at me,

I sometimes wish through them I could see.

 

 

 

Poem No. 12

 

Prelude:

 

As I labor on this freak of love,

in green and yellow

and North African blue

torture tables

wearing tortuous ties

all my work was in

but the service of vain

that found but smiles

and succumb to my pain

but I self-pity

forms a child half conceived

to make a better humor

out of my affairs

simply by adding

Czech hanging glass

off of all my ideas

making black and blue

the work I offered

while Czech glass

hangs off all my love.

 

Poem:

 

But like a flower in the bud,

Your opportunities wait for me

Where spring is ever just in seed,

When your embraces rain down on me.

 

Though work and change swings and burns

From contempt to love, to love of hate,

The dial of my love never turns

That it doesn’t tell the position of my fate.

 

Like want itself, I think of you,

At that last kiss you gave,

And I long such lengths for you

That never I’ll be the same

 

Like a flower in the bud

My day of returns awaits

When no other sun instead

Will hold my time as waste.

 

 

Postlude:

 

Red cut glass

player pianos

black like wood

furniture dropping out

that plopping down

marble pretense

pushing wood’s intent

of an honest life

all that might

make their aim

the intent of my despair

but I have knowledge

like a secret in me burning

that I can pass without a care

all that goes with a silly age,

to the future give my longing

when to your arms I will care

to have no other knowledge

than the touch of your love burning.

 

 

 

Poem No. 13

 

Love’s answer from The Passionate Pilgrim No. 20:

The Passionate Shepherd to His Belovèd Boy Alexis

 

Live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields,

And all the craggy mountain yields.

 

There will we sit upon the rocks,

And see the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers, by whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

 

There will I make thee a bed of roses,

With a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

 

A belt of straw with ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs;

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

—Christopher Marlowe

 

Sunny,

 

With these borrowed words have I tried

To grab and bring you by my side.

Tonight the beginning might begin

If these and I your heart can win.

 

 

 

Poem No. 14

 

Sonnet:

 

Reach deep in me and take my heart in hand –

Slip around me as in our nascent form

When mere membrane and bone couldn’t demand

Us to be two beats apart like the norm.

If through the wilds of my rug tonight,

You find me by soothing troubles away,

Watch what you’ve retrieved in me spread delight

As in an ear, breath-like, the L-word say.

Touch the husk knowing full well what I am –

Only matter in decay whose green is gone,

But desire moves as only virgin springs dam,

That near you might run barefoot through the dawn.

Say you love me more than timely

form could ever likely do;

Say forever’s but a sapling

when pared to the love of you.

 

 

 

Poem No. 15

 

Haiku Stanza:

 

In the blackest bowl

Sits the orangest kinmokusei,

Fragrancing our love.

 

 

 

Poem No. 16

An Apology

 

Sonnet:

 

If I were a real poet, I’d tilt the skies

with me as I set motion to this act,

writing boldly black the breadth and size

of my times seemingly, but of me in fact.

Yet, what am I but a manly Harpy,

screeching through one love, ripping another;

the feeding madness feigning therapy,

with no peace for me, comfort for the other.

In my dreams I used to fly, I can swear,

but such an ideal has fallen in kind

and smolders hatefully before me there

when I see your eyes watching from behind.

And yet, just say you love me like before,

And on that breeze, watch man and poet soar.

 

 

Poem:

 

She said, “Do you think love is forever . . . ?”

I thought that’s a question to tell my age;

if yes, a boy it proves me; if no,

how much have I paid to become a man.

 

“If two people are in love,” she said then,

“the one who plays the deeper role in love

will always be the loser; strength’s not enough

to keep what words alone used to hold.”

 

She asked me whether I was man or boy;

if my sky were cast with anxious gloom.

I told her, “As long as youth will be young,

and I getting old, so love urbane will be eternal.”

This I believe, this I say to you.

 

 

Sonnet:

 

The more I try to make us one, the more

My heavy-handed mixtures fails to work,

But makes a mire to estrange our score

While touch cuts, and wider the rifts assert.

