Matsumoto

I Shall Give You The Journey

2012-02-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

They may promise you kisses blown across a room
I shall be the winds blown into your sails
They may promise you a house
upon a quiet expanse of land
I shall be the fire comforting your home
and the rains that water your garden
They may promise you the Queen's finest jewelry
I shall give you the starry heaven's brilliance
They may promise your name upon a yacht of luxury

Walk with me and I shall give you the journey

Copyright © 2012 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved Image Source

Love Bleeds Its Deepest Red

2011-12-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

"Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind douses a candle and kindles a bonfire."
- Francois VI Duc de La Rochefoucauld

I have found you, sweet girl
we must get lost
among the starry celestial fires where
you'll remember me
as the morning stars sing together
and the ocean waves bring us home

Ours was an army of angels
and all-not-yet-invented
where love bleeds its deepest red
with its tenderest mercies
and whispers heroic moonsilver
brilliant over our bodies
fierce with inhaled intent
and blissed panic.

It is us who moves the world
and us who will pull it through
not one heartbeat will we forget
with every measure of grace
we will escape into life
before our most brightest star forever
expires.

Copyright © 2011 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved Image Source

Made of Stars

2011-05-02T18:06:00.001-07:00

Tell me about waking where we were two horses turned loose,
running and running until we forgot we were horses
where we would teach each other all the things we forgot
and we discovered we were all made of stars

I need your grace as the earth needs the memory of rain
I will drink poetry from your lips and kiss your fire with mine
I cannot resist you as no mere human
can stand in a fire and not be consumed

I can sit all day wearing nothing but your kiss
I am drowning deep in your undertow
Tell me we shall be ruined by love
and tell me we shall never get used to it

Copyright © 2011 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved
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My Bucket List

2010-12-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

1. You (only you).

Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved
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The Moments Between

2010-09-25T18:12:00.001-07:00

" The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. "
-Joseph Campbell

My Dearest Love,

I cannot lie.
I've raced through my life
as I've had through a novel,
anxious for its sweet ending.
Mad sprints through the tall
grasses,
heaving lungs, arms
thrusted
through the thinned atmosphere
to touch the light of sacred
stars
in the indigo night.
This is how I breathed you.

I've traced your face in the
air with my fingers
across knowing
fields
and waking mountains,
felt it real as the
scripture of trees,
the living water
and the days of March
you wore in your eyes.
This is how I lived you.

Yet, what we know,
what we know the world does not,
is not the brilliance of
dreams
in distant universes.
The freedom we seek,
the love we've found,
is in uncovering
the infinite beauty
that lies
in the moments
between the seconds
of our life.

This is how we love.

Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved
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We Stilled The Hours

2010-07-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

I want to tell you my stories
whispered secret into your ear,
and feel your struggling lips go soft
with our conspiracy.

I want our eyes to
dance past the cynics
(who have bet their forgotten
innocence against us),
and peer beyond this anxious world of
toothless fear
and swallow deeply
outward
all
space
completely until

we feel
our lungs rise as the tides
and its singular pull
with the heroic moonlight
throbbing in my heart

as we found home

and stilled
the hours.

Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved
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Resuscitation

2010-05-29T12:03:00.001-07:00

I fell from the sky
hard

Mouth to mouth,
you kissed my mouth open.

Life screamed back
into my lungs,
through my vessels
from within my heart.

My eyes opened
to no one there
Who were you?
Where did you go?
The unseen hand
laughed openly
with what twist of plot?

Am I coming home
to a place I've
never been?
Were your comforting words
during our trips
to the sun
dreamed into a unsung
mind?

I will fly again.

I will fly
as the match head
struck alit
starved for oxygen.
searching madly.
to find this tender soul
who came back to me
under the fragile sky.

And should my wax
wings melt
before
our arms shall wrap
our spirits again,
pray that I
may quickly unclutch
to the
unforgiving
winds
the
scribbled note:

"In case of
Emergency,
please
do

not
resuscitate".

Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved
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You Were Gold

2010-04-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

You were gold
I was silver

We drank moonlight
from rooftops
in drunken glee
and kissed with
the taste of promise
We were

light chasing light
over evening wave tips
I've inhaled your sky
and sand and water as

I walked into your ocean
and failed to walk out.

Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved.
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Let Us Go Then

2010-04-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

Let us go then, you and I
and wade into the sea
where the shifting sands beneath our feet
no longer question our souls' intent
and the swirling salt water washes
through our fragile longing
like the stars that rush
through our bodies
and disappear
toward an unknown
destination.

My fingers will always know the
details of your
spine in the small
of your back,
and the feel of your hair
my hand sifts though
and without knowing all
the colored
details of your life,
I will recite the song of your eyes
with the depth of its
wisdom.

Yet they hold so many stories
I have yet learned to read.

And want to.

Copyright (c) 2010 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved.
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In My Heart

2010-03-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

In the stillest moment of the evening
you fire through the aether and
the rush of chaotic atmosphere
and slide through a crack in my perimeter,
past the guards and monsters,
and with silent feet
slip under my skin,
swim up the currents of
my capillaries and vessels,
climb up the trees and
up the furthest branches
to where you will rest.

And in the morning
I will awaken
to the cathedral bells outside
and with you
in my heart.

I See You In Colors

2009-09-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

I am pretending you did not exist.
Ink nightly washes black
over my consciousness
and abandons me as morning seaweed
upon a foreign beach.

I am pretending we were simply
the sparkling imagination of some higher being,
our life together set below a singular epic sky
unrepeated
in future histories.

I am pretending I cannot taste you
each day as I do the sea air in my breath
when I am running,
my heart tied upon one foot,
ancient melancholy tied upon the other,
anxiously racing,
madly racing through lifetimes,
to find our brightened souls.

I see you in colors that don't exist.

It is all that I see clearly.
and why I run.

Copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All Rights Reserved.
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Unraveled

2009-07-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

I lingered silent over the geography
of your spirit,
and inhaled its saffron valleys,
sunlit with lissome lilies,
as I drunk deep from its coaxing wells
of cool electricity.

I have tasted the Spring's first blooms
in your glance and wondered
of the half life of our words
and the extraordinary struggle
of their anxious disorder.

I stopped cold with your slight
"hey mister" and all I could think was
of the fate of crowned angels
in the silvered milky way
watching over,
washing over
my desire to be lured
and unraveled
and...
did you really call me
"mister"?

We shall run away far from all
that is familiar,
toothy fear and excitement our fuel,
until the burdened chatter of others
becomes inaudible,
until all that is unspeakable
is spoken,
and our voices,
clear and charmed in its
undressed debut,
sings.

Image source

Love Is The Only Rational Act

2009-07-11T12:42:00.001-07:00

"Love is the only rational act."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

If we don't breathe to speak of love
then we are wasting our breath.
If we aren't eating to have the energy to love
then we are still hungry.
If we aren't moving to love,
then we are moving in the wrong direction.
If our every action, movement, thought, word
does not lead to love
then we have failed as we may have before
and if we do not pick ourselves up
and love ourselves and others even more
then we have declared the ultimate
war upon humanity.
The only true war on war
is to express love
and to share it with everyone
even in the most unlikeliest of moments,
especially in the most unlikeliest of moments,
we must share love
and reach others with it,
teach it, preach it
from the rooftops,
from the mountaintops
to surround every ounce of our being with love
no matter the consequences,
past and future,
for herein lies
the present
and future
for us
all.

Picture Source

On This Splendid Day

2009-07-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

As if blown over hot embers
a drowsy wind blew soulless
over the zoo that lined the Boulevard.
There was no redemption
found for those on the 181
as it jerked toward its destiny.

Highland. Vine. Western.
The bus lurched forward,
its captives silent with a lifetime of
guilt and indignity,
their endless untold stories
already forgotten.

In Little Armenia an elderly man
boarded in his Sunday best.
No one noticed the music
that twinkled unashamedly
from his eyes.
Vermont. Los Feliz. Central.

