the meaning of life is not only to be found in happiness”

i’ve had enough of meaning.  give me some joy–
make my imaginary havens real,
give my fantasy lover flesh.
but let’s face it, i still struggle to learn something
even as i try to forget everything–
it’s nothing but
a leftover habit.

i have learned that
in a life so short as mine,
one should never sell out for promises
or sacrificial things
or months that wound down
to nothing i understand..

i wanted to give you some time
i wanted to open a cardboard box
and have a god climb out and say Yes I Love You
i wanted to have a lasting love
or at least half a lasting love

half of something

this world is not my home-- i am
a sight-unseeing tourist, only.
my eyes are blinded
by tomorrow's dreams.
i plod toward a western horizon
that is strewn with missiles, bathed
in an eternal sunset of kindling fire.

barefoot, i dance through flames
and drift over trees.
i come to you every morning,
still smoking and warm,
holding in my hands
a fist full of charred earth
and pale green sprouts,
more delicate than morning light...

in our next incarnation
you will be a blue tractor,
and i, a red one;
or i may be a wheelbarrow,
and you, a chainsaw.
there will be lightning
in the sacred wood--
the blue robes of an upturned sky will open
and we will find the treasure we have buried here:

golden coins
spilling from a magic page

my hair was tied in a youthful ribbon
and my arms were encircled
by the velvety bracelets
of memory.  my necklace was
strung from the pretty stones
of a young girl's yearnings, 
my jacket was fastened
with the exquisite buttons of dreams
the man i used to love ran up to me 
and held my face in his hands.  
let me look at you he whispered
you look wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
a sudden gust of wind scattered what was left
of last night's loneliness.
we stood like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
left outside the frame
because they couldn't be made to fit.. 
the sun pressed closer
to the ground, trees and grass seemed to catch fire...

i climbed into my car and drove away

sometimes i think i hear whispers
in the woodpile, voices from far
mysterious forests where one long
beam of light shines on a patch of green moss.

sometimes tree-ghosts disguised as dogs
come and lick the bowls i leave on the
back porch. the wind spins me from
this ordinary world until i am almost
broken with regret, split

like this pile of green hickory and oak.
in the dark, a vision of rustling leaves chases
me into dreams, pursued by splintered voices
that moan in the pitch dark night,

then lift and become blue smoke

it's not a diary.
it is a wind of blue satin
between poverty and poetry
where people begin to love
only the fences they have built

the cuckoo in the woods
is calling like a haiku,
the meadow is a pointillist painting
the shadow of the past
is on the sundial

and humanity--oh the humanity! is softly
singing in a broken mason jar
a song of parting that never ends
a song that can walk through walls

*drawing by Allie Brosh

above the distant mountain
the golden cradle of the moon
gently rocked in the swaying branches
of the old maple, to the music

of the wind bells on my balcony.

i came inside, then, and i thought of you
as a long shadow slipped along the doorstep
and firelight from the kitchen stove
cast a red glow

on my bare arms

After three years away from you,
I'm back at last for one day, and more.
We drink green Luling wine this evening
and I see yellow cloth-wrapped books, like when I left.
My sick bones still exist,
so nothing is impossible in this world!
Why bother to plead with the dice,
just throw them and let them roll!

~ Li He (797-817)
Distantly related to the imperial clan and extremely talented,
Li He was nevertheless an unsuccessful scholar who attained
only the lowest posts in his brief life (he died at the age of
twenty-six). His poetry, like that of Meng Jiao, can be bitterly
sarcastic and reflects the frustration he must have felt in his career.
He had a penchant for erotic, romantic, and even morbidly violent
imagery, and his poems grated on the nerves with the shrieking of ghosts,
weeping of flowers, and the burning of sinister fires. He was something
of a Chinese Edgar Allen Poe, though a much better poet than Poe was,
and like Poe, his reputation suffered because literary culture
couldn't stomach his unclassifiable works of genius. Sponsored in his day
by the prominent poet and prose writer Han Yu, Li He quickly
disappeared from literary consciousness after his death, making a comeback
only in the last two centuries. Two hundred forty of his poems have survived
centuries of neglect, though legend states that what remains was part of a larger
collection that was thrown into a toilet by a vindictive cousin.

inside myself
there is a sea where
the moon
is as beautiful
as instant death

climbing stars
have lost their footing
no one can say
what will be lost
in yesterday’s boundless sea

life is a story
filled with typographical errors
neither to be believed
nor denied

software, hardware,
analysis, reason,
astrology, The Book of Changes–all
are useless for knowing
how our lives are arranged–
where we will board the ship,
where we will disembark–

useless for determining
whether those red marks we bear
are scars or birthmarks

love is a letter with no words
containing a whole lifetime
of things thought but never said
sealed in a bottle
bobbing in the sea inside myself

a love poem locked away
in faith that one day
the person for whom it is meant
will read it in my eyes