The kinmokusei have fallen from the tree

And backwardly like stars to the dark earth

Through the air sightlessly now tumble free –

Liberty from the branch; prisoner by birth.

But take my hand and hold it near your heart,

Don’t push me out of you to careless night;

Make me substantial from this tainted start

So that a phoenix from the mud takes flight.

Say you love me, for I know it’s yet so;

Let the truth rise, and all its glory show.

 

 

 

Poem No. 17

 

Time fly on silky silence

till my sorrow of today

be folded in your arms tomorrow

and there we’ll a portrait paint

of a love so true that gold

blushes aluminum cheap before it

 

 

 

Poem No. 18

A Tardy Little Valentine for Sunny

 

Sonnet:

 

In the still time of the coming morning

The gray sky reflects your still sleeping face

And I wonder what token love-shorning

Could fair this day enough to match that grace.

A bushel of camellias, strongly red;

Or a bunch of plum blossoms plucked for you;

Or some shy Adonis poking his head

Blondly away from lovesick Love’s kissing due.

But could bold color or my dull fustian

Hold as my hands can in untroubled clime,

Waiting for day to break the frustration

And guide the world to love a better time?

For then I’ll see the narcissic daffodils turn

To envy your soul, and there, true beauty learn.

 

 

 

Poem No. 19

Hymenaios,

or The Marriage of the God of Marriage

 

Prelude

 

Sonnet:

 

Outside, winter plays one last trick on spring,

As through the room of your brain, a fever

Makes your perspiring head its plaything,

While I hold you to play heat’s deceiver.

How to say I love you if not like this –

No knife box could sharpen my demeanor

More than pressing lips on your brow to kiss,

And pull back with intent all the keener.

So rest, and when morning finds you again,

It will see me still holding on, and true –

The metaphysical reasons found when

The tale I’ve woven finds its end in you.

So drift in sleep and open the portal

To see how love makes us more than mortal.

 

 

[The link to the complete poem may be found here.]

https://gayauthors.org/story/ac-benus/hymenaios-or-the-marriage-of-the-god-of-marriage/

 

 

Postlude

 

Epithalamion

 

Sonnet:

 

But how to bring this to an open end,

To tame my emotions and reason’s fight

With all the desire I must defend,

Yet be here holding you, my love, in sight.

Awake and begin our vernal weaving,

For I can barely hold you anymore

Without needing kisses for the thieving –

Awake, for what a day we have in store.

Break the tranquil cycle, come to the point

Where waits primordiality seminal

To bear down and on each of us anoint

A love more natural than chemical.

For if ever heart loved heart and endures,

Marry me and it will always be yours.

 

 

 

Poem No. 20

A Postcard for Sunny

 

Sonnet:

 

When I come to write how much I love you,

What words implore, actions must be struck,

But over the miles, I still peruse

The fleeting image of my grinning Puck.

I love you, Sunny. Let the world hear it

And never have to guess about its source;

I’ll say it till every age believes it,

Shaking incredulous heads at its force.

Let vicious fate and dispatient man try

To work between the concrete bond we’ve mixed;

But let those who know and understand, sigh

To think the past had their love so well fixed.

Know no space can division condescend;

No act of God nor man can our love upend.

 

 

 

Poem No. 21

 

When those cold days come,

the ones yet to be,

I’ll keep myself warm in the place

you’ve touched most sincerely.

 

 

 

Poem No. 22

To Sunny

after the departure of Selina Goh

 

Cursed or blessed

What things I count or don’t

If they ask

I’d tell them I’d die.

I’ll not deny

Never ever again

How much I love you.

If they asked

I’d say I’ve lived enough

If not for a single anointment.

Thinking how much you love me

I know I’ve lived long enough.

 

 

 

Poem No. 23

A Present Note

 

Open up my love,

and unlike a Russian box you’ll see

it needs a bigger

space to fit it in comfortably.

 

Not like the descending requirements,

of a cube tucked down into another,

what works in me needs more than the requirements

of good ideas pruned by restless others.

 

Unwrap my love,

and with your own eyes look and see

it’s grown the bigger

and won’t fit more comfortably.

