Resuscitation

I fell from the sky
hard

Mouth to mouth,
you kissed my mouth open.

Life screamed back
into my lungs,
through my vessels
from within my heart.

My eyes opened
to no one there
Who were you?
Where did you go?
The unseen hand
laughed openly
with what twist of plot?

Am I coming home
to a place I've
never been?
Were your comforting words
during our trips
to the sun
dreamed into a unsung
mind?

I will fly again.

I will fly
as the match head
struck alit
starved for oxygen.
searching madly.
to find this tender soul
who came back to me
under the fragile sky.

And should my wax
wings melt
before
our arms shall wrap
our spirits again,
pray that I
may quickly unclutch
to the
unforgiving
winds
the
scribbled note:

"In case of
Emergency,
please
do

not
resuscitate".




Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved
Photo Source

You Were Gold

You were gold
I was silver

We drank moonlight
from rooftops
in drunken glee
and kissed with
the taste of promise
We were

light chasing light
over evening wave tips
I've inhaled your sky
and sand and water as

I walked into your ocean
and failed to walk out.



Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved.
Photo Source

Let Us Go Then

Let us go then, you and I
and wade into the sea
where the shifting sands beneath our feet
no longer question our souls' intent
and the swirling salt water washes
through our fragile longing
like the stars that rush
through our bodies
and disappear
toward an unknown
destination.

My fingers will always know the
details of your
spine in the small
of your back,
and the feel of your hair
my hand sifts though
and without knowing all
the colored
details of your life,
I will recite the song of your eyes
with the depth of its
wisdom.

Yet they hold so many stories
I have yet learned to read.

And want to.


Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved.
Photo Source

In My Heart

In the stillest moment of the evening
you fire through the aether and
the rush of chaotic atmosphere
and slide through a crack in my perimeter,
past the guards and monsters,
and with silent feet
slip under my skin,
swim up the currents of
my capillaries and vessels,
climb up the trees and
up the furthest branches
to where you will rest.

And in the morning
I will awaken
to the cathedral bells outside
and with you
in my heart.

I See You In Colors

I am pretending you did not exist.
Ink nightly washes black
over my consciousness
and abandons me as morning seaweed
upon a foreign beach.

I am pretending we were simply
the sparkling imagination of some higher being,
our life together set below a singular epic sky
unrepeated
in future histories

I am pretending I cannot taste you
each day as I do the sea air in my breath
when I am running,
my heart tied upon one foot,
ancient melancholy tied upon the other,
anxiously racing,
madly racing through lifetimes,
to find our brightened souls.

I see you in colors that don't exist.

It is all that I see clearly.
and why I run.



Copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved.
Photo Source

.

Unraveled

I lingered silent over the geography
of your spirit,
and inhaled its saffron valleys,
sunlit with lissome lilies,
as I drunk deep from its coaxing wells
of cool electricity.

I have tasted the Spring's first blooms
in your glance and wondered
of the half life of our words
and the extraordinary struggle
of their anxious disorder.

I stopped cold with your slight
"hey mister" and all I could think was
of the fate of crowned angels
in the silvered milky way
watching over,
washing over
my desire to be lured
and unraveled
and...
did you really call me
"mister"?

We shall run away far from all
that is familiar,
toothy fear and excitement our fuel,
until the burdened chatter of others
becomes inaudible,
until all that is unspeakable
is spoken,
and our voices,
clear and charmed in its
undressed debut,
sings.

Image source

Love Is The Only Rational Act

"Love is the only rational act."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

If we don't breathe to speak of love
then we are wasting our breath.
If we aren't eating to have the energy to love
then we are still hungry.
If we aren't moving to love,
then we are moving in the wrong direction.
If our every action, movement, thought, word
does not lead to love
then we have failed as we may have before
and if we do not pick ourselves up
and love ourselves and others even more
then we have declared the ultimate
war upon humanity.
The only true war on war
is to express love
and to share it with everyone
even in the most unlikeliest of moments,
especially in the most unlikeliest of moments,
we must share love
and reach others with it,
teach it, preach it
from the rooftops,
from the mountaintops
to surround every ounce of our being with love
no matter the consequences,
past and future,
for herein lies
the present
and future
for us
all.







Picture Source

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.