Miscellaneous poetry by Hikaru Kitabayashi

Miscellaneous poetry by Hikaru Kitabayashi

1.
A noisy, howling, owl, hooting "Who, who,"
announced the imperious morning's cautious maddening state.
The malicious man in the moon, with sparkling Venus as his mate,
sent his spiteful spotlight through the limbs of the winter's trees,
forming foul and fateful faces
traced in painful places weird with wonder.
The lancing shadows dancing deftly, prancing,
impressed on the windswept snow a wind-indebted show.

All the while, the pining winds wearily whined,
singing the blues as they moved,
reproving, with no bracing boldness,
the coldness lingering deep,
asleep among the slumbering trees.

And there, encased and painted into that scene
a woman wondered with no hopes to garner,
who tread the starlit road unto her Silas Marner,
ready to explode there on that public path
and splatter all her dope-induced, high-splashed, wrath.
Ragged, finding redemption chemically enhanced, unkempt,
she was already heady and unaware,
and ever onward, never stopping,
she lullabyed a bawling bundle
born of a well-paid, well-laid, lecher's fondle.

Then, from around the road's next nearest bend,
she heard a host of joyous sounds, in the air suspended,
from the hounds of heaven and the angels of hell,
scowling hugely with all their airy hearts,
howling with their garish glee their parts.

A shimmering light glittered,
glimmering as it fluttered on the snow,
coming quickly from the darkness of the deep below,
flickering to the spirit sprites of the forest night

And on the poor man's steps the death-drawn, otherworlded woman,
laid down her burdensome bundle's baby's bulk
Which cried, screaming harshly, as she death-drawn went her way,
she, who scored a frozen high, in truth,
as high as any other low-class whore down on her luck could go.

First thought out in or about 1964, revised 13 November 1967, 25 & 28 August 2002, 1 & 2 September 2002, 25 February 2010,  and 22 April 2012. This poem is a development from certain paragraphs written in Junior High School, and represents the first surviving effort of mine at creative writing. I had actually written a short skit based on Aeneas and Dido when I was 10 years old as a class project. I also wrote one or two acts of a full-length play based on Oedipus Rex, based on the assumption that Oedipus was not so much horrified by the fact he had married his mother, but by the fact that, in spite of everything, he still desired her. I eventually destroyed these and other efforts out of fear that others in my family might find them and either tease me or feel shock that, barely having reached puberty, I was exploring the artistic possibilities of incest and jilted lovers.





Poems 2 to  6 started off as incomplete and partially aborted attempts at poetry when I was a high school student some 45 or 46 years ago. I think I have grown wiser and mellower with age, but still have a fond feeling for the shy, uncertain, young man I was back then, so anxious to be both good and shocking at the same time.

2.
FRAGMENTATION 1

A person dumb enough to love me dear,
With hands and lips to understand my fear
Of what it is that grows beyond me here,
A person blessed with wide-awakened wisdom,
When in the sight of hide-away hisdom.
That's what my he most heedlessly does need.
But if that body, wholly hole-endowed, appeared,
I 'd swear no doubt it wasn't meant for me,
Just illusions, jostling hormones, fine, unrefined.

1967 or 1968 while in high school, 12 August 2002, 25 February 2010, 22 April 2012. The poem has evolved but the message hasn't, remaining in its essence the same.


3.
FRAGMENTATION 2a

I love you fearfully well, attractive dear.
I love your bulges front and rear,
But I'd die before admitting how I needed you,
Before committing my emotions raw to you.
I love you as we both now are,
Security for me together in my car.
And when I think of you,
Of what with age's skill you do,
And, calculated, what you say,
As you ensnare me willingly in play,
My ego swells my thoughtless heads with joy
And I am ready to become again your toy.

1967 or 1968 (in high school), 12 August 2002, 2 September 2002, 27 June 2004, 22 April 2012. This poem has evolved, not only in language but in edginess, though, knowing what I was, I am convinced I would have attempted something even edgier had I had at that time the life experience I now have. My hormones would have demanded it.


4.
FRAGMENTATION 2b

I have known you, both in sadness and in gladness,
But the joy in your employ that I treasure now the most
Is having heard you to the rafters laugh
At each and every joke my mind inclines itself to make,
Ever and ever, a delicate endeavor for a fake.

1967 or 1968 while in high school, 12 August 2002, 2 September 2002, 27 June 2004, 25 February 2010, 22 April 2012. Self-knowledge is the most difficult thing for a human being to attain. The instinctive awareness that I didn't really understand myself was something disturbing for me as a teenager. With age I have become more accepting of my limitations.


