When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
         Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
         Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
         Of pure ablution round earth's...

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
       Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
       And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
       So haggard and so woe-begone?

Now by what whim of wanton chance
Do radiant eyes know sombre days?
And feet that shod in light should dance
Walk weary and laborious ways?

But rays from Heaven, white and whole,
May penetrate the gloom of earth;
And tears but nourish, in your soul,
The glory of celestial mirth. 

The darts of toil and sorrow, sent
Against your peaceful beauty, are
As foolish and as impotent
As winds that blow against a star.

Faintly remains.
Scarcely remains.

Drops of  water form inside my life
as if  I cherish a drop of light
just as love is formed inside the word love
just as the word goodbye doesn’t permeate it

it faintly lingers.
A thin part of me remains.

Sometimes inside me...

    Driving, dogs barking, how you get used to it, how you make
                            the new streets yours.
Trees outside the window and a big band sound that makes you feel like
     everything's okay,
  a feeling that lasts for one song maybe,
                 the parentheses all clicking shut behind you.
          The way we move through time and space, or only time.
The way it's night for many miles, and then suddenly
                                     it's not, it's breakfast
   and you're standing in the shower for over an hour,
                   holding the bar of soap up to the light.
I will keep watch. I will water the yard.
      Knot the tie and go to work. Unknot the tie and go to sleep.
                            I sleep. I dream. I make up things
   that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
                      The trees in wind, the streetlights on,
          the click and flash of cigarettes
being smoked on the lawn, and just a little kiss before we say goodnight.
      It spins like a wheel inside you: green yellow, green blue,
                                  green beautiful green.
   It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun. It's green. It's still green.

Faintly remains.
Scarcely remains.

Drops of  water form inside my life
as if  I cherish a drop of light
just as love is formed inside the word love
just as the word goodbye doesn’t permeate it

it faintly lingers.
A thin part of me remains.

Sometimes inside me...

The place has carved out my sleep. I walk it every night.

On moving here, there were old sounds,
sputtering meter at the end of a cab ride,

or the back of the ferry, its engine like the
low-end keys of a baby grand,

like...

Between Hanoi and Sapa there are clean slabs of rice fields
and no two brick houses in a row.

I mean, no three—
See, counting’s hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet

over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves.
Hours ago, I...

There’s a slim enough chance
we’re edging our last century.
On its brink I sit or I think it.
Snow, white itself, whites itself
out and us along the way.
Words of no gravity kept floating
into water where a future perched
a comma between brackets
of waves:...

Every door stands an open door:
our human settlements all temporary.

We share together the incidental shore
and teach the young to tend the lamp's wick,

weary of anyone small enough to bar our entry.

my parents were born from a car. they climbed out
& kissed the car on its cheek. my grandmother.
to be a first generation person. 23 and Me reports
i am descendant of pistons & drive trains. 33%
irrigation tools. you are what you...

the slight angling up of the forehead
neck extension                        quick jut of chin

meeting the strangers’ eyes
a gilded curtsy to the sunfill in another

in yourself      tithe of respect
in an...

I come home,
feet about to bleed
from angry stomping.
“Boy!” says Mom.
“Quit making all that racket.”
But what does she expect
when, day after day,
haters sling words at me
like jagged stones
designed to split my skin?
I retreat to my room,
collapse on the bed,
count, “One. Two....

I am hardly ever able
to sort through my memories
and come away whole
or untroubled.
It is difficult
to sift through the stones,
the weighty moments and know
which is rare gem,
which raw coal,
which worthless shale or slate.
So, one by one,
I drag them across the page
and...