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In another town, people are being transformed

into statistics by bullets. A minute past, and there are enough:

an Important Issue.                               Meanwhile, you are

hunched over your desk: A coincidence possible

only by virtue of this poem. How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses, a dilemma already said, yet you want it

asked by yourself, the throat from which it issues

an available difference. Meanwhile,

you hover like a ghost whose repetitious message

is frustration.                     Always there are no words:                                                                A statement that makes this poem

a contrivance, though not in the way all poems are unnatural,

also not in the way all poems wish

to call attention to themselves.                                               People are dying. People are

dead.           In time this would get to you, the mind choked

by diatribes, most of them sincere. By the time this gets to you

some other source of trouble would have                                                                pressed its barrel                                                                                            against your head,                                                    an unwarranted metaphor

because it is metaphor. Not that you don’t deserve it, but that

you do deserve it. A kind of guilt that lets you fall

asleep: From where you’re not, yours is a why or a yes that goes unheard,

which is              how it should be: this judgment that implies an ethical imperative:

you must accede. The consequence

a button pried off a shirt by neglect,                                                        which is to say constant

use, loosened from a world where you are bent

over your desk in a manner that’s not

even salacious, and you are thus convinced something

has to take place if it hasn’t just yet.                                                       How to end this poem without remorse, an easy echo                                    of its didactic overtones? With a question,

I suppose: notice how the phrase divorces utterance                                                                                and complicity, a disavowal worth another poem, without it.

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He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand.

He was dead anyway, a ghost. I’m surprised

I saw his hand at all. The moon, of course, is always

there—day moon, but it’s still there; behind the clouds but

it’s still there. I like seeing things: a hand, the moon, ice

in a highball glass. The moon? It’s free, it doesn’t

cost you anything so go ahead and look. Sustained attention 

to anything—a focus, a scrutiny—always yields results.

I’d live on the moon probably except I think I’d miss

the moonlight, landscaping craters with clay roses in earthshine

and a reasonable excuse to avoid visiting hours

at the mental hospital. In space, no one can hear you

lying to your mom: “Can’t make it, Mom. It’s

a really long schlep.” The coffee’s weak and the coffee cake’s

imaginary. You’re not missing anything. Inside: a day room

and a day pass. Outside: a gazebo under a jackfruit tree.

The other inside: a deeper understanding of the burden

and its domestic infrastructure. Make yourself white.

Make yourself snow but the black bears trample

your landscape like little black dots that show up on x-rays.

It is not enough to be a landscape. One must also become

the path through the landscape, which is creepy. Truly.

The sun melts the snow, the bears wander off, the leaves

tremble like all my sad friends. I can still see his hand.

Once, in a fable, the moon woke the dead. Buried

underground, its light was too much to bear. How did it

get there? Greed. The brothers who owned it had it

buried with them. Later, St. Peter hung it in a tree.

The dead went back to bed, allegedly. One wonders why

a story like this exists. Who wrote it and to what end?

An ingenious solution: trees. Cashew, avocado, fig,

olive. Put it in a tree. Hide it in plain sight and climb

higher. We are all of us secret agents, undercover in our

overcoats, the snow falling down. Little black dots.

Some dream of tall things—trees, ladders, a rope trick.

My dreams are filled with bricks, or things in the shape

of bricks. Rectangles in the hot sun. A cow, a car,

a carton of cigarettes. Even my imagination sleeps

when I sleep and why not rest? Why crash the party

on the astral plane? You’ll just be too tired to go 

to the real party later. Have you ever eaten

Swedish meatballs at a dream party? They taste like

your blanket, because they are your blanket.

My imagination wants breakfast burritos. It refuses

to punch the clock until then. I could eat six but then

I’d need a nap. A breakfast that puts you back to sleep

is useless. Dear bears, we must not hibernate!

The bathroom tile is always wet and slippery and the door

from sleeping to waking always sticks and squeeks

but I have arrived, triumphant, with corporate coffee!

Tawnya has written our names on the paper cups

in her immaculate cursive. Her eyes are dead

and lusterless but her heart is in the right place, I guess.

Somewhere deep in her chest, I guess.

We take our hats off and get down

to business. “You got plans tonight, Dick?”

"Eight dollar spaghetti dinner and all you can sing

karaoke at the Best Western. Gonna school

Pace and Killian in the finer points of falsetto.”

Not even one hour later: smoke break

in the breezeway by the handicapped bathroom.

Why is it we believe we only have one soul?

Because it’s easier to set the table for one. And you can

sing your dinner tune to yourself while you eat over the sink.