5.
FRAGMENTATION 3a

Fairy princess, fairy princess,
Acts you've mastered, they're convincing.
But, now, when I clearly say I love you,
Dear, I know I sort of bug you.
You're so primping-pretty, itsy-bitchy in your beauty.
I'm so doodling-drooping, eyes so drifting, shifty.
What if you're so past and present, future perfect?
What if I'm a purring tiger, burning brighter?
Furry fights tonight will make us both the lighter.
I will love you, bugger you. Oh, yes! And, oh, how nicely!
But, you slut! I also shudder at the love I bear you,
Bear for you and your delicious butt, the two together.
But having made me feel that I had sex appeal, can't help it.
Think it was a first-time fucker's luck at fucking,
Now, unhung, unstrung, a dunce, I curse the worse us,
'Cause for longer than forever now I've loved you.
Satan's hell's soft chiming bells! I've loved you!

Fairy princess, hairy, beary princess,
How I've loved you in one hole and out the other,
Kind of doggie-style you charmed me in your bending.
You're so pretty, you're so perfect in your movement,
Could you possibly suppose, suspect my thoughts would wonder,
That the love I loved you with has lost its splendor,
Is, I figure, less in vigor than the sex I'm wanting
From your older brother's wife's new fucking hot step-father.
Should I bother?

1967 or 1968 while in high school, 24 August 2002, 2 September 2002, 27 June 2004, 25 February 2010, 22 February 2012. This poem and others in this group were not meant to be strictly biographical, but were originally thought of with another purpose in mind, which was to shock. Irregardless of the merits or demerits of this particular work, it was only with age, though, when I realized that shock and humor were two sides of the same sword, that I could sometimes become successful at it. Finally, it should be noted that this particular composition is written with a trochaic meter.


6.
FRAGMENTATION 3b

Will you date an eastern prince,
Smelling vaguely like he's spiced and rich in vice?
Will you be your fairy princess best,
Let him fuck you clean, create a realer fairy queen?
Or, my sweetest, do you wish to be a fairy king,
With the fame and fury, all the sting,
Pressing yourself on the naked emperor for a lark,
Making bastard butches beg and whimper, "More!"?
After all the places I have been and things I've seen,
Stay, I say do stay to fuck your aging edgy drama queen.
And, my dear, if you should need to eat another dish,
Some young, delicious, sumptuous, divinely tasty tart,
Just be good enough to ask and he'll provide, I'm sure,
Some young fairy prince's princess of a younger brother,
Ready then to render service on demand,
In one end or other, all at your command.

1967 or 1968 (high school), 24 August 2002, 1 September 2002, 27 June 2004, 22 April 2012. This was part of Fragmentation 3a, but flowed off in a different direction, so I separated it, though trying to be faithful to what I would have done with it as a 17 year old, if I had had more life experiences and fewer inhibitions. It is written with modified trochaic lines, as each line will not only be found to begin with a stressed syllable, but also to end with one.


Poems 7 to 9 form a group which I call the Torn Page Poems.

7.
THE TORN PAGE - POEM 1

Life immortal's a random sort-all,
continues, has a ball, without abate,
insinuates itself on every place on every date.
By way of death, it robs the best of breath,
the worst, too, and all the mediocre rest.
Some can live, some unlive, each day a test.
Others, they must die, become a tie
to the great beyond which is most fond
of taking luckless great and small, wild or meek,
in the place of those whom destiny seeks,
fixes on with greater length and strength.

1968, 12 August and 2 September 2002, 27 June 2004, 25 February 2010, and 22 April 2012.
This poem, among with the others in this group, was first drafted in my last months of high school or in my first months of college. In all of the transformations it has undergone I have been careful to preserve the pomposity of youth in which it found its genesis.


8.
THE TORN PAGE - POEM 2

I speak in terms symbolic
the words of the workaholic,
and there is always a motive
which makes my empty words emotive,
which suggests true meaning
in an undemeaning seeming.

1968 and 12 August 2002. First drafted in my last months of high school or my first months of college.


9.
THE TORN PAGE - POEM 3

In looks, I must compulsively insist
I am quite repulsive and I will resist
all unwelcome, all unwholesome praise.
I have no grand delusions, will not be amazed.
I am unillusioned, fat, and pimpled pink
with hair no amount of time at the sink
could right the wrong of its hideous color and cut.
And the clothes that wrap me, legs and arms and butt,
are of a fashion light-years delayed.
They, like overweight and dated me, are not okay.

