I See You In Colors

I am pretending you did not exist.
Ink nightly washes black
over my consciousness
and abandons me as morning seaweed
upon a foreign beach.

I am pretending we were simply
the sparkling imagination of some higher being,
our life together set below a singular epic sky
unrepeated
in future histories.

I am pretending I cannot taste you
each day as I do the sea air in my breath
when I am running,
my heart tied upon one foot,
ancient melancholy tied upon the other,
anxiously racing,
madly racing through lifetimes,
to find our brightened souls.

I see you in colors that don't exist.

It is all that I see clearly.
and why I run.



Copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved.
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Unraveled

I lingered silent over the geography
of your spirit,
and inhaled its saffron valleys,
sunlit with lissome lilies,
as I drunk deep from its coaxing wells
of cool electricity.

I have tasted the Spring's first blooms
in your glance and wondered
of the half life of our words
and the extraordinary struggle
of their anxious disorder.

I stopped cold with your slight
"hey mister" and all I could think was
of the fate of crowned angels
in the silvered milky way
watching over,
washing over
my desire to be lured
and unraveled
and...
did you really call me
"mister"?

We shall run away far from all
that is familiar,
toothy fear and excitement our fuel,
until the burdened chatter of others
becomes inaudible,
until all that is unspeakable
is spoken,
and our voices,
clear and charmed in its
undressed debut,
sings.

Image source

Love Is The Only Rational Act

"Love is the only rational act."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

If we don't breathe to speak of love
then we are wasting our breath.
If we aren't eating to have the energy to love
then we are still hungry.
If we aren't moving to love,
then we are moving in the wrong direction.
If our every action, movement, thought, word
does not lead to love
then we have failed as we may have before
and if we do not pick ourselves up
and love ourselves and others even more
then we have declared the ultimate
war upon humanity.
The only true war on war
is to express love
and to share it with everyone
even in the most unlikeliest of moments,
especially in the most unlikeliest of moments,
we must share love
and reach others with it,
teach it, preach it
from the rooftops,
from the mountaintops
to surround every ounce of our being with love
no matter the consequences,
past and future,
for herein lies
the present
and future
for us
all.







Picture Source

On This Splendid Day

As if blown over hot embers
a drowsy wind blew soulless
over the zoo that lined the Boulevard.
There was no redemption
found for those on the 181
as it jerked toward its destiny.

Highland. Vine. Western.
The bus lurched forward,
its captives silent with a lifetime of
guilt and indignity,
their endless untold stories
already forgotten.

In Little Armenia an elderly man
boarded in his Sunday best.
No one noticed the music
that twinkled unashamedly
from his eyes.
Vermont. Los Feliz. Central.

At the Galleria,
I stared out from the bus,
now in disrepair and half emptied,
at the old man
meeting
his loved one,
their imperfect bodies
suddenly perfect,
their arms wrapped around each other
like silk ribbons around a gift,
as they kissed
and kissed,
and kissed for what seemed like
an infinity of moments,
each moment intense and delicate,
soft and unbroken,
with an urgency deep with patience,
I watched
as others soon did


and I soon
discovered too,
unashamedly,
on this splendid day,
how
the broken song
can find its notes
and live
forever.



Poetry copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All rights reserved.
Photo Source

Familiar Love

My Dearest Love,
I do hope this letter finds you
and finds you well.
I have been gone much too long,
I know, in search of longed for
misadventures
and uncalculated
love,
a misspent life, perhaps,
but one,
it seems,
that has led me
to you.

How many perfect sunsets have I been
haunted
with your lilting voice cresting
over the waves,
the waves
that rushed through the ventricles
of my heart, and filled my
desperate lungs
with foam
and hunger
for breath,
and then
abandoned me,
silent and
drowning.

How many times did I find
that home in my mind
that belongs to you,
where the early sea fog
swallows your secret garden
brimmed
with lilies and brambles,
hidden paths and buried jars,
where the bright, bright fields
evaporate
beneath the galloping hooves
taking flight
with winged
fierceness.

How much I have missed you,
sweet girl,
I missed how
you arrested my thoughts
mid sentence with
uncommon grace
that disarmed me
for reasons
I cannot name.
I missed
your lovely genius
that so easily
dismissed the weight of my
measurable life,
I missed the intensity
of our words
which became our truths
and bound us
as kindling
to a starving fire.

When we meet again
on that exquisitely ordinary day
you may not remember my face,
my body,
my clothes,
but the welcomed recognition
of the stark flame behind
my eyes,
will hold a
disturbingly
familiar
love,

and I
will
always
remember
you.




Poetry copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All rights reserved.
Photo source

because you asked

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
soulstruck with the vivid terrains
of unexplained familiarity,
mindful of ancient promises that
locked our spirited fortunes together
with unnerving elegance

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
agents of wanderlust
and unexpected thought,
waking the timid to all that is real,
waking the timid to all their dreams
then watched all of its terrible beauty
as they gracefully turned one into the other.

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
agents of wonderment
and unexpected comfort,
and laughed as old friends do,
laughed as lovers do
as we sat, feet dangling
off the edge of the world.

