my 'best' poems
(though i always call every new poem i write my best poem, here are some of my favorites)
my 'best' poems
(though i always call every new poem i write my best poem, here are some of my favorites)
after on earth we're briefly gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Is love, the empty of your heart, carved up into a million pieces?
Do we ache across the space of distance traversed in the bodies we no longer wish to occupy?
Does the softness of your sweater; fuzzy, bright, death-inducing, beneath my cheek call forth tears under your psychedelic eyes for nothing, for everything, you/we, refuse to be?
Could we walk amongst the moon, interlock dry lips in the sharpest point of the stars?
Do you dare fall and crash in the inky sky; fire lighting the empty crevice where your heart used to be?
Would you take pity on the restless soles of my cracked hands and free me from the cage I want to reside in within your being?
Can you take a hold of what you cause--fireworks & grotesque vomit coloring the pink of my mouth--once you turn your gaze on me?
When would you look at me? When i look at you.
Which you would hold the fragments of being I hand over, turning warm, blood streaked, palms up till the leaves of the wind swallow them whole?
Under the light waves of breathing in Ocean Vuong,
"Don't we touch each other just to prove we are still here? "
in the event that one could feel a deepness echoed in your voice;
i am here.
brushing off tasks as the mountain climbs me higher.
the roll of a neck to refocus and establish communication back from the clouds.
sinking later near the abyss, it's own form of darkness;
rivals in whom shall tear my earth down the fastest.
yes the words intangible often times are laced with meaning in every draw of a letter
it is up to me if id ever let you find it.
because;
--------------------------------------
throughout all my years, ive had you
free and colossal;
stuck between an open and a high place.
you let me feel you, hold you, destroy me
till we are only whole in each others embrace
broken within each others absence.
--------------------------------------
softly, it pours. the silence echoes and i melt,
waxing underneath its cold gaze.
in these moments, you sit beside me;
empty as the echo resounding.
the days younger were stricken with regret of a body mine yet not.
standing small, the multi colored flesh peices line up, ready for my choosing;
eyes linger on curvy forms, pretty smiles, long straight hair, body movements and they follow;
unconsciously trapping me in a web of acceptance i cannot look back & comprehend.
a structured, fragmented view of who I really am, presented frozen and unsure leading the way for
grabby hands to grasp all over; pinching cheeks, inspecting width between fingertips, stretching out smiles till i question,
who am i if i do not belong to you?
you deem me to be unsatisfactory, to be
taken apart bit by bit & poured full of undesirables I once again long to recognize.
way behind in the past or perhaps a present hidden in the past aiming for the future,
the edges have corroded, turned into oddly shaped puzzle pieces I can take apart forever.
day by day, the pieces tainted by your demonic hands are ripped off; bloody & tossed to the ground.
to be buried with all other forms of you that i do not see in me.
slowly,
the truth shall be revealed.
On the underside of my eyelids, lies a mirage only i can see
{a vision clouded with memories, the usual black streaked with color}
Dirt kicked up;
the soles of our shoes & our feet stained red, a whole new world.
Particles ingrained in our lungs, our own involuntary tattoos.
Yell, shriek, laugh, cough--we never knew sadness.
Bodies tumbling, seen as one
Hands hit a head, a face, a stomach, punching and yelling: " WWE! "
Our laughter ringing like bells,
I was always one of you then.
My head empty, the rain making sounds as it made impact; {pit pat splash pit pat splash pit pat splash}
clouding my vision.
Glasses overun with shadows, hands out tracing the air hoping it will lead me home.
The road to my school, cars like sonic booms, speech a mile a minute,
food wafting in the air,
the aroma inspecting clothes taking refuge in them.
Wonder never fading though these streets have been walked countless times .
From the woman who sold fried rice, the most best in the world, to the woman who sold yam and sausages right next to the school.
Lines on their faces always saying to buy more, always smiling back,
their waves heavy with age.
The one my heart belonged to, my Paul, my bestfriends edith, loreitta ,charlotte--far away now.
The great hulking school, it touched the sun.
Enclosed in brown paint, cracked walls, that made us feel invisible,
unbeatable.
My mentor. The one i knew yet barely knew;
face nothing but a puzzle that doesnt fit.
My math teacher. Evil voice grating;
mind in a whirlwind;
fingers placed together, "WACK!" you got it wrong!
The kids making a circle around me, faces melded together, confused
i was missing something.
Heart thundering hearing the bell,
students pour out the gates a flood now visible,
beatable.
