The Chinese Woman Across The Street
I Don't Care If You're Only An Illusion
An Esoteric Poem: August 13, This Time, That Time
The Chinese Woman Across The Street
What happened to her?
The Chinese woman who lived across the street?
The one who looked like once she was a
singer in a pageant too bright to look at, or shut up in a box:
the one who looked like once she was a dancer,
who could trace the life and death of a leaf
in silent grace,
like a cat stalking the beauty of a tear
no one else was brave enough to shed?
I saw her, for months disheveled,
lost among her kids,
out of place in her comfortable home,
cruelty like a whip in her eyes sometimes,
the anger of having been robbed
spilling out of her like blood out of a wound,
other times sitting alone,
like a runaway orphan,
puffing a cigarette on a curb out of sight of
her home.
The last time I saw her, she was
wandering down the street like an almost undetectable trace
of wind,
a strange vacant look in her eyes,
drifting, like
a corpse drowned and carried away by the sea,
the tiny mark of a tear below each eye.
Please paint me
into the picture of your life.
Make me be a tree
bearing fruits for you in the summer,
or an empty tree
with the fire of all his fallen leaves around,
the tree who missed you by a season;
or put me in the darkness of winter
wearing ice that sparkles like a jewel
giving refuge to the one black crow
who is my voice,
my little trace of wisdom
at the end.
Please paint me
with the eyes of a woman in love
as you
give birth to my body
with the colors that you’ve mixed,
my dancing Leonardo.
Create me
with the gentle kisses and whispering touches
of your brush,
or paint me with a storm of feelings,
like a wild rush towards ecstasy,
I need not be a tree,
I can be a sky filled with lightning
or an ocean
as seen by a drowning sailor
or just an empty black space,
like the void
we all come from.
Or paint me as the reddish sand
of the desert
where I have been waiting for you to rain.
Or as a barren wasteland,
waiting for a bandit or a prophet
to come
and cherish me for what I lack,
which is what makes me be
what he needs.
Paint me any way you wish.
If you want, as a bird in a little bush
outside the palace where your heart lives:
a bird who
has all the sky,
yet waits, with wings folded, by the door
that all the sky leads to.
Please paint me
into the picture of your life.
Paint me,
if you wish,
as the spirit of the almond tree,
that can’t stop loving you,
or paint me
as the blind man’s eyes
that are in love
with something he will never see,
in love with a voice in the dark
upon which he hangs everything beautiful
in his soul.
Paint me as a fire
and let me burn your painting and everything in it,
or turn me into the ashes of a fire spent,
or into a lake that will never burn.
Paint me as a frog
who might one day become a prince
and hold me up to your life-giving lips,
as close as Adam’s hand to God’s hand;
or paint me as a frog who
will never leave the swamp,
yet, even so, could still
give Basho a poem.
Please paint me
into the picture of your life.
I don’t ask this as a whining child,
but as a searching pilgrim who does not want
to be left out by God.
Please use me in your creation.
I give you my red blood,
my dreams of fire,
my tears and my wounds,
my whole life,
as paint for your brush,
to use or not to use.
Please paint me
into the picture of your life,
somehow,
some way.
Please give me a little space of color
in some corner
of your canvas,
something that will let our lives mix
together just a little,
something that will leave at least one speck of orange
where your yellow
met my red.
Everyone is a butterfly in death.
Why can’t we be butterflies in life?
Why do we need death to
finally open our eyes
to see what matters?
Why do we need sickness, tragedy,
the pain of losing everything
to finally take the pollution off of love
and set it free?
Why can’t we talk to each other
before our last words,
why can’t we be kind
before the separation,
why can’t we accept
the people who we banish,
before their beauty
is finally shown to us by their
dying?
Why can’t we enjoy them for who they are
when they are with us,
instead of missing them
when they are gone?
Why can’t we get over
these worthless illusions
that keep us apart
before we are a universe away?
Why do we
only wake up to the treasure that was right beside us
when it is a million
miles from us,
on the other side of time?