Take Me Far

I could not explain
to you the angles
of our collision
I awoke to no recognizable
wreckage,
just you easing
stargazers into a vase.
You had left the moon
on all night
and sang McLachlan to me,
bending gentle notes
and jazzy laughter
around our tangled bodies

I asked you to
take me far
away
and
you did
as we inhaled
a clarity
and shuddered
into
being.

Save Us

"I am not the
perfect man you seek.
I have little to impress
you with.
I cannot save you
with my ambition,
my dreams,
my love."

"Ironically", she mused,
"You are perfect.
After all,
Who else could have crafted
yourself with tremendous
flaws and virtues
as perfectly as you?
Others have taken from you,
plundered your soul
for more,
left you wanting
for sweet rescue.
But truly,
what person can torture you
greater than you
so that
you would freely
surrender all that is
dear to you?"

"Then perhaps,
I can save myself
with my ambition,
my dreams,
my love.
And that is
most of all
what
I can give to you."

"I understand not
the explicit mathematics
of our spirit,
only that we are pure
as the light
we travel within
and our love,
given freely,
will save us."

Diary from the Battle Zone

I have seen the raw
horrors of this war firsthand,
its naked wreckage bleeding,
its perverse hunger feeding
the crippled screams
within lonely dreams
leaving its tortured soul desperate
for painless respite

I have seen the raw
agonies of this war firsthand
where from earth its soldiers disappear,
in nightmares they keenly reappear
where their ashen bones seemly mirror
all their death wish fears,
where their tortured souls slowly anticipate
relief from all that they wholly hate

I have learned to deeply respect
what the wisest have forever written
of the bitter fruit barely bitten
and the grandest stories time will tell
where on earth the angels fell
and before the fingers of those
tortured souls
would strain to deftly spell:
"LOVE IS HELL"

The Thin Whispers

We soon forgot our skittish
introductions,
a day's silent banter of
suspicion
and pride.
No wills were broken,
no wills won.

We trailed the
thin whispers
from the skies
hallucinogenic,
across uneasy
canyons
along the dry beds
and their bleached umbrella
spine

Brush turned to
scattered pines,
as we turned to
long slow draws
from a palmful of water
between brackish
rocks

Each day eavesdropped
upon evening's edge
pushing the trailless
ridgelines,
till
the thin whispers
sang

and
rang tiny bones
within her
and she ran
blindly
down,
down
into the startled
valley,
our aching
muscle upon muscle
breathless,
her coat gleaming,
reveling
full stride
in the blurred
tall grasses,
till we
took flight
within
the thin
whispers

To Love Differently

We have exchanged
no histories,
no storied details
amongst strong coffee
and
ritual laughter,
mild
confessions
and rehearsed wit,

still,
this silence
between us
speaks complete
as the
forgiven
moment and
the orbit
of small
planets

I seek no one,
no more
than
the evening seeks
its darkness,
Yet, I am
compelled
in my madness
to love differently.

To love you.

I do not love you as
the high desert admires
the wild blue Canterbury Bells
that rub your ankles,
(like a cat that grazes
affection in the hollows
of your neck)

I love you as
the sweeping heat squeals
and shudders to a halt before
the sudden storm,
and with your breath locked
in mine,
my soul inhaled into yours,
we exult across
the holy
sands

I love you as
the downpour wakens
the fragrant earth,
the ancient red rocks ingest
our wisdom,
the golden poppies,
like nervous stars,
blink in excitement,
and as we
release our quakened
light
beyond my madness
to love differently.

To love you.

The Untested Key

I exposed your
old diaries locked away
behind your crowned eyes
(as easily as you
chewed off your glove
for your naked fingers
to breathe)
and touched each of
your concealed desires
that were
carefully named
and dated
for a less guarded
moment

We rushed
the crowd of stars
unburdened from
the dragging of
shadows
and muslin,
the untested key
opening the cool
steel lock,
and teeth bared,
reveled in an
oyster dawn
fully
undone

She Forced The Restless Night

She forced the restless night
with rifle scope attention,
arms akimbo,
head weighted back
tilted by attitude and hair,
movement absent,
save jaws that kindly
chewed my imaginary future

My thoughts stuttered
in rhythm to the
teakettle steam,
vaporous,
useless
as the gazelle's dream
of outrunning the
lion's devotion

Still,
as the stars contemplate
their own eternity,
I consider my threadless
mortality,
amused by Hamlet's torment,
for I have chosen
to be

devoured,
as she forced the restless night,
feasting upon my glistening organs,
wet twisted muscle and sinew
entwined in fragrant seizures,
inhaling my soul whole
in open delirium,
and falling,
falling,
in storm drunken bliss
as we forced
the restless night

Into Our Star Splintered Silence

into a star splintered
silence
i reach
with hopeful fingers
into the light
of distant
mornings
captive in the
unbloomed
flower.

into a star splintered
silence
the desert swan
glides
between my shadow
and redemption,
captive in her blithe
grandness of
renewal

into our star splintered
silence
i will not always
understand the spirited
flourish
of our higher
being's wand
but i will always be
captive in the lithe
grace of
your
love

closer

gentle emily sings by the sea
strands of opera
and seaweed that
untangle beneath
a lustful sky
as the tides pull her closer
to (than i will ever know)
the mercurial faces
of angels
leaning
with soft elbows
upon my chest
who rise with
the inhaling of mist
and fall with
each exhaled breath
as the sea
pulls me
closer

A Dreamless Night

I came to you
on a dreamless night.
In your deepest sleep
your eyes were alive
and had not forgotten
the promised possibilities
that once stilled
a world's breath,
and quickened ours.

