&.&.&

Long Lunch

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:51:11 +0800

Noodles coagulate
Unable to disentangle
From the choking mass
Gathering in my throat.

Syllables unutterable
All that I cannot hear
Resenting quavers
Startling the bar.

Nothing worse
Than the insincerity of silence
Dinner of the unspeaking
Orders cut off in mid air -

Your fingers aren’t grasping
My throat, and still I am strangled
By these swollen threads
Of your heart, pining elsewhere -

While my dough feet remain stubbornly plastered
Here, no yearnings else, but to grow
Large in this place of my choosing.
This bowl cannot hold your steaming desires.

Not a dish, but an idea,
Loose and unfixed
It must see worlds -
Check - the meal is over.

Ode to a nightingale (and to work)

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:06:12 +0800

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.

Play acting

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:57:48 +0800

Isabella guessed the word that Giles had not spoken. Well, was it wrong if he was that word? Why judge each other? Do we know each other? Not here, not now. But somewhere, this cloud, this crust, this doubt, this dust-

About Time

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:40:42 +0800

In the time it took to hold my breath

and slip under the bathwater

– to hear the blood-thud in the veins,

for me to rise to the surface –

my parents had died,

the house had been sold and now

was being demolished around me,

wall by wall, with a ball and chain.

I swim one length underwater,

pulling myself up on the other side, gasping,

to find my marriage over,

my daughters grown and settled down,

the skin loosening

from my legs and arms

and this heart going

like there’s no tomorrow.

Words

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:37:01 +0800

Out of us all
That make rhymes,
Will you choose
Sometimes –
As the winds use
A crack in the wall
Or a drain,
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through –
Choose me,
You English words?

I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnet rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer:
Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet,
Equally,
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew, -
As our hills are, old, -
Worn new
Again and again:
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.

Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales
Whose nightingales
Have no wings, –
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire,
And the villages there, –
From the names, and the things
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb,
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.

Road Cycling

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 14:02:00 +0800

No longer the barbaric yawp from the rooftop -

Just the silent celebration, in small and measured spoonfuls

Packed carefully against your tightening chest, as you

Perch precariously on the arc of two wheels

That perpetually spin beyond your will.

The Eagle

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:55:41 +0800

He holds the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Remembering

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:43:45 +0800

Crickets and pools
Sing memory songs of you.

Not even poets have measured, how much the heart can hold

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:37:33 +0800

In case I ever were to forget - my love for you is beyond circumstance and regret.

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins."

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:11:45 +0800

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”

- T.S Eliot, “The Waste Land”

"A relationship is like a shark- it has to keep moving forward, or it will die."

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:05:18 +0800

“A relationship is like a shark- it has to keep moving forward, or it will die.”

- Woody Allen

Dark Light

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:08:00 +0800

Twelve moons past,

We had squeezed past brown men like toothpaste

Unelegantly discovered ourselves by the edge of the sidewalk

The garish red and purple lights casting an electric pall on your brown face

You brought me to the god that you worshipped

Only after something good had transpired - retroactive thanks

Her many hands clenching the air and the whispers of her devotees

Twisting promises into gold knots and banana leaves easily deposited into one’s purse

My widened eyes could not frame the noise

The muddy puddles that pooled in between my toes

While we navigated through the wailing screeches imitating love

A web between our ears, your words pulling me to prostrate between your knees

I remember, it was your gentle face

That I saw on that goddess’ countenance

Benevolent at first, but ultimately, human, and once again,

Tragically limited and loveless. Moons later, I would weep at your feet

Unable to lift your heart from the wreck

That our own hands had devised. Dirt trails

We had thought once divine, now, only dust and frail memory.

Because I can no longer call upon you, this is the only sign of all that you meant to me.

Too Good To Be True

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 05:40:12 +0800

My mind grown soft from too much Internet usage… Whether on my laptop with its glowing piece of violated fruit on the lid, or the awful little slab I’ve made the mistake of entrusting with my phone calls and, more and more, my higher faculties. Plato’s slab. It is the last metaphor.

meganmcisaac: samantha.los angeles, california.spring 2012.

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:36:13 +0800

meganmcisaac:

samantha.
los angeles, california.
spring 2012.

Irony

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:34:49 +0800

The greatest economic disaster of all time was caused by the most data-oriented sector of our society. Wall Street didn’t fail because it had too few quants; it had too many.

Please take me there! allthingseurope: Soča river, Slovenia...

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:59:09 +0800

Please take me there!

allthingseurope:

Soča river, Slovenia (by rmaltete)

Statistics is like a bikini - it's what it's hiding that you worry about.

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:47:00 +0800

am learning the language of numbers, and i remain convinced that they tell more lies than words do.

One of the most poignant videos I’ve ever seen, capturing...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 23:09:00 +0800

One of the most poignant videos I’ve ever seen, capturing the steel and fragility of the human spirit and the beloved works of our hands.

As F1 Weekend Approaches

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:06:30 +0800

What do you do at the F1?

You drink expensive water,
And drink expensive beer.
And then you walk around
With small plugs in your ear.

What I feel this morning

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:23:18 +0800

Alexithymia - the absence of words to describe emotional states.