What’s wrong with
growing these brilliant butterfly wings
on the earth,
what’s wrong with flying in the world,
what’s wrong with being half a flower and half a bird,
a hovering jewel, a floating hope,
a secret angel,
before the night
destroys the lies of pride
and releases our hearts from bondage?
What’s wrong with that?
Everyone is a butterfly in death.
Why can’t we be butterflies in life?
Said the wise man:
Greatness comes
from being able to be alone.
I guess that means I will never be great,
because she is
hiding everywhere in my solitude,
haunting me wherever
I go.
Whatever emptiness,
whatever wind,
whatever sea I seek,
she is in it.
She is cruel to me,
but still I keep her with me.
She is indifferent to me,
but still I hear her voice.
I go to the edge of the world
where people find the answer
by falling off,
but she pulls me back.
I try to empty myself to
be filled by the truth,
but she won’t let anything else in.
I call out to the darkness of the Beyond for help,
but the candle of wanting her
keeps the spirits away.
I come to the end,
and open my eyes,
expecting to see God,
but all I see is her face,
trapping me in the eternal pain
of losing her.
The sky did not use the sun
to adorn itself.
The sun used the sky
to seduce the earth.
I did not use you
to make my poem.
You used my poem
to make the world need you.
You used my blood
to announce the coming
of your light,
my poem to turn all eyes
to the place where the dawn of you starts:
the dawn that is for them,
not for me.
Who used who, I ask?
You have a world.
I have a pen
that is nothing but your shadow.
Who used who, I ask?
My art
gave me nothing,
it was only my way
of losing you.
Two souls crossed paths.
They thought it was forever,
but it was only for a moment.
They thought it was everything,
but it was only a part.
They thought it was who they were,
but it was only what they were becoming.
They thought they would die if it ended,
but they were reborn.
They thought they were lovers,
but it turns out they were each other’s
mother.
They thought the other was their wealth,
but the other was only there like a light
to shine upon their
own treasure.
They thought they had separated,
but they had only united.
Rivers may be continents apart
but they are still working together,
bringing water to the sea.
A lost love’s gifts
never stop flowing.
Sometimes, a bee
keeps the strength it has gained
from a flower, by leaving.
When love’s hour is gone,
save what was
by giving it up.
Enter the world
of a higher love.
A new ecstasy is waiting there for you.
Everything you dreamed of
looks so different from how you first dreamed it,
but once you stop expecting
your illusion,
at that moment,
your dream will
finally be free
to come true.
All your pain
was your way of coming
to me.
I am so sorry
that you suffered;
I wish the road of happiness
could have brought you here.
But you know
as well as I:
disaster was the only path
that led to my heart.
No one who was whole
could have arrived here,
no one who had not lost everything
could have found this dark country
where I live,
turning other people into suns.
He grew dark horns
when the golden light
lied to him.
It was after Love came
with a knife,
and the rapist came
with the face of his father;
it was after he peeked
into the hall of
righteousness,
and saw nothing there
but the bones of those who
had believed.
It was after he saw
that the trail of brotherhood was covered
with thorns,
unused for years,
and he felt like a lonely fool
spit at by the dream
he would have given his life for.
"Come, wear our clothes,"
they told him.
"Come, live in our house."
That is when
the dark horns sprouted from his head,
like plants coming from the earth
of something real.
Now, because he has
broken his allegiance to hollow things,
they call him a sinner.
They do not know
how long he waited for them
to come to their words,
how long was the winter,
by that empty house,
the one boarded shut,
in the woods,
far from where anyone lives.
But now
the spring of truth is here.
And the lies are dripping
off of his life, releasing him
from the ice that binds the rest.
Now, all that is left
is the anger in the holes.
And the blooming
of a whole season of anger.
They will hunt him now
because he is real,
because he once
believed in the things they only said.
And he will not last long:
he is doomed,
by knowing.
But while he lives,
truth will live.
He has grown dark horns:
all that is left
of his longing for love.
The more you see
the harder it becomes.
