finding Mabel
I bet you couldn't find her above the clouds
A girl whose attire would make you proud
So adventurous to life
Beyond the sea shores' golden blue
Her heart shows through
Catch her if you can
Turn envy into desire
The beauty you got
Will light her fire
breakfast at tiffany's
You say you wanted no more coffee
But how would I know
How much more you could take?
Darling, this is just like having Breakfast at Tiffany's
Sparkling diamond rings, can we get something for under ten?
I would just like to kiss you, hope that's for free
Rich life fantasies and bad girls' dreams
Prudence keeps you home at night
Don't take the drama out of it
Let's have Breakfast at Tiffany's
Because there's just one place to go
When you're in love and you don't want to show
holding on
Yes, the times they have changed
And the waters have grown around us
I just didn't think the waves would turn against us
When I jumped out of that bus
Was has gone wrong since the bright sunny days in cold January?
What has caught you up and made you grow weary?
Is it the colour of the sea, the sunlit blue
That makes me still hold on to you?
i would
I want you to belong to me
I don't think there's something wrong with me
I just know that I would run to you
Because I know that I belong to you
I would go on hour long road trips for you
I would dive in the deepest waters for you
I'd do all I need to make you see
Darling, you belong with me
Those Twelve
A piece of May slanting its way,
falling on the piano’s worn-out wood,
a peace cradling May had this to say:
the 79 year old body that you wore
writhing and struggling two months before
on a hospital bed some twenty blocks away,
succumbing to delirium -
that's all the doctors could see...
They saw and examined the x-ray;
they saw twelve tumors in the brain
and alleviated the body's pain.
They didn't see the spirit's ecstatic storm
breaking through, blazing through
the confused and delirious human form...
The pianist was giving way
to twelve angels bearing you away,
the winged fruition of twelve notes
masterfully handled with your fingers of rain,
appearing as twelve tumors in the brain.
The Loving One
The image of you
sitting in the living room chair,
the ears and eyes then meeting
its silence and space and stare
suffice to ward off distractions,
thoughts of inconsequential things,
meditation unfolding her wings.
Never again to see your human form,
never to speak with you again
is strong enough to silence any storm,
is sufficient for meditation then.
Like a black brushstroke poised on a gleaming reed,
an afterthought of the rising sun
bending bow-like over the river's glass,
we're a black butterfly, beloved One,
one black wing your death, the other mine,
the butterfly weaving an uneven line
over the water - till it disappears,
till there remains only the Loving One
appearing as shifting glass and the sun.
Mother to Son
For some months I have left you alone,
For I saw that a flower does not grow
The more easily with a rain of stone,
Or insistence such-and-such should not be so.
I would not confine you with my country's past
Nor impose upon you my culture's cast.
Questions about these can feather your sky,
Can weave their arcs in a passionate style,
And you can be sure I'll oblige with a smile.
But if no questions stir and break their shells,
I won't be bothered, I will leave you be.
But I fear there's as yet no clarity
About freedom: It is not desire
Simply to do what your pleasures demand,
To be in the clutch of frivolity's hand.
A cell can be of gold, a comfort as well,
But it remains, after all, a prison cell.
You wanted to paint, you expressed passion,
But you expected the stars at the start.
You thought excitement was the kin of stars,
First Love (1)
Long buried in the drawer
the photograph looked at me
as a dimly lit chink of a door.
Behind my father my first love stood,
violin in hand, her freshness all aglow
on the stage of teenagehood.
An old song softly made its way,
a haunting of harmonica and piano
calling to mind her standing one summer day
on a balcony, then a balcony with snow.
She married years later, while my father
was swept away by an alien tide
so that during my visits once a year
I heard his drunken laughter masking fear,
great artistic promise not quite meeting
the luminous, long-remembered career.
The photo went back in the drawer.
The bedroom curtain tapped and stirred.
Dandelion seeds were scattered, blown away
as the summer light with the voice of a bird,
a faint afternoon perfume, stood aglow
opening a strange and familiar window
to one...
The Glowing Arc
The mother bird was often tired,
foraged for worms, the bushes, grass,
the fallen trees, rotting wood
in the grip of rainy days.
Each day was undistinguished like the one before
with wheels, wheels. Chicks cried and cried.
She knew the wheel of circling about,
never far away from the nest, never reaching for
the clouds, never skirting the forest's edge,
until, it seemed, something else moved and flew
instead of the one she once intimately knew.
The weather had warmed up, a sliver of light
pierced through the leaves hugging the nest,
and pierced through her, like some distant thought
at once familiar and strange,
some poignancy perhaps unveiling her delight
in which was lodged some thorn,
lodged a feeling akin to what one feels
while recalling young love, the recollection
of which is at once delicious and sad.
Amsterdam Park
Anonymous One,
The mature bloom of yellow afternoon
Waved at us, and we entered Amsterdam park.
September spoke softly to beach and sand dune,
Passersby, deer, trees, red-berry bushes, till the Moon-Dark
Of ourselves and aloneness silenced words,
Scattering them as though they were a flock of birds.
My friend and I - we walked and walked and some profound,
Vast and alien meditation suffused each trail and mound.
I could no longer say the rabbit stirred the grass
Or deer leapt; any movement that would pass
Was rather some anonymous force bending space
In infinite ways; the green-glowing beetle was Your Face.
We stopped by somewhere and only felt there was no mistake,
That we had never been elsewhere or ever could be.
I say now that we had come to some water
With austere presences, each towering tree,
But it was Aliveness before the world began:
The horizon and...