Published Poetry
- Xanadu The Long Island Poetry Collective, 2013:
“The
Lighthouse”
Turning the pages,
intrigued with the subject at hand,
she speaks to herself
and struggles to decipher the vague ideas.
Her pencil scratches across paper.
She pushes her glasses to her face.
Lately she’s been seeing more clearly
through these fog-veiled days.
She has surmised manuscripts
of the precious and the soluble.
She untangles verity from honesty.
It astounds through the fog.
- Houston Literary Review, Literary Journal, 2010:
“…rage Sale”
There, the vented and suppressed
sell their release. The failed gather
to purchase what they already possess.
Children run freely through the market-palace,
and learn from the formlessness of formalities.
Hand-me- downs are passed down.
The children reach down toward clouds
into the market-palace of buyers and sellers
where as adults they choose to be.
- Decanto, Literary Journal, 2010:
"A Sonnet: Christmas 2002"
The blinking cursor waits with me,
waits for words to arrive profoundly,
waits for newer words to be tossed
upon the rose-colored screen you made,
waits for a Christmas poem, a gift to you.
My mind scans feelings, memories, images –
possible fodder for an annual poem.
Poignancy void of cliché hides.
Your presence that so indwells me,
your movements, your stories told to me –
how can I fix such a force into symbol?
Let this poem that still doubts itself
somehow represent and replenish
movements toward you in return.
The blinking cursor waits with me,
waits for words to arrive profoundly,
waits for newer words to be tossed
upon the rose-colored screen you made,
waits for a Christmas poem, a gift to you.
My mind scans feelings, memories, images –
possible fodder for an annual poem.
Poignancy void of cliché hides.
Your presence that so indwells me,
your movements, your stories told to me –
how can I fix such a force into symbol?
Let this poem that still doubts itself
somehow represent and replenish
movements toward you in return.
"Poetry"
I.
…Un walked white snow.
an unclaimed plain.
I express, yet hide,
and work until it is let go.
II.
The boy snatches at the agitating bug
that flies around electricity’s light.
The bug’s allusive yet alluring,
So he snatches at the light.
With fleeting thoughts he concentrates
on the belief light is reachable.
He discovers in a rubber band a slingshot,
and throws paper rocks, settles divergent moments.
After an elongated sigh, the boy surmises
that the light like the fly must wish to be captured.
So he patiently waits.
III.
Like a lighthouse-light that melts
the early morning’s covering,
the slanting ray seeps through
a peephole to the darkened room.
A shadow attempts to cover the light’s trace
though the producer of light is an inside lantern,
an expression of a burning fire’s quivering
warming the shade that shivers from wind.
IV.
This word “whistle,” it finds the front
of these thoughts that probe
to scan some subject, to rethink
an original slant.
This word “whistle,” it roadblocks lines,
phrases, rimes that wait for
streets to be emptied. Imagery
is almost all. Words stand only to stutter.
This word “whistle,” it declares
a vision of a man whistling
Ave Maria under an umbrella.
He walks into no rainbow.
And I hear it.
I.
…Un walked white snow.
an unclaimed plain.
I express, yet hide,
and work until it is let go.
II.
The boy snatches at the agitating bug
that flies around electricity’s light.
The bug’s allusive yet alluring,
So he snatches at the light.
With fleeting thoughts he concentrates
on the belief light is reachable.
He discovers in a rubber band a slingshot,
and throws paper rocks, settles divergent moments.
After an elongated sigh, the boy surmises
that the light like the fly must wish to be captured.
So he patiently waits.
III.
Like a lighthouse-light that melts
the early morning’s covering,
the slanting ray seeps through
a peephole to the darkened room.
A shadow attempts to cover the light’s trace
though the producer of light is an inside lantern,
an expression of a burning fire’s quivering
warming the shade that shivers from wind.
IV.
This word “whistle,” it finds the front
of these thoughts that probe
to scan some subject, to rethink
an original slant.
This word “whistle,” it roadblocks lines,
phrases, rimes that wait for
streets to be emptied. Imagery
is almost all. Words stand only to stutter.
This word “whistle,” it declares
a vision of a man whistling
Ave Maria under an umbrella.
He walks into no rainbow.
And I hear it.
- Living Buddha: Won Buddhist Review, 2005 (published with Buddhist name Won In-Myung):
“Paper, moon, monk, wind”
1.
The paper that absorbs this ink,
does it absorb Truth itself?
Words represent ideas put forth.
The moment of ink's absorption --
it can alone be confirmed
2.
The Moon in China is the same
As the Moon I see tonight.
My view from Chiri is different;
maybe China's Moon knows clouds.
The One Moon knows none
3.
A monk named Yi-Kyo says he has seen me before.
He has, but the monk he saw was only named
Wonhyo.
Unnamed hands waive back.
Untitled eyes perceived him through blinks.
4.
The wind that moves the chrysanthemums
is moved by those same flowers in turn.
The wind ends its existence here,
but in the trees, away from me,
it still proves it reality
- CrossCurrents, Scholarly Religion Journal, 2002:
"Snow-Town Meditations: Conversion"
I.