Black ceases to be black
and white ceases to be white.
And your heart’s desire
to help
seems to fall into a spider’s web,
because suddenly
the difference between helping and harming
begins to fade
and everything begins to seem
like a butterfly’s wings
that one touch
could destroy.
And you find your gift
could kill
and discover that one man’s food
is another man’s poison
and what you thought you knew
is only the lens you were wearing.
And you see that, just as
Zeus’ fiery embrace burned Semele
into nothing,
so love is not always
enough.
When you jump into the car of action
to try to drive away from this terrible knowledge,
little children get in the way.
When you flee from
doing nothing,
you can hear the cries of thousands,
injured by your zeal.
When you finally stop,
then you can hear new voices,
the cries of those who are waiting for you,
like patients calling to a doctor
to bring medicine
to kill the pain.
Everywhere you want to go, there
is a reason to go,
and a reason not to go,
and your heart struggles
like a wild horse that wants to run free,
held back by the cruel hand of complexity.
"God," you ask, at last,
"where can I find the path of heroes?"
And God tells you:
"First, find the path
of truth."
I am ugly in o so many ways.
Wounded, strange,
rusty from hiding,
sometimes
unable to change a social light bulb,
longing for secret places
to be buried
with my wild dreams,
more wild than anybody’s tattoos
(my tattoos are all inside,
but all the wrong people
see them anyway).
Yes, I feel ugly,
like a misfit with no
dark skill,
with no outlaw way out,
no mad ascent among the angels possible,
no guitar or voice
to transform the lonely night,
just this deadly main street
forever piercing my heart,
asking me for answers
I knew years ago
and can no longer give.
Where is my dark angel?
Where is my Valkyrie
to carry me away
on the wings of my
unread poems?
Where is the Buddha of
my defeat,
to tell me I didn’t need
a palace, after all,
not even the palace of a book
opened only after I am dead?
Yes, I feel ugly,
for I have seen the highest vision of beauty
and cannot compare to it.
Yes, I feel ugly because
I didn’t want the beauty of all of the others,
and mine was too hard to reach.
So I left it hanging there
like a coat nobody takes home
after a party.
Like a star left behind by the night,
lost from the darkness
that makes it shine.
And I became ugly.
Not because I look different than they do
on the outside (though I do),
but because my inside doesn’t fit with my outside,
and everyone can see it,
like mismatched colors.
In the end,
I became ugly,
because I wasn’t strange enough,
or ugly enough,
I was disfigured by their influence,
by the one step I took
in their direction,
trying to be something
I could never be.
I Don’t Care If You’re Only An Illusion
I don’t care
if you’re only an illusion.
I’ll take the joy
of being a fool.
It’s worth the pain
of waking up.
I don’t care
if you’re only an illusion.
What is life,
but one long string of illusions,
winding through the desert?
What would we do
without these oases of hope
called mistakes,
these wells of a single day
that quench the thirst
of years,
these cruel sorrows
that fill the emptiness
with the beauty of longing,
with the treasure of things
beyond having?
I don’t care
if you’re only an illusion.
I want the thrill
of standing by your door.
I want to hear
the heart of life beating
even if I never get any closer
than that.
You do not understand
how priceless is the fantasy,
in the moment it seems to be
reality.
You don’t understand
how willing I am to be broken
by a vision
that does not fit in the world.
I don’t care
if you’re only an illusion.
Some remember, forever, the lovers that they lost.
I remember, forever,
the lovers I never had.
Come, be my illusion for a moment,
death is in seeing clearly,
life is in becoming lost
in the hugeness of one’s heart,
which blindness can turn into a palace.
Come, be my illusion!
They say the camel needs
but a drop of water
to walk for months.
This dream is my drop of water.
Let me have it.
Don’t worry about my pain when it is over,
your beauty will be mixed in it,
I’ll take the pain
to keep your beauty.
I don’t care
if you’re only an illusion.
Illusions are the atoms
of life.
Illusions are the flour that makes
the bread of the world.
