1
Love
I liberate the captive herd within me
I summon back the fossilized kisses
2
If things have souls then things bear static souls
3
Hungry birds are building nests in space
Affliction gathers in the handkerchief of a bride on her wedding day
4
We kidnap fear by the sharp-edged tongue of a knife
5
The sound of your crying purifies the darkness
A sacred place is where I begin an entrance
6
Each grain of sand is the carcass of a dried star
Distilled in the deep pool of tears
7
Dissonant music lingers in the bodiless ear of the present tense
8
Truth is the wafting shadowy zone of doubt
9
The night deepened
The toiling laborers continued beating moon rock
10
In the rat-hole quarters
Cheap dreams have no anchor to hold
They float together straight down pipes after an unseasonable rain
11
If the sheep become authors
They will write about their innocence being lost
12
We
Evolved animals
Excessively preoccupied with petty calculation
While in trees with a tribe of orangutans
Naturally admiring the moon in ascent behind mountain tops
13
The loneliness in a dark corner contorts a self-constructed pain
I welcomeparty a friend from afar at the first break of light
The wind blows across the sky of Brothersisterhood
14
Buddha never speaks precisely about Truth except for when the Sir is protecting silence
15
The lunchtime napping people are evolving a dreamy fountain of energy
16
Buddha is assembling a labyrinth of love exclusively reserved for evil
17
Your heart infuses my heart with a consoling word packed with spring bounty
Not a fresh flower remains on the Sunday morning eating table
Dusty rain beyond the garden makes a pair of hands far exceed cerulean
18
Pass me along to the lighthouse and burn me bright like fire
Let me become the jagged underground rocks that rupture a boat in the night
Let me grow like the flecks of light breeding in the deranged brain of a man
Let me chant while watching my standing legs battered and buried in the hurricane
19
The mutual affection in a couple of supine beings asleep beneath a shadowy patch of orange trees
Amorous feelings in repose and a summer of increasing heat
In the cluttered tunnels of stacked sensual flesh
They search for each other beneath scalding bellows of a ruminating ox with broken horns
20
Indulge yourself in the food of breasts teeming with life
Netting hope throughout the jungle with a web of sound
Carry the wandering songs of those romancing strollers within
Entangled fresh flowers climb up the roof where the spring rain flutters
21
In a midnight dream this spring
The East was a river skin of visionary sleep
I sense I am a lethargic carp lost in thought
Drifting with the stream and gulping stars as they take shape
22
The universe can be constructed out of the dried skeleton of a mythical deity
This morning a steamroller’s pulverized dust billowblurrs every place
As hundreds of planets open their delirious eyes plunging head first into each other
The bloated vigor in every desiccated vein of the late harvest flowers
23
Everything around us is blindingly present
A rose a gripped cinder a hand a scythe
A clenched diamond can be launched into each corner edge of the present
Time putrefies with its abiding richness!
24
All people should self-immolate their faces and on them search for light
25
Humans will be mutually set free upon entering the final judgment day
All saints should be too
26
If people could live one thousand years then there would remain neither guilds of saints nor of the woeful
27
The conscience is a grain of sand in the shoe of Consciousness
28
Only those with true digression step in hoping search for home
“Những mảnh vỡ” © Pháp Hoan. First published in Pháp Hoan, Lịch mùa, AJAR press, 2016. By arrangement with the author. Translation © Kaitlin Rees. All rights reserved
