Sitting on the barn haystack
Watching the shadows of the sun change,
Counting cars that exist only in imagination.
A rural landscape,
Eyes full of wheat fields.
There is no plan today,
No guilt in idling.
Waiting for a fly to come,
And if I am lucky,
A dragonfly.
You are the hand holding me afloat when I am drowning
You are the song of my inside turmoil which turned into lyrics
You are there for me when I am pretending to be strong for the world to see
You are my dear friend, whom I wish never to take for granted
You will be there when my sad face turns into a sunflower once again
Thank you my fellow writers
The mere fact
that I can read your work here
after my absence
sparked something
in my dying creativity
If you think what you share here
do not matter
I say that you are wrong
You are so wrong
When you poured your talent and heart out into these written words
They transformed into buterflies
One landed on my windowsill
to bring me hope
Another landed somewhere to bring beauty
and so on and so forth
like a fig tree bears much fruit
Thank you for overcoming your fear to create
夜机缓缓地升空
城市里的万家灯火
就如掉地上的流星雨
来不及许下秘密的愿望
With the night flight taking off,
all the city lights
look like shooting stars
that have landed on the ground.
I miss the chance
to make a wish.
Before I flew in an aeroplane,
I thought the sky was just up there,
where birds reside.
Now I am midair,
the clouds look like someone knocked over an ink bottle,
spilling to form a marble floor.
I imagined that when I looked up,
there would be a light-projecting ceiling,
filled with imaginary galaxies and the Milky Way.
Never have I seen a girl as stunning as she
by the shoreline of the summer Celtic Sea.
Held captive by the golden sun shining in her hair,
I hoped, as she walked, she’d see me standing there.
I wanted to know her name,
such blinding beauty in a blue daisy sundress.
Would she link arms with me for a sean-nós dance?
I was just a boy dreaming of his future bride
when I first laid eyes on Bella Blu,
a girl with whom my heart could hardly wait to entwine.
# This is a collaboration with Bree Leto. Bella Blu is the name of a boat I saw parking at the Marina di Cagliari.
Alcohol is like a slippery sliding door into darkness.
When I step through it,
the haunting past, the rest in terror, the failure, and the hurt are endless.
No matter what positive emotions I feed it,
nothing grows in a place without light.
I don’t remember making any promises.
A runaway child with shifting sandcastle dreams.
I am here with you; the whole of me, to you, is not enough, is insufficient.
What can promises do?
They don’t anchor my heart.
They don’t keep me wearing your scent.
They don’t keep my legs jelly and from wandering.
Let the kite fly freely to its ruin
by cutting the string.
Please!
I believe you are resting deep in the ocean, sometimes coming up for air bubbles.
Responding to the sound of your breathing, paintbrushes dropped onto pebbles still radiating the warmth of summer scotch.
I rushed out wearing only my jeans, escaping the slumbering heat and running towards you.
The waves draped themselves around my jeans like a night serpent, slowing me down as they tightened around my ankles and calves, crawling up to my crotch. The buttons were torn open recklessly, breaking free.
I began to trek through the saline foam, following the sound of you.
You were calling me to go skinny-dipping with you again, moving in synchronisation. I was well aware that I was alone in the dark water, trying once more to listen to your streams of consciousness as they formed poetry.
I dived into the depths where your voice became clear, arousing me once again and offering us the chance to become one for the thousand and thousandth time.
The train is chugging through the open plain.
Sunflowers flash before my eyes,
like sour lollies exploding on my taste buds.
I imagine the smell of green grass and dry hay, remembering the harvest moon and village celebrations. I was too young to be drunk on rice wine; instead, we gorged ourselves on roasted peanuts and bamboo shoots. We didn’t care about the char and bitterness, washing them down with strong green tea until our bellies ached.
As the train journey is anchored by the clouds above, my sense of self is defined by the happy memories of childhood.
