What Is Given, What Remains

The room is small enough
to hold every breath—
and still, something waits
just beyond what we can name.

Oil and dust cling to the evening.
Hands—
so many hands—
that have taken,
blessed,
betrayed without knowing
the exact hour of their turning.

He does not lift a crown.

Only bread.

Simple as hunger.
Breakable as trust.

And in that quiet fracture
something passes between them—
not seen,
not proven,
but entering
like warmth into cold fingers.

I have known this before:
the way a body can become
offering
without spectacle,
without witness,
only the soft, irreversible
yes
of being consumed
by love.

“Take—”

the word rests
like a pulse in the mouth,
unfinished until answered.

What is given
does not diminish.

What is taken
does not satisfy.

Still—
we reach.

Wine follows—
dark, remembering the vine,
remembering the slow patience
of sweetness becoming ache.

He calls it blood.

And no one refuses.

I feel it—
that trembling consent
we carry in secret:
to be filled
and undone
in the same breath.

Outside,
the night gathers its witnesses.

Inside,
the table becomes
something else—
not wood,
not ritual,
but a threshold
where absence begins
its long work
inside presence.

Tell me—

when the body is given
and the silence after is deeper than before,
what remains of us
that is not already
being shared?

Holy Wednesday

The night grows close around the whispered door,
A breath of silver on a traitor’s tongue.
The coins lie waiting on the table’s floor,
Cold moons that gleam where darker thoughts are sprung.

A footstep falters in the lantern’s glow,
A heart once faithful trembles toward its fall.
No thunder marks the moment of the blow—
Just quiet hands that reach, then lose their call.

The garden dreams of sorrow yet to break,
Its olive branches heavy with the air.
The world holds still, as if afraid to wake
To find that trust has turned to thin despair.

Thus Holy Wednesday holds its fragile breath—
A hinge of time that hums with coming grief.

你以為喇?

四月一朝早
陽光都笑到歪
我仲未刷牙
已經收到十個「真消息」

「你中咗獎喇!」
「你老細今日請假!」
「前度想搵你食飯!」
——我差啲信到喊

街角間茶餐廳
貼住「免費奶茶」
我衝入去
老闆只係眨一眨眼

朋友話請我食好嘢
帶我去到門口
原來係
「自己畀錢都算請咗啦」

今日個世界
好似全部人都識演戲
連隻貓都扮唔識我
轉身仲偷笑

到夜晚
我終於學精咗
有人再講笑
我只係慢慢點頭——

然後認真咁答:
「我都呃緊你。」

April wakes up laughing,
sunlight already crooked with mischief.
Before I even brush my teeth,
ten “true stories” knock at my phone.

“You’ve won something big!”
“Your boss took the day off!”
“Your ex wants dinner!”
—I nearly cried believing.

At the café corner,
a sign: Free milk tea today.
I rush in, hopeful—
the owner just winks.

A friend says, “My treat tonight,”
walks me to the door,
then smiles—
“Treat means you pay, right?”

The whole world today
feels like a stage rehearsal.
Even my cat pretends
it has never met me—then smirks.

By evening,
I finally grow wise.
Another joke comes my way,
I nod, slow and calm—

and answer, gently:
“I’m fooling you too.”

Speaking in Seeds

He does not answer plainly—
truth, in his mouth, refuses straight lines.

Instead—
he scatters.

A story falls here,
another there,
small as seeds slipping from a loosened hand.
No promise they will take root,
only the quiet insistence: receive, or do not.

I listen—
but not with the obedient part of me.

There is a field inside
that prefers certainty,
neat rows of meaning,
harvest I can name before it ripens.

Yet he speaks of soil
as if it were a mood—
fickle, tender,
easily bruised by its own stones.

And I wonder
which ground I have become.

Some words land
and vanish—
taken by the quick-winged thoughts
that fear depth.

Some linger,
but split themselves thin
against the hardness I keep
like a polished defense.

And some—

some disturb me.

They fall into the darker loam,
where I do not often look,
and there,
without asking,
they begin.

This is how he teaches—
not to instruct,
but to undo.

Each parable
a door that does not open outward,
but inward—
where the air is thicker,
and the light must be grown.

