"I Take A Walk Outside"

I take a walk outside
And wish you by my side.
Nothing seems as gray
As when you're far away.


Come back into my dreams
And mend their broken seams.
Long before robins sing
You're my first hint of spring.

Story of my life (crescendo)

This has got to be the strangest thing that has happened to me in years. Recently I noticed I've recovered some of the things I stopped doing or experiencing.

I was done with it a long time ago but lately I began to search the vast blue sky and exhale lento. What was that! The last time I did that I still had a whole heart to rend on the altar of life...

And I began to be afraid again. Really afraid. Suddenly there's something in life that I'm afraid I might lose...

But strangest of all, I've totally detached myself from all the past grievances that I ever visited... I stepped out the door one day only to hear birdsongs and feel the sun's warmth on my face.

I found the source of my newfound joy in the most unusual place. I want to let the world know the reason I'm happy but for now I'm content that my reason already knows.

"One Week"

Strange that a fire kindled my heart,
And it has been one week since;
Across terrains my soul did chart—
O heart, hail to Love's crown Prince!

"Sleep Well in Saigon"

In town they call you river-goddess.
Your nose is the narrow cliff of their life source.
The dripping faucet bids you home to the river...
Your place is in this sun-baked room made of our liquid love.

Your dark unruly hair makes the lawn of our bed fragrant.
Your limbs are collapsed towers accepting a delicious fate.
I eat and drink you for all these days that you let me.
Now I cannot go back to earthen food or water.

Your voice is a small house that I can live in,
Your lips the swift portal of a laboring man's bliss.
I enter your voice through your lips and sleep well in Saigon,
In the afterglow of a slumber I never wake from.

"Glass House"

You sit in the corner to avoid
Your own radiance in the sun;
Light fails to miss you
While you stay motionless.

Your eyes swimming, searching,
Fearing that you might wait until cold dusk
For a man who hasn't come home
To you heart.

Where are you?, you ask,
But do you know he's asking the same?
How long, you ask again,
Till you stop dreaming
And wake to a smile
As bright as the reflected sun?

You've been suspected an illusion,
A mirrored silhouette
Of his young-aged yearnings.
And your own yearnings—
Who is to notice them?

It can't be him—not this day—
For he is still dying to call out a name...
A name that will be beside his own
One day in this glassed fortress.

I have no advice nor comfort for this
Your hardest hour,
Save to only bear it
Until a river comes forth from your core
And engulfs his parched land.

You will see him rising from the graves
Of his many a dark death,
Clutching the air with bone-tired arms
That turn thunderous;
And his feet, lean though they are,
Will charge, with full sagacity, to where you are.

True, he is not here now,
But this glass house is consecrating your tears
For the day he walks in through the front door...
Will he see the same you?

Time to sleep now,
The deep, bright secret sprouting in your heart
Let not the angels see,
For it is even more sacred than they!

"Roses"

A balcony full of roses
Is like your sweet love for me.
They smile and astound,
Blush when they are admired,
Tenderly holding my breath.


Then one day in all suddenness
The roses I no longer see.
Since you are not around
The flowers grow sad and tired,
And they miss you to death.

Story of my life

Do you have any regrets in life? That's what I found myself answering today when I was caught in the Simba-and-Rafiki moment as I was pulling up some fond cases from the memory file.

"Yes...?" said Simba.

"Try again!" replied the nosy Baboon in me.

"Well... no?"

"And why not?" asked the monkey as he invited me to stoop low and watch him form ripples on the water's surface with his ugly index finger.

In an enlightening moment an answer came...

"No..." this time the monkey gave me time to finish my thought, "no I don't have any regrets in life..." and he waited still... "Only pity."

That's when the pesky monkey disappeared.

So what's with that? It took me a while but I finally figured out what the simian was trying to say. He wanted me to know for sure that I haven't been living with regrets. But on the other hand there is pity, which may look just like the same thing as regrets but is not.

I haven't a regret in my life, because I eliminated them along the way as best I could.

But I'll always have pity, because hard as I tried, I could never make someone love me.

So there you have it, the story of my life; a life with pity but no regrets.