Night in a D.C. Suburb and Pressed Against a Car by a Drug Addict

Flowers of rapeseed fields…

No whale approaches.  Darkness

Spreads over the sea.

~ Buson [Englished by Phillip Whidden]

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

~ Oscar Wilde

The kiss was like the sighting of a whale

Beneath the beauty of the waves both real

And dark and vowing promise.  It was pale

Inside its dark.  A paradox, surreal

Because lips whispered love, but lacking sex,

And yonder cool combined.  He meant too much

Yet far too little.  It became some hex

That Absalom might speak, a kiss, a touch

Like licks that you have never known.  The kiss

Was perfect and imperfect, thus ideal.

It promised all and nothing.  Lips loosed hiss

And thrill because they gave what all would feel.

  Yes, all would feel them given such a thing,

    Fixed raptured death, a cracked but hopeful  wing.

~ Phillip Whidden