At the Galleria,
I stared out from the bus,
now in disrepair and half emptied,
at the old man
meeting
his loved one,
their imperfect bodies
suddenly perfect,
their arms wrapped around each other
like silk ribbons around a gift,
as they kissed
and kissed,
and kissed for what seemed like
an infinity of moments,
each moment intense and delicate,
soft and unbroken,
with an urgency deep with patience,
I watched
as others soon did

and I soon
discovered too,
unashamedly,
on this splendid day,
how
the broken song
can find its notes
and live
forever.

Poetry copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All rights reserved.
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Familiar Love

2009-06-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

My Dearest Love,
I do hope this letter finds you
and finds you well.
I have been gone much too long,
I know, in search of longed for
misadventures
and uncalculated
love,
a misspent life, perhaps,
but one,
it seems,
that has led me
to you.

How many perfect sunsets have I been
haunted
with your lilting voice cresting
over the waves,
the waves
that rushed through the ventricles
of my heart, and filled my
desperate lungs
with foam
and hunger
for breath,
and then
abandoned me,
silent and
drowning.

How many times did I find
that home in my mind
that belongs to you,
where the early sea fog
swallows your secret garden
brimmed
with lilies and brambles,
hidden paths and buried jars,
where the bright, bright fields
evaporate
beneath the galloping hooves
taking flight
with winged
fierceness.

How much I have missed you,
sweet girl,
I missed how
you arrested my thoughts
mid sentence with
uncommon grace
that disarmed me
for reasons
I cannot name.
I missed
your lovely genius
that so easily
dismissed the weight of my
measurable life,
I missed the intensity
of our words
which became our truths
and bound us
as kindling
to a starving fire.

When we meet again
on that exquisitely ordinary day
you may not remember my face,
my body,
my clothes,
but the welcomed recognition
of the stark flame behind
my eyes,
will hold a
disturbingly
familiar
love,

and I
will
always
remember
you.

Poetry copyright (c) 2009 Paul Matsumoto. All rights reserved.
Photo source

because you asked

2009-06-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
soulstruck with the vivid terrains
of unexplained familiarity,
mindful of ancient promises that
locked our spirited fortunes together
with unnerving elegance

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
agents of wanderlust
and unexpected thought,
waking the timid to all that is real,
waking the timid to all their dreams
then watched all of its terrible beauty
as they gracefully turned one into the other.

because you asked
we worked the invisible splendid,
agents of wonderment
and unexpected comfort,
and laughed as old friends do,
laughed as lovers do
as we sat, feet dangling
off the edge of the world.

Take Me Far

2009-06-06T19:52:00.001-07:00

I could not explain
to you the angles
of our collision
I awoke to no recognizable
wreckage,
just you easing
stargazers into a vase.
You had left the moon
on all night
and sang McLachlan to me,
bending gentle notes
and jazzy laughter
around our tangled bodies

I asked you to
take me far
away
and
you did
as we inhaled
a clarity
and shuddered
into
being.

Save Us

2009-05-31T16:59:00.000-07:00

"I am not the
perfect man you seek.
I have little to impress
you with.
I cannot save you
with my ambition,
my dreams,
my love."

"Ironically", she mused,
"You are perfect.
After all,
Who else could have crafted
yourself with tremendous
flaws and virtues
as perfectly as you?
Others have taken from you,
plundered your soul
for more,
left you wanting
for sweet rescue.
But truly,
what person can torture you
greater than you
so that
you would freely
surrender all that is
dear to you?"

"Then perhaps,
I can save myself
with my ambition,
my dreams,
my love.
And that is
most of all
what
I can give to you."

"I understand not
the explicit mathematics
of our spirit,
only that we are pure
as the light
we travel within
and our love,
given freely,
will save us."

Diary from the Battle Zone

2009-05-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

I have seen the raw
horrors of this war firsthand,
its naked wreckage bleeding,
its perverse hunger feeding
the crippled screams
within lonely dreams
leaving its tortured soul desperate
for painless respite

I have seen the raw
agonies of this war firsthand
where from earth its soldiers disappear,
in nightmares they keenly reappear
where their ashen bones seemly mirror
all their death wish fears,
where their tortured souls slowly anticipate
relief from all that they wholly hate

I have learned to deeply respect
what the wisest have forever written
of the bitter fruit barely bitten
and the grandest stories time will tell
where on earth the angels fell
and before the fingers of those
tortured souls
would strain to deftly spell:
"LOVE IS HELL"

The Thin Whispers

2009-05-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

We soon forgot our skittish
introductions,
a day's silent banter of
suspicion
and pride.
No wills were broken,
no wills won.