The throat of the sink: silent. The throat of the argument:

more silverware, a tablecloth, gratitude, more souls.

A kid under a tablecloth isnists he’s a ghost. A table

underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us,

only pretending to be invisible. Or worse:

dressed for work and not in the mood for, you know,

how it all plays out, always the same ways, boring times infinity.

"When I grow up I’m going to be a truck,"

says the kid underneath the tablecloth, and that’s one way

to deflect the weight of the inevitable, to insist on possibility

in the face of grownups and the pumace of their compromises.

The trees die standing. My Spanish teacher told me this.

I had conjugated the verbs beforehand and taped them

to the bottom of my sneaker. Cheater, yes. Also uninvested

in the outcome. She could tell. Nothing to be done about it.

Verbs of being and verbs of action. We, neither

of us, were doing much anyway at the time and the room was

too hot. I think she meant unroot, which is a good thing to mean

but a difficult thing to hear when you’re living under someone

else’s roof. I climbed trees then, too. Then climbed back down.

How do I tell you how I got here without getting trapped

in the past? I suppose that’s a bigger question than I expected.

"Hey Dick, tell ‘em about that one time when we made out.

That was a good time.” Yes, it was. And yet

should we really spend our velocities on backwards motion?

Yes. Any motion, every motion. It’s spring, green, take off

your coat, pull down your cap, roll up your sleeves, we’re

hunting, we’re arrows, we’re stag in a meadow, in a frenzy.

"Like I said, Dick. That was a good time."

Soul 1: Was it a good time?

Soul 2: I had fun. You seemed to like it.

Soul 3: He’s no Neil Armstrong.

Soul 2: Few are.

Neil Armstrong: Hush.

"He was such a colicky baby. Always fussing and crying.

As if he didn’t want to be here at all. Right, Dicky?”

No, mom. I don’t remember. And you’re not supposed to be

in this part of the poem. You come back later, near the end,

with the ghost and the hand and the moon, after dark, after

the gimlets. “Sweetie, you asked for prompts and it’s getting dark

on the East Coast. Tick tock. And don’t type drunk.”

Dear East Coast, I’m sorry it’s getting dark. It must be problematic,

living in the future, always a few steps ahead, knowing

things you shouldn’t say, since they haven’t happened

to the rest of us yet. And Poland? I don’t dare wonder

what you know about tomorrow. “Your grandma was from Poland.”

I know, mom. And grandpa was handsome and you

were the smart one and the pretty one. “Still am. Poor Barbara.

You know, Dicky, I’ve been out of the hospital for a while now.

Remember how you promised you wouldn’t write about me

while I was alive, Dicky? Remember? So if you’re

writing about me that must mean something, yes?”

You’re not sticking around for the end, then. “No, you’re

doing fine, Squish. And yes, I miss you, too.”

We cannot tarry here. We must march, we must bear the brunt.

Smoke break: in the alley by the oleanders, the pink ones.

Dear East Coast, it is getting dark here too now. Suddenly.

"It’s getting late, Little Moon. Sing them the song."

It’s not that late, Mr. Kitten.

"You are my moon, Little Moon. And it’s late enough.

So climb down out of the tree.”

Is it safe? “Safe enough.” Are you dead as well?

Soul 1: Sing.

Soul 2: Sing.

Soul 3: Sing.

Stag In The Meadow: Sing.

The Black Bears: Sing.

Kid Under The Tablecloth: Sing.

I’ve been singing all day.

"Yes, you’ve been singing all day. And no, I’m not dead, not

everyone is dead, Little Moon. But the big moon needs the tree.”

There is a ghost at the end of the song.

"Yes, there is. And you see his hand, and then you see the moon."

Am I the ghost at the end of the song?

"No, you are the way we bounce the light to see the ghost."

He was looking at the moon by I was looking at his hand.

He was dead anyway, a ghost. I’m surprised I saw

his hand at all. Once, in a fable, the moon woke the dead.

One wonders why a story like this exists. Who wrote it

and to what end? Sure, everyone wants the same things—

to belong, and to not be left behind—but still, does it help?

Perhaps. Once, in a fable: a man in a tree. Once,

in a fable: the trace of his thinking, the sound of his singing.

I like seeing things: a hand, the moon, ice in a highball glass.

The light of the mind illuminating the mind itself.

Put it in a tree. Hide it in plain sight and climb higher.

We are all of us secret agents, undercover in our overcoats,

the snow falling down.

