some parts anger

where do you place your anger? do you pour it in the sink? 

i find my temper short these days.

there are always 

indistinct night sounds.

must be impatience & something else.

where do you place your anger? i pour mine in a drink.

27 things

1. I must tell you I met someone.
2. Named Gold.
3. Fire burning tight in a small frame.
4. Birdcage, voice box, body.
5. Skin supple, subtle to the eye.
6. I want to, but do not.
7. So much age, so much youth.
8. She laughs and she says.
9. I step back and hold myself back.
10. Half a hundred smiles.
11. Three hundred times of waiting.
12. I search for something else instead.
13. Try again patience, the kind that sees through the last of the ripples so the liquid surface calms again into a mirror of sky.
14. Morning, afternoon, night, the chairs and tables by the streets are with people, warm temperature in the middle of winter.
15. Spark, spark, spark.
16. I dream of the outline of her.
17. Search for something else instead.
18. Is it possible to call it mirror? 
19. Translated into permutations: woman, night, flower, gold.
20. No one remains innocent, not after the wars folded in the years.
21. Are you spring cleaning?
22. I have two rugs and two wooden, folding chairs.
23. There is a list made into existence everyday and made to disappear everyday.
24. Am I waiting? Yes.
25. It is always the same woman.
26. In different translations.
27. The same.

a dark impenetrable forest

It is raining now where I am. 
The heater hums, the gray will not leave
until the weeks of winter will finally
exhaust themselves. In the meantime

the tea, the sound of rain, the days
in the calendar filling up
like things to do that march on and on.
I sense my right eye stooping now
like an old working dog. It means
the glasses will have to be changed.

In the meantime, how to talk about
translation? When everything 
we manifest are truly incomplete.
A student, armed with practice and theory, 
argues: translation is always a gain.
In time

one will know gentleness; and why 
the horizon is what it is: something
perceivable, what we can move towards
eternally, as we would a dream, 
as we would each breath. Always beyond. 

There are many ways to live.
Even the one who ruminates drinks tea,
the bag possibly packed in a factory 
filled with underpaid men and women,
children too, in some developing country 
never far beyond.

All in an open circle.
Echos-monde.
The water from this rain.
Me. You. What the limitations I have
make of You other than the You
that you actually live. What we imagine
of ourselves, of each other. 
To one another.

In the meantime, I write a letter
to a You.
Letter without postal stamp, physical 
address, even a legible name. As though
believing the tangible is an organic case 
always subject to decay, unable to contain
what we are truly trying to reach.

young man

The list for the grocery would be short.
But walking through the aisles, 
By itself, The List would grow, long and
With wings, maybe, as in poultry.
And promising as in spices, sweet like
Dates in a section closer to wines.
It would be important to impress the girl, 
Nope, not soda or beer or pizza.
Not in that old way of wooing 
That she would be a queen, 
In the kitchen.
The young man would show off he could
Make fire and keep a pot warm,
Apologize as well he's no cook, but
She should stay put on the high chair
And enjoy his attempt to show grandly
What he has trouble saying plain.
And the pretext for her coming over?
Anything but a movie on a small screen,
Anything that would lead to the couch,
Anything that would lead to anywhere else
Except the kitchen.
And seeing him trying not to be a klutz
In an apron with a wooden ladle, she
Would most likely offer to cut the onions.
Between the two of them, someone would 
Banter and another would quip,
And laughter a chorus that would fill.
The fried chicken wings, burnt.
The butternut soup, no salt.
Only the multigrain bread absolved.
He: "We got the dates, though."
She: "And this is some wine."

trace

More likely than not, the Japanese
got it right. About the traces
in our lives--our very long lives, 
perhaps, very long till our souls 
grow very tired and very old.
                             And 
more likely, Buddha, as well,
got it right. About the traces
in our lives--our very long lives,
perhaps, very long till our souls
grow very tired and very old.
                            

by the river

A mile from where I am, there is a river.
There are ducks, some other birds. The water
fragments and glistens like glass, and runs
with a sound like bodied spirit-wind.

Sometimes the afternoon walks take me there.
Mostly to see the sun 
set behind the mountains. Beautiful sky.
There are men who sport fish, bass usually.

It is tempting to do the same; though, 
why bait and hook a fish merely for pleasure
stops me in much the same way
I stop myself from crossing what separates 

us.