Today’s featured poet is Brian Lu, another (former) student of mine who wrote exceptional poetry that I was sometimes jealous of because it was so thoughtful and adept.  This poem, “Re,” draws on Asian influences regarding death and the afterlife and reincarnation.  It’s one of my favorites of his, and he wrote it in tenth grade.

When I asked him to send me a bio, this is what I got:  “I enjoy having my back cracked when my friends hug me and eating fried eggs with cheese for weekend brunch. I have an art blog that I really should update.”  And here’s the link to it. 

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Re

Men and women no longer with beating
heart or rushing blood or warm skin realize real rest
as they ramble down crowded glowing streets
talk of nothing for the sake of nothing          and wallow in steaming bath houses
all the while happy          euphoric          ecstatic          doing anything but thinking

The glorious hammer does not so much waltz near the mind or bother the thought
because as is life          repose in the heavens is preteritely short

Well          this is death          but not really death as the dead will soon live again
upon the resonating gong of a bronze bell rung

Guests of death will be ushered into a line loose like string
and one by one the magnificent hammer will crash upon memories          thoughts          skulls
erasing men and women into infant boys and girls who leave
to be birthed again          rising like bald featherless phoenixes
happily remembering nothing