dreaming is cloud-walking
with heavy pockets
that are stuffed with
thin-hammered gold hearts
and cicada wings,
mists, snows, celestial coordinates,
stars, bridges, mysterious shadows,
rainbows, spring rivulets, startled stars,
night-wide eyes, fingers of the wind,
and the fair side of a peach
darkened by the cruel knife of time
fading in the relentless sun

i would write this poem in chinese
but i have forgotten the character for love
and remember only the radical heart,
the vital and vestigial organs
where emotions come from
and which,
in my case
had cancer of the metaphor.

the maiden behind the curtain
is always someone's courtesan
pondering the void.
west lake is a bog
behind a hedgerow of litter
and wild thistles
a nation of frogs
fuck blissfully
trapped in their cycle.

i keep pulling those words
from my pocket
so i can write the same old poem
the best facicle
of a stupid pupil
which is not like popsicle
(which makes me think of sucking you.)

don't assume
that truth is an oxymoron
and eternity
can't be proven to the dead.
i was escorted from girlhood
to unhappiness
by several men
(don't say my boudoir is too narrow now,
i can sleep on but one cold bed)

right now i am
propped against the couch ,
computer on my lap
hands on the keyboard
white silk lace at my collarbone--
(camisole, wrists, ankles
just hindrances i would shed
if you were here)

all that is beautiful ought to bloom,
don't you agree?

i have kept the sanctity of my body
(i've had offers)
and cleanliness of dream, if not mind.
i have washed my heart of bad intentions
i have shouldered burdens
in brief moments of reprieve and splendor.

all history must step aside and grant me passage.

what is destiny but an angry wind?
or did i mean wound?

i ask for little, therefore
i get little.
(i need a taller-than-me someone to change the light-bulb
i cannot reach.)

footsteps so light, the fallow deer can't hear me
heart so heavy, you could sink a stone in my name

night will lower its black knife
(you can take that to the bank.)
only the lantern will bear witness now.
( the moon is drunk and anorexic
constantly reeling, constantly changing weight.)
the moon mourns her unwritten words
cries naked into trees and windows....

poetry is a vast orphanage
where i am waiting for the love of all loves
or waiting to unlearn ecstasy
or waiting for the dead to reawaken

i opened my eyes and you
were already within me
my thin jade bracelet shattered
into five dazzling pieces
one for each element
that makes up the stars
when you are gone i feel you again
like the rapture of the water-clock
pleasure that burns to pain that
burns into the long hours of the night
(can you hear that serious pounding
of the ages? not nocturnal lovemaking of the muses
but the bad persona pounding the good.)

i don't love you for the savage beauty
of your flesh
nor for your sun-spectred countenance
and your stars that paralyze the sky--no,
i yearn for all you do not give me:

wild geese winging over the moon, blindly.

a small dream controls my destiny
veering into vast blue loneliness
calling from the netherside of the universe

lover, i am calling you
from the northeast hinterlands.
i am scrawling this long love plume
mocking my own befuddlement.
believe me, baby, when i tell you that poetry
doesn't matter--only happiness,
an eternal noonscape
more substance than shadow
where your arm drapes over my pillow,
the sun kissing it, just so.
i can see you driving
zenfully, chariot
rattling through the blue void.

and even though i can't admit it to myself

i am missing you.

my ass should be
spooned against you.

how am i doing with this completely new-word poem?

i have loved you
when i have been
long-haired and braided,
silent and over-wordy
but never without mercy

what is the past participle of the heart?
she would have loved not to have loved.
let us make mad love
until birdsong morning

i will take your olive branch deep within me
some night
while the stars
are shimmering.

see? this really is the same old poem