1968, 12 August 2002, 22 April 2012. First drafted in my last months of high school or first months of college, this poem is one that has only been lightly edited in its most recent version. Actually, I was neither fat, nor hideous, I only thought I was. In fact, when looking at pictures of my youth, I can see I was an extraordinarily handsome young man. It is a shame beauty is so often wasted on those who are incapable of recognizing it in themselves and, consequently, use it so poorly.




10.
Jump, my friend, on twilight's back
and fly imponderous far,
far through the starry depths of lunar night,
until at last you reach
the rosey-bullet battleship called dawn.
Then take command
and pull the cowardly sun.
But stop, don't work too hard.
Make a bed of the morning heat.
Then fall, dandelion-doting, fall,
until you see an acorn's summer's green
Then make sweet shade an aim.
Go sleep where fairies, elves, and sprites have lain.

20 March 1972, some days after my father died. Revised slightly 18 Sept. 1972, then again 26 Dec. 1972. Slightly revised yet again on 22 April 2012 and 25 April 2017.



11,
I'm looking for a flower,
the one that makes a crevice crimson,
the one by the witches tower.
Others have seen the things it's done.
They say it has a potent power.
I know it makes the heart forever young
and thus becomes a woman's first-most dower.

Isabel, Isabel, the flower, the flower,
crimson by the tower, I've found the flower.
I find that the witches are kind.
It's enough, but yet too much.
A gift like this is given to share,　
to share and then again and again to share.

Isabel, Isabel, will you take the flower?
Please, will you taste its power?
I could not bear to think of you have no dower.
Come, let us go to the tower.


15 and 16 May 1972 and again very lightly edited on 22 April 2012. A romantic tidbit with no particular meaning, but possessing a certain charm in its sound structure.


12.
I was picking polkweed, polkweed,
on the top of that hill.
Oh, don't you listen to the stories,
stories that the people tell.
No, no, oh don't you see
they are lies, they are lies, they are lies everyone!
No, don't you listen to the stories,
stories that the people tell...

'cause I was picking young thistle, Young thistle,
on the botton of that hill.
Oh, don't believe all those stories,
stories that the people tell
No, no oh don't you see
they are lies, they are lies, they are lies everyone!
No, don't believe all those stories,
stories that the people tell...

'cause I was picking wild roses, wild rose
to the side of that hill.
Oh, don't be led away by stories,
stories that the people tell
No, no, oh don't you see
they are lies, they are lies, they are lies everyone!
oh they are lies, they are lies, they are lies everyone...
on they are lies, they are lies, they are lies everyone...

The above represents my adaptation done in 1974 of Song no. 50 as found in Arthur Waley's translation of the Shih Chin. It was written with the intention of it being sung, something which I can still do.


Poems 13 to 23 were written at a very dark time of my life, when everything seemed to be going both right and wrong at the same time. What saved me was my belief that the soul had the capability of finding its twin.


13. 
The human heart sailing seas of storm and woe,
like a sinking ship in tow.
And, yet, dark clouds that come
soon go,
replaced by shining sun,
by the full moon's glow.
28/30 June 1993, 07 July 1993.

14.
The heart is a hungry hunter,
dreaming of rainbows,
searching for prey.
I, though, would rather break my heart myself
than lose a dream,
would rather suffer sharp
than live a life that's mean.
30 June 1993, 07 July 1993.

15.
I loved you before you were born,
wishing on a star,
not knowing how far I'd have to come,
how long I'd have to wait.

Not knowing now if you've come too late,
I shall wish again on stars,
on yours and mine,
accepting what I must as fate.
07 July 1993, 12 July 1993.

16.
Soul-mate of mine,
The world and all its riches are but dust
which time shall sweep away with no remorse.
I, too, shall disappear without a trace.
Yet, while I live your heart will live in mine.
I'll know my thoughts were bound with yours a time;
and, knowing that, will face what comes, what was.
16/21/26/29 July 1993.

17.
I'm lost for ways to let you know my mind,
lost deep, too deep, in thoughts by you refined.
On many roads I've born my cross alone,
vain fears I've fed the food of empty days,
escaping tears through dreams half-formed, then gone.
Yet, through the years I've gained a certain strength
on which I've learned to cling in times of woe
until the heart sheds fears, then yearns again.
My soul, so like a plant in need of rain,
yet needed you, your clear and gentle eyes,
so feels you with it in its thoughts and dreams.
Of what I have for what my heart now holds,
upon the scales of fate could it be so,
love all I would have piled like shining gold.
21/26/29 July 1993, 24 April 2012.