 

 

 

Poem No. 24

 

Prelude:

 

All through dinner, your arms were around me

While bright, funny people by example

Invited me join, but could not see

Age was not the gap, though clues were ample.

I’m not one of today’s be-grungèd youth

With sloppy attire and thin gold earrings

Who wear their passions pinned in fashion proof

That they and their day have different stirrings.

The restaurant was busy; they wondered why

I seemed to grudge them company at all

Weakly trouncing the world’s ways while I’d sigh

To feel your strength over me come and fall.

For I only know I love you; that in act

Our love long past fashion will ever live in fact.

 

 

Poem:

 

Desiring more than passion,

Wanting you will never be routine;

Foe of contraction,

It will bring honesty to what I mean.

 

How unlike shallow-but-intense

Displays of slipped reason,

Unwilling to drop their pretense,

Though youth had long changed its season,

 

The way the high tribute goes

Myopic vision predicts

That what hangs on knows,

It’s best by the grace of what picks.

 

So those transitory ways

Have blundered mode onto mode

Giving silly days

Some ludicrous ways to be bold.

 

Habitual though they e’er,

They don’t know their counterparts,

Littered here and there,

Chronicled in the human heart.

 

But I’ll keep track above

With means stocked from within,

Knowing the truth is love

Others twist, just where it begins.

 

 

Postlude:

 

The world keeps making the same old mistake;

For in a quiet thought of reflection,

I see through your fingers the paths they’ll take,

Never knowing they fear from projection.

But hold me close, away from the darkness,

And the errors of the day are broken

By the sweet force your thoughts can now me kiss

In a transcript no mimic thinks spoken.

So when “Do you love me?” falls from my lips,

The minute out I want to retract it

Least a faint dilemma between us slips

Via the course of a hasty habit.

But if here I can feel you love me, then don’t say,

For I don’t want to be loved any other way.

 

 

 

Poem No. 25

 

Sonnet:

 

Less than art, I vow to raise its better

Out of the fodder that I’ve said before,

But every try sits with me no better,

Ruminating the same cud as before.

I need to love you better than this,

Show not what I am, but my potential;

Reveal how much of you yearnings insist

I reach beyond death’s bass role essential.

So, less than art, I fear ability

That could make a passed loved long inspire

Courage built from human fragility

That makes the dull ground repeat my desire.

But try as I might, there won’t be enough

Matter in art to match your love enough.

 

 

 

Poem No. 26

 

Obon

 

Prelude

 

Sonnet:

 

All too short this sunless summer grows now

That its end taunts with a chiller view

Of the many ways my love failed, and how

I sputter sparks where a blaze is due.

For when I think how well has been your love,

And your never ceasing benevolence,

What dark shame overcomes me like a glove

Decrying guilt no inner evidence.

But how to gain the liberty I seek,

Away from just good intentions, and then –

Be bright? Though my flesh is only too weak,

You action my soul, and through it my pen.

So then like the sputtering punk inspires,

I’ll flower uprising skies with fires.

 

 

Poem:

 

The body always wants,

But what it can’t remember.

Just that it wants it knows,

In nothing other satisfied.

 

I thought I saw the dancers dance

The summer welcome for those gone,

But slowly their hands came to rest,

Their faces shining back the night’s fire.

 

They didn’t wonder why

The deed come back to light,

They only knew they knew

Heart will return to heart.

 

But I trapped in sunless

Wander over the same things;

One never happy, one never due

Anywhere or by anyone.

 

Again I say I’m sorry,

Again I say I love,

But if you can forgive,

In me my fate is doomed.

 

 

Postlude

 

Sonnet:

 

How must thought retain the time it needs

To force merit into fruition? –

Unfettered by hate and petty deeds,

Release worth from half-thought cognition?

From my bed I watch the season’s pallor

Outside my window like a globe of gray,

And curse my intellect’s lack of valor

Lying plagued with little hope to inveigh.

For colder times may yet come to defeat

The higher purpose that seeks renown,

But which, like autumns make summers retreat,

May grant me a time I won’t let you down.

