2. Strings

1.

People want something they can hold

onto: love, country, reason - but open your mouth

and the kite soars from your hands. Rice paper or silk, sticky

glue in my stomach, I painted it as I imagined its physical

presence, as menacing as loess.

2.

Anger may go the furthest into muscles: become the joint.

In my shoulder's

action, filled with my throbbing breast, I threw

the shape up, ran it to disappearance

against the milled sky;

it landed where I could see: the dragon's head

separated from bamboo vertebrae. And I,

this short handed child, dragged in its powerful

decline, in scorched hands dismounted the lofts of my ambition,

tore my flesh on the winds surface, never let go.

3.

I loved my path into disappearance

against the grace of faith: believing in even without; feelings fly by;

offering their perfect angles to the air, their strings

shifting my life. The greatest, stealthy

kisser, love has never been visible when it soars. But I feel it

where I can see, crashing and seeking rest, dragging me

through my nation.

4.

This childhood dragon under my old bed,

it needs a fluid flow, perhaps we have poorly

leveed its planes, Father; perhaps we have

not run fast enough for this shape, perhaps we need

a higher ground, an open mouth. Or I will pull it under water; tempt with

earthen pearls and put out the blazes of stars.

Perhaps the problem is what my imagination

will no longer do. I know its head is under me

here where I return, home: where I lay down

in its lair, and offer it my dreams.

In morning I will dust it, fix its peeling,

hold its colors to the light,

feed it my mind,

release it to heights, count its scales,

ready my blade

and courage. Play again

what it is supposed to be.