Welcome to Kevin's Daily NaPoWriMo '09 Section
The poems will be written each day, downwards for the latest poem. Many of these are highly unedited, having only one day to work on them, but may be the basis of future poems. 4/26/09 My Mentor Today, a man was left unsaid, his thoughts locked up with his libido in jail. We forget him, and under 50 grand he wonders what went wrong on his metal bed with cheap sheets, low-grade cafeteria meals made of something like gruel and what happened to his writing? He must have left it on his bedside at home next to a wife who's still delirious. The poetry, no, his inked soul are patterned like a mosaic at his desk at home, a story of what might never be. 4/25/09 Abstract Memory (Why We Forget) Gray area, zone, blank, borderless, shapeless, formless, they still pain like a lead pipe to the center of your chest. We spread out those memories like a cancer, thinking if we kept looking back at them, analyzing them over and over again, they would become forgotten deaths. Back then, I must have felt unstoppable, and today I still do. 4/24/09 The Other Letter I had written you a letter to be stored in your drawer, the one that's damp, wooden, but has peeled and is locked inside your heart. On the top shelf, dried chrysanthemums and tulips picked while you dreamt at night - those were the ones I chose carefully and placed them while your eyes were closed. 4/23/09 Apathy No one cared about my dream; could it have been so sinister? A tree fell down on a house, in another world, the owner loses his job. The children become suicidal, I am forced to join the military via draft. The last time I looked a daffodil and picked it up to admire, was the last time I dreamt of my old wooden swing set that collapsed when moved to the new house. I could walk around a tangible infinity colored a dark blue, with little light, and the daffodil will still brown before awakening to the next spring. 4/22/09 Crown The same child who puts on a crown and suddenly becomes a princess, or the boy who dons a cape to escape through a window in reality. He can’t fall down, but I feel like I could, his little white shoes would bring him back up the blue laces still intact. Little white shoes with rubber soles, at the bottom and bounce back high through the window, like what I can’t do, the same child is not me, and I have lost my crown. 4/21/09 Hypothetical I was not the boy you were looking for, the one who opened his arms like wings, and tried to fly, blindfolded from a cliff of ambition. I could have crashed down like a fiery temper and upon opening my eyes, find you, but I am not the boy you seek, nor were my wings strong enough. 4/20/09 Birdie I think his happiness came from having a partner, before she died and he became blind. Perched alone, he waddles back and forth and occasionally falls to a floor covered in seeds, newspaper headlines covered in droppings to hide the faces of murderers, saviors, headlines screaming for attention. His foot bled like the ink and he too fell into disarray and chaos before passing away but unlike a headline, we remembered him; his funny beak, chirps that sounded pleasant and harmonious like the young boy selling papers. 4/19/09 Awaken one: the bell-tower bellows like a giant, seven times when the sun rises. two: and to think, my sheets are cold, my body shivers. three: a crack within the window echoes the impatient ringing. four: my phone sings a song. five: my laptop hums, like a young child who prepares for church. six: if it is 6 AM, the summer feels like winter. seven: my stomach churns like two koi in a small pond. eight: water is essential. nine: if breathing is heavy, take some medicine. ten: occasionally the stray cat will stare at me, then run away as if I were chasing it. 4/18/09 Like Wine They are probably looking at my poetry, submitted again for the nth time, wondering, “How is it possible that this person hasn’t improved after all these years?” Then you begin to wonder why your words never mature or age like fine wine but instead your senses grow and the wine that has sat there for a day, or a hundred, tastes better and better every sip you take. 4/17/09 Warmth I touched your warm skin and pulled you towards me with the sun pulling itself towards sunrise or the cold air pulling in the morning dew while the grass stalks feel as much as pride as the mother giving birth to her first born. They can both look to the stars and feel as significant as the cosmos looking down, or the stars who became novas with the memorial many light years away, worth traveling; I would take the time to pull it towards my warming body. 4/16/09 Auguries of my Eternity I cannot hold infinity in my hand, or both hands, even