Five Poems by Jackie Chou

 

The Muse

 

I must have loved you

on those sad stone steps

of girlhood

by the grass fields

where we gathered every day

at lunchtime

 

I don't know if I can still love you

your face in glossy photos

tucked away long ago

my memory of your voice

becoming words in a poem

 

Today I envision you

touched by the bright beams

of a universal sun

which lights up your smile

whether I love you or not

Nostalgia

I miss you

like I will someday miss

this present moment

that there will be something

in a raven's cry

the trail of broken glass

and heart-shaped leaves

on the sunlit sidewalk

the dusty wind

and even this aloneness

that will one day

become something lost

like you

the grasslands of youth

with their ghastly green hue

now a field of nostalgia

The Gull Feather

 

What do we do,

now that I've found you

like you knew I would?

 

Am I just a white feather

falling from the gull

above the smoky city

to slip off your shoulder

by a brush of your hand?

 

So light,

so light is my touch,

that you do not remember me,

and I cannot bring us back

to the same sky again.

Fairy Tale

Stand by me

on the balcony,

for I will give you a fairy tale life.

Don't be discouraged

by the dust on the concrete,

the pot of wilting poinsettias.

Behold the view of the city,

let every lit window

turn into a star for you,

my most deserving prince.

My mind is a rosebud,

ready to burst into a blossom,

and my heart a garden,

welcoming you at all times.

Rapunzel

I'm no Rapunzel,

with my scratchy voice of a blackbird,

and don't possess long tresses 

for a lover to climb,

nor am I her sorceress stepmother.

I've shown my pockmarked face,

looking out the balcony gate,

and exposed the backs of my hands,

mottled with new age spots.

Dusk after dusk,

I sit in my second-story room,

listening to the crowd below me,

more agoraphobic than hopeful.

The men I've observed

are no suitors but more like muses,

though a few of them

have gazed back at me.

I've turned their raven hair into verses.

Jackie Chou is a poet of Japanese short-form poetry and free verses from Southern California. Her two collections of poems Finding My Heart in Love and Loss and The Sorceress can be purchased on Amazon.  Besides writing, she loves to watch Jeopardy and talent competitions on TV.