Sakura

I am done now
learning to yearn
for things unattainable
the introduction of you
an all-sufficient instruction for me
in that regard;
I am done with the desire
to explore the whole of this world
or have the whole of this world
come explore me in awe
before either me or this world
is stuck in the ground in a coffin--
The sunken cities
that hide in the swollen seas
your large pupils swim in
is all I want to go to.
The sonatas,
the sonatas of fear and laughter and sweat
your long fingers can draw from me
all I want to hear, your fear,
your fear and laughter and sweat all the taste I want on my tongue.
you see: My heart
no longer a house for the imitations
of great things, no longer like
the cheap dusty Sacred Heart of a plastic Jesus
in another forsaken church
but a mantelpiece for your light feline sit,
that crossing, oh that soft crossing of your legs
that makes the whole of this world tremble,
and the bastard you grin like.

You Come Down From the Stage

You come down from the stage
already feeling like a tree
fooled into a full blossom
by a treacherous March morning

you come down from the stage
utterly alone, the personas you loved,
the personas you hated--the personas that blissfully weren't you washed away,
gone, and once again there is no excuse
for this haircut that is rather a lack of a haircut
once again there is no excuse
for this face, this pitiful waste of benzoyl peroxide
and (never quite) Clean&Clear.

you come down from the stage
to an empty bed, that was all the gazes you'll have on you
for the next god knows how many months,
now you have to live with everything
the make-up remover will not take off
the hunchback of your character
exchanged with a more difficult kind of hunchback

You come down from the stage
already feeling like a tree
that fooled itself into a full blossom
in a March morning almost like any other

ready to have its flowers
frozen and cut down by the winter
ready for nothing else,
nothing else at all.

An Airport Emergency Journal

            The way priorities of passion and greed are drowned at times is clear only when the water is burning the nostrils and the throat and the heart. ''How do I fucking make sure that I stumble upon the blonde in the lobby again?" becomes "Where the fuck in this room is my passport." Desire turns to despair, desire made cold and wet like wet clay, uselessly smearing and freezing on all the fingers. It is the perfect little red booklet that you need now, not the perfect little red nipples: That which is made perfect by its seemingly unreal loss has overcome that which is perfect in its lifelike dreams. Indeed, loss overcomes imagination. You imagine perfect little red nipples again, other perfect little red nipples; but every time you lose that perfect little red booklet -for you do lose that booklet very often, in hotel rooms, in bags, in airports, as if to abandon the name and the likeness that is you or as if to cut all this crap and pleasurably imprison yourself in a waiting room of an airport forever-, every single time, the nipples will be gone. Everything will be gone. A gentle, mellow aching of the heart for a few hours and no more "Oh I am so happy and so anxious and so curious and so fucking frightened that I will be living on another continent in a few months and oh what is the food like and ah the culture is definitely inferior yes but yeah human rights and freedoms are certainly much, much superior" but only an "Oh will I be alive the next second, please let me be alive the next second' now. The nipples gone, the passport gone, the hotel rooms gone, airports gone. Only the heart remains. The heart of the matter. Not that any of it matters. Nipples in a hotel room and a glorious higher education in a foreign continent and other dreams of the future shall be unravelled only if they are to be unravelled, because the ache shall heal only if it is to heal and if it is to turn into a torn, dead heart then it will turn into a torn, dead heart. Loss drowns all passion and greed, death drowns all loss and passion and greed; and the fear of death drowns all, even death. But if your heart is not aching yet, none of this will matter much to you, I know and approve this, the audacity of an uninterrupted, unbothered life. If -or when- your heart is not aching anymore, this will really not matter much to you either, not anymore. I know and approve this, too, the foolish, immense forgetfulness that characterizes the human being, making him the slave to passion and greed crying out in joy and exaltation. But you've paused graciously from your passion and greed to read this crap, so I will cut to the point: Go on, go on like this, write little meditations or chase nipples to suck or lose and find your passport, whatever you think will help you get through with the fact your heart is slowly -or quickly, (''oh please not quickly''--the first and foremost and the only shared prayer of all men and women)- becoming torn and dead; but pause just for a little moment every once in a long while: Think about trying to become the kind of person who doesn't lose a passport, not quite that often, think about not worrying about death and separation that much, it cannot possibly be good for your heart. Or think for a moment about seeking medical attention. Then carry on.

Gifts

My gift
is to read lucidly and impress the elderly
in two languages
and win at
small insignificant things
like not pulling the doors that say PUSH and predicting rain.

