Cemetery Smiles
     My mirror is the cemetery of smiles.
                              ~Tada Chimako

Outside the blossoms have fallen.
Love exists though there are people
still broken hopeless in this world.

Night rises like a poem, the moon
is the only mouth in the sky.
Visiting hours are over but I stay.

The nurses don't mind.  I'm quiet.
Don't talk to your drugged, sleeping
face.  I do hold your hand.

Seven months they have kept you
alive when you should have been dead.
I sum the hours and blame myself.

I come at dawn and when I leave,
it is below the plaintive sky,
cemetery for stars.  So many graves,

so many dying stars, waiting to be
counted.  Which one is for you?

 
                           Unrest

Let no lover follow you on that night you bury your heart
in the garden.

Carry it trembling like a wet fever in a sack.
Go like a shadow, daughter of midnight.

Don't weep, tears always obscure vision.
Don't moan, moaning is a sign of regret
and might arouse the dead.

Use your hands to unknot the soil, uproot
the poppies if you have to, they can always
be replanted.

Avoid the slippery gaze of the moon.
Soon not one will not know your heart from the flowers.