alotus_poetry

Hello, dear Readers! Thank you so much for stopping by! This website is primarily my ongoing, ever-growing portfolio/collection of old and new poems I've written over the years (and then there are still more on paper collecting mildew and dust somewhere in the "Mount Fuji" of my closet, which I don't know if they will ever make it on here). This site will also contain random works of writing that need a nurturing home, which will include essays, fiction, plays, drawings, drafts, etc..
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11/21/08
I stumbled upon riesiel's wonderful work in your_spirals and found a wonderful list of "themes." I am looking forward to completing this challenge as I've been collecting poetry sites with prompts as if they were gems in a treasure chest I found at the bottom of the ocean. It keeps my poetic brain stimulated.

---

100 Theme Challenge

Date Started: November 22, 2008
Percent Completed: In progress
Date Completed:
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flower-pressed in his warmth,
his sighs of longing
and missing her mandarin & berry perfume
jumped an octave deeper
making her toes curl
& her stomach somersault
like the autumn leaves around them

putting leaves
of (mis)quotations aside--
the moment wrapped in
the pause
of their jasmine kisses
was whispered
to a nearby singing wren:

please forgive me.

This is my all-time favorite question. But you know what? I'd have a heck of a time deciding which one power I should have! At any given time, it could reduce to the following superhuman abilities:

-doctor/healer (physical & spiritual): I love helping and guiding people in their lives. I want them to find peace and happiness in the midst of the sickness, pain, and suffering. I want to touch them and see them heal, especially cancer patients!

-fortune teller/oracle/prophet: I want to tell others of their fortune (or misfortune). Truth is important. I want to make people see what is good and what is bad and give them a second chance in life.

-time traveling: I would absolutely love to see how things happen in the beginning of time. I want to see how dinosaurs existed, how Jesus lived, whether if there was a city of Atlantis, the progression of Pangaea over centuries, how languages evolved to what they are known today... I want to see the why and how of things happening in history. I also want to see the future!

-flight: The essence of mankind's heart. To find freedom, to escape, to see the world beyond what is known.

-teleportation: To teleport objects, to self-teleport. Never have to lift a finger or a muscle, but of course, you would still be eating a lot because of the metabolism rate is much higher than a regular human being.

-self-cloning: Ah, there were days when I wish I could be in three places at once. It would make things much easier--multi-tasking...

-telepathy/mind reading: People can be really dishonest sometimes or have really bad intentions to a point where they hurt others. Reading their minds would help a lot. I would be fascinated to see the dreams, memories, and other stored information of different kinds of people.

On Mother's 44th Birthday Card

birthday blessings--
the turn of leaves
on mother's face
smiling in the distance

assured,
the baby bird takes
the first dive
into the deep autumn blue

after a few seconds,
the mother too does the same.

each bird note--
the same
no matter the age
of feathers

Happy early birthday, Ma! (Her birthday is tomorrow.)

As of Monday, October 26th, 2009, Geocities closed down its services for free websites. I saved all of what's left of the html coding and images that once built my small website way back in the years of early Y2K. Ever since I moved onto Blogspot/Blogger and other places around the web, my Geocities site was terribly abandoned, and so in a way, closing down my free web service at Geocities wasn't a big deal to me.

Now, I'm glad to head back to a place here where I can put all of my artwork, poetry, and other musings onto one place and not be a scatterbrained about it all.

Anyway, for my nostalgic purposes, the link: Ambiguity Lotus V. I. (Version Infinity) (http://geocities.com/kathyun/). It is silly in that I named it "Version Infinity" because the site was always under construction in some way--whether it was updating poetry or construction of webpages. Of course, the link is no longer available as I shut it down before the official closing.

Geocities, I bid thee adieu. You were once a part of my younger self.

This is perhaps my second experimentation with renga with other poets. (My first is over at red Ravine.) Interestingly, putting together a renga over Twitter was quite interesting as it wasn't entirely perfect. However, I'm glad we could work out a few tangles with some of the verses. Overall, it was enjoyable, and I look forward to doing more renga experiments with more poets (not just on Twitter).

I posted the entire 36-verse renga below as to not interrupt the flow. The original source is at the end of this renga. Please enjoy!
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Original post: Morden Haiku.

P.S. Matt & Alastair noted that this #twenkuxp renga was submitted to Alan Summers' 1000-verse renga project! That's a lot of verses!! I can't wait to read the whole thing when it comes out!

More autumn greetings! Here's another monthly update of haiku, senryu, tanka, and other short form poetry for the month of OCTOBER! I've also been experimenting with fragmentary writing (#fraglit) and a renga with several Twitter poets (#twenkuxp).