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Juana the Mad married the handsomest man in Spain

and that was the end of it, because when you marry a man

more beautiful than you, they said you pretty much lost control

of the situation. Did she ever listen? No. When he was away

annexing more kingdoms, she had horrible dreams 

of him being cut and blown apart, or spread on the rack,

or sleeping with exotic women. She prayed to the twin

     guardians

of the Alhambra, Saint Ursula and Saint Susana, to send him

     home

and make him stay forever. And they answered her prayers

and killed Philip the Handsome at twenty-eight.

Juana the Mad was beside herself with grief, and she wrapped

his body in oils and lavender, and laid him out in a casket of 

      lead,

and built a marble effigy of the young monarch in sleep,

and beside it her own dead figure, so he would never think

he was alone. And she kept his body beside her, and every day

for the next twenty years, as pungent potions filled the rooms,

she peeked into his coffin like a chef peeks into his pot,

and memories of his young body woke her adamant desire.

She wanted to possess him entirely, and since not even death

may oppose the queen, she found a way to merge death and life

by eating a piece of him, slowly, lovingly, until he was entirely 

in her being. She cut a finger and chewed the fragrant skin,

then sliced thick portions of his once ruddy cheeks. Then she ate

an ear, the side of a thigh, the solid muscles of the chest,

then lunged for an eye, a kidney, part of the large intestine.

Then she diced his penis and his pebble-like testicles

and washed everything down with sweet jerez.

Then she decided she was ready to die.

But before she did, she asked the poets to record these moments

in song, and the architects to carve the song in marble,

and the marble to be selected from the most secret veins

of the earth and placed where no man could see it,

because that is the nature of love, because one walks alone

through the ruins of the heart, because the young must sleep

with their eyes open, because the angels tremble

from so much beauty, because memory moves in orbits

of absence, because she holds her hands out in the rain,

and rain remembers nothing, not even how it became itself.

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This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead are dead. I hear the witch's cry break in the moonlight through a sheet of sugar: God rewards. Her tongue shrivels into gas . . . Now, far from women's arms and memory of women, in our father's hut we sleep, are never hungry. Why do I not forget? My father bars the door, bars harm from this house, and it is years. No one remembers. Even you, my brother, summer afternoons you look at me as though you meant to leave, as though it never happened. But I killed for you. I see armed firs, the spires of that gleaming kiln-- Nights I turn to you to hold me but you are not there. Am I alone? Spies hiss in the stillness, Hansel, we are there still and it is real, real, that black forest and the fire in earnest. 

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In the end, I made myself Known to your wife as A god would, in her own house, in Ithaca, a voice Without a body: she Paused in her weaving, her head turning First to the right, then left Though it was hopeless of course To trace that sound to any Objective source: I doubt She will return to her loom With what she knows now. When You see her again, tell her This is how a god says goodbye: If I am in her head forever I am in your life forever.

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I never turned anyone into a pig. Some people are pigs; I make them Look like pigs. I'm sick of your world That lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men; Undisciplined life Did that to them. As pigs, Under the care of Me and my ladies, they Sweetened right up. Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness As well as my power. I saw We could be happy here, As men and women are When their needs are simple. In the same breath, I foresaw your departure, Your men with my help braving The crying and pounding sea. You think A few tears upset me? My friend, Every sorceress is A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you I could hold you prisoner. 

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Something

comes into the world unwelcome

calling disorder, disorder—

  If you hate me so much

don’t bother to give me

a name: do you need

one more slur

in your language, another

way to blame

one tribe for everything—

  as we both know,

if you worship

one god, you only need

one enemy—

  I’m not the enemy.

Only a ruse to ignore

what you see happening

right here in this bed,

a little paradigm

of failure.  One of your precious flowers

dies here almost every day

and you can’t rest until

you attack the cause, meaning

whatever is left, whatever

happens to be sturdier

than your personal passion—

  It was not meant

to last forever in the real world.

But why admit that, when you can go on

doing what you always do,

mourning and laying blame,

always the two together.

  I don’t need your praise

to survive.  I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

  I will constitute the field.

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When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added.

Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness

Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars. Let Persephone get used to it slowly. In the end, he thought, she’d find it comforting.

A replica of earth except there was love here. Doesn’t everyone want love?

He waited many years, building a world, watching Persephone in the meadow. Persephone, a smeller, a taster. If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all.

Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. And when one turns, the other turns—

That’s what he felt, the lord of darkness, looking at the world he had constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind that there’d be no more smelling here, certainly no more eating.

Guilt? Terror? The fear of love? These things he couldn’t imagine; no lover ever imagines them.

He dreams, he wonders what to call this place. First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden. In the end, he decides to name it Persephone’s Girlhood.