grasping to drain my life. And eternity, why has it passed by before I could tell you everything that happened to me today: how many daffodils in wet soil I passed on the way to class, how many sweat drops exited my skin as I slept and dreamt nightmares about creatures and blood. The soldiers and their children, I will never say hello to them, and I cannot be God. For every slam I boldly announce when I enter my bedroom, I’ve left that many lives of the cosmos behind me and like the hours I’ve stayed awake, they refuse to come back to me. 4/15/09 Dinner My grandfather slept in a separate bed, opposite the room of my grandmother. He was a quiet man, a philosophical gentleman and upon entering the room I could tell which side was his. His dusty, unkempt brown bedsheets surrounded by an aura of friendliness of familiar math textbooks and a Chinese-American dictionary. He speaks Shanghainese to me. I find it so familiar, yet opening my mouth to answer, I manage to speak only English. He laughs with our tongues so distant, but when my grandmother sets out the shrimp, the cong xing cai, our minds are the same, equally tasting the authentic memories of the China he wants to remember. 4/14/09 A Drawing Yes, I remembered you too - your black dress appropriate for the night, like it were tossed in velvet and satin. The way I went home to have my tie scented of vanilla, or the way your hair fell like long strands of rain, twirling and twisting in March's breath. I wonder if you'll drink red wine with me tonight, but the heart is speeding, the night is too shy, and no kisses have been contracted. If we did, it would have to be sunny, and you would pour cider instead: tart, sweet, sparkling in a wine glass. And then, you would want to go to a bookstore, putting reality away in pages of strangely drawn characters, also unable to sip red wine but curiously happy. Their hands are drawn with sweat and tears, but always love, I'm sure. Yes, I believe it's fine to think we are two layered characters in the hands of a brilliant and proud artist. 4/13/09 Rain in Armstrong
Wires, pixels, leakage currents fall on me, rain in my eyes, disobeying the rules of food and drinks near the power supplies. My eyeglasses can’t stop my vision from blurring – such an awkward kind of rain. Oscilloscopes, resistors, speakers playing music I normally don’t care for. Yet, any umbrella I can get, sure, they work. My eyes feel sandy in such wet weather. 4/12/09 Easter Sunday The campus had died; a graveyard was marked by the trees who eyed the ground carefully. Only the sidewalk felt cold and the dining hall doors never opened as if the story I had read, A Year of Silence had come to wrap me in a warm blanket. Easter Sunday, a day in a Year of Silence. A man who had risen from the dead would no doubt expect silence but the cold wind doesn’t. Who else could have made the rumbling rock move from the entrance of the cave? Who could have wrestled the flowers that seem to live forever? 4/11/09 12 Microfiction 1) Before that incident, I was invincible. 2) She waited, and waited, and waited. 3) Sobbing, he closed his eyes, then 4) Suddenly, I heard a strange noise. 5) “I can save you!” she yelled. 6) There was nothing left to kill. 7) He opened his eyes, and laughed. 8) Man: Wait, you’re not my wife! 9) Aliens invade America. Conspiracy theorist laughs. 10) Upon death, he whispered one word. 11) Dog: this doesn’t smell like bacon… 12) Don’t shoot me, I’ll give you 4/10/09 About Yesterday I remembered I made you cry. The angry boy who runs to the basement and states that he takes his anger out on a punching bag, yet the flower that grows even in the little shadow knows it has been broken for weeks. I paint the whitest tulip red, but will people still know it as white? Make it a lily, or a lavender, I would have told you the truth. They sprang anew all at once, and a boy who forgets promises will pick them every time he sees them. 4/09/09 To-Do List I see a man with a cigarette and long, curly hair. I almost know him. He does this on a daily basis, in his room with a stale to-do list and his long hair covering the oil on his forehead. Instead of the cigarette, he lights some herbs and engages in “burning and writing”. Here, the television is being played quietly, the subtitles rewriting what was written. The yelling outside is in time with the hourly bell rings. They irritate me, their order – I would rather have been unable to see a to-do list. 4/08/09 Kasey I miss the dog who always acted like she came from a hard day’s work. She creeps quietly, with paws gently shaking the carpet as her heavy tread brings her next to my desk, lights on. She puts her head to her front legs after spinning around 3 times, then looks behind me as if to ask permission to sleep by my desk. I look on silently and tickle her pointy ears, watch them twitch. She still doesn’t know that it is I who wants to tell her to always keep me company. 