Illusions are like the jewels
a little girl plays with
when her mother is away,
they turn her into a princess for a night.
Come, be my illusion!
Come destroy me with the beauty of my
dream of being with you.
I don’t care
if you’re only an illusion.
For this moment,
you are my life,
and my life is made of moments.
What an awful part
that wants to fall.
Right off the cliff
of everything respectable
down into the deepest, darkest pit.
What is it
about falling
that’s so alluring,
what is it
about losing everything you have
that’s so erotic,
like making love to your opposite
at the place
where the world ends?
Maybe it’s the fact
that they will let you go then.
That they will send you away
like a leper
into the wilderness.
Into the wasteland of not wanting you anymore,
which is the only free place left,
the only place
where a person
can crawl back into the womb,
and come out just the way he wants,
with horns, or wings, or
a mad love for women who wear black.
Maybe falling
is only the secret way
of rising, in an upside-down world.
Maybe life,
not death, is behind the deadly attraction.
Maybe it’s because by
falling,
you can have another chance
to land on your feet.
Maybe an angel is
putting this
insane idea into your head.
Who are you to tell me
who to love
and how?
You, who drop bombs
on cities of infants,
you who
have made lying a way of life,
you, who talk of freedom
while you make people pay for the air
that they breathe
and the water
they drink,
you, who are always looking
for someone to stone?
Stay away from my heart!
I only need to look at what you have already done
outside my door
to know that I do not want to let you in.
Stay away from my heart!
You own the world,
and that’s enough!
Leave my heart
to me.
Act with honor from within,
be driven by your own engine
of understanding; stand by
your own pillar of morality. Don’t second guess
the pilgrims, or walk
cramped by their perversion,
twisted and hidden within its flight from itself,
don’t be eaten from within by
their termites.
If your action sounds
reproachless like a clear bell
ringing to your soul,
walk strongly and
breathe in, deeply, the air of
your desires,
a purer form of being.
I saw you in a dream last night.
What a beautiful meeting!
When we met in real life,
it was just like last night,
as though I were having a dream
of somebody I already knew,
as though I were seeing the ghost
of someone I had loved before,
the shadow
of a past
I could not remember,
yet never forget.
You mesmerized me
on the very first day,
in the very first minute,
you frightened me
with your beauty I did not want to lose,
even before I had it.
Honestly, I was scared of you,
like a man is scared
of a goddess who burns down
every possible refuge
with her fearless gaze.
I was scared of what you could do
to my heart
in an instant
like a child who hurts the toy
she discards.
I was scared of you seeing my helplessness,
my inexplicable love; I was scared
of becoming a joke to you
and your friends
like an old man at a party
who, dancing with young girls,
mistakes their pity for his own charisma,
until he hears
their laughter as the door closes.
I was scared of
straying too far
from what was supposed to be,
like a fish
who jumps out of the water
and can’t get back.
At the same time
I could not banish
the attraction,
you were
like gold left lying on a table
which I could not take my eyes
from; like a place beside the road where I had lost something
irreplaceable,
a place I could not leave,
but had to remain in,
searching.
Searching your face,
searching your eyes,
searching the body that seemed to be
your eyes
in another form,
searching the mystery of
why you came so little,
and why something about your beauty seemed to
limp,
which is what prevented me
from losing hope.
I could not tell you what I was feeling
as you began to fall apart before my eyes:
not everything,
only a part,
which was not enough.
Still, I begged you to let me help you,
though I did it in my own way,
a hint,
which I thought
would be enough
for someone like you.
I would have let you through the door
for next to nothing,
just the little that was needed to
get you past the eyes of others
who would not let me love you
so unconditionally.
But you would not
break the spell
by becoming only human.
You wore your shining pride
to the end,
following your wound
beyond my reach,
to the old you
who no longer existed
but who you would not give up
in my eyes:
the greatest honor you could give me,
greater than your physical love,
yet also the greatest heartbreak.
For you gave me no choice.
