Interconnectedness
arrives
as a terrible greatness
yet departs the same way.

Some things are
never meant to last,
so i'm holding on
to the memos we had.

Staying is a form of haunting.

I don't know
whether it's the mind or the heart
that refused to let go,
incessant, untouched.

My trail steered towards
their station,
a cerulean sky,
an ekphrastic response

where the jigsaw-interlock
of sand grains mocked
the subtle imperfections
inherent in any life.

So you joined the dance anyway.

A token of loss.

The fact that a trip can't last makes the illusion cruel.
And yet, you take it.
Who wouldn't choose that over this?
And yet, the thinking itself reached an end, dwindled.
You can't return
without leaving part of yourself in the site dwelled.

You find yourself at the edge of oblivion.
The tacit rapture. Tzion. Nirvana.
The heaven that makes you up.
The souvenir photo shows you
as you've never been yourself there.

You weren't even here.

We’re told that we would
be able to connect with myriads of people
in the course of life, until we find out
that few true connection comes.
It’s so meaningful to connect
with someone who interprets you so accurately.

I have so much of you in my heart, quoted from John Keats.
I see you in the back of my head.

Thank you for your presence at the mortifying ordeal
of being known
so that I may partake in the euphoric experience
of knowing you.
Grown up, I realize that
there really isn’t anybody to whom i can tell everything
and there never will be,
and there are certain things not supposed to be told,
and that’s just how it is.

If we vibe, we vibe.

I evoked you. left. And just so.
Few tears shed on the way there
and back.

The towering walls, ashen,
ditto the ceiling
but darker.

it allows everything to fall through
I'm being told
to close my eyes,
shut my mouth—
the mouth in my head;
the head my mouth will soon be missing.

I took the landscape with me.
I stood looking backwards.
Snapshots came back blurred.
Unnerved by a palace
where inside is outside.

with and without.

I didn't belong, not then, not there.
but i feel my way
backward

It codes for a day
where you sit next to someone
and confide your history.

I have been making sense of
all the senseless endings
all along.

An object held by a gaze, radiating.
You would say passion but a demon
has sewn your lips shut.

It looks up as if to ask: Tell me
How often do you feel the way you feel?
By you he meant me.

As they were documenting
the height they are about to fall from,
I dropped my camera.
Some secrets are better left buried.

The sea
was once everything i needed.
The ornamental, the accidental.
The absolute is.

Night rolls in to stand watch
a film in which i play everyone,
a scene that refuses to end.
end.

Staring at the monster
who looks enough like me
to be me.
me.

The check-in process and security check took a long time. But I could and did defy thirst only to find home in a bookstore here in LAX, in dusk’s falling veil.
I tried to find some coffee with a taste of a mix of feelings. I almost walked through every stretch of the airport and finally found an unassuming café. And found the ice latte more familiar than expected.
21: 40-22: 12 PDT; 12: 40-13: 12 BJS. I called you two. At the corner where the plane craft is in in sight, i held my Mac, tight and tender; three profile photos engraved by experiences touched me, again. We're so faraway. A distance of 15-hour time difference.

The WiFi was bad, while we're so connected.

We defied it all. And finally i realized that nothing is more crucial or invaluable than the tacit bridge we constructed——sincerity, resolution, flexibility, and accordance.

I wondered how my most important people are all here——no, there. And it hurts to think about you all gonna depart, leaving our dialogue in between. Would the sentience pick those debris up?

...
I’m writing all aforementioned while sitting on the edge of the building, in the silhouette of the morning sun. A waft of breeze departs me from the dreariness, unhinged. I found myself in and out of a tidal wave, as if drowning is the only way to stay afloat.
It all serves, too difficult to confess.

In susurration, the landscape exhales something in the color of trees, the temperature last night, and the slant of daylight.

How carried I was (still am) by the unexpected field we encountered, the confidant dialogue we built, the emotional walls we broke. There is a part in my brain that grief won’t grow. Summer in Cangyuan was not lachrymose. The lyrics of Under the Flying Clouds alludes every one of those who are too heavy for me, whom I can’t let go of.

I was not ready for my unscheduled departure from nowhere to nowhere. Many were the tears shed by me in my last adieus to a place so much beloved, and to everyone who makes the place the place.

Do I continue the same, unconscious of the pleasure or regret I occasion, insensible of any change in those who walk under my shade?