Mind racing, going to a place to sink my teeth into "the best sandwich ever" {it was the best} im supposed to home.
Nimble hands placing bead by bead on a string looking into them, my own telescope,
the world painted in vibrant hues: red, white, blue, purple. Eye catching. Vivid.
Selling them, hands on waist, proud.
The stairs i descended, staring into the long road below, an enigma.
Ive never been there.
[its empty down there. Different, no warmth. A half-baked building, but they cry out to God {in tongues they say o!sambalo ba-ba-ba} maybe he will hear them with the roof no longer there, it is on their heads.]
I turn back .
Home. My hands scraping the concrete. Its hot, its harsh, its my friend.
Gates opening, silence meets me alone.
More dirt, ever ocurring.
A long winded road, my shoes painted in its holy color {friends}
The tree of life bearing mangoes the fruit i swear brings everlasting happiness {naive young me, its oranges}}
Attempts to climb to no end, only he can do it.
Saturday chores, dirt rising to the surface again, it becomes my nose ,my eyes, my mouth, & my smile .
New things ive never imagined before:
The taste of a cereal called cheerios in our mouths. Its strange, its sweet.
Ice from the freezer, parading as snow we daydream how seeing this wonder will be for the first time --Its excellent my dear.
A phone, it is also strange.
Outside with the dancing coconut trees, swaying to the beat of the wind, the rhythm making the coconuts fall. The two of us catching them victoriously. That was our friend, not this.
Noise from a game from overseas;
a cop chasing a skater? We laugh. They are so funny over there beyond our horizon.
My barbie cake siting on the fridge.
I say ah with pink stained teeth, i have no clue who did it.
Dressed in our best. Our church, an old building, hanging on its last breath.
Its concrete sharp. Uncompleted always with the promise to be completed.
I see my Paul there. My heart yelping even though he never pays me any mind.
My beloved from afar, ill paint you among the stars.
Corner store with a deep gaping well.
Its not all it has to offer but it is all you see when the drought comes.
And so does the daunting task of peeking into that well, hoping i do not drown.
Hands grip the handle of the bucket, tight, cursing whoever put TILES near a water source.
You slip many times, impaired, till the gallon is full and the drought drinks his fill.
Uncle always bringing home chocolate. He calls you 'the american girl' for you will go there soon and you will see & you will achieve what they couldnt.
Chocolate running streams inside your little body, you are happy.
Hometown, a microcosm, piled away in the deep, depths of the brain.
Far for me to reach,
so for now, my soul rests.
after duplex by jericho brown
Hope is painted ketchup-yellow beneath the swaths of prickly grass.
Cracked hands call for the un-bending of already-broken spines.
My last light stood beyond the warm, rich harvest
They were blurred and burdensome as to not prevent the moons arrival.
Blurred and burdensome, my poor moon arrives.
Weak as the rows of flaxen, she burns down all progress.
Like the sight the colors make, mad again
All sounds divide us and you where we first ended.
If love is friendship set on fire,
then douse me with the inferno of flaming blue;
scorching, tearing out the insides of our hearts to inspect the crevices in which the care we hold is born anew and erased.
If love is friendship set on fire,
take me away in the pink skies;
floating and freezing the very sockets of our eyelids,
till all we see is round and round and me and you.
If love is friendship set on fire,
free me from the shackles of burning underneath your gaze,
and hoping to swallow you whole so that
what you light up in me,
what burns inside me like the very home of rattling goosebumps,
is only within me.
If love is friendship set on fire,
hold me close. breathe me in. tear me apart. set me ablaze;
Into ashes that fly away in the wind and return back to you like air and water,
intermingling sickly, sunflower breaths that take us nowhere.
If love is friendship set on fire,
squeeze the essence of my being out of the tiny pores that line our skin,
till the cold, cold droplets of tears from our eyelids,
washes the wave of endless fear,
Of abandonment
into a tight, locked up corner, we grasp and hold the rusty key in,
and push the broken pieces into a lock that is golden and full of memories
That none of us hold yet
Yearn
Not to.
If love is friendship set on fire,
love me. Endlessly as the fire burns,
freeing as it crackles into the pale white sky,
empty as the smoke that drifts into the moon and fills her craters with gray, unmoving dust, temporary as the wood logs that change their looks from strong to weak to gone,
refreshing as the replacement of brand new spark to add to the flame,
warm as in just warm;
Dousing our clothes with an everlasting scent that somehow covered up, never leaves.