18.
This is a song for you
A song of hope -- a happy heart
and you shall see
that my love shall last eternally
beyond ... the end of time

Of all the loves I've had
you are the one, the only one
that saw what's me
yet you gave your heart of gold to me
and love ... to last all time
02/03 August 1993, 12/13 October 1992.

19.
Although each kiss were death,
I'd die and die again to touch your lips with lips,
to pull your body tight to mine,
to smell your smells and taste your tastes,
And though my arms have held
and heart has felt so many others' warmth,
you're all of them to me and more,
more than pleasure,
more than pain.
You're life, itself.
The one for whom I'd suffer hell,
for whom I'd disappear without a trace,
should doing so then make you something better,
bring you someone greater blessed
than me.
29 September 1993.

20.
Me in you and you in me
Possessing, possessed
Loved and loving you, and free
27/28 October 1993.

21.
It's good to be home.
Good that I no longer roam,
alone and foolish,
in search of greatness abroad.
I saw it's good to be home.
02/03 December 1993.

22.
When the blue-black arms of night
hold me tight in sleep's embrace,
my dreams unite us once again.
I see your face and feel your kiss
and hold your body close to mine.
But when I wake, we're still apart.
And feeling pain that only love can bring,
I pray and pray and pray that dreams come true.
10 April 1994.

23.
More to me than man,
more than woman.
You shall be my greatest love
and all my heart's desires
shall find their fill in you in full
till death do our bodies part.
And when your ashes mix with mine,
I shall rest forever joined with you.
09 July 1994.



24.
Songbird, songstress to the heavens,
mistress of the sky clouds,
messenger of light and lightning,
may your days be blessed with freedom.
May you give the winds your beauty.
Oh, and when the work God gives you's over,
may your children bear your soul's imprint,
both at land and sea, outspread in spirit,
being charmed by truth from you derived,
give another generation's young ones love that's uncontrived.

25 March 1996, 23 April 2012, 25 April 2017. This poem was originally written in honor of Fuiva, the wife of a former Vice Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Tonga on the graduation of her adopted son with a doctor's degree from Daito Bunka University. I revised it somewhat to make the theme more universal, taking my cue from the fact that Fuiva is the name of a Tongan songbird and was given to her at her birth by the Queen Regnant of Tonga, Queen Salote, the grandmother of the current king of that country.


25.
Chuggalug, chuggalug, chuggalug, lug,
riding on a train that's shaped like a bug!
Stopped by the rains and taking a bus
seemed like an awful lot of fuss.
But I had to go on and take a chance,
no matter the style of the typhoon's dance.
You see, there was something in it for me.
The trip was tied up with my destiny,
for maybe you might come along and bring
the will for us to make some songs to sing.
And maybe this might revolutionize
the role of poetry in others' eyes.
For you got talent, I got age.
We can light a fire, start a rage,
Together we can be a team,
and we can both achieve a dream.
You can make your writings known
like a light that on a hill is shown.
And I, who am a slut for history's fame,
can make for me the honored name
of one who recognized the worth
and assisted in the birth
of a star that brings about comment,
a star that lit up the firmament.

31 August 1998. This poem was written to encourage a student who claimed to have a deep interest in writing English poetry. I have no idea now who the student was. There have been many who have given up almost immediately after realizing that poetry is not only hard work, but, to do a good job, means learning the rules in order to be able to break them with good effect. This was one of those students and I responded as I always do by almost as immediately forgetting those who won't make the effort to learn something of the scope of English poetry before they write it.




26.
Angel, you're a man I'd love hate,
a man to whom I'm drawn by fate.
Angel, angels come from heaven,
Come from hell,
But I don't care where you might dwell.

I don't care about the crowds or what they think.
It's you, against your skill, that I must play.
It's not for them, it's you,
The rival of my fame for whom I play.
I use my might to fight you,
Fight the man, the only man, I love.
Life is full of games we play.

You fly across the field.
You have a body made of steel.
But all of life that I expect
is winning from your eyes respect.

I call you angel now,
The angel that I'd love to hate,
The one to whom I'm drawn by fate.
Angel, angels come from heaven,
Come from hell,
But I don't care where you might dwell.