"Tell me how far you will go if you really want to keep me close.” The lyric sounds present yet absent, too familiar to pay attention to, though it hints me on our unspoken accord. “I remember tears streaming down your face when I said I will never let you go.” As a result it can't advance, it can't take the upper hand. I'm euphoric with that firm embrace though i never ever shared it with anyone else. Without a lucid expression to each other we know that, if we chose to, we could venture into something reckless, even pointless. “Feeling close but we are faraway, farther than we think we are.”

As the cabin fell languish, I found my sentience lucid than expected. Is the caffeine reining in the back, out of all cases as the most eminent one? It’s way better than the impasse of drowsiness anyway. The interstice of the window shut down glimmers. Amorphous sense of prelude. I’m stunned with and at peace with the pace my two neighbors and I created. At the moment while their breath calmed arms staggered in their dreams, I hope I am too. “There’s monster in my dreams, I should fight’em but I let them in. It’s killing me slowly.”

The nightmare creeped as the plane is declining height. As the air pressure changes my ear didn’t feel well. All the machinery rumble made a soundscape in and of itself. “Meet me in the middle of night and let me hear you say everything’s okay.” I shut out the world to open up thoughts, to let the inner universe take over. As I'm inwardly present and completely distant comes the greatest moment that transcends all language. To compose poetry is not to utter but to listen, so does anthropology.

The astonishing sunset awaits us, no matter the exact time, as long as we dove down high from above and saw through at the right time. The New York City leaned, boosting its colonies of glow that stood in the night. I threw my sight from the window. What's happened there? Whose light is it? Whom is it lit for? I wonder, and I can’t see it clear. But the depth index is too big to see it clear; the blur blurs. Physically and figuratively.

"Maybe when I'm older it will all come down but it's killing me now.” What am I to cling on, if even the evanescent waft fails to remain intact? A shaft of ineffable dread strikes me.

I appealed to my little nook of nonchalance, the insular of words i dwell upon whenever needed. The gentle riptide of another life-wayfinder found me well, gratefully before the mental stress saps the strength. He's at peace with himself yet at odds with the world, Whereabout reads. It resonates with my subconsciousness, for I fathom it as a tactic of abiding all the unideal, if only I were dare to live with this insurgency. In the ambient voices riddled with glib claims, pros and cons, I’m trembling, unconvinced.

In the seat reserved for me and only for me, i clenched to the sentience excluded for me, excluded for my presence at the site at the moment. The lachrymose baby disturbs and retunes the shapeless stillness that has kept me sane. I've grown acquainted with malaise. I frame it as perennial. Lament not, the crowd stays blind of what my feelings of mind afford me. “Free is feeling they can’t take from you.”

Seats away the window left me a last gate that opens to the outside world, the residue of experience, springing. Clouds scudded by, too slow, too quick. The sky was dissolving in pink and blue, a hue that consoles passenger of all kinds. Until the tilt was steered too high to see the realm not yet darkened, as if the sun departed upon the same lane as the flight did. Unpredictable weather, unconjugatable caprice.

When all is said, the site no longer matters; it makes little difference whether i'm burned in the heating sun, caught in a heavy rain, or sailed across a navy ocean. They are to weave in one crease somewhere inside me. Nevertheless, from another dimension, the site means something hard, engraved, irreplaceable. These days in home I found myself disheartened, nonplussed, and suffocated. Out in the city I navigated through the giddy horde, antisocial. There’s no subversive changes but nuance shifts that eventually leave the sentiments in deluge. I felt like a caged elf. I questioned my staunch nature.

“I miss the day when the glass is always half full”, when I was exuberant always, at least in front of you, my heaviest confidant. It’s feeling colder inside than outside; I know, relieved that I didn’t initially, all is irrevocable. Those detritus of enchantment repaints the vibe of mine. I owed it all, to the ones that imprinted me. What’s wrong with my mawkish side? Why is eccentricity to be censured? Who else sway one stronger than the self does? One can't ask the sea to never swell in rage. In that you've forsaken your role as my defender, i build my enclosure higher, thicker, colder than the backyard fence, so there's no errands, no means of lapse, of censure. You know everything yet about life——the one I devoted to live. Terrified to admit, I hesitated when asked whom I am referring to.