4/07/09 Windowsill You could pluck a daisy or a daffodil from the yard, out of their circle, from holding hands. A girl might place one in the nozzle of the firing squad, only to have the stem disintegrate and her neck torn. The others tread upon them like a Macoute over a villager’s head, or perhaps in a way a child runs about an afternoon puddle once the rain has left its glory. That night after a black day, I rested my head near the windowsill at my bedside, and watched the flowers below me whisper to each other, reciting the names of the constellations, and why the moon would name them that way. 4/06/09 L'Aquila The 6.3 no longer became a number for mathematicians to compute. It was no longer the time you have before your workday ends. Multiplied tenfold plus, and you have a list of fathers who drove their children to school, an inventory of mothers singing lullabies, all on a list as old as Death’s. It is the number inscribed on the rubble of churches, each stone brick once together like human cells, now collapsed like a junkyard. But prayer, could that tell you what building this really was in the past? Put your hands together to hold a hand outstretched in the ground. 4/05/09 Binghamton There were many thoughts unsaid, which you led astray in your head, into some ungodly darkness land to be forgotten, sand covering these graves into oblivion. You remember them like sin - your joblessness, their taunts, target immigration centers! Their civic duties don’t apply you, though you definitely tried to save yourself, echoes of merciless bandits ran you into a perpetually lit hellfire. If you take some lives, perhaps the voices will end, apprehend them so you can move on elsewhere, like heaven, or hell, depending on how you count your sins. Suicide. 4/04/09 Bathroom Poetry Walls inscribed with sexual innuendos, inappropriate pictures, the occasional politico junkie who felt his internet forums were insufficient to express his absolutely correct views. The mold by the floor resemble vines, slowly creeping their way through the cracks in the tiles, worn out tiles that tell stories of passing through World War One and Two, the Great Depression, raging fraternities brothers too arrogant to regurgitate their innards outdoors. The edges of the toilet are barely cleaned by the custodian, who knows his job limits him from touching areas growing their own civilizations. I tell them, if you can hold out, take the ones in the middle of campus, two buildings down. 4/03/09 A Warm Cup At first, you notice the aroma – a hint of hazelnut kindly warms your sense of smell, then sugar and a pinch of something else that’s sweet but you can’t quite name. Drinking sip by sip on the road at night, a light drink of java becomes a good friend. Your tongue welcomes the camaraderie, your fingers enjoy the warmth of the thermos, as if a part of you is spending a cold evening in front of the fireplace. Perhaps, this road is familiar but you don’t remember how long before you arrive home. The car continues to hum as if it had all the time in the world. 4/02/09 (Mis)Use of Science First, the atom must be selected at random like an apple. Rotten or not, tell the public it represents a division of sentimental love versus a rigid kind of science then win a prize for your supposedly poetic use of chemistry. Next, you can say a character is transforming genetically, and despite the lack of phenotype, as long as her identity changes between various men, who will notice even with a sharp eye? Your book becomes famous, critics relay their thoughts through journal papers, compare you to greats, as long as your misuse of DNA does not result in storybook cancer. When the formula and science pole is set in a ground of ignorant soil, you can wave your literary flag like a rebel with no cause 4/01/09 Soup for Thought Pushing letters through the ink is a difficult task. The wait, the hand movement, the action. The spring leaves fall down, students gather at noon for lunch, the wind blows papers to a puddle. Had we finished writing any sooner, these completed poems might have been saved. But they were not, and we continue onwards to biting down sweet apples and rummaging our backpacks for books we have forgotten to bring, and remembering an idea for a poem boiled in warm thoughts the night before we fell asleep, to find come sunrise half of it evaporated - what is left tastes of cool and crisp water. |
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April '09 |