Your gift
is beauty
I would kill you
if I knew I could steal your gift that way.

I read men and women whose gift is
to write like mirrors;
unravel body and soul, make and unmake
dawn and dusk between two covers
I would burn every single letter they wrote forever
if I knew I could steal their gifts that way.

I know of someone
whose gift is impeccable health of mind
who is alive despite knowing that
his name will be on a gravestone somewhere someday
I would unleash maladies on the world
Pestilence and plague, dusk, eternal dusk
if I knew I could steal his gift that way.

This
is the kind of person that I am:
shameless twat, servant to the vest
who wants the dawn and the dusk, winter and summer,
your gifts and his, all the gifts, greedy, yes, won't stop--

luckily someone gave me a gift of paper and pen
so I lie still in my little lair, buried
in jealousies disguised as longings
my desire endless
my limbs unmoving
my blessings uncounted,
scheming and scheming.

Is Impressionist Landscape Poetry Possible?

A bleak

cliff

gray

headache

after

A dawn

sour

river delta

dry, so dry

stomachache

after

a starless

debauchery

first transparent

then gray

damp

dim

a quarry

increasingly solitary

after

a violet

lily

lambs

whistle

dusk

heartache

after all

all that remains.

***

This piece was a derivation from another experiment:

New Year's

a headache

is all that remains

after a stomachache

after the heartache.

A Different Kind of Poetry

I am jealous of Cohen

he’s 78, he’s famous, he’s rich, he’s good, he says

“Come on baby,

give me a kiss

stop writing everything down.”

I am 18, on the other hand

and still say

“Come on Kut,

write something happy, write something light, write something good.”

But nowadays my life outdoes me

when it comes to poetry

my days are becoming one by one

kind poets of kind poems, I envy them:

the days are almost getting longer

and the nights no more pretend to be heart attacks—

the bed lets me sleep all through the dark

and lets me go when it’s time -for a change-

the Bosphorus ferries wait for me

empty bus seats wait for me

the cabs without the cigarette stink

the cab drivers without the philosophy and the politics

oh what bliss

the winter

the winter properly foreshadows the spring

the sweatshirts are here

(though with a cigarette stink)

the letter is on its way

I am on my way

these brownies

baked for me?

oh my, oh my, oh my

and all I say (in Chinese) is “Qing wen, wo bu shuo zhong wen.”

but that too will change soon.

I am still jealous of Cohen

as things aren’t too good in the poetry department as you see

but you know what

it doesn’t really matter

that much

when my life is making

such fine poetry of itself

like this.

Our Lady

Our Lady of the Rosary shall know

many good poets spoke many good words

about roses and other good things

and when we strive to follow in their footsteps

her face is the rosary on our tongue

her memory bead after bead

her memory rose after rose

Our Lady of Mercy

now needs to rain upon

other bards and travellers

and teach them how one shows mercy

to himself. Our Lady of Mercy

now needs to be the steady branch

under some other tired bird,

the steady branch

under some other unsure flower bud, the steady branch under

some other woodcutter’s hand,

goodbye, Our Lady of Mercy,

thank your blessed heart for trying even though you knew

we have way too many sins to forgive.

Our Lady of Peace

we try to be in peace in her absence—

there is no anger, there is no strength

left in us to unsheathe an anger,

to unsheathe a grief, to unsheathe our hands, to unsheathe our hearts.

Peace she has taught us well, but in her presence

we swung our rotten wooden fears and swords, pretended to be at war

and in her absence now, we pretend to be in a peace

that is not the peace of a graveyard,

                                           of a borderline,

                                           of a still pool of blood,

                                                a stiffness,

                                                a silence.

When does a silence become a peace? When is longing’s edge made blunt?

Our Lady of Navigators

stands now on a deserted island

she does not wait for other sailors

but she cannot steer us now

our ships without wind, anyhow,

are but other deserted islands,

our hearts

but other deserted ships in the wind

lost in the Depth and the Breadth

without her steering.

Our Lady of Sorrows

was not a lady of so many sorrows

ere she met us, we have been to her

a gale to a naked soil

a whip to a naked back

a dagger to a naked heart

a lie against the naked truth

an us against a her

but now we are made barren, we are flogged, whipped, struck

now we are being lied to

and it is too hard to be an us without a her.

Our Lady of the Rosary shall know

many good poets spoke many good words

about roses and other good things

and when we strive to follow in their footsteps

her face is the rosary on our tongue

her memory bead after bead

her memory rose after rose