JOANN LIU

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The Poetry Of...
Joann Liu....................................................

Bodhisattva.

maybe I will become bodhisattva
to complete the circle
... to form new beginnings and fuse old stars
maybe I will light the world on fire.
does the snow fall because it wants to touch my skin?
did it fall just to see what happens down here
... instead of up there
... where everything is illuminated in crystalline clouds and pure rain water?
maybe I will submit to compassion
and tear up every time I hear birds sing, every time the wind pulls my hair.
so I have devotion for my life? my god(s)? my mind?

it's the feeling of stretching as far as you can
rooting your heels to the ground and reaching tall
as trees
to touch the sky.
to become.

Cattle.

i remember my friends faces as they were bitten by the bug of insanity
slugging up hills with hand-reaching bushes,
the hand of god,
the cry for the heavens,
deeper and deeper and still they thrust their bodies
intravascular interests of denying one's truth
to achieve what they believed was everlasting.
between the sun's licking lashes and midnight's unheated furnace of slaves calling out
they'd prance in a stupor of drunken chants and
howl at the moon as if she did something wrong
.. - poor thing, poor innocent life of mister man on the moon, mrs. wonder of our eyes, my soul.
i wanted nothing but to scream "you fools!
...................................... it's 2 in the A.M. or
...................................... 2 in the P.M.!
...................................... what's the difference!
...................................... what's the matter!
...................................... what are you doing!"
the submissive grunts, the teardrop craves,
some fix somewhere hidden
between passing fingertips and smothered laughter
- she waits in the dark for a friend,
an enemy
to come help her through this hard time.
so seldom does diminution come right out and follow you,
tickling you when you need to remain silent,
tracing your footsteps in the sand as you try to tell someone that you want nothing more, nothing more! to do with them, their face,
........................ their curious voice,
........................ their inconvenient unholy unbashful monstrous soul.
i saw minds diminished beneath the beauty of a world like ours,
fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers sit in solitude
as their little loves far outstretch their lengths and
grow the wrong way too small
to even stand.
and somewhere along this path i've discovered
a charming existence in patience and
the under weighing belly heaving lung capacity to carry on,
even through all the murk and disgust- i will weather this isolated storm, marching forever toward some distant calling, some secret place foraged in ivy, somewhere along the ocean's horizon and the birds wings of hope.
lately they've all gone mad, stark raving mad.

Spectacles.

what have you left to give me after everything we've pushed into the ocean
.. has drifted out to some extreme middle
... and wasted away, corroding to greens and molds and ash?
i taste the sky as i weep on these forbidden mountain ranges, high and mightier than anything
.. our simple minds could ever know or
... greater than anything these plain used hands could conjure up.
i've settled in a nest beneath the brush, marking my way with people: redheads brunettes blondes and more
.. only to come back, knocking at your door,
... a used old rag who can't help herself and who feeds and lives upon temptations and desires.
in the morning we bathe in crystalline lakes, naked and more vulnerable than new born babies, young and
.. upon birth, no breath in their chests and life hanging by a thread,
... so innocent and unreal, surreal, divine and natural. (what's more natural than life itself?)
and we've come upon the mouth of the gulf, extending our hand and wading the water.
... the deepest part has not yet begun and the morning's tribulations are only the crash course for the severe and eager cunning that awaits us.
... will you be there til the end?
.... what if we get separated?
i put my mind in your hands
- mold it as you will and take me where you want.
. show me wonders my eyes could never have dreamed of seeing and show me visions that only the luckiest ones in this world could see.

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