Softly Unbound

Compulsive exposure of the midsummer night—

flakes of mosquitoes,

the hairy riverbed,

and,

The giant grotesque

The forest is watching you

Sunlit Brilliance

白日光輝

My Horse

I saw it,

the ashes inside the sun,

and in the ashes,

lava still burning.

I stirred it with my fingers,

crushed it,

swallowed it whole

to make sure it became part of me.

I needed pain,

so much pain,

a pain to fill me.

Yesterday’s jolt,

the smoke of dawn,

memories laced with soft smiles and unrest,

passing again and again

through the same place.

So many days

I once held aloft.

But today arrives

heavy,

sharp,

fragile.

That horse,

locked in a safe in a foreign land,

let it survive in its petty way.

It has learned silence,

as if we never remembered,

never proved,

never lived.

⸻

My Dog

Love is the friction

of one body against another,

small, nameless sparks.

You called it a crop

under mechanical care,

pure and resolute,

like a sun grown by scientists.

You never mentioned the ghosts

drifting between barley spines

in the night,

how they gaze upward

from hollow ground,

displaced whispers,

white solace,

white romance,

white howling,

white fear.

The dog,

stuffed with garbage,

sleeps contentedly

in the moonlight.

Poetry by me