We had trampled over the
imagination of lesser gods
and parted bodies of water
as we did flesh,
and we had not forgotten
the promised possibilities
that once stilled
a world's breath,
and quickened ours.

You had come to me
on a dreamless night.
In my deepest sleep
my eyes were alive.

I Saved Your Dreams in My Eyes

(For My Children of Whimsy)

I saved your dreams in my eyes
Whatever I see, I see your dreams
opening its first orchids

I saved your eyes in my dreams
Whatever I dream, I dream with your eyes
as stars sing light

I saved your thoughts in my whimsy
Whatever I think, my heart
imagines its smile

I saved your dreams in my eyes
Whatever I see, I see your dreams

Kiss Deeply the Remarkable Sky

Let me walk with you to the edge
of our despair
and leave our garments
of ordained prose
and expectation
We have explored the unbroken
terrain with the tongues
of linguists
lingering over a life
less ordinary
Kiss deeply the remarkable sky
It sings our mystery
and our embrace
of haunted splendor
that hungers for every
moment of new infinity

The Ventricle

I have mounted the orchestral wave
rising and falling beneath a shaken landscape
racing a blinded horse with guided sight
as cathedral bells unravel the thick air

We swallowed surrendered geographies whole,
the disturbed earth no longer elegantly polite,
and raided a swollen ventricle
and raised the smoky alto deeply into the night

Your eyes traveled across my soul's domain
drunken with fresh sonnets and mystery
and quieted the storms as
prime numbers spread beneath our infinite sky.

Our Return

My arms open to your fractured sky
spread beneath our unwieldy youth and sweat,
merciless enthusiasms,
kisses of flesh and vapor
that stab the empty air

Our lips taste the measured pride and savagery,
our fingertips trace the distant constellations
spread beneath the wisdom
and lissome rhythms
of our sovereignty

Let me bury deep all memory
of earth's unforgiving minute,
and the colors of her countries,
and spread myself beneath your breath
and triumph

Let us sing our redemptive anthems
to unsuspecting gods
and bathe the night skies
with reckless pageantry
of our return

Let It First Taste

If this raw flame
should go out,
let it first taste
the vibrant fast twitch
muscle fiber
of willing thighs,
and the quivering
tuning forks' reach across
an unknown universe,

let it taste
the doomed sea floor
heartbroken
before the mermaids' rescue
and your heroic lips
pressed into my soul's
secret retreats

let it taste
the sublime upheavals
of your victories
violent with wet perfume
and feast in
its humid bliss

let it taste,
and I will forever embrace
the drenching
of my light

Dreams of Your Elegant Escape

sing me your
dreams of the firefly
escape
beyond the wind chimes'
uneven
evening reach

let me
dream of your elegant
bones
within this world
of
watery touch

let me
bathe in naked
starlight
with music releasing
me
from my thoughts

let me
be gone with
you
with clear eyes
of
perfect light

In the Rain

Under a parched sky and its unforgiving sun
I searched through the tallgrass plains
for a sign our work is done
and I will languish in your Serengeti rains

Under an arched sky and Cassiopeia's stars
we searched through the unwelcomed pain
for a sign of life on our dying Mars
and to anguish in its inviting rains

Under the cloud towers we made our pact
before our souls would part again
for a sign to remember a love intact
where we will dance forever in the rain

Straight to You

Down the dwindling
spiral of the rabbit hole,
past the spiritual madness
of conspiracies unknown,
past the perfect delusions
of finely manufactured truth,
past the triumphs of bloodthirsty kings
and the ruthless ignorant,
past the whirring generators
of pharmaceutical high anxiety
and the hypnotic bliss
of senseless propaganda,
past the pixelated memories
of misspent lives
on this prison planet
of tormented souls,
and fired deep inward into
the vacuum of uncharted space,
I have been somehow delivered
straight to you
and our one chance out.

Song of a Chosen Sunrise

Your finger presses my lips
presses me beyond the eclipse
of sinking souls of wrecked ships
the sinking souls of wrecked ships

Madness pursues my indecision
mind ruined by its revisions
victim of its lack of vision
victim of its own imprecision

Your eyes unfold me as sunrise
unfolds her ripened skies
as this sleepless soul can rise
this soul will rise

Beyond my life's keen disguise
unravels all that is wise
as this sleepless soul can rise
this soul will rise

I Walk the Earth

I walk the earth
with gravity's comfort
gliding past the ghost ships
of unglinted eyes
in dreamless imprecision

I walk the earth
with misspent intent
hiding infinite complicity
of epiphanic eyes
in ripened anticipation

I walk the earth
till I slip its orbit
sliding past the hanging stars
of your eyes peering
through my imagination
with silver indulgence