Come my love, caress a soul into me;

Complete what parts have most longed to be free.

 

 

Poem No. 27

 

Sonnet:

 

I’m unsure just what it is I’m doing,

Rushing in full force to greet disaster,

Shunning away from my action’s pursuing

To catch catastrophe all the faster.

Sunny, I call for only you to come,

Aid me in the exorcism of youth,

Tell me what my deeds imply, what’s begun

Will lose for me my only piece of truth.

But no longer do I want to suppose

The falling blows are better now than later,

Up around deceit away it all goes,

So I can be what your faith knows greater.

Honesty, calm and settled in your plan,

Grab me still as only love’s granted can.

 

 

Poem No. 28

 

Tanka:

 

The morning rush out,

The day’s readiness put on;

With we at the door

I watch him balm his lips first,

Foretasting that sweet orange kiss!

 

 

Poem No. 29

 

How like a time when all was fresh,

When the air turned secrets tumbling

In the breeze of promise that

“I will never die” whispered!

 

How like these things were the time

Between my youth and manhood

When I let the wrong go past

Before coming to the darker edge.

 

How like the kind of sleep I’m in,

Where none stays inspired in me,

Wandering where it thinks is good,

Resting in whom it can find.

 

All of these are true, and what’s more,

I know it’s not your forgiveness

I have the right to ask of you;

Given it, you already have.

 

The absolution well beyond

The wanting of it ruins me now,

And knowing if I simply ask,

You’ll comfort me in your arms.

 

But it’s I who have to forgive,

With never-failing memory

Of the smelly way I have gone,

All the time saying I loved you.

 

 

 

Poem No. 30

 

Every happy moment spent with you will

Be double-paid in sorrows to be.

Every gentle brush of your hand shall spill

A tear you’ll marvel over when you see.

 

 

 

Poem No. 31

 

Tanka:

 

In a moment’s thought,

Standing at the closet door,

That great love of his

Stretches me out as I slip

His shirt and fragrance on me.

 

 

Poem No. 32

 

今の愛,

今の愛 の見込み,

今のところは

それだけあげられる。

 

Only this love –

Only the prospects of this love –

And of this time

Is what I can offer to you.

 

 

Poem No. 33

 

Tanka:

 

Now, this time of year,

The sun at four o’clock falls

On the black slate frame

Where your arms are around me;

Warming itself on our love.

 

 

 

Poem No. 34

 

Sonnet:

 

Why tease we who the other loves the more,

When comparison only draws me nearer –

Around your heart – clearing off the score,

And bringing me to your soul still dearer.

Hold my hand, and let me show you something.

Bring it to the light, and there will we see,

They look so much alike – like they could sing

Of the other they hold – of the you and me.

Even if seen out in the public’s mind,

When they, the ones who’d never know, deduce

Two equals holding on, they’re still unkind

To love where comparison is no use.

That in, we see so much in the other;

Out, I’ll never hide more in sham’s cover.

 

 

Poem No. 35

 

Lyrics:

 

To come to this again, with words unbelieved;

which find no solace in your thought, but in

this ink that imbues me with lines believed,

to be the solitary shadow of your love again.

 

To come to this again; words unbelieved,

finding no solace in your thought, but in

the way the ink flows there softly pretends

the shadows of your love in me again.

 

What does it know that I do not? What words,

what knowing can one thought of you summon,

if not to be, if not love in words,

what the whole of love in me determines.

 

Know then apart we still can muster

the very thought of life in the other.

 

So there, and here follow the flow of you,

like the shallow depths I can only swim

so that I can recall the departed you,

and you do the same of me where distance seems to win.

 

 

Poem No. 36

 

Sonnet:

 

When the lonely hours of the night come

To afflict the poverty of your loss,

I lie awake, empty headed and dumb,

To suffer, destitute, what fate can toss.

But near your heart I long to lie my head,

To feel beneath me the pulse that gives out

A life to more than sleepy limbs in bed,

But also soul to this, and soothing to doubt.

So, isolated I wait the time now,

Counting the hard grievances of you gone;

Still, in and in, I have love anyhow

To pine under me to the light of dawn.

