yet another meditation on the rose bush no longer blossoming

passing by you now
as if you are no longer there

(i) recall you from half way beneath the street
do not have to see you
to know
of all the roses that you contain
within your winter silent limbs

these days
we do not speak
do not look at one another
as we did
i have not gazed up you in weeks
but still
i
see you
without eyes...

you stand
quietly
in the courtyard of my heart
suffering the cold
of december
recalling your unexpected
autumnal appearance
when i just happened to glance out
when i did not want to go out...
when i had given up on seeing beauty...

i know
we do not speak as we did
but i do not feel
that you are any further
than you were
when you last let me
gaze upon you
in your
just before
unannounced retreat

even now
from this too chilled room
i recall you
as if you were some past
lover
still know the beauty
that now lurks within your frozen veins...

i think ahead to knowing
of what these months will bring
how it will seem as if
you will never return
and then
one day
youll wave to me with
your
tendril
kiss me with your
petals

and though we'll never say it
we'll both know
as i gaze upon your fullness

that

we were waiting
all along...

to be

seen.


kim thompson. friday. 23 dec 2011. seoul. s. korea. 18.07

yesterday/today

catching up on the latest "gossip"
news
from back home
-- home being whatever that may mean
no indicator of the actual place grown up...

interlaced with a lot of
"oh my fuckin' god are you kidding me!"s
(a lot of gods got fucked in that conversation)

realizing maybe life here
isnt so bad
hearing the ridiculousness back there
-- my choices being just that
- mine -
and i got let go of just in time
-- salvation beginning in the first act of saying
"this has been let go of
now let go of me"
(not that heart stringed attachments are bad
but
knotted strings
only trip me up)

and im supposed to drop the "i"
to evolve
but what else can "i" speak of
with some form of actual
certain knowing
when in truth even knowing "i"
can be
perplexing to
my own
eye.

to try to unravel
my "i"
only winds my eyes
into a blur
-- better
i begin to think
-- to just let be.
--- followed by a string of cliches on
the key of b

... like how
im not waiting for you
but im not closing any doors
"i"m gonna let this space
fill itself"
and like how...
that seeming act of letting you in
was a door closing
as "i" filled the space
with
my own past repeated habit
-- im sorry that sounds so unkind
... this is how honesty can be.
(its nothing personal
its not "you"
its that theres this "you"
and that is the "you"
that my "i" is looking towards
all the while knowing
it could be that this is how
my eye[s] must look in
order to see
some
unknown
"you"?)

and they say half the key to cool
is not admitting anything
-- so lets say that for most of my life
ive been frozen
and now im done with cold
and prefer the heat of just saying
even though the lack of certainty
makes my eye sweat salt.
(but im still done with palm trees
and
palmettos
and the hurricanes of late summer)

and theres a cigarette stuck to my lips
and im supposed to be considering quitting
but
ive never been good at quitting what i love
so
one day when i cease to love
i will let the filter fall butt end to the floor
for good
and sweep away the ashes of this form of love
but for now
we remain synonyms...

and its still early in the day
but the sun has turned its winter
soul
and
we spin on its axis.

and all the darkness of yesterday
(did the sun even ever rise?)
my eyes sank deeply into
too dehydrated to shed tears
so eye just dribbled salt
from the side

and "i"
dont expect
a thing from any "you"
but that does not change
what the
eye
wants.

and all this news from that place
that once was home
where they misname a patch of lake sand
"beach"
not knowing of the tepid heat of the atlantic
as my "i" does...

how they still preen
too old
for not having let go of any "i"
or
"you"
they speak buddha out their ashen-ed butts
and cling cling cling
so tightly
to
something
that was never
theirs to
keep
because
thats not how
"you"
and
"i"
is meant to work

but then
who am "i"
to cast my eye(s) downward in their direction
when
"i"
prove to my own self
time and time again
how
caught up in proving nothing/something to my "me"
ruins all this unwinding
that is being done

fists opened
palm lines
shifting in new directions

just when "i" thought
"you"
were gone
you returned
with flowers

and so today
for the "you"
who has been with "me"
since the beginning
and the "you"
who let go when "i" needed
and the "you"
who does not want to be a "you"
(but then maybe "you" do)
and the "you"
who wants to be a "you"
(but then maybe "you" dont)
and the me
who wants an
"i"

... i think of over there
and right now here
pick up another smoke
let the words drop where they may
though it is now
the shortest day
it feels like
the beginning
of this
next
that ive been waiting looking for
and in the throwing up of surrendered
hands
in the utter loathing
of what "i" can do
(its not that it was that bad or wrong
its just that "i" know that "i" am better
than such doings
and my eye does not like cheap)
in looking towards "you"
i's
are
seeing

me.

kim thompson. thursday 22 dec 11 18.09 seoul. s. korea

language

she reaches for something
flipping her wrists
jumping into the arms of he or she
she contorts to fit the others limbs

we pull our masks off each morning

she jerks in the embrace
fingers extended
to some other dream of life
her feet moving to the rhythm of her
own
heart

collapses without falling.

she takes a hand
between her own
elbow extended
her knees
buckling
under some
imaginary weight
of
being

we are not alone.

she drops her head
to a silent rise
as if proclaiming
all the words she will never write
whilst in this arms akimbo moment

we hide because we must.

she straightens her toes
touching floor
as if gliding on some kind of
table made from air
her abstract
so
intended

we yearn.

she jumps to the opening
of the others
extensions
and rides them until she
arrives in otherworlds

because there is no other way but this.

she is the pressing down
of each key
the arching back of
some form of
ecstasy
that can only be known
with two

we run from what we want.

she steps towards
because
today
she
cannot run

today we can only confess.

today
she crumples
mid reach
and
begins
again

as do

we.


kim thompson. wed 21 dec 2011 @ 19.16 seoul. s. korea.