A Poet Contemplates A Beauty

What is beautiful if not unique?
Wisdom without kindness?
Life, sans grand challenge?
Might as well seek dreams without change,

Poems without language.

Her stride awakes our memories.
Her breath
(Dawn at the edge of Nam Ou)

Returns our hearts to our limitless nations within us.

Her life?
Resplendent canvas of fluttering leaves and laughter,
A celestial smile, an ornate treasure summoned from the deep heart

She makes her world
Strong and beauteous

In and out, constant motion, but
Never so hard to live with as she suggests

Her kiss, her gaze, legends worth retelling,
Her truest story not yet finished:

A song, a daring light from the stars.

A single page could never possibly contain her
With any justice.

A Crime Against Flowers

Who dares confine such beauty within
Stone, within walls and brick
Routine?

Let the loveliest flowers of Laos
Bloom free, unfettered!

Grace our hills, the edge of seas,
The virgin plains, our pale cliffs

Among our fertile rows of dreams
Yet unseen!

Sao Lao

When she says my true name as ‘Ai Somnouk,’
Giggling in Cali passa Lao, I’m shaken
And think she’s beautiful in these shadows.

It’s too simple to get me to smile.
It’s too simple to remind me of home.

The rules to get my attention should be as
Complicated as Cold War politics and not
A button that’s simply the sound of her voice.

I reminisce in abstraction,
Distracted by what it takes to make me miss Laos so.

Not a face. Not a memory of an illicit touch:

The pressure of her slim thighs against mine,
A warm breast with the scent of distant Pakse.

A breath of whiskey, smoke and papaya.
Thick hair the hue of night and lustrous brass.

A dance within a sliver of time between two
Who have nothing in common besides a mere war.

None of these are necessary to me,
Slowly undoing my buttons back home alone

Ashamed I want to remember the sound of my own name
So much.