I had to leave you there,
dying,
like all the others did,
as though I saw you with their dead eyes,
as though
our hearts had never
met in
that secret inner place
that is more real
than the world.
Forgive me,
child-bride!
Every night I pray for you,
and beg God to let our paths cross again.
This time,
there is a throne waiting
for you.
Crimes were committed.
They weren’t in the books
but every heart knows.
The law is a wasteland,
the depths of the heart
are where right and wrong live.
You violated nothing
except
something so
sacred
that it can’t be seen.
Just like gravity,
that something
binds the planets and the sun
to each other
and gives order
to the immensity
which has no up or down,
no top or bottom,
nothing but nothing,
going on forever.
Just like the air we breathe -
utterly invisible,
utterly indispensable -
this something is what gives us
life, and gives life its soul.
Didn’t you ever see a feeling?
Do you expect a heart’s eyes
to work the same way
as the eyes
that read a book?
As the eyes that can see
someone dying
by one’s own hand, even,
yet find no page,
no law
that says "No"?
My friend,
your book is a
desert
that means nothing,
your laws are maps
that leave out
what matters most.
One day you came into my
heart’s country,
and destroyed it
because you wanted
another life,
to turn into another rung of your ladder,
reaching upwards towards
your private stars,
your jewelry of
stolen light
to wear for all
the wrong eyes.
You murdered me within the vast
empty space
you call the law.
Crimes were committed.
They weren’t in the books
but every heart knows.
An Esoteric Poem: August 13, This Time, That Time
Two weeks before you returned
is the day I died.
(But it’s OK
because I was born again
before you left.)
On that day
everything fell,
but its beauty also
became clear.
In the moment of losing it
I knew
it would have to return
because the world needed it
more than death needed it.
And so the pain
became a force,
a flood
bringing what was no more
into the center of
what was,
and washing away
what could not be.
And what was gone
struggled back
through the earth that
had received its defeat,
to hide in the flower
of a new day.
Behold the flower!
Smell it!
Who would think
that it came from so long ago?
All she wanted was love.
She got a bullet instead.
All she wanted was something sweet in
the middle of the rock.
Instead, she got a drop of poison
and that is all it took.
The soulless days
of being thrown out each minute,
the jagged edges of broken dreams
that cut her
every moment she spent
away from her heart,
that is where the
incautious nights
came from,
the deadly nights of trying to win life back,
all at once,
to rip it out of illusions
and the highs of drugs and drinks,
in the shelter of
music and lights
that hid everything that was outside,
away from the center of hoping.
And in her beautiful mind
she was able to turn thieves
into the golden visions
she alone could create,
as Verdi created Violeta,
as Bronte created Heathcliff,
companions blossoming
from herself.
She fled
from her longing
with impostors
disguised by her imagination,
into the exhausted night
that cannot judge,
and does not care,
that only waits for
needing to give way to
yielding, to consume the pain
with the blindness of forgetting.
And she opened her delicate, unfeeling
body,
numbed by all the blows,
and buzzing with her fantasies
that masked
the hungering assassins,
whose crime was not knowing
they were a weapon,
and not recognizing that
she was different.
She opened the
flower
whose petals had never turned into a
shield,
since she had not yet
given up.
And into the flower
came the drop of death,
just before the sun arrived.
And she slept alone
that morning,
the shade drawn down
as the secret shadow
began to cover over her hope,
something she could not
sleep off,
like one too many rums.
Until, months later,
the doctor said,
"Now you’re one of them,
in death’s waiting room,
which you entered
through the only door
that said ‘Life’.
How unfair!
That your love of life
has brought you to life’s end.
That running from lifelessness,
you ran
straight into Death’s hands!"
At that moment
she felt the sky come crashing down on her,
and all the missing dreams of life emerge to say
"We were not gone, only hiding,
if only you’d seen us!"
And as soon as she saw them,
they disappeared forever
because she had guessed wrong.
And rage like fire filled her heart
for all the things unjustly taken from her
that she had only been trying to return to,
when she had been ambushed
by the final defender of the
loneliness.