And when you beat in me again, I’ll know

Deep within, my wealth of gain shall yet grow!

 

 

Poem No. 37

 

Sonnet:

 

How can my sight look but not sometimes see

How your touch loves me, but me not alone –

Why when you hold, do I forget to be

The sad boy that comfort can bemoan.

For those who have ever pondered on me,

And the numberless digits I show them,

They’ll never find an answer where they see

My nervous face dart and writhe around ‘em.

So when you tell me what you see of me

Is handsome, I don’t care to have it said –

For a face is brief, but living beauty

Is incarnate though all that praise be dead.

Head on your arm, for me that is the all –

Here, our touch, our love; all questions enthrall.

 

 

Poem No. 38

 

Tanka:

 

In a crowded train;

Thirty minutes yet from you,

And none of them see –

Through their empty-hearted ways –

Just the way you will be kissed.

 

 

 

Poem No. 39

 

Sonnet:

 

That I will always be a fool to time –

Though in hours, days or needs it’s unkind –

I know a greater drudge were I to rhyme

A word to what loves only when love’s not blind.

So, I’ll never be fool enough to hide

My love for you in feminine pronoun,

Or this union taken, or leave you denied,

To write a lie that belies all renown.

I love you Sunny. Let no man smother

A vow they see from one to another

When a sage preached to us as his brother,

‘What merit have you, lest you love each other?’

For no fools are we; not to time, nor want,

But open-eyed equals to time’s affront.

 

 

Poem No. 40

 

Sonnet:

 

If I take up pen again and write,

After all these soulless attempts have failed,

What merit can I expect to invite

Except that my love by ink is assailed.

We know that love and hope should equals be,

And your supply of brightness is stronger –

Deficient in the latter you see me,

But that's because I'm strong in the former.

But step-by-step, and word-by-word I try,

To cause belief in me to rise to you,

And long the day to come that when I try,

I'll master hope enough that time will love you too.

I can speak and watch my words fall to shade,

But the ink my love stains will never fade.

 

 

Poem No. 41

 

Sonnet:

 

Some hope for movement in the rates they snatch,

Eyeing steadily the broken line rise,

While others fear their money won't be a match

For what their greedy hearts can realize.

But none of them know just how rich I am.

None of those spies of supply and demand,

Know that shallow hope a great love can fan

Or how a kindled flame can a blast withstand.

Let them grub for pennies. I have what I need.

One look around: you are there –

He who lives without love is a fool indeed,

If to try is to gain their true fair share.

The only line I need to watch is there,

If your eyes smile on me, all is fair.

 

 

 

Poem No. 42

 

Tanka:

 

Stands the old tree still –

Like people we used to know –

Thus Takasago’s

Pine and the so long ago

Become friends who seem no more.

 

 

Note:

One of the major dramas of Noh, Zeami's play Takasago deals with a pair of deities, who in disguise, visit the physical incarnation of one of them, a pine tree in Takasago. There they find an old man tenderly maintaining the tree and learn how much it means to him. The story follows that this tree was separated from his lover, and that his partner pine tree was planted far away. Eventually, the gods reveal their true identities and openly rejoice that mankind can still glory in the true heart of ‘poetry,’ that is, in the true nature that the beauty of the universe is its central generative concept – love. From April to September 1995, Sunny and I were separated by an ocean, and thus my feelings.

 

 

Poem No. 43

 

Sonnet:

 

What misery supplies is often met

Not by cure, and much less by solution,

But it's by injury our pains get wet –

With tearful demand, comes absolution.

Like a stroll on the beach I see them come;

One care pushing the incoming beneath,

By the weak undertow, the strong grow numb,

And bathe the tides in shallow points of grief.

Yet the heart returns to a hunger bold,

And old woes sometimes new wail decries

Not letting new grief luxury in old

The way hope often better-sense denies.

But what sorrow from us will sometimes take,

Nothing but it can a complete love make.