A soft light rising above the level meadow, behind the bed. He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you

but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you’re dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

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Now and then I forget the awe I felt, at six,  upon discovering Monet’s water lilies in a book. 

Then it comes back to me, what my teacher said. He was going blind when he painted them, wearing specially-tinted glasses. 

Something inside me was shaken. I began to suspect there are worlds apart from ours, with wormhole-portals scattered through our attics 

and backyards. Eyes behind eyes that do the real seeing. A shy but marvelous iris at the epicenter of sleep. 

Some things I learned while young: to make a statement true, add an unremarkable if. Explicate the assumptions; assumptions fill the wells 

from which we drink. The eye is an aperture embedded in a body. At twenty, all I had learned of the world 

fit these definitions. Dream is an act by which the mind takes a stroll around the neighborhood as the body sleeps.  

Betrayal, a thorn concealed by petals. Suffering, the length of this thorn and its sharpness.

Vanity, that by which a bird measures the sky with its body. Courage, the attempt of this bird. 

Forgiveness, the notion by which the blind do not envy us our eyes. The eye is an aperture embedded in a body, 

and the body expires. Monet, like the whippoorwill in a rhyme I called whimperwill, from the age of six, I have searched 

for your nymphéas in life and have found the world in its vastness—such immensity—radiant and gorgeous and lacking.

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Cha is a Hong Kong-based online literary quarterly journal dedicated to publishing quality poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, drama, and reviews written in English, as well as photography and art. It has a strong focus on Asian-themed creative work or work done by Asian writers and artists. It also publishes established and emerging writers/artists from around the world.

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On average, 5 people are born every second and 1.78 die. So we’re ahead by 3.22, which is good, I think.

The average person will spend two weeks in his life waiting for the traffic light to change.

Pubescent girls wait two to four years for the tender lumps under their nipples to grow.

So the average adult has over 1,460 dreams a year, laughs 15 times a day. Children, 385 more times.

So the average male adult mates 2,580 times with five different people but falls in love only twice in his life—possibly

with the same person. Seventy-nine long years for each of us, awakened to love in our twenties, so more or less

thirty years to love our two lovers each. And if, in a lifetime, one walks a total of 13,640 miles by increments,

Where are you headed, traveler? is a valid philosophical question to pose to a man, I think, along with

Why does the blood in your veins travel endlessly? on account of those red cells flowing night and day

through the traffic of the blood vessels, which if laid out in a straight line would be over 90,000 miles long.

The great Nile River in Egypt is 4,180 miles long. The great circle of the earth’s equator is 24,903 miles.

Dividing this green earth among all of us gives a hundred square feet of living space to each,

but our brains take only one square foot of it, along with the 29 bones of the skull, so

if you look outside your window with your mind only, why do you hear the housefly hum middle octave, key of F?

If you listen to the cat on the rug by the fire with the 32 muscles in your ear, you will hear

100 different vocal sounds. Listen to the dog wishing for your love: 10 different sounds.

If you think loneliness is beyond calculation, think of the mole digging a tunnel underground

ninety-eight miles long to China in one single night. If you think beauty escapes you

or your entire genealogical tree, consider the slug with its four uneven noses, or the chameleon shifting colors

under an arbitrary light. Think of the deepest point in the deepest ocean, the Marianas Trench in the Pacific,

do you think anyone’s sadness can be deeper? In 1681, the last dodo bird died. In the 16th century,

Queen Elizabeth suffered from a fear of roses. Anne Boleyn had six fingers. People fall in love

twice. The human heart beats 3 billion times — only — in a lifetime. If you attempt to count all the stars in the galaxy, one

every second, it’ll take 3 thousand years, if you’re lucky. As owls are the only birds that can see the color blue

the ocean is bluish, along with the sky and the eyes of that boy who died alone by that little unnamed river

in your dreams one blue night of the war of one of your lives. (Do you remember which one?)

Duration of World War 1: four years, 3 months, 14 days. Duration of an equatorial sunset: 128 seconds, 142 tops.

A neuron’s impulse takes 1/1000 of a second, a morning’s commute from Prospect Expressway

to the Brooklyn Bridge, about 90 minutes, forty-five without traffic.

Time it takes for a flower to wilt after it’s cut from the stem: five days. Time left our sun before it runs out of light: five billion years.

Hence the number of happy citizens under the red glow of that sun: maybe 50% of us, 50% on good days, tops.

Number who are sad: maybe 70% on the good days— especially on the good days. (The first emotion’s more intense, I think,

when caught up with the second.) So children grow faster in the summer, their bright blue bodies expanding. The ocean, after all, is blue

which is why the sky now outside your window is bluish expanding with the white of something beautiful, like clouds.

