On This Splendid Day

As if blown over hot embers
a drowsy wind blew soulless
over the zoo that lined the Boulevard.
There was no redemption
found for those on the 181
as it jerked toward its destiny.

Highland. Vine. Western.
The bus lurched forward,
its captives silent with a lifetime of
guilt and indignity,
their endless untold stories
already forgotten.

In Little Armenia an elderly man
boarded in his Sunday best.
No one noticed the music
that twinkled unashamedly
from his eyes.
Vermont. Los Feliz. Central.

At the Galleria,
I stared out from the bus,
now in disrepair and half emptied,
at the old man
meeting
his loved one,
their imperfect bodies
suddenly perfect,
their arms wrapped around each other
like silk ribbons around a gift,
as they kissed
and kissed,
and kissed for what seemed like
an infinity of moments,
each moment intense and delicate,
soft and unbroken,
with an urgency deep with patience,
I watched
as others soon did


and I soon
discovered too,
unashamedly,
on this splendid day,
how
the broken song
can find its notes
and live
forever.





Poetry copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All rights reserved.
Photo Source

Familiar Love

My Dearest Love,
I do hope this letter finds you
and finds you well.
I have been gone much too long,
I know, in search of longed for
misadventures
and uncalculated
love;
a misspent life, perhaps,
but one,
it seems,
that has led me
to you.

How many perfect sunsets have I been
haunted
with your lilting voice cresting
over the waves,
the waves
that rushed through the ventricles
of my heart, and filled my
desperate lungs
with foam
and hunger
for breath,
and then
abandoned me,
silent and
drowning.

How many times did I find
that home in my mind
that belongs to you,
where the early sea fog
swallows your secret garden
brimmed
with lilies and brambles,
hidden paths and buried jars,
where the bright, bright fields
evaporate
beneath the galloping hooves
taking flight
with winged
fierceness.

How much I have missed you,
sweet girl,
I missed how
you arrested my thoughts
mid sentence with
uncommon grace
that disarmed me
for reasons
I cannot name.
I missed
your lovely genius
that so easily
dismissed the weight of my
measurable life,
I missed the intensity
of our words
which became our truths
and bound us
as kindling
to a starving fire.

When we meet again
on that exquisitely ordinary day
you may not remember my face,
my body,
my clothes,
but the welcomed recognition
of the stark flame behind
my eyes,
will hold a
disturbingly
familiar
love,

and I
will
always
remember
you.




Poetry copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All rights reserved.
Photo source

because you asked

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
soulstruck with the vivid terrains
of unexplained familiarity,
mindful of ancient promises that
locked our spirited fortunes together
with unnerving elegance

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
agents of wanderlust
and unexpected thought,
waking the timid to all that is real,
waking the timid to all their dreams
then watched all of its terrible beauty
as they gracefully turned one into the other.

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
agents of wonderment
and unexpected comfort,
and laughed as old friends do,
laughed as lovers do
as we sat, feet dangling
off the edge of the world.

Take Me Far

I could not explain
to you the angles
of our collision
I awoke to no recognizable
wreckage,
just you easing
stargazers into a vase.
You had left the moon
on all night
and sang McLachlan to me,
bending gentle notes
and jazzy laughter
around our tangled bodies

I asked you to
take me far
away
and
you did
as we inhaled
a clarity
and shuddered
into
being.

Save Us

"I am not the
perfect man you seek.
I have little to impress
you with.
I cannot save you
with my ambition,
my dreams,
my love."

"Ironically", she mused,
"You are perfect.
After all,
Who else could have crafted
yourself with tremendous
flaws and virtues
as perfectly as you?
Others have taken from you,
plundered your soul
for more,
left you wanting
for sweet rescue.
But truly,
what person can torture you
greater than you
so that
you would freely
surrender all that is
dear to you?"

"Then perhaps,
I can save myself
with my ambition,
my dreams,
my love.
And that is
most of all
what
I can give to you."

"I understand not
the explicit mathematics
of our spirit,
only that we are pure
as the light
we travel within
and our love,
given freely,
will save us."

Diary from the Battle Zone

I have seen the raw
horrors of this war firsthand,
its naked wreckage bleeding,
its perverse hunger feeding
the crippled screams
within lonely dreams
leaving its tortured soul desperate
for painless respite

I have seen the raw
agonies of this war firsthand
where from earth its soldiers disappear,
in nightmares they keenly reappear
where their ashen bones seemly mirror
all their death wish fears,
where their tortured souls slowly anticipate
relief from all that they wholly hate

I have learned to deeply respect
what the wisest have forever written
of the bitter fruit barely bitten
and the grandest stories time will tell
where on earth the angels fell
and before the fingers of those
tortured souls
would strain to deftly spell:
"LOVE IS HELL"

The Thin Whispers

We soon forgot our skittish
introductions,
a day's silent banter of
suspicion
and pride.
No wills were broken,
no wills won.

We trailed the
thin whispers
from the skies
hallucinogenic,
across uneasy
canyons
along the dry beds
and their bleached umbrella
spine

Brush turned to
scattered pines,
as we turned to
long slow draws
from a palmful of water
between brackish
rocks

Each day eavesdropped
upon evening's edge
pushing the trailless
ridgelines,
till
the thin whispers
sang

and
rang tiny bones
within her
and she ran
blindly
down,
down
into the startled
valley,
our aching
muscle upon muscle
breathless,
her coat gleaming,
reveling
full stride
in the blurred
tall grasses,
till we
took flight
within
the thin
whispers

To Love Differently

We have exchanged
no histories,
no storied details
amongst strong coffee
and
ritual laughter,
mild
confessions
and rehearsed wit,

still,
this silence
between us
speaks complete
as the
forgiven
moment and
the orbit
of small
planets

I seek no one,
no more
than
the evening seeks
its darkness,
Yet, I am
compelled
in my madness
to love differently.

To love you.

I do not love you as
the high desert admires
the wild blue Canterbury Bells
that rub your ankles,
(like a cat that grazes
affection in the hollows
of your neck)

I love you as
the sweeping heat squeals
and shudders to a halt before
the sudden storm,
and with your breath locked
in mine,
my soul inhaled into yours,
we exult across
the holy
sands

I love you as
the downpour wakens
the fragrant earth,
the ancient red rocks ingest
our wisdom,
the golden poppies,
like nervous stars,
blink in excitement,
and as we
release our quakened
light
beyond my madness
to love differently.

To love you.

The Untested Key

I exposed your
old diaries locked away
behind your crowned eyes
(as easily as you
chewed off your glove
for your naked fingers
to breathe)
and touched each of
your concealed desires
that were
carefully named
and dated
for a less guarded
moment

We rushed
the crowd of stars
unburdened from
the dragging of
shadows
and muslin,
the untested key
opening the cool
steel lock,
and teeth bared,
reveled in an
oyster dawn
fully
undone

She Forced The Restless Night

She forced the restless night
with rifle scope attention,
arms akimbo,
head weighted back
tilted by attitude and hair,
movement absent,
save jaws that kindly
chewed my imaginary future

My thoughts stuttered
in rhythm to the
teakettle steam,
vaporous,
useless
as the gazelle's dream
of outrunning the
lion's devotion

Still,
as the stars contemplate
their own eternity,
I consider my threadless
mortality,
amused by Hamlet's torment,
for I have chosen
to be

devoured,
as she forced the restless night,
feasting upon my glistening organs,
wet twisted muscle and sinew
entwined in fragrant seizures,
inhaling my soul whole
in open delirium,
and falling,
falling,
in storm drunken bliss
as we forced
the restless night