For those of you who would prefer to get an instant daily update instead, check out my Twitter page on the sidebar. :) Please (re-)enjoy!!
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Paper Cranes

they're like fractals,
these origami cranes--
their wings catch dragonflies
and gold dust at every
autumn sunset.

sometimes i search
for the meaning of peace
while i climb mountains and slide
down valleys,

my fingers smooth each wrinkle
on your face
and tuck you beneath my wings
on rainy days

as we hide in the bat-shadows
of maple trees,
this nest--
a mesh of home and love
and pain.

at the end of the day,
a smile gleams
above the water.

we catch a poem
in the wind and sing our songs
without the hums of cicadas,

but if there are days
when we do not feel like singing
for sorrow or love,
we dip our feet
in the water,
drawing mandalas--
the water ripping pieces
from cumulus clouds
until the night comes when
the moon changes to a pearl.

Autumn greetings! Here's another monthly update of haiku, senryu, tanka, and other short form poetry for the month of SEPTEMBER! For this month, I was also playing with words as you can see with the #collectivenouns (hashtags on Twitter), which are definitely NOT poetry.

For those of you who would prefer to get an instant daily update instead, check out my Twitter page on the sidebar. :) Please (re-)enjoy!!
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From Cafe Writing's September/October 2009 Project:

Option One: Seven Things

A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.

--Lemony Snicket

In improvisation, one of our exercises is a game called "Seven Things," in which we go around in a circle giving each other the challenge, "Give me seven things that [whatever]." We are not going to go around in a circle here, but if you're drawn to lists, this prompt is for you.

Give me a list of seven things that make a library good. These can be real or imagined, physical or intangible. Have fun with it. As always, explanations are welcome, but not obligatory.

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Libraries vs. Bookstores

1. Poetry books
2. Comfy couches
3. Good & quiet study areas
4. Arts & crafts presentations
5. Wireless Internet access
6. Media to check out (e.g. movies, audio-books, etc.)
7. Great reference books & sources (for the scholar and artist in me)

Of course, there are some things that libraries don't have that I do like at bookstores:

1. Stationery stuff
2. Calendars & planners
3. Boxed sets of "little hobbies" (e.g. origami in a box, grow-your-own bonsai in a box, etc.)
4. Comic books & manga
5. Cafes (I love the smell of coffee but can't drink it.)
6. Magazines
7. Plushies, stuffed animals, collectibles, & toys

[Based on @4and20poetry prompt.]

Electrons

i.
Your hands fold over mine
folding paper cranes & planes.
When they fly, leaves trail behind them
in the autumn wind like a comet
dust of electrons--
our love never losing to time or fate
but always gaining moment(um)s,
reconfiguring like the words
in this poem,
like the pauses of your cherry lips
whenever I kiss you,
like the less-traveled blue skies
of our writing notebook.

ii.
These thick, black slashes & dots
down this paper
are the rain, my tears,
unavailable letters that cannot
arrange themselves atomically
into one big puddle
to tell you how much
I have missed you.

iii.
When I think of electrons,
entropy lights the way
into the big bang theory.
I find myself ahead
of my present self
without a sense of direction
& with a questionable past.

iv.
Like electrons,
negativity exists in this world
if one keeps perpetuating it
to chaos & corruption.
For some people,
they live for the drama.

v.
I always count
these cups of rice
to cook for dinner,
but when I dropped the pot
by accident one day,
a million or more grains of rice
fall like the sound
of rain
breaking suddenly
from orange clouds--
my kitchen floor
now with puddles of whiteness
surrounding me.

vi.
Throughout all the madness,
I have my own crown
of potential energy
to recreate what former poets
left behind
in dusty book(shelves/stores).

Hello again! I'm back for another monthly update of haiku, senryu, tanka, and other short form poetry for the month of AUGUST!

For those of you who would prefer to get an instant daily update instead, check out my Twitter page on the sidebar. :) Please (re-)enjoy!!
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From Cafe Writing's July/August 2009 Project:

Option Four: Can You Picture That?

Use the the following photo to inspire a piece of writing in any form (poetry, prose, whatever).


Photo courtesy of iStockPhoto.

---

Through the Binoculars*

i.
With binoculars,
I still can't see the wind
chasing the tails of seagulls
scooping up bread crusts by the shore,
but I can feel how
I have become a rooster
when it tousles my hair,
when I do not look back at it
and see if it brings me
sand dust to my childhood dreams.

ii.
Awaiting in the wings,
the world is much closer on my stage.
My eager eagle eyes
find treasures within
the bark of a redwood tree
to the holes and mounds of creatures,
all of their names I do not even know
until they find their way to my gut.
I can then spell their names
with twigs and leaves,
categorize them in nests
of thoughts.

iii.
If life were
in California skies,
I won't have to see things so closely,
hold onto things so dearly
with these binoculars.

*Note: It's a working title. Can't think of a better one...


I've also written a haiku on Twitter as well.

