Rot

The rot in your hair is turning grey;
The growth is dying, the colour fading away
And you gather your thoughts towards decay

You were hoping for green thoughts in green shades
For crimson strawberries quashed beneath your feet
For golden peaches you dared eat
To dangle tantalizing just out of reach

You were hoping for bleached out roots in the garden of your loss
For vibrant streaks to grow, shockingly, out of the dullness
For dyes to drown out age, for gels to smooth
All that is caught in the tangles of your branches

You were hoping for oceans of colour, the red seas
You’ve left behind in the deserts you now wander
For that mountains tall and pale, cold and barren,
Might yet house monsters waiting to tell their life stories.

You were hoping for long sunlit summers
For the winds that blow fall foliage
into spirals of hectic red and yellow to tell you
That winter comes, but spring is close behind

You were hoping for ashes to remain ashes
That they may not realize an ashen world
For loss to lay buried and forgot
Amidst the colour and the life.

Your search for some semblance of life began in the mirror.

Stamp Collector

We all collect little bits of bitterness,
tucked away in our scrapbooks,
to remind ourselves of what we are denied

Then is the time it comes tumbling out, haphazard
of the boxes that line the hall, the shelves grown too heavy,
the ghost under the bed
until the desire is gone, and only the mess remains.

Spit

You spit your soul onto faces like venom
your defensive mechanism, your vitriolic verbalisation.
You hope it, caustic and rotten,
will etch itself bloodily and brutal on their features,
sear scars burning into their skulls and their eyes and their minds—

That the festering heart of your being
Will disfigure in its wake and leave
its mark, bitter and virulent,
biting and acrimonious—

That throwing up yourself bare and vulnerable
Of all buried inside like such will seem a soft reminder
in its intrinsic memory—

That the display
might leave an impression.

City

The pulse is uncertain here
My blood flows, but does haltingly
Pausing at the stop signs, red lights

The river runs small and slender down my spine
Slow and thoughtful, the nerves float meandering downstream
Crooked and winding as the hunchback
Of this city

But the workday finishes, and urgency strikes
We must go forward
We cannot wait for boats wandering aimlessly
We must cross
My ribcage drawbridge is lowered

My lungs, crushed, collapse
And the fumes pour out into the air
It all escapes.

My Father Says

You should wear stripes, my father says,
They make you look wider.
You’re too thin, he says,
Not wide enough.

Your hands are so soft, my father says,
never had hard work.
His rough ones enclose mine.

Your grandfather was good with these things, my father says
Still is.
He worked as a carpenter, he says,
for much of his life.

You should wear stripes, my father says
You’re too thin.
He stands before me, wide-shouldered.
Is he wide as his dreams, I wonder;
Am I thin as mine?

They speak lighting and thunder in Shanghai

They speak lightning and thunder in Shanghai
With the flash of emotion, and the knowing boom of reply.

The typhoon hits hard in the city—
the rain pelts hard off the haphazard march of umbrellas,
each to its own purpose.

And the constant sound of wet tires
usurping puddles on the street side terrifies your ears
as you tremble, under your flimsy plastic cover,
waiting for help.

Perhaps, a dry spot; perhaps, understanding.

Coils

The long, coiled regret wraps itself around my neck,
hissing sweet soft doubts in my ear.
There it lies, weight heavy on my shoulders
slithering sorrow up my spine.

I tear my heart out, smash it to pieces
sick of the anguish, sick of the hesitation, the torment the fear
And I wring myself of feeling, pain and remorse.
til I am warm, dry. hollow.

But yet, the dissonant sibilance whispers to me,
chokes me, constricts me
And I stoop to fit the broken shreds back in place.
All the while slowly its venom drips,
burning between the misshapen cracks.

when feeling returns, deep down—
I ache.

Sleepless

You wake to the ache beneath your eyelids
you open your eyes, only to close them again—sleepless
though you slept.

You dreamt a dream long and terrified
inconsolable, it rocks
to and fro in its corner
its cries, deafening
your useless comforts,
your useless help.

You live the life of the day unrealized
burdened with the bags beneath your eyes
Sisyphus’ world on your shoulders
backwards and forwards
backwards and forwards
the nodding heads on your commute.

And after, you pace the coming night out of habit
and the sinking want of just something more
you close your eyes, only to open them again—restless
as always.
At last, you drift
to the sound of static:
panic and uncertainty.

This world

This world, of which I still consist
Is battered, beat, and does persist.
Come times that strike pressures undue,
And cracks that heal, and form anew—
Lives yet my soul, once radiant;
My molten core, tossed, turbulent
That has failed me those times before
Fail me not now, just this once more.

You could be mad and unknown

You could be mad and unknown
Unhinged, and yet unheard, unseen
Genius undiscovered, mystery so wild
An insanity, child-like, that escapes unnoticed.

You could be grace in despair
Hopeless in simplicity; you know
All eloquence in words is survived
By the sadness kept in your eyes.

You could be happiness on crack
With a smile to allure and distract
No distress to deter, just joyfully demur
And a laugh both charming and shrill.

If you’re old enough to dream
You’re old enough for regret
That self-same conception
The self-made lie:
“All I could have been,”
“Oh, all I could have been.”

“Nature, red in tooth and claw”

It’s cold and empty in my skull
A vast and primordial sea
Crossed, unformed
Alone and infantile

Most Sundays have eyes like mine
Tinged red with worry and regret
As the seventh restless day
Creates the seventh sleepless night

Red, red as the bloody birthing sky
Giving rise to the sun
Red as the dim-witted rose
That forgot to grow thorns

Red as the guilt and the doubt
In the love you lived without

Red as the smell of blood
Between the teeth
Behind the lips that meet
to say:

This.

This and this and this.

This is what you can form, this is what you can become, this is what you can choose to be, to be!

And this is what you cannot.

Tied

The tongues we speak are tied:
Nothing translates
But the time we spend alone.

How long?

How long?

No, your comforts are obliged
Just pity…
I speak for I alone.

Derivative

Your dreams dream dreams of mine
like the glow in the aftermath of a crime
in the retina of a movie-gazer—
Mirrored mirrors can tell you
that fairest of them all
is still a shadow of a shadow
against the cavern wall.

Fetal Position

Empty, empty but the sound of your head beneath your shoulders.
your knees against your chest
whispering white lies (wishes)

Time against motion:

It’s empty but clasped hands on the clockface
Grasping and being pulled apart
with every second—
tick tock.

Empty so you can cry a little
(you know, ‘cause it only hurts a little)

Like snow on the windshield
it’s just water, it just wipes away
swish swish

Thank your mother for the mistakes she’s made
(thank her that you lay this way)

Your wet face beneath your shoulders, your knees against your chest
Grasping and being pulled apart.

tick tock.

In Imitation of Milton

On the Burning of My Papers

All, all is lost! The waves of fire fought
In rooms where they had flared contained before,
With bitter blade in battle, and blazing roar
Engulfed my work; it transformed all to naught
That in the thirsty swords of flame were caught.
As I contemplate poems mine, now no more,
Forgot midst ashes, burning at my core
Fester these thoughts of fame unclaimed. Distraught
Out cries my muse, “O Miser! Pinch not hope
As one does coin. Be not wounded, but write:
Your labours yet still more your mind contain.
Make known, a brighter world beneath your scope
Lies than can flame diminish. Pen to light
The change from ‘All is lost!’ to all regained.