We trailed the
thin whispers
from the skies
hallucinogenic,
across uneasy
canyons
along the dry beds
and their bleached umbrella
spine

Brush turned to
scattered pines,
as we turned to
long slow draws
from a palmful of water
between brackish
rocks

Each day eavesdropped
upon evening's edge
pushing the trailless
ridgelines,
till
the thin whispers
sang

and
rang tiny bones
within her
and she ran
blindly
down,
down
into the startled
valley,
our aching
muscle upon muscle
breathless,
her coat gleaming,
reveling
full stride
in the blurred
tall grasses,
till we
took flight
within
the thin
whispers

To Love Differently

2009-05-15T20:46:00.001-07:00

We have exchanged
no histories,
no storied details
amongst strong coffee
and
ritual laughter,
mild
confessions
and rehearsed wit,

still,
this silence
between us
speaks complete
as the
forgiven
moment and
the orbit
of small
planets

I seek no one,
no more
than
the evening seeks
its darkness,
Yet, I am
compelled
in my madness
to love differently.

To love you.

I do not love you as
the high desert admires
the wild blue Canterbury Bells
that rub your ankles,
(like a cat that grazes
affection in the hollows
of your neck)

I love you as
the sweeping heat squeals
and shudders to a halt before
the sudden storm,
and with your breath locked
in mine,
my soul inhaled into yours,
we exult across
the holy
sands

I love you as
the downpour wakens
the fragrant earth,
the ancient red rocks ingest
our wisdom,
the golden poppies,
like nervous stars,
blink in excitement,
and as we
release our quakened
light
beyond my madness
to love differently.

To love you.

The Untested Key

2009-05-09T19:36:00.001-07:00

I exposed your
old diaries locked away
behind your crowned eyes
(as easily as you
chewed off your glove
for your naked fingers
to breathe)
and touched each of
your concealed desires
that were
carefully named
and dated
for a less guarded
moment

We rushed
the crowd of stars
unburdened from
the dragging of
shadows
and muslin,
the untested key
opening the cool
steel lock,
and teeth bared,
reveled in an
oyster dawn
fully
undone

She Forced The Restless Night

2009-05-01T16:51:00.001-07:00

She forced the restless night
with rifle scope attention,
arms akimbo,
head weighted back
tilted by attitude and hair,
movement absent,
save jaws that kindly
chewed my imaginary future

My thoughts stuttered
in rhythm to the
teakettle steam,
vaporous,
useless
as the gazelle's dream
of outrunning the
lion's devotion

Still,
as the stars contemplate
their own eternity,
I consider my threadless
mortality,
amused by Hamlet's torment,
for I have chosen
to be

devoured,
as she forced the restless night,
feasting upon my glistening organs,
wet twisted muscle and sinew
entwined in fragrant seizures,
inhaling my soul whole
in open delirium,
and falling,
falling,
in storm drunken bliss
as we forced
the restless night

Into Our Star Splintered Silence

2009-04-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

into a star splintered
silence
i reach
with hopeful fingers
into the light
of distant
mornings
captive in the
unbloomed
flower.

into a star splintered
silence
the desert swan
glides
between my shadow
and redemption,
captive in her blithe
grandness of
renewal

into our star splintered
silence
i will not always
understand the spirited
flourish
of our higher
being's wand
but i will always be
captive in the lithe
grace of
your
love

closer

2009-04-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

gentle emily sings by the sea
strands of opera
and seaweed that
untangle beneath
a lustful sky
as the tides pull her closer
to (than i will ever know)
the mercurial faces
of angels
leaning
with soft elbows
upon my chest
who rise with
the inhaling of mist
and fall with
each exhaled breath
as the sea
pulls me
closer