The balls we kick so high,
From goal to goal will fly
And with the balls our souls can also fly.
In death, let mine find yours, my angel.
Let us play our angel games
in Heaven let us also seek our fame.

07 January 2000 and 25 April 2012. This poem was largely finished in 2000, but needed a few extra lines for completeness, which I added a short time ago. It was originally an attempt at a song and I had a melody in mind when I first wrote it, but have now completely forgotten what it was. It was written because Japan was everywhere excited about its international competitiveness in soccer. My premise what that there must be an occasional player for whom the game has meaning because he has a particular rival who means more to him than anyone else, player or fan, and that it is for the sake of this rival's respect that he puts so much effort into his game. More than a poem about soccer (which it, of course, is), I see this poem as an ode to the glories of competition and its often positive role in building a healthy society.



27.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
a great big wiggly, wobbly, wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great slide
and in a flash,
he made a splash,
and Humpty Dumpty died.
And all the king's whores
and all the king's men
thought it a sin
that the King of Tarts
had broken their hearts
and they couldn't put Humpty together again.
Yes, they couldn't put Humpty together again.

2004/04/19 and 2010/02/25 - Tokyo. This adaptation of the Mother Goose rhyme was written as a song for adults and was meant to capture the impact the original Mother Goose rhyme had on English people in the last quarter of the 17th century.



28.
Can't let departmental schisms
affect my sense of rhythm.
Can't feel down and out
when I got songs to sing and shout.
The Past may have been a bitch,
but I'm attracted to that witch.
The Future, a noted slut,
I'd like to kick it in the butt.
The Present presents itself as cool.
It's enough for this old fool.
And, I tell you, one and all!
Life ain't bad, but, just the same, it ain't no ball.

13 and 14 June 2004 - Higashi Matsuyama. A poem of defiance. Being head of the English Department of Daito Bunka University was not an altogether pleasant experience, in spite of an occasional success now and then.


29.
Sapphires were not more beautiful than you,
you who were spirit's fire and soul-touched truth.
But now I hear that you have left us here alone,
are gone unto another world, another home.
I wish my tears could build a bridge to there.
I wish that I could bring you back both young and fair,
for you were the jewel of my child's young eye
and I think that life's too short a thing and sigh.
15 June 2004 and 25 April 2017



30.
Kick it fast and kill that ball,
Over others, run and maul.
Keep your guard and don't you fall.
If the finals are your all.

19 July 2004, 24 October 2011, 10 March 2012, 21 April 2012. This started out as a short poem and was always intended to remain that, the object being to pack as much as possible into as short a space as possible, in order to encourage a former graduate student in his participation in an amateur adult soccer league. In the process of revising it, I think it became something more universal.



31.
Today, as a class exercise in my song-writing class, I had my students rewrite a portion of the Song of Solomon. As an example, I rewrote Chapter 2, verses 10-12, as follows:

My lover spoke and said to me,
"Rise up my loved one, come away,
for now the winter's past, is gone.
The snows are over, gone, are gone.
The flowers bloom on earth. It's spring.
The birds, the doves, new love do bring."
19 September 2013



32.
Into the star-strung night, I wait for rain.
I seek out hearts of loved ones lost and try to explain,
but explanations, self-wrung, drinking not of truth, remain,
attack me, lay me down in lies fed by inconclusive sighs.
My heart awash in tears fills with fears dry eyes,
as I think of could-have-beens, of sins unsinned
and wish I could have learned to kill my broken heart with lies.
For all that's left me now is acting out a ravished fate,
feeling all is dated, all too late
when in the leering eyes of fate
is an onward rush of raging age,
and I pretend, pretend, pretend, pretend,
pretend to be unfazed.
28 December 2014

Sometimes I think pretending can create its own reality, but the effort is always at a cost of stress that must, on occasion, rear its hostile head. 



33.
Alive or dead, my son,
When will I know your fate?
My hopes, they sink in fear
of you in rubble drowned.
Come back, my son, come back.
You have your life to live.
27 April 2015. 

A Nepali student of mine returned to Nepal for personal reasons on the 21st of this month with the intention of returning in a month or so. Now everything has gone so terribly wrong in that country and, with no way to make contact, I worry.