Half explicit thrill, half insidious vehement. Full fugitive conviction. My second journey towards America. What happened last summer in Texas flew by on some occasion. That’s the center of incidence, not mentioning millions clips of the periphery, the subjective. which stifled my intimidated solider in an unexpected battlefield.  “Tell me where the time goes, it’s like I’ve had my eyes closed.” Some memories are encapsulated. The world seems to remember more I wish to.

As those ego pitfall, the outside order of time becomes my last propel. I never settle, sometimes tarry. I rearranged the handy necessities in the backpack, inspecting within, behind, beyond. The ruffles hinged imply a constant shuffle between packing and unpacking. “Beneath the flying cloud the home assumed forgotten.” Adrift, astray, bewildered, apathetic, unsettled. I'm related to these related words. The plane of the rite of passage takes off, me the only passenger.

started the day in disparate paces
clustered in a rash
Things began.
Disconcerting reality stroke.
None of us had a way out.
I frowned. I trembled.
It’s getting colder outside.

words coagulated in framed narratives
where I hardly find a way in,
though didn’t put down conversing with them;
I hear their voices resounded
tensions as time terminated.
Scrambled in silence,
It's getting colder inside.

Only when the guises of expectation are gone
Was I able to meet this tinge of ineffable confidant
Often ambushing behind the tune from days to places
Where self-gaze sails across something in and of itself.
Over the nuvole flies men in chaos off meaning loss
Wafted down detritus of love in strikes of turmoil.
Omens scudded before stunned, defying gravity
With nuanced remembrance of odor antidotes
Orienting my soul in shivering flux, astringent enough
When silence is not heard, nor eyes are met.

Words de-surfaced, drowning me dizzy.

In reverse of the waddle wheel
the landscape runs back in blow
of winds that take a hair threadlike’s hand
to dance a trickle of pathos
when I swallow.
Not thoughts of of prattle, but roars within struggle
as if time concreted through spaces, still,
to contingency thee confide.
What a subtle heaviness to stand where I shall revel
What a terrible freedom to know what I cannot sail

It’s gonna end.

But until now I can’t even tell
what I am missing,
for what, and by whom?

out I burned
down I collapsed
in I nirvanad
off I set.

Waves of welter aligned to rewind
losing the weight of mind.
Swear I won’t fall again
But this isn’t feel like falling
Gravity can't forget
to pull me back to ground again.

The tune was arising until it’s fading.
The image is grounded until it’s leaned.
The voyager was granted until it’s strayed.
The eyes were flicked until it’s shut.

The hands were clutched until it’s fumbled.
The sight was stretching until it’s blurring.
The breath was pacing until it’s muddled.
The heart was harboring until it’s shivered.

The butterfly was fluttering until it’s tethered.
Sinking, surging, swirling,
There I was, though no one noticed.
Not even my ashes afloat.

Breeze nestled on wings of cradle
Shade blurred in a beam of surge
Petals flicked off stumble
Thorns unfolded to prattle

Fallen angles tethered
sinful to light the
darkened feather
As it fell to fly

You
closed yourself
and returned open.
I
shut my eyes
to see the darkness.

In thee it flies, down thee it sighs
There got thee back to the leap
of graceful nihilism we dwell upon
of forgottened veil unfolds in.
Confessed, the sin invites.

In me it strikes, down me it ties
Cuz’ ain’t you a stranger too?
Absurdity afloating back and forth,
Alienation flattering be and not
Nauseated, the chestnut tree sprouts.

In hell it inane, down hearth it ablaze
Until the sprakle’s all but gone
Not in the way off the grounded What
But on the sheer of That it is
Unhindered, the cradling halo fades.

In blue it prattles, down black it blusters
Can’t the passenger paint a red eye?
Sailboat shivering on the sea
Salvation shotting at the sky
Stumbled, the fallen angel flees.

From a whisper sinking so close away:
Here’s a flight doomed to fall
a leap led to lost
But I’ll show you how

I lost my confession
But why u repent?
I shot at the sky
Did sin see me salvaged?
I cradled insanity falling upward
Got the tune with me?
I mocked the thorn, faded
Yearning, bluing, prattling
I hummed the silent lyrics, nested
Could dandelions dare astray?