If love is friendship set on fire,
why oh why, does its gracefulness call in me the intangible urge to fall and burn and break and feel and heal and scream and cry and cry and turn into ashes,
that have burnt from the flames of all that I ardently ache to hold for you?
If love is friendship set on fire,
what do we lose when we stare --together & alone-- at the crumbling pieces of happiness right in its boundless, red-tinted, black filled eyes?
as the blur of the year has turned focus unto other chapters,
i think about uncalloused hands grasping a plate that lines the edge of the sink,
pulling intermittently as eyes glance behind in quick bursts of air
as to not get caught.
i think about crouching, hiding
, feet colored with red dust,
back resting on jagged concrete,
greedily gulping sweet tarts of hesperidium to coat a pink tongue.
i think about hands feeling the weight of juices splashed unto them,
white blocks of chompers scraping out remnants of a dead fruit,
rinds of a shell rough in my palm.
i think about joy split in 3 parts;
1. freeing laughter as each morsel is consumed,
2. a gleaming smile with infinitesimal ghosts of citrus lodged between,
3. puffs of pride aimed towards the behemoth mango tree,
boasting which friend has reached the top of self-actualization.
my dear,
im writing to wish you oranges now that this new year has come.
To float in the bounds of sun-burst happiness,
to think about dreams, all the things you have yet to become,
aiming towards the tips of a marigold star,
to never, ever, fall back down to earth.
tumbling into the night hours
a whistle of glistening laughter is heard,
echoing from floor to wall,
shaking the outsiders who manage to hear with glee.
a group of 6, with one halfway out to bed,
sit on a floor hard with softness,
cackling unstoppably at letters that form
a 14 year old boys big, fancy, joke
all while one says with a cracking voice
-'guys, stop being immature.'
warm touches always shared;
a head pillowed softly on a collection of flesh
/shoulders, legs, stomachs/
With heated hands wrapping the cold ones in a
-'oh wow you are so cold *** '
-'yes, i am. I don't know why’ procedure.
they douse the rough cement in perpetual footsteps,
hustling hard as the cold bites at their bones,
to stay in a behemoth building
learning till the moon wanes and kisses the sun good morning.
oh the stuffed animals held gently, tossed harshly, stacked mathematically
oh the 'are you up for breakfast' 'anyone want to go with me to ___'
oh the city explored from the closed house of art to a rush of exploration, poses, food, wasps, scenery, and them--- wistful as the tornado flowers swirling in the sticky air.
oh the horse rides with ice cream dripping in syrupy gulps through fingers that rush to grasp unseen napkins.
a frazzled season of frost,
herding them into the richard room
studying haphazardly till the air breaks
and pictures intermixed with a snow fight, ensue.
'i wish we had a sled' - a sentence said a million times with no action to follow
just wishes and memories lost in photographs.
wishing for the best ['you got this']
wishing things were better [' yea i am so tired right now']
Wishing.
I'm distracted by those around, meshing their hands with the keys I can't bear to touch.
I'm distracted by the words which won't come to me but scream that poetry is everlasting.
i'm distracted by the fugue state
my eyes have decided to be buried in & remain seated for the show.
I'm distracted by the way I refuse to be elastic, forever having to snap back into place, with those who say their favorite tree is oak.
I'm distracted by the sky who decides to dim and be dreary from day to-day, but smiles some other time while i exist beneath time, torn by the waves of time, the sky is moved by time,
and yet, it gets away with shifting like it's made out of leaves and people lament 'wow look at the weather today.' no look at me today and feel how i am wilting with no chance to flip my coin sunny-side-up.
My distraction eats at desire.
My distraction wants to fall into the arms of my partner who was nearby yet now gone, the imprint of their brown-rugged jacket fused on my skin.
My distraction will be willing to be exchanged for another emotion. Again we call, 'another other emotion? No? Alright'
Wait.
I'm quite thrown off by those who can stare at the ‘Landscape with a Calm’ and examine the calm in their words.
The chaos in the calm throws me off and oh heres another emotion and oh its gone and i am distracted by the sheep in the landscape
and how does one write about fluff endorsed, chocolate-chipped eyed sheep in a descriptive way?
Return.
No, not all the time, but today, I got distracted by the sticky goop on my windows and had my frog stare at it, becoming the witch under those stick-ers.
Now henceforth, I'm distracted by the frog who can be whatever he wants to be, padded, soft, forever in bed, learning the lessons of rest.
i'm distracted by the fact the frog never has eye bags.
I'm distracted by those who make the most of their distraction and create.