8/08/09 Dream

I was holding you down to a chair,
but you were squirming like a 5-year-old,
not caring if you had a pulse
or if you were bleeding
or if there were middle-aged nurses
eating their meals out of lunch bags,
staring at you coldly, impatiently...

In the room,
it was a hybrid between breaks
and a blur of old and new faces
of patients and nursing staff--
some speckled, some melted like wax,
some were sad and broken marionettes
hanging from the walls and ceiling,
some could be owls in other life
scribbling away, decoding existence
through crossword puzzles.
Their mouths move without sounds
but were in rhythm with the intensity
of flickering fluorescent lights--
the flashing, crashing, and burning
of eyes, of senses, of urgency,
of sanity.

Surrealism, mechanism,
dream-like, routine.
In, out like a coma,
or was it a comma or an apostrophe
pooling over your body
like unanswered questions or instances
of out-of-body experiences?
The mind assesses and reassesses
surroundings, meanings, tones,
changes, moods.

Are we robots, sacrificing ourselves
to painkillers, an oily sweet drop of every pill
that would cure the ache, the distress, the disease?
What could I do to heal you?
What could I do to make you feel at home,
even if it's just a few days or months?
With my knowledge, my hands cannot always map
your every cell, tumor, or mood
on a butterfly-pinned display.
But if you take them,
hold onto them tightly.
Trust me as I hold you down to this chair,
and I will try my best to fill your breath
and blood with reassuring words,
sacrificing my time for your journey.
Just follow that star to comfort
and live once again.

From Read Write Poem - Get Your Poem On #86:

Topic: Personal Universe in 23 Lines

---

Ouroboros

I was Mozart at age 3,
yanking out the silky ribbons of cassette tapes
while waddling down the musical sidewalks
of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and Sesame Street.
Ma was mad for a little bit, but then laughed
when she saw how her destroyed music was wrapped up
in a turban around my head. (I have the baby picture to prove it.)
Over the years, I wavered between
a cookie fortune teller and Medusa,
my identity hidden behind my curtain of Pantene Pro-V hair
and my turbulent emotions were bottled and corked up
well below my gut (though not like Frida Kahlo's gut).
Oftentimes I would spit out how I felt in only 17 syllables or less,
and like the snake-whips, each word would count
and carry stones that would hit the walls (and hopefully not loved ones!)
and echo, echo, echo their names toward their descent down the well.
(Sometimes I wondered if anyone heard them or even their tiniest splash of good-byes.)
I still believe in lucky number 9
and still have yet to figure out why I am attracted to it--
perhaps it spirals like the whorls on my salty fingers
and like the tides, pulls me to devour meditation like the starving wolf
and to write music across the watercress-lips of E.B. White's Trumpeter Swan,
my herbal voice, the final, loving touch to everything in time, distance, and existence.

Hello! Yep, it's that time again! Here's another monthly Japanese forms update! This would include haiku, senryu, tanka, and other similar forms for the month of July, plus a couple of six-word sentences.

For those of you who would prefer to get an instant daily update instead, check out my Twitter page on the sidebar. :) Please (re-)enjoy!!

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I can't believe it. Half of the year is gone. Tomorrow is July. That means, I probably missed about 3 days' worth of writing haiku, but by a narrow margin (i.e. for several hours). As of today, I have 500 pieces of Japanese forms (e.g. tanka, senryu, haiku, and a few attempts similar to haiku/senryu).

Here's my breakdown:

January - 38
February - 62
March - 76
April - 103
May - 91
June - 131**

Half of the year total: 501** pieces since launch date on New Year's Day 2009!


On some days, I was able to write on water. The words flow like a river, and I had to row my boat hard to keep up with the words flowing from my pen. On other days, my mind is like a drought, my pen ran very little ink, and my soul was just dying of thirst.

All in all, I am amazed with how far I've gone, how much I've written. Writing meditative pieces in Japanese forms is always a challenge but is well worth my time and attention. It gave me a much keener, more focused view of life, seeing things in different facets and on a much deeper, sometimes even on a more inquisitive level.

Here's to the last half of the year! Hopefully, I can do another 500! Thank you everyone for your never-ending support, sincere thoughtfulness, care, and appreciation! <3 <3 If there's an important thing I've learned from writing poetry in general, the poet has to believe that the words he/she writes are meaningful enough to make the entire poem meaningful. Then, the poet is ready to share what he/she discovered or experienced with the world, keeping in mind that at the end of the day, it is still something the poet has created despite what anyone says, but the poem will always be evolving if the poet takes the best stones to spark that fire.

I do appreciate you all, my dear friends and readers. I am most humbled and sincerely touched. Please continue to enjoy my work. :)

**Last minute addition was written last night after this post. So, 501 pieces total. (Updated 7/01)