chiang yomei | london | u.k.

WOMB OF DESIRE

The anatomy of loss
is a skeleton of broken dreams
Phantom images
with nowhere to go,
stuck in the labyrinth of hope.

Still waiting.
Still wanting.

Hope and fear:
forever twinned in the womb of desire.

LILITH SPEAKS

Lilith’s veins
lead to Miriam’s well;
this darkness heals.

Rage -
no longer contained,
courses through her being,
ripping apart seams
of carefully mended wounds.
No more tip-toeing;
Lilith says it all.

Through the fresh tear
of the ancient cut
I see myself
embedded
between flesh and blood;
in shards of mirrors crack’d
lay the ruins of her restless soul.

Lilith cries in pain.
Salt in her tears
renews the stagnant blood.
Nourished,
it flows again.
She emerges,
a queen,
a link to our shared past,
our future.

Lilith is born again;
She is seen.

NAGA

I close my eyes:
thoughts wash over one another
like the tide

World of the living dead
undulating before me
Naga’s Nest
is born of my mind.

I die,
blinded,
buried in a tomb of ideas;
birth and death are ideas,
so are you and I –

I open my eyes:
thoughts extinguish.
Dying a thousand deaths
I find Naga’s skin.

Sight restored,
I live again,
in the Garden of Illusions.

WHAT SHE FOUND

They fall through her naked heart,
faint yet pregnant with longing,
a cascade of images
unleashed –
some dried and brittle,
some still damp with desire,
all of which
she can neither quite capture
nor discard

Images
belonging to no land
unhinge and dissipate
into a great silence
where all is possible
nothing confined or defined

She found it all
as it is,
as it should be:
silent echoes of an oceanic dream.

FOOL

So much fear
in this space –
words erupting
from your imprisoned brain –
words
building a great wall
between us
walls
all around us:
mind-walls.

You don’t really want a reprieve.

I will sing you a song,
lighten your mood,
and you will call me
a fool.

MY FATHER’S DREAMS

In the mirror
I see my father’s dreams
bleeding gently into my own.
Muted cries –
the texture of broken grass
imprisoned in a house of glass.

Sentiment –
tepid
like humid summer rain
falling heavily
pooling into our hearts –
gaoler of souls!

My father’s dreams,
unlived,
obscured by this obstinate glove of demon’s curse,
wearing promised delights
like an old tart’s cloak:
tattered,
reeking of a million what-ifs,
a cloudy concoction
of sweat and compromised scent
at once revolting and intriguing

The cloak casts a spell.
I struggle,
unfulfilled,
in my dreams

My father’s dreams
fold into my Grandfather’s face.
Shrouded by his own lost dreams,
his eyes still burning,
wondering how it could have been.

My Grandfather’s dreams
shackle my pink-veined heart;
shall I ever breathe –

In the mirror
I see my dreams
which I do not own.
The bones of desire
which link us all
will become earth
and dreams
nothing but ashes
lighter
than a falcon’s feather.

UNTITLED

When light strikes the point of reflection,
everything falls into place.
You and I are no more,
there is only one space:
loose yet confined,
empty yet full.

I am that space,
as are you.
We are the same event.

Together
we are a trillion particles of goldness,
reflecting one another,
shimmering in our nakedness,
meeting and parting,
forever counter-transmuting.

MEMORIES

What are memories –
thinly veiled echoes
winding through a windowless labyrinth -
half-forgotten captives
in an ancient fortress
of crumbling passageways

Reverberations
trapped in private spaces
in the hollows
between earth and Hades

Now sharper
Now duller
no more real
than your face in the mirror

PILGRIM

From the first step
I hold my mind.

Looking into the flames
I lose my mind.

Sweeping up the ashes
I find Your Mind.

GOODBYE SONG

What do you say
when someone’s gone forever
You wish you had words
but you don’t.
Staring into the silent gaps
you realise
to your horror
that grief has no map

What do you do
when you understand
that you will forget in time,
that your beloved
will be nothing
but a faint shadow,
a dream, perhaps –

Where do you go
when all the tears have dried?
You can only go home.

MATTER

Virgin matter:
it exists only
between lines
drawn between breaths –

When the lines soften,
begin to shiver
in their nakedness
and disappear altogether
then there is no breath
no no-breath

Virgin matter
is only an idea
in your mind

Everything is recycled,
even thoughts
Nothing is original:
a newborn’s cries
echo a dying man’s gasp –
how final is death?
No more so than melting ice
waiting to form again
when conditions are ripe

Form
is nothing
and everything
in your mind.

MOTHER

Last night I dreamt of her
Doing nothing much at all
Just sitting there
Looking like a china doll

I had no doubt
She smiled at some point
if not with her lips
then with her heart

My mother died
and went away.
Sometimes
It’s as if she’s never been;
sometimes it’s as if she’s never left at all.

INDIGO

Indigo night.
Tears find no voice:
a language unto itself.

I understand
all the pain in the world:
how tears burn
and sear the heart
like dried wood –
a funeral pyre
that resurrects.

Nothing makes sense;
all that remains is loss.
A loss so full
it is empty –
a receptacle
for all the pain in the world
A primordial river
carrying all the suffering that has been
and all the suffering that will come.

IN AN INSTANT

Change your mind
And you change everything –
World unlocked,
purged of lumbering memories:
a slithering mass of tangled vines –
Medusa’s locks
severed at the roots

This is the wisdom of the Golden Bird:
Grounded yet in flight,
belonging to yet separated from
the world of words and images

Zhuang Zhou dreams:
an entire universe is born
in the space between a butterfly’s wings

In an instant
differences vanish
hell and paradise become One
joy leaps from your heart,
womb to all the stars

You open your eyes
and find that
you have not left your point of departure at all:
journey to the Centre
in the blink of an eye

DEATH

Death
wild-eyed,
ran across the page

Found itself
sitting in the same position
laughing

xiv. FOR HANS

The empty vase shatters,
Yet the fullness of space is sustained.

The vase is temporary:
The vase has a beginning
and an end;
the space in-between
is timeless

Everything changes;
everything that is born
grows and dies.

But the unnameable
does not change
because it has no boundaries
no concepts
no fear
no by-products of fear.

The unnameable is not born
so it cannot die.

It is Whole.

xiii. FAINA

I lay a wreath of memories
on my Grandmother’s nameless grave.
Stone.
Cold.
Tomb.
No longer a womb.

A once full life
abbreviated
to a footnote
unremarked upon
except in passing reference,
in quiet submission
to a great man’s legacy

Some call it virtue,
others a shame.
I call it a Great Love
As I lay a wreath of papyrus-thin memories
on my Grandmother’s nameless grave.

xviii. HOPE

Release this carcass of hope
from its tomb
and find a space without fear –
riding on the back of time,
winging past memories:
diaphanous,
ice-palace
passing jewel-like
into the silken womb of the sea

Ur-Mutter
waiting patiently
for her prodigal children
waiting
to swallow them whole,
to return them to themselves,
erasing all footprints,
all shadows,
until they free themselves,
until they are nothing,
going nowhere.

xix. CELEBRATION

When death rises to the surface
You might as well embrace it

If being born from the Source
is to be celebrated,
then why not
returning to the Source?

Death
is nothing more
than a point
waiting to expand
into eternity

xx. ONE

I and the rock are one,
quietly breathing in
the palpitations of time.

Golden leaves shed
by the aged Mother-Tree
are tears from my eyes

An explosion of light
glittering between the lines –
my thoughts take flight
on the tails of falling stars –
We are One.

Formless
Without thought
Suspended between realities
We are One.


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