psychology

Mental Illness

I watched the light in her eyes fade,
My dear mother – strong and proud,
It came for her, the dark shroud
Her mind swallowed, left afraid.
Healthy in body yet an empty pit
Spirit drained from backwards sight,
Once so able and now unfit
When does one declare the end of a fight?
Dear mother, I beg you to be free –
Free from the haunting blurs
Free so we may return to as we were
You as my mother and I as your son.

The Modern Queen

The putrid smell of rotting flesh
upon bamboo sheets in shades of green
While day and night shifts endlessly
Long live the modern queen.

Ranked high among men of trade
Oven stored stacks of green
Bottles of weekday wine
Long live the modern queen.

Hard facade on padded shoulders
An air of power turn faces green
Turn to mush in sight of hearts
Long live the modern queen.

Sweat and beauty entangled in one
Pursuit of perfume scented green,
A hint of musk burns the lie,
Long live the modern queen.

Modern Wanderer

From which city do you hail?
The world is a giant field
where ants are visually frail
their true strength concealed.

Have you met the father with the blade*
while recorded by the West?
Angered by the river decayed
Traded for the oil obsessed?

Rising water harbors no sympathy
Man-made structures slipping in,
Scapegoats dragged along too easily
Can you swim, wanderer? Can you swim?

Trends nowadays ask to look at a tree
point out the roots, trunk, and leaves,
Forgotten the essence of life that seeps
or our breath which leaves conceive.

Hide your wooden cane in case a kick
sweeps the balance from the feet,
Humans today bear more than heartache
they feed from the pain of others’ defeat.

Wanderer you seek that poetic light
within planted trees and sculpted grass,
because the untamed grounds are fresh with blood
from wanderers like you determined to pass.

Can you read faces? There is no such thing…
Faces these days know how to deceive
See closely how smiles fail to crinkle eyes–
How high the bid will you believe?

Yet to be a mere skeptic or critic lacks bravery,
How hard is it to trample a dream
by becoming a cranky fool drinking envy?
Away! and flush this fool into a stream.

You wander alone not to find paradise–
a word tainted by Spring Break lust–
but a sanctuary where depth is the price
flour sand with the softest gust.

And alone…wanderers must be alone
or in company of similar souls,
as old souls, every rock a gemstone
While the young sees rocks to throw.

Coexistence is an inevitable fact,
but do not drink from the cups of the dead,
I speak of the living whom’s body hijacked
by a cancerous pulp of dread.

Wander away from Circe’s Island,
enchanted cups of reddish wine,
She wishes only to have you fattened
Slaughtered and enshrined–

Another wanderer casted in gold,
Placed atop a crowded mantle,
Do you want to become a silent mold
and wait to grow brittle and old?

You are wanderer because your path is yours,
Others cross with persuasive remarks,
angered by how high and fast you soar,
fueled only by your undying spark.

*Refers to a video/art project shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NY

You Ask For Wisdom. How Far Will You Go?

With age our wisdom grows–or so I have been told
Few encounters show how little this quote knows.

Even now as you read these words, you read from afar…
Across the Pacific or the Atlantic
No! So much farther than that.

Wisdom is a process and all processes cost time,
Every second death nears, thus time is a price
few willing to pay, lacking patience and such
Delayed gratification is an old-fashioned bore.

I ask: Would you buy a moisturizer that doesn’t sink?
that floats like a boat over all the pores?
Such is the product of shallow lives,
You wish to sustain beautiful flesh
yet refute the need to pay a little more.

Marcel Proust said:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands
but seeing with new eyes”

The question remains where to find those eyes–
they cannot be bought or forcibly made–
Like a well-made armor, a process awaits
Not for the fainthearted or happy snakes,
Too high the price and too long the wait,
How far will you go to feed your soul?

The Chinese preach humbleness
but what is its meaning? Shyness? No.
“To accept you know nothing and seek to learn more”
Not for an absolute but to create another thread
One piece of a web stretching for miles
from your soul to mine and to many more,
How long can you keep standing with that pull?

When advice is given but discarded soon after,
the pores are closed to any offer,
Yet you pine and pine for an answer already given
search everywhere but your own screaming soul
fearful what the mirror may show;
Too many fear to be alone
In case their clone walks in and smirks,
Brightly dressed in repressed thoughts.

But back to wisdom, where can it be found?
The question for you is do you even want it?
Do you crave it the way you crave your morning coffee?
Do you desire it the way you desire that nameless beauty?
Are you willing to make the world flat again
and the planets fly around planet Earth?
Are you willing to suffer eternal loneliness
to obtain the eyes that see the nonexistent
and bear the pain of knowing what others cannot know
and risk the scorn if you reveal the secrets
only understood by those who walked this road?

When You Swim in the Shallow

When you swim in the shallow
Mistaken for ground
Spikes planted freely
Drops blood by the pound.

Unable to float and sinking fast
Set off the mine (planted before)
Blast out a piece of your soul
Closer the line till a corpse

Deprived of depth and substance
You are struck in the green
Swallow the small waves
As you long for more

Evening Free, Evening Spent

How one spends an evening free
speaks a lot about character–
a malleable element–
often bent backwards in youth
where paths collide and chaos borne.

All remedies of odd sorts
lend their hands to the trigger,
human forms emerge,
more beastly than of flesh,
cannibals quenching thirst.

Disguised in mockery
the prey becomes the predator
and the predator becomes the Devil
down a drunken well,
no one hears. No one cares.