Because the sky, now pale blue, is obscured by the blinds in the room i sit,
conjoined on a symmetrical couch,
a grand piano hidden away in shame,
I close my eyes and let the distraction be.
but will wait for you
across the pale, splintered rock glued to the ground
watching the white arrows point up to the sky,
garnished in mute green resting on sticky red.
let your feet buoy you up
and float you over to the triangular formation
of the crest-fallen home
to watch the sides upheave
the crystal white tears of the sky
into a ball of 3
wearing a funky, magicians hat
while twirling its wood-boned arms
to pick pebbles from its crystalline chest.
wrap the silky, mosaic of print
where it breathes in and out
and move forward
back in your home
to watch it melt under the gaping sun.
after Arda Collins with lines from Kaveh Akbar
Tension begins here:
My bleed/my break
the line one curves over slopes
the crevice cascading two-pulicitous over an edge
the stream of over-consciousness squelched in bliss
Return with me now,
wind humming honey
a touch filled with ache
when silence lingers in our throats
You sit with me now
distance a year or two,
blue shedding where you peel
apart skin
lips devour rubbed lipstick
My dear my dear
let me give you some instructions:
sip slow
slow down your slurp
I ask sip slow
chew wide
allow flesh stuck in between teeth
to pour and pour and pour–
Excuse me,
she says
I mean
hello she says
Allow me to begin this poem
allow me to tell you
How
[over a festering wound]
she colors my mess like
the time i expect sunrise
forevermore but keep
opening my eyes to darkness yet
I still can't reach
the headrest in any car when i see
How she stretches up there
body taken apart by years of weathering
Sheltered pain in slight movements of
A wrist where we begin as love does
[love breathes.]
She says
"I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
This may be me at my best."
now let the poem end
Mimic Poem after Franny Choi's Unlove Poem
When I call myself romantically unloved, I am practically;
If I hold it far enough, abandoned. Then like hollows,
I am unmoored; I’m far-fetched.
I’m a short-sighted bonanza, a crack in the sidewalk, a pinch of an ankle, a frowning,
cotton-candy loser– no, it’s not easy, really. It’s the hardest thing,
I tear it apart when I am awake. I have unshakeable awakenings,
after all, they douse my lover’s skin, they pour grief
into our mouths in swift movements. After all, I am made of dust
plus the ugly things people have put inside me, they concoct a new organ.
everyone has killed me
with affection. Everyone can reach me through the sound
of such generational detachment, sound of my dearly beloveds stewing
two weeks in the future (did they?) My related brethren twisting their hearts
with their fists, drinking the ache like poison (did they?).
I am dust-made. No one can fill my brain with newness but me.
If not even my tongue loves me enough to chew on my memory,
then fine, cut off the soul that made me face-to-face with you.
See? Like hollows, then,
I call myself a loosened screw, and soon enough
I’m hauling out the drips, cracking my wood-filled shoes
under a hammer’s opaque verdict. Sometimes an ocean opens
between my hurt, and I curl around it till I belong.
Sometimes I wonder how long I have to contort
to reach a temporality where any of us feel loved,
and I crumple in slow increments. I come from the small line of unnameables
who were fed healing as salvation from care.
I’m a hopeful lie of a person whom people have
torn apart with their supposedly beautiful hands. I mean, same.
If I love anyone enough to know they can choose better than me,
and I remain anyways, then: What? If I love myself enough to scratch
lines of remembrance into my skin, into me who hurts me, oh well,
I’m just imitating the people before me.
O, unloved is an open wound, anyone can breach
the line of defense it calls up. Here is the part where I list those
who have contributed to my fissures or pushed me to overcapacity
my one, my two, three, four, and six
the boy who invented balloons, the girl who showed me what blooming is
without a sense of imperfection, the person who created storms when we distanced,
of course, there is the girl
whose words and actions left me cold from spine to rib before
I remember my quiet and the wall I'm building up that sings trembling:
‘know your worth lies far away from someone sunflowered
towards another,’ the endless stretch of undoing, railroads of quiet.
O, I’ve been slow to touch what’s blessed
I’ve been too hopeful to swallow what’s less
I’ve been some version of the one who still has the gall to be unloved
O, my badly-built kin,
the crisp of our desire is trickling from my skull: indulgent, lilac
breeze, anguish, clay of molded-core. I am loved
by accident at best.
O, second-choice fortune, I am loved bitter by the horrors of
my own, and by yours, O honey thorn root, by ours.