Drizzles call, drops fall
Flicks a stillness storms fleeing
Then got to know a flock
of drips dancing in youth
outside the windowsill
So close, so away,
Enough for a drizzloss.
Cradling me a home,
yearned I, isn’t it rainproof?
Yes, if only you were blocked.
In sprinkling pond sank me lost
for gray invaded, drops are doomed
As if dawn dwells upon morn frost
Humming a tune composed by
the weeping sky

The thread thee warp
shadow shall shade so
as silken cradles fade though
So soothing that I
lost the rest soaring

Fool’s gold never seems to keep its shine
as if shiver sun ray never stray
until down it bends
until up it flicks
Naively flow with waves of velvet and thorn
not until finding them its own.

Tuned tile, aged alley, clouded cement,
welcome
wander the sunlight
setting feeble rose and blue
adorning tranquil ardent and alive
soothing sacred faint to find floods of glow
announcing alienated savage to shelter sprouts of soul

I leaned on it,
As it listens to the waves of lakeside,
Frothing more than backing.

I breathed with it,
As it stands with branches adorned by golden spots,
Fading yet staying.

I greeted on it,
As it shallows those lost ones with its fragrant of brown,
Healing for the incomparable.

I fell into it,
As if it starts to stray,
Losing while finding.

The peak just vague in clouds, yet
fails to tame hikers' wild hearts.
On the fragment of petrifaction, I
saw my own beauty reflected.
Amidst the dusty wind, I
heard my inner voice echoed.

Footprints on shortcuts transform treads to tracks
“Hi!”
Golden gale tore the still moss
Yet shallowed the brown might
“Thank you!”
Stamps lull taken steps into gone
“Cheers!”
Sheer lines
“You’re close!”
Grey clouds settled on the peak
For no up-looking eyes to glance
“Hi!”
As if the small has always been the great.

On mountains edge sun shines grace,
without looking back a wild rabbit ran away.
Greetings connecting the towering mights
adorned the mountain with resounding sights
that transcended the “Hi!”s

Not upon

I have seen that ME
Seeking for a trivial book
Whose sentiments mingled my soul

I have seen that ME
Wandering down the Quay Street
Where harmony was found in chaos

I have seen that ME
Falling in love with a lonely cloud
When the wind lies a paradise

I have seen that ME
Voyaging on waves of blue
Whom the young poet cried with

I have seen that ME
soaring as a kiwi bird
which died in eternity

Flowed, the stillness,
Flamed, the sinfulness,
Engulfed, the holiness,
Edged, the tenderness,

Lulled, the illness
Leaned, the lightness
Surged, the doubtlessness,
Sparkled, the wilderness,

Colored, the coldness,
Collided, the casualness,
Tamed, the loneliness,
Torched, the goodness,
Dumped, the steadiness,
Drifted, the faintness,
Bloomed, the apartness,
Burned, the angleness,

had I housed pieces of music
of salvation in depth
of constellation in paradise.
of darkness, of thee.

So untamed, it
Blows
So surged, it
Howls
So wrapped, it
Unfurls

There swirls thee stumbled
Here narrows the gate of nestle
Drizzles are drown
too subtle to afloat,
Stormy navy sky's gone
too distant from home.

Only yearned Thatness.

The grounded drop took a leap
into the sky soars the azure
into the sunray flows the torrid
As the rain not yet make its curtain call,
is the next symphony coming?
Summer sundown sinks me in subtle
Here I heard a cuckoo

In murmurs we sank
dizzy minds torn out the day.
Then comes stillness,
as the breeze is heard,
variegated.

In beam treads autumn noon
Now the photographer laugh it out
Nothing seems to be captured
For she takes it
an overture.

“Why does the sun go on shining?”
An afternoon fervidity
of two thousands of miles
of away, of afar.
Where seaweeds stand no still,
a silhouette steers.

I turned down the tune.

in lagoon the lotus ruffles her wind.
in monotone the lizard shrills his song.
the wild goose homing,
slumbered rushes oozing.
hushed lie the sedges
of beamed nuvole, vapors creep
late cranes, heavy wing, and lazy flight.
Sail the silence beneath the nearing night.

I owe it all——
to the words unspoken
to the flow unseen
to the poet-insanity uncomposed
to the tunes unhummed.
On the way.

Azure thee afloat
Drizzles, alluded not
Absurd me adrift
Dreams, awaked not
Ahold see alight
Drowners, ached not.
In the way.