34.
Beauty, breathing beauty, bursting beauty's bonds,
There I see a face, the face of which I am most fond.
God in man, if such hyperbole be true,
God is what I see in you.
29 April 2015 



35.
Yes, my son's for me a sun
Deep in space bright shining.
In his wealth of knowledge grows he still
He brings me joy in each day's growth.
And when he sings an angel sings
God's heaven's sounds on earth are mine
From love to love with love they fill
Without a need for any oath
To force the rich rewards he brings.
19 January 2016 and 27 April 2017



36. 
So like the Sun deep-piercing in its love,
You fill me in the thoughts that I think of.
I trust your love and feel that life is grand,
Although I know I stand on shifting sand
And know that time's a thing I cannot own,
For I must face my afterdeath alone.
But yet, until I do no longer live,
It's yours! It's yours! My heart to you I'll give.
25 January 2016



37.
Sincere the thoughts your eyes can't hide.
Hope, I must, that they will stay, abide.
If, beloved, you still remain when go I must,
Vanity does, in my place, make me think it's you,
Age replaced by all the best of youth and truth, by you.
29 April 2015

38.
Like swallows, fly the rodent-headed bats at night,

through moonlit shadowed spaces, in and out of sight

The bloody, sucking, royal rulers of the sky

ignore me as I wander, lost in wonder, past them by.

Yet, I would swear that angels look at them and sigh

With bats, the more important destiny does lie.

22 May 2015, during my 5th period poetry seminar for third year students of the English Department of Daito Bunka University.



39.
Touched by a ladybug.
Moved by a ladybug.
Views of a beauty's hues,
Heartstrings all pulled apart.

Written on 30 May 2015 for a youth in class sitting by a window expressing fascination with a ladybug three days earlier.



40.
My darlings put their education first
and I am now with pride about to burst.
They chose a road they did not back then know
those four and five now long gone years ago.
With gambler's hearts we took each other on
And we, down unexpected paths, have gone.
Yet I, at sixty, found a father's heart
From which at sixty five I'll not depart.
27 January 2016

41.
Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is a work I much admire. I reimagined and extensively rewrote and reorganized the last two pages of this translation of FitzGerald's translation as Omar Khayyám's death song and this is what I would like to share here.

The Death Song of Omar Khayyám

Indeed, my love, the wine I drank so long,

It did my credit in men's eyes much wrong!

It drowned my honour in a shallow glass,

And sold my reputation for a song

Of course, repentance did I try before.

I swore - but was I sober when I swore?

But love and spring then came, and springtime's song.

My penitence unglued, in pieces tore.

And much as wine has been a thief from hell,

And robbed me of my public honour - well,

My love, I wonder what the vintner's make

That's not more precious than the goods they sell.

So, love! Could you and I with fate conspire

To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,

Would not we shatter it to bits - and then

Re-make it nearer to the heart's desire!

You, too, your spring will vanish with the rose!

Your youthful scented days of joy will close!

So as the nightingale which to us sings,

We know not where our flight will go. Who knows!

The grape, my love, which I myself provide,

Will wash my body when I will have died.

And in a sheet of greenest grape leaves made,

I'll have me buried by some garden's side.

My buried body then shall be a snare.

Perfume shall fling itself into the air.

That you, my fair, shall stay sedeuced thereby

And, of my essence, stay by me aware.

Ah, moon of my delight which has to wane,

The moon of heaven rising is again,

How often after rising shall it look

Through this garden after me - in vain!

But when your roaming feet shall, seeking, pass

Among the blooms star-scattered on the grass,

And in your lover's errand reach the spot

Where we are sitting - drink for me a glass!

And seeing what in empty death I've missed,

Those lips, those lips, I'll bless those lips I've kissed.

In former kisses will my soul exist,

Unmissed perhaps, in kisses past I've kissed.

30 June 2016

42. Tanabata Festival Love Song

Altair was cursed for love of Vega,
not permitted by the current social order,
And Vega, also, having been with others,
Knew no love could ever be the better.
They shared their souls more than their bodies,
afraid of what would happen, if the world around them knew.
But shocked and rowdy friends and neighbors,
could smell their love and love like theirs they hated.
Star-crossed the two, with evil eyes and hexes murdered,
their bodies to the vultures given, mutilated,
their souls in death, still dispised and burdened,
demanded hell and heaven both a bit of justice.
The angels half from each appointed as a jury,
their souls in stars imprisoned in the evening heavens
that once a year could have a meeting,
a mating only spirits find themselves are able
and then return, their hearts fulfilled and broken,
again to count the days until eternal passions
again break down the evil fate imposed by earthly harriers
and can escape a day, just a day, the barriers.
7 July 2016