 

Note:

Though it turned into a very un-scenic poem, the image of the tides washing in over the tops of retreating ones inspired this Sonnet. The notion itself was inspired by Shakespeare’s W. H. Sonnets No. 60: “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore . . . . Each changing place with that which goes before.” The date given to this poem, August 9th, 1995, is that of the main body of the sketch. I have completed it with a loose ‘Sunny’ quatrain (the 3rd) written at the end of 1993. The following poem, No. 44 below, was part of the original Sonnet sketch from 1993.

 

 

Poem No. 44

 

Two parts seem to be at fight within me,

Hope/no-hope: love and spiteful apathy.

 

Meaningless seems all the effort I see

Wasted in pursuits that bring in no gain;

While pretense makes the work futility

And above it all, I thump my tired brain . . .

 

Beach –

Water: tides erase the small imprint I've made.

One wave pushing under the might of the next,

Weakens the strong by the counter-power of the weak.

 

Supply and demand –

The need always seeks the cure, and of one,

A solution often injures far more than it shores up.

 

 

 

Poem No. 45

 

Prelude

 

I hope to bless the Fate that once blessed us

With a word deemed proper fitting’s tell,

To look straight in the eyes that first saw us,

And like to the Fortunes say, you matched well.

It seems my life’s on hold while I wait now,

While the hands walk around the slow hours,

Lengthening days to months, not showing how

Distillation ennobles heart-cowers.

I like them must pass around a shared eye

And see others’ love under suffering,

For like them provide a voice with which to sigh

Other, better lives than just buffering.

But my turn will come, and we will be heard;

What They gave will one day be blessed with our word.

 

 

Poem:

 

Sakura

 

Why so long a silence

from both our pair of lips

why so hot a loneliness

when neither a word has writ.

 

 

Poem No. 46

 

Do I sleep or wake when I reach out –

When my arm goes out to your leg,

Or goes to bring me against

Your sleeping form, and into

Your arms that so often open

To let the wayfaring me in;

Do I wake or do I sleep when I do these –

Knowing you are not there,

But, knowing also,

Soon, you will be again.

 

 

Poem No. 47

 

Why so long a quiet?

As if others will be led

Into believing I care not at all;

Believe that silence bespeaks

More than all the terms

Promised, and yet,

Promised for the times

We won't have power to see.

 

 

Poem No. 48

 

“Here,” she said to me,

A tiny glint of a smile

Peeping forth from her

All so proper composure.

“Take this and know.

Take this and I assure –

You will know

What the words of all

Those long-gone Bards

Strove to bring to life

In the death of paper, and,

The resurrection of the eyes that read.”

“Take,” she said, “and love

Will finally be made

More than a word

You've read once or twice.”

A tiny smile glinted,

As her composure melted,

Into a little sigh,

And a little show,

Of love.

 

 

 

Poem No. 49

Two Fragments of an Idea

 

I’m not the same as I was when we met,

and maybe now I’m able to repay

the red and black flow of investments’ net

that for your patience was met.

 

-------

 

I’m not the same as I was when we met,

but proof is not put into word likely

to move a man who knows what he can get

from the investment of patience given not slightly.

 

 

Poem No. 50

 

Tanka:

 

In a simple room,

With me just looking at him,

The rest’s a whirlwind –

He at center in himself,

I, all awhirl without him.

 

 

Poem No. 51

 

The view written from within,

the slow seeing, the painful searching

for the world without you.

 

 

 

Poem No. 52

 

Tanka:

 

I'm wearing his shirt,

And though the day goes badly

– Tough little I feel –

The greatness of him in me

Comes like love's breath with his scent.

 

 

Poem No. 53

 

Sonnet:

 

Why to this return after so long has passed,

And how do days to longer time extend

When we two seem to stand against the cast –

Two stones like one in a mighty current’s bend.

I find the word love again trailing in ink

Behind the sweet thought of you in its tag,

The melancholy of how I fail to think

Worthy actions ever behind yours lag.

Then to this I turn again for some relief,

For shame never can stay a restless quill

When perfect charms still goad a constant guilt

That my love, yours its equal never will.

Though lovers’ rise can fall in quick season,

Safe seems your love from slow time’s dull treason.

 

 

 

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