Around fire the Wa arised
syllables afloat, stories alive
Above fire the Wa aligned
steps abeam, songs alight
Amidst fire the Wa awaked
sparkling out, sprouting in
Cease me not

Behold the way, bet a say
Brick a home slumbered
whither for return in gusto
Blaze a tune of unity
weather harsh with vitality
Beam through ashes blew
Wa fire fueled the way found
Wither thee not

It knocks me out.

In tap, on tread,
mud you black
The mount knows our track.
In weft of brunet dye
flows the lapse defied
dancing a dance not our own
for a waft of strangers.
Memories ruffled in rusty voice,
melodies frozen off the echoes.

A small hand in a big one, the way home.
There grows crops, plants, and lives
picking, watering, handing, crunching,
In gentleness built upon nothing less than
the radiant afternoon sun creeping down the alley,
a melancholy tune, a melancholic loss
and a terrible greatness.

Hedged eyes I descry
your silence lingering on

a bloom not I sniff on its wax
yet soap in its name.
Is chime an echo
shuttling between shores clenched and surfs wrinkled?

Forthcoming. Impending. Violating.
Could thou help me to say this?
that I was in out of my depth.
Over-night granola, Mixed-berry fizz, Planet-Traveler hues.
Could thou let me shelve vacancy?
that I’d be sobbing for its mess.
Signature Choco cake named here sole with latte all around globe
some taste brewed here sole.
How hot and heavy and hazy
this existence savors.
But—
there is Thank you, the simple words that turns us into lamplighters
who walk each other home, through the night never seems to end
fluxing, always, always. after all.
before all.

A beam of apathy.

Hithernay I lapse in the liquid fear
of drifting afar from all flowed through me, a terrifying truth
that strikes, falters, and aches.
On shaft of daylight I look fine
but look behind my eyes, everything
is new until it’s old.
An osmosis of remembrance wafts across the lake frozen
I gazed tears streaming down its face
and was told: every metamorphosis a co-passenger brought you
continues the voyage with you on behalf of him.

Would I get over it?

Anon I find the galactic city model of the mind
too cold to defy
as I expend three minutes hesitating shall I do it or not
that could be done within the three minutes
so it’s left undone, with an ongoing groan.
I yearn for rationality is too spiny and messy and illusory
like a broadcast of self-deed that never ever pitch a well guess.
But—
nothing come decipherable until I seek
to return with hands empty of dictions indecipherable.
I love the debris of word that I don’t understand, that
I build brick by brick.
Euphoria stumbles in what is
and what isn’t here.

Chimeric.

This time, at ease I walk into the place scrawled by unfamiliarity
of all kinds, giddy, amorphous, variegated,
not without my muse.
Hovering, the Wayfinder exhales
an attuning overture,
an astringent taste of cacophony.
“Free is the feeling they can’t take from thee.”
a rustle not I shivered in
yet took a leap towards.

Through the bullet-spiked walls of unseen wars
analogy hums a thousand suns
as warriors bury a thousand letters.

The wind blows.

Tracking, violating, a little train on its way
to the E island for the ninety-fourth time this day
in this infinitesimal airport, this enormous node
converged of weaves of space,
meaning collided.

A young woman gazing somewhere not special,
until my sight aligned with hers: rail unravels
its skeleton as the train forwards
only as bitten by the steal heaviness, that
guises dumb voyagers, a heavy lightness
inside.

Tapped by sound, a haphazard feeling of mind, I
percept couples prattling in native English
from scattering finches called home
Drifting away or reflowing towards,
adjacency suspends in lenses of all.

Afraid
to envision the scent of seeds unplanted,
to dwell on questions without an answer,
to defy gravity,
I know you are too.

The wind blows.

Departing with my hue of strength found in all that I lacked,
a sprawl of bouncing breeze leaves my tune beneath the rail.

How am I to say such vigor
specious and amorphous and astringent,
effacing a landscape called yesterday
soon after some shut-eye,
then the jive suspends with
a dissonance creeping in coda
as the overture falls through.
If the clock is right or it feels wrong,
mono-tempo takes over anyway.
Now I see it when looking back.

Enchantment hedged a garden full of lush lives
that I didn’t even know I could ignite
until the season shuffles.
Had I hit my stride? Yes
I keep my head up, but No
I'm upside down, from the outside in.
Clouds that we glided by
are dropping through my hands like sand.
It left me hovering around a layover of sentience
less itinerant than fugitive,
brittle memos that
are in no ways oblivious.
You don’t know your words engraved but
I do.