And then,
after the rage had lost its power,
because there was nothing it could do
except burn itself into oblivion,
regrets came,
like endless falling
into the middle of everything lost.
For one mistake in
the darkness,
a life was taken -
not only from itself,
but from everyone
who was searching for it.
All she wanted was love.
She got a bullet instead.
All she wanted was something sweet in
the middle of the rock.
Instead, she got a drop of poison,
and that is all it took.
I believe in miracles
because I believe in beauty:
the beauty of the flying bird,
the beauty of the crashing sea,
the beauty of the apple on the tree,
a generous fruit grown around a need,
offered by God’s branch to you and me.
But we don’t need rhymes tonight, do we?
We have arrived at the point in life
where nothing rhymes,
and everything is sacred.
As the star is offered to the poet.
As the wind is offered to the sail.
As the mountain is given to he
who has yet to rise above the valley,
so the pain is given
to shake life
out of all its hiding places.
And the tears that stain your cheeks
have changed your face,
as cherry blossoms awaken a sleeping orchard
turning the whole world into light,
with their torch of pink.
You are radiant
because it is near the end,
yet too radiant for the end!
Even the shadows
want to release you now.
I believe in miracles
because I believe in love,
and I am not done
loving you.
I believe in miracles,
because the world is filled with them.
Everywhere you go,
it is because of a miracle,
surrounded by them, witnessing them,
but never knowing it
until it is almost time to die.
Even an ant, even a piece of dirt
is a miracle.
We walk on top of miracle-dust,
we breathe in miracle-air,
our days are lived under a miracle-sun
and our nights beneath a miracle-moon.
How could I not believe in miracles?
How could I not reach out for one,
along the path of miracles
we travel every day?
A miracle for you,
picked by the hand of my prayers
from life’s inexhaustible tree
of miracles.
Why not?
I believe in miracles because I believe in you.
Because you are a miracle to me,
I want to bring a miracle to you;
to gently shake the tree of
life’s miracles with my
love for you,
until the fruit of a new beginning
falls, and you are saved for
your rightful time.
I believe in miracles,
because I believe in us.
Because I believe in us…
If I ever stand in the way
of who you want to be
or need to be,
leave.
I have been hurt too much in life,
already,
to bear the wound
of seeing your dead soul
lying in the middle
of the road
of my love.
My heart burns
to see the picture of the slave
in chains
with whip marks on his back,
his country so far away,
on the other side of
an uncrossable sea.
Please, never let my arms become your
chains.
Never let my
need for you
become your uncrossable sea.
I am strong enough
to endure your freedom,
to survive you living your life.
They say that true love
is when you release the captive bird,
so that she may
come back to you
of her own free will.
But, I say, true love is releasing the captive bird,
knowing she will never come back.
My love -
all my loves -
I open the cage forever.
I rise above the false love
to the true love.
Though it could be
(and you deserve it),
it’s not just for you.
It’s also for me.
I never want to look
into my mirror
and see a killer
looking back.
In the loneliest time of your life
an angel will come to you.
She’ll come
not to save you
but to be saved.
She’ll come looking for her own angel,
and seeing the halo of your wound,
ask you to touch her with your
healing hand.
And you will be healed
by the faith
she has placed in you,
by the way she has bent down to
worship your frailty;
just as the reverence in your eyes
when you are in front of her,
the wings your need has given her,
will allow her to fly
away from her
disaster.
When two people play the role of angels for each other,
angels are born.
Pray, when you are hurt,
but don’t expect a miracle:
expect something ordinary to suddenly
seem like a miracle.
Or better yet,
don’t pray at all:
just cry,
just let your broken heart
fall into a million pieces
on the floor,
because that is what will
make you beautiful.
Beautiful enough
to attract an angel.
It is
from the Heaven of our wounds
that angels descend.
Needing light,
we become light.
Great sorrow
also makes wings.
Angels
awaken angels.
I wonder if she
has recognized herself
in this poem,
if she knows yet,
that on the day we met
two more angels were born.