Poetry & Prose

Past
Lover
The Zen
Living
Tenderly*
Water*
Empty
Mirage
Spontaneity
Celibate
You
Chocolate Dream
Awake
Surrealist
Summers
Strength
Truth
Quotations



Haiku
Amber incense burns
in the foyer of passion.
Dark smoke drifts upward.



Moment

He looked at me. My cheeks burned. It was as if something inside of me began to unravel itself. I could see my face in his eyes. There were no more secrets, no more hidden truths. I felt his gaze settle on me and I knew. I could not speak. He spoke. He asked me if this was what I wanted, or everything was going to come to an end. It would be a devastating end. My tears betrayed me, falling through my lashes. Yes, I thought. He gathered me in his arms and whispered into my hair, “Me too”. I clung to him. All the glorious tomorrows floated before me, but the yesterdays still lingered. He is not like the rest, I said to myself. He wasn’t. J. M. T. L.


















Past

I saw an old friend from highschool
at the local mom and pop’s store,
in the canned goods aisle.

He was tall
and his tailored suit fit him well.
He smiled, and most of the years fell away.

He commented about the snow,
and said that I looked the same as
when I was seventeen.

Seventeen was the year of dances,
pop stars, and matinees. Of love,
hope, and promise rings.

Time and distance separated us
from the innocence,
necessity and practicality took its place.

We talked about nothing at all
for several minutes,
and left each other.

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Lover
Stranger’s eyes
we dance through the morning glade
in a moment of agonizing
ecstasy.

Jenny Lam
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The Zen

Of half-full water bottles,
twenty-five cent mints,
and 6 a.m. showers.

Of locker combinations,
broken relations,
being mistaken.

Of forgetting,
and remembering,
the warm coat on a cold morning.

Jenny Lam 9/8/02
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Living

Frozen
in mid-thought,
in mid-dream,
in a midnight under dying stars,
I lie awake.

Through the endless darkness,
the call of metal swims in a
river of cricket song.

Far beyond my secluded corner,
dawn arrives. A toddler’s feet,
wet with morning dew,
dampen the fertile earth.

I breathe. . .
the breath of patience,
the breath of love,
the breath of heros unborn,
to live another day.

Jenny Lam 8/02
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Tenderly,
You brush my hair away
with your hand. . . your fingertips roughened with
work trace my yearnings -
fancies roaming in my brown eyes
cry out to be fastened inside you,
forever.

JL 5/31/02
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Water

from the sea
washes the shore,
intimately embracing
the rocks that
glisten and gleam
in the sun.

Soft harmony,
rhythmic and flowing,
fills the air with
sacred sound.

Gentle but firm
aquamarine lips
caress the golden sand,
leaving a mark -
only to come back again
and wash it
away.

J.L. 3/11

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Empty

Lonely, so lonely.
The blaze of a lover's fire
blown away from the coldness of winter's wind
Clinging onto the last strand of hope.
Hope, hope... becomes
meaningless after being said so many times.
A void is filled with regret,
seeping into every crevice of a stone heart.
Unseeing eyes trace what might have been,
and hoping that the visions are not lies.
That word again, hope.
Escape and run from the criticizing voices-
Laughing and taunting.
Faster, faster.
Through fields of angels and heavenly things.

Mirage

Join me my lord,
at our clandestine rendezvous
in Shangri-la,
Where we will savor the fruit of our enchantment.
Let tranquility capture you, and
Succumb to the Delphic oracle.
Myriad spectrums of divine light
Cast a haunting glow upon you
and I am entranced.
Exquisite euphoria calls.
Come with me to seek a dream
Untarnished.

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Spontaneity

Gilded words of foreign love
hinged on fleeting humanity’s shadows
follow my thoughts.
Inner longings call for release
among weeds and brush
and wasteland.
Surrender to the fantasies
that beckon, like great feasts
dancing in the eyes of a starving soul.
Echoing, faceless voices reverberate
in the hollow vestiges of a heart,
existing on an idea.
Rouged with my own blood
and shredded of essence,
I lose myself in a strange land
where songs of freedom sound
lilting to my ears,
And lemons taste sweet in my mouth.

Jenny M. T. Lam 2/8/02 5:21pm
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Casting off all inhibitions
Enveloped within pulsating lava
Lust curls around and permeates every cell
Indulging the carnal senses
Brazenly immersing onself in the heat
Ardent motions stoke the flames
Titillating and
Emblazoned.

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You

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    I hold in my hand my dreams, untouched and unshattered by a cynical world. I believe that there is hope for a tomorrow where the principles of equality, liberty, and fraternity are understood by all. The tragedy that recently affected our lives has brought everyone together. From the rubble of a fallen edifice, fundamental ideals are placed in the forefront. Hand in hand, we can build a strong society on the foundations of respect and honor.                                 September 11, 2001   
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     Henry David Thoreau had once asked, "How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" To try the experiment of living, that’s what I’d like to do. If I could walk in someone else’s shoes for a day, it would be with a wise, old woman. I want, for just twenty-four hours, to learn how to fly through life, to know all the secrets to it, and then to forget them and be young again. After all, what fun would it be, to never make a mistake?

Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

                                                            Aldous Huxley

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating— people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.

If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another’s; if we feel, we would that another’s nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart’s best blood. This is Love.

                                                    Percy Bysshe Shelley

It’s true love because
If he said quit drinking martinis but I kept on drinking them
and the next morning I couldn’t get out of bed,
He wouldn’t tell me he told me.

                                                   Judith Viorst

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don’t know. I mean, how can you tell?

There used to be two kinds of kisses. First when girls were kissed and deserted; second, when they were engaged. Now there’s a third kind, where the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr. Jones of the nineties bragged he’d kissed a girl, everyone knew he was through with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919 brags the same everyone knows it’s because he can’t kiss her any more. Given a decent start any girl can beat a man nowadays.

Melodies heard are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.  
W. B. Yeats

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
Anonymous

I always made an awkward bow.
J. Keats

To say the truth, reason and love keep little company now-a-days. 
W. Shakespeare

Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship.
C. Dickens

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.  
H. D. Thoreau

Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one surely wasted. 
Sebastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.
A. Huxley

The only passion is the passion for happiness.
D. Diderot