At sometime,
a snow-plow made mountains in this
empty parking lot.
Seagulls settle camouflaged
and singing this morning.
The mountains were once kingdoms of mine.
I climbed,
climbed kingdoms.
Crying queen-less
I climbed,
cried alone to thrones
and sat invisible to over takers,
blind of doubt.
In the succor of snow
and in its mirror the moon,
prostrated, I would pray, stay.
And the shallow winds somehow entertained.
I listened, smiled, then fell to sleep.
II.
In another morning,
the seagulls without scent of seas awoke me.
The might of suns' light
acknowledged it to my eyes.
Those quaint kingdoms
melted to saltless seas where seagulls still
played,
where an embrace embraces the powerless, eternal
flow.
III.
The night brings confusion.
The night brings doubt.
The night brings anger.
The night brings doubt.
Opening the hidden child,
behind the torn curtain I cry.
The night brings snow now.
IV.
the snow and sky are different hues of the same
color.
a child in a snow-suit quits the creation of
snow-angels,
and peers to the heaven where they supposedly
come from.
the stars are scattered crystals mirroring snow
sheets.
the child is alone, feeling alone, not noticing
the cold. snow-suits can protect for awhile.
the hollow, hallowed wind of meditation exclaims
the night.
the child releases all movement for a moment of
pause,
pausing the creation of angels that melt not
away but up.
- Windhover, North Carolina State University Literary Journal, 1997:
“Five Sonnets”
1.
The gold-paved path they call the only way
distracted with its narrow streets and lost me.
While lost, potholes jutted and jarred and
frayed.
But the oil-black streets were gold, I once
believed.
The script in red ink gave direction to my show,
and to me, an actor who was to simply mouth
the words. From the heightened stage, I looked
below,
a good actor who could no longer deny doubt.
The torn curtain jolted to a close, to thick
black
where a light was cast on its own lucid view.
In the spotlight I adhered and came to lack
Everything. I found my way home when I saw you.
You were a streetlight piloting me to a familiar
place,
an encompassing compass I, who was lost,
embraced.
2.
Reading lamps are night-lights on this bus
floating south to some small town named
Unknown. When will the yet unformed dusk
awake and join me and release this detained
hope? Out there, night-white fields of March
fumble snow to cold roads. It stays, persists.
Reclined awake on twin seats, I try to dodge
my questions so to sleep, so to make miles blink
away. Hazardous roads make it hard to steer.
The bus in first gear climbs this mountain.
It ascends, attains the plain – the answer
of not seeking them out. The snow-clean
morning accompanies my renewed day.
Soon I’ll arrive to greet her awaiting grace.
3.
The dolorous station is locked. Today
is Sunday; the streets without a church alone
gather rain mixing with shades
of ice and water-logged snow. Is there a phone?
I’m always without a watch. Am I late?
I’m the only traveler deboarding here,
and the feeling of fear is barren. I fear
she’ll not be here, she’ll not wait
for me who stands between snow and rain,
who whistles around nervous street corners.
Under an umbrella she peers and ponders
at the sight that walks while worrying.
She looks down at puddles and their rings.
I arrive with laden arms and reborn feelings.
4.
We reacquaint amid the stocked aisles
filled with what makes grocery stores similar.
Amid the familiar is the wishful wondering
about what can’t be seen – the locked files
not opened, poems not written – as we choose
the food to feed us, the fruit to unpeel.
The fluorescent lights seem warm and we steal
their light, trying to separate the fool’s
gold. We see, ponder the transparent bridge
in front of us. I look down each row.
I look for you. Subliminal music
is sublime, precious. I find you and follow.
Exiting into snow-light, you lean into me.
I listen. I heed your presence, kiss your black
hair.
5.
Birds insist on one phrase. Chimes improvise
in this symphony so talkative.
In the morning snow-remnants rise
and melt below tender suns living
today. I wake forgetting where
I lay. I remember with a soft knock
that summons me. She walks in prepared
with a glance, a greeting. Birds and chimes
flock
to one song. The sun gives one dawn
to this day that begins with such quiet,
such music. The room’s light widens
to ethereal heavens, to this home
we only adopt. Let heavens ceaselessly
remain; let springs bring their constancy.
- The Exponent, Cedarville University Literary Journal, 1992-1993:
"Hope Faith Alzfair"
Hope Faith Alzfair looks out the window, as
she washes the dishes.
The snow – like
the water through the
drain – cleanses the
winter air.
In her mind’s ears
she hears her two boys
play.
But intently she
waits for a miracle that
she knows will come.
She reads the
horoscopes.
They told her today that
its on its way.
They seem to say the same
thing everyday – day after
day after day. But
she needs to grasp
onto something.
Her son Someday
colors rainbows red,
blue, green, orange, and
yellow with a black
crayon, while his brother
Reality cries in the dark
snow.
Hope Faith Alzfair
writes her son who
escaped the loving home,
but not its sorrow.
The letter states:
Someday, oneday,
you’re going to be rich.
Love,
Mom
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