Thailand Poems: Midnight's Waypoint, Blackbird Summer, Bells, Love You

A four-poem journey through a brief romance

Happy New Year! I thought I’d kick off this year by sending some love poems I wrote in Thailand before, during, and after a one-week situationship in Pai.

My heart has felt like it’s been steadily opening up and thawing this entire year, and sharing deep connections across my travels was one of my greatest joys across my entire trip.

There is no relationship more important than the relationship we have with ourselves. Yet we are also relational beings, and I’ve learned this year that immense healing can, in fact, happen with the help of other people.

I’ve also learned that as much as I love being alone, I love connection — real connection, built on mutual love and trust and a desire to see each other bloom — even more (though my ideal is a balance between the two).

It’s quite easy to get caught up in thoughts of what we should be doing or should be changing at this point in the year, and I know I’ve certainly been all wrapped up in that mindset, and yet sometimes you have to take a step back and remember: at the end of the day, love (for ourselves, for others, for the whole world) is the most important thing we can ever possibly create and leave behind on this blue-green planet.

Midnight’s Waypoint

in the garden
at the crossroads yet again,
airplanes criss-cross my mind
the sign of the cross flashes neon

and I am trying to be someone
alive and real and yet
it feels impossible if only because
I am so half-here half-there always

but this garden feels like a place
I could stay
if only for a morning

if only I could find
someone to stay with
who, like a garden,
I could grow with,
instead of burning like a tower —

is it too much to ask for,
a garden in my heart,
soft rains, coffee in the morning
and no more bombs and no more cigarettes?

the war’s past,
so why can’t my body forget?
but the earth remembers too,
and still grows out of dissolution

and like the earth
I must keep trying
while always knowing I’ll die
if only to come back here again.

Blackbird Summer

The coffee is sweet here and the air is a melody.
The streets have a rhythm and the people are kind.
Paradise is not real but there’s a bar I know on the corner —
And under the moon it’s easy enough to pretend
We never left the garden.

The world warps and spins. A dancer throws fire into the air.
Ants loop and twine over my fingers. Rain dampens the soil.
The pavement undulates. Steam spills from clay pots.
Palms stretch their fingers out.
Dogs race through the streets, and the jungle sings.

The city hums. The stars let down their hair and shine.
From 7-11 to the waterfall, from the churches to this bed
Everything glimmers, twists and shapeshifts.
Hibiscus flowers and birds of paradise, mosquitos and incense
Mango and soft guitar. I’ll take these memories home with me.

I’ll keep the fragrance of these nights for the long winter days to come.
Sweet beer and ash on your fingers. Constellations of freckles,
Muscles rippling gently beneath them. Our memories interlocking like hands.
Looking for UFOs in the rice fields. The sun coming up. Time disintegrating.

Just this. Your hand in mine. Just this. 
A song on my lips. Just this. Blue lights on our blue planet.
No me, no you. No past, no future.
I must remember this was life.
This was why I came to earth. This sweetness. This song.

Bells

That’s all I really want
and maybe all any of us need:

to be seen as the mirrors we are,
to be drunk up like the nectar from the earth
pulled from the ground like the seeds we were

when we first touched down 
in our watery shell,
having just left a state of perfect communion.

We seek that communion in everything. 
Or at least I do.
I chase it through the lonely nights.

Sometimes I even find it. 
Ginger, sweetness.
Bells ringing on a summer night.

Love You

Yes there is so much pain. 
And yes there is also bliss.
And yes it will not last.

And yes you will leave me.
And yes I will leave you.
And yes it is still good. 

And yes I’m still glad we met.
And yes. If you were wondering.
Yes. I do.