Fact: The world is a beautiful place—once in a while. Another fact: We fall in love twice. Maybe more, if we’re lucky.

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You don't know what love is Bukowski said  I'm 51 years old look at me  I'm in love with this young broad  I got it bad but she's hung up too  so it's all right man that's the way it should be  I get in their blood and they can't get me out  They try everything to get away from me  but they all come back in the end  They all came back to me except  the one I planted  I cried over that one  but I cried easy in those days  Don't let me get onto the hard stuff man  I get mean then  I could sit here and drink beer  with you hippies all night  I could drink ten quarts of this beer  and nothing it's like water  But let me get onto the hard stuff  and I'll start throwing people out windows  I'll throw anybody out the window  I've done it  But you don't know what love is  You don't know because you've never  been in love it's that simple  I got this young broad see she's beautiful  She calls me Bukowski  Bukowski she says in this little voice  and I say What  But you don't know what love is  I'm telling you what it is  but you aren't listening  There isn't one of you in this room  would recognize love if it stepped up  and buggered you in the ass  I used to think poetry readings were a copout  Look I'm 51 years old and I've been around  I know they're a copout  but I said to myself Bukowski  starving is even more of a copout  So there you are and nothing is like it should be  That fellow what's his name Galway Kinnell  I saw his picture in a magazine  He has a handsome mug on him  but he's a teacher  Christ can you imagine  But then you're teachers too  here I am insulting you already  No I haven't heard of him  or him either  They're all termites  Maybe it's ego I don't read much anymore  but these people w! ho build  reputations on five or six books  termites  Bukowski she says  Why do you listen to classical music all day  Can't you hear her saying that  Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day  That surprises you doesn't it  You wouldn't think a crude bastard like me  could listen to classical music all day  Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann  Shit I couldn't write up here  Too quiet up here too many trees  I like the city that's the place for me  I put on my classical music each morning  and sit down in front of my typewriter  I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see  and I say Bukowski you're a lucky man  Bukowski you've gone through it all  and you're a lucky man  and the blue smoke drifts across the table  and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue  and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk  and I puff on the cigar like this  and then I lay the cigar in the ashtray like this and take a deep breath  and I begin to write  Bukowski this is the life I say  it's good to be poor it's good to have hemorrhoids  it's good to be in love  But you don't know what it's like  You don't know what it's like to be in love  If you could see her you'd know what I mean  She thought I'd come up here and get laid  She just knew it  She told me she knew it  Shit I'm 51 years old and she's 25  and we're in love and she's jealous  Jesus it's beautiful  she said she'd claw my eyes out if I came up here  and got laid  Now that's love for you  What do any of you know about it  Let me tell you something  I've met men in jail who had more style  than the people who hang around colleges  and go to poetry readings  They're bloodsuckers who come to see  if the poet's socks are dirty  or if he smells under the arms  Believe me I won't disappoint em  But I want you to remember this  there's only one poet in this room tonight  only one poet in this town tonight  maybe only one real poet in this country tonight  and that's me  What do any of you know about life  What do any of you know about anything  Which of you here has been fired from a job  or else has beaten up your broad  or else has been beaten up by your broad  I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times  They'd fire me then hire me back again  I was a stockboy for them when I was 35  and then got canned for stealing cookies  I know what's it like I've been there  I'm 51 years old now and I'm in love  This little broad she says  Bukowski  and I say What and she says  I think you're full of shit  and I say baby you understand me  She's the only broad in the world  man or woman  I'd take that from  But you don't know what love is  They all came back to me in the end too  every one of em came back  except that one I told you about  the one I planted We were together seven years  We used to drink a lot  I see a couple of typers in this room but  I don't see any poets  I'm not surprised  You have to have been in love to write poetry  and you don't know what it is to be in love  that's your trouble  Give me some of that stuff  That's right no ice good  That's good that's just fine  So let's get this show on the road  I know what I said but I'll have just one  That tastes good  Okay then let's go let's get this over with  only afterwards don't anyone stand close  to an open window

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How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time.

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Shall the water not remember Ember my hand’s slow gesture, tracing above of its mirror my half-imaginary airy portrait? My only belonging longing; is my beauty, which I take ache away and then return, as love of teasing playfully the one being unbeing. whose gratitude I treasure Is your  moves me. I live apart heart from myself, yet cannot not live apart. In the water’s tone, stone? that brilliant silence, a flower Hour, whispers my name with such slight light: moment, it seems filament of air, fare the world becomes cloudswell. well.