Tell me—

if meaning refuses to be held,
will you still follow its trace
into the unspoken?

Quiet Fire in the Court

The doors were never closed—
only crowded with the wrong hungers.
Coins spoke louder than breath,
their small metal tongues
licking the air where prayer should rest.

I enter late,
not as witness—
as echo.

There is always a table in me
laid out for bargaining:
touch for silence,
love for a softer leaving,
devotion measured in how long
I can remain untouched by truth.

Then—

the sound.

Not thunder,
not rage,
but something cleaner—
wood against stone,
the body remembering its right to space.

He does not shout like men do
when they want to be feared.
He moves like certainty—
unfolding,
unanswerable.

And everything false
begins to scatter.

I feel it—
not in the air,
but under the ribs,
where I have kept my careful trades.

What is overturned
does not break—
it reveals.

The coins roll,
small moons fleeing their orbit;
doves burst upward,
white thoughts refusing to be owned.

And I—

I am left
with an emptied court,
bare as first breath,
bare as the moment
before desire learns its name.

Tell me—

what will you place here now,
where nothing can be hidden?

Palm and Pulse

This morning enters soft with lifted hands,
a hush of leaves against the city’s breath;
the quiet tremor no one understands
that walks beside all praise and leans toward death.

I stand among the voices, warm and near,
yet feel the distance threading through the light—
a knowing brushed against the edge of fear,
a sweetness veiled, already tasting night.

They lay their garments down for love to pass,
each step a promise no one dares to hold;
I trace the shadow slipping through the glass,
where fire begins its slow, appointed fold.

So let me praise with lips that almost break—
for every crown, a silence left to take.

Song of the Sea

Waves keep their counsel, low and deep,
They rise like breath you learn to keep;
A hush between each undertow
Where hidden currents come and go.

Salt on the tongue of moonlit air,
A silver thread in dark laid bare;
The shore repeats what tides confide,
Then takes it back on every side.

I stand where foam forgets my name,
Yet every crest returns the same;
A pulse that writes across the dark
Then erases each arriving mark.

No final word, no settled place,
Only the drift of time and trace;
And in the turning of the tide,
I learn to leave what I can’t guide.

Second Epistle to Jokerman

You preach in parables, wink at the flock,
Salt on your tongue, blood on the clock,
Silver-tongued psalms with a jester’s seal,
You quote the Book but you dodge the seal.

You walk like Elijah, speak like a thief,
Fire in words, no altar beneath,
You sell the desert as promised land,
Moses’ staff in a gambler’s hand.

You say all is written, dust to dust,
Yet you keep your coin in the purse of trust,
You bend the law till it learns your name,
Call mercy a loophole, faith a game.

You dine with angels, deal with goats,
Float your truth on half-said notes,
Every cross is a clever sign
Till it’s time to bleed instead of rhyme.

You speak of scales, of right and wrong,
As if judgment were just another song,
But someone’s child gets laid in the sand
While you wash your hands like a righteous man.

You mock the crown, you mock the nail,
Say resurrection is a tall tale,
Yet you keep one eye on the empty tomb
Like you fear the stone might move too soon.

I’ve read the fire, I’ve read the flood,
I know false prophets dress well in mud,
They quote Isaiah, they laugh at Job,
Say suffering proves the world is a joke.

But I don’t need riddles wrapped in grace,
Nor truth that won’t show its face,
I choose the weight of a spoken yes
Over a god who dodges flesh.

So keep your visions, sharp and sly,
Your heaven measured with a liar’s eye,
When the trumpet sounds and the masks all fall,
I’ll stand unhidden, answer the call.

You can keep your name, Jokerman,
Your sideways throne, your shifting sand—
I’ve learned the cost of borrowed light
And I walk awake into the night.

A Weekend in Nature

The morn breaks saft ower field and glen,
Wi’ licht that stirs the heart again.
The breeze comes clean, the day feels wide—
A freedom rinnin’ at yer side.

The burn sings low by mossy stane,
Its waters clear as April rain.
Ye wander slow, nae rush, nae care—
Just breathin’ in the open air.

The hills rise heich wi’ timeless grace,
A stillness haudin’ every place.
Ye sit and watch the shadows glide—
The world at peace, the soul untied.