Sometimes a memory
Burns and scalds
So bad
Those moonbeams
Can’t soothe
The seething heart,
Sometimes a memory
Leaves shivers and chills
So bad
Those sunbeams
Can’t warm
The frozen heart.
Between
The moonbeams
And the sunbeams,
The ‘present’
Tosses in unwished
Gifts of its own;
The wild winds
Have blatantly blown,
With worries of the
Future unknown.
As I have grown
Accustomed to Life’s game
I firmly hold my hand
And tall I stand,
Just on my own.
Existential Hazards of the Mythmaker, by Michelle Chen
In English class we learn how the lotus flower, native
to Guyana, is a fiction of resilience, but under keen
Chinese eyes blooms purity in the dark. Because critical
interpretation never lies – unlike climate deniers, harms none
with narcissistic subjectivity, personal insight,
the queer naked streams and rivulets it produces
from ash-dusted inkwells, bound and gilded paper sonnets
all reversible with the tenderizing root of a whip, breaking-in
of a sand-flecked mustang lost and grazing celestial beneath
the shifting leaves of cottonwood understories – good argument.
But no words may possess where I’ve lived for nineteen years
no debater may capture any time zone, nor grammatical instructor
invade conservation with unwieldy tradition, not epic novel lectures
timed before Aristotelian systems collapsed – earth, wind,
fire, water, Ptolemaic heavens spinning vulnerable circles,
quintessence of stars, planets, antidote of all disease. In other
words, seek geopolitical tensions of a single tulip planted
in an English garden, unnatural clusters in Europe’s
Chinese courts perfuming medieval midnights. They say
rising tides and heat waves live and die without intervention,
how the four elements of emotion wash over us
in Mandarin before vanishing.
In twenty-four seasons watching cherry blossoms fall on Park Avenue
with the muddied runoff of gasoline-soaked snow, believing winter
and spring never fought, or were torn apart, loved or even recognized
one another – only consumption’s sorrows, creeping steam
treatments for asthma, boiling water into clear diamond glasses,
cirrus bubbles foaming away lead in dreams, ghostly
chromium 6 combusting liver, lungs, womb, high fevers.
Public housing’s chlorine mutations, the magic of pretending
and oblivion. For the female titan Theia bestowed elements
their brilliant looks, forgetting beauty attracts misfortune. Only
known for the children she bore, she of starry cow-eyes.
Her roving gaze searches for governmental carelessness,
crafting mid-victorian diseases of melting, torrential rains,
skin slickened in debauched contact – how the drought
is our thirst, flooded air all our gasps.
Actually, they were in exile for ages
Adulation ensnared deep down cages
Senile ataxy exploited their minds
Except it wasn’t that serious, just silly reminds
Her naive seed had sprouted short of me
Poker-face of a conned frail
But I was the one who kindled her bleed
Need not abase yourself it’s sword and sorcery in and of itself
I know I tore you down before your stem was free
The bristletail you became fresh out the slammer
You’ve blossomed and you’re right in front of me
The penitentiary I held you in when you were just an ingenue
Fuck, it all just came back to me.
Actually, she is incessantly beautiful
So, fuck if I’ll ever be sure why she even loved me
Since back then I ignorantly beyond innocently fucked her in the head
God, I swear that wasn’t really me, these thoughts are just some ephemera of what nethermost
despair made up the sinking empire around me
But seriously, had my mind been clear, had I not been a trained pistoleer
I would have never fucking hurt her
Pistol to my head, for real.
We both know it was me who should’ve been locked up and away
It will always be my fault for condemning you astray.
So, I am sorry, my dear
and I owe you unending peace.
You blew spit on me
when you laughed,
your hands cupping your mouth
a split second too slow to cover your raspberry giggle.
And even though you apologized profusely,
turning beet red as you
turned to escape
from me,
to hide.
All I want
is to pull you back,
To see if I can make
you smile again,
where your body
lets its every guard drop
in one spit second,
and your heart moves too
fast for your brain.
So tonight when I go home,
hair reeking of spirits, sauces, and spice,
skin still sticky from nerves,
I don’t think I’ll shower; ‘cuz if I did,
I’d wash away the tiny
flecks of proof
of when I saw you
for the first time.
I have to tell you about the river.
My constant companion.
This place lonely…
So far from my big city.
Your touch, like the river
Life changing with seasons.
Migration patterns.
Your attention, like the river.
Ebbing and flowing, delighting and exhausting
Flooding, rushing – bringing life.
Churning and murky. Unclear.
Poof!
No warning. Dried up.
Worry left in its absence.
Did you know you are life giving?
Did you know you are destruction?
Did you know?
Pinkies lay next to each other
They align at the same time
A small rush enters my chest
We sit in the backseat….in darkness
Our driver and her companion are blind to our mischief
We’re only shadows
And as the radio plays
I belt out notes….to distract myself
Your hand rest adjacent to mine
Fingers talking
Only until, your pinky moves to play
It plays with mine
They frolic around and now there’s heat…somewhere within me
A rush from a small touch
Finally….you pull my fingers to interlace with yours
My heart feels so wanted and I want more…more
Our hands now lounge around my thigh
I thanked myself for wearing such a short dress!
We unlock and your fingers trace circles….up towards where there is warmth
You scribble my name, then yours
You take my hand and place it in the center of your lap
The texture of your jeans are rigid, and bumpy, and difficult
My fingers still traces the outline of you there
Our driver is focused, she sings as she leads us through the nights darkness
We’re hidden but not all
Her passenger turned to us to speak, then changes his mind
His eye caught your hand inside my thigh
My thumb strokes against the stitch of your zipper
I felt what I already knew….was waiting for me
Somewhere, the lines became blurred,
and we found ourselves caught, fighting
against the currents of lustful desire.
Seldomly, we surrender–about as rare
as the Sapphire gemstone. We concede
that it is true–a door has been opened
into each other’s thoughts and minds, and
a gravitational pull forces our bodies
toward one another. Only for a day, we
admit our defeat. And then we continue
living our separate lives as two people,
swimming in two oceans, against two
currents flowing toward one another. And
when our fantasies of a soft touch–finally
giving into the temptation, a passionate
kiss, or an act of intimacy, grows too
strong, the cycle repeats. We lose our
fights and ride the currents back to what
we had craved. Maybe it’s because we
fill in the missing parts of each other.
Or maybe, it’s that we know it will never
truly be–regardless of what it is, what
sparks this attachment, comfortability,
and affinity, the cycle continues repeating
If sand is the embodiment of time
Then I’m…
Going to collect it all and become it’s keeper
That way, when I meet Mr Reaper
I can flip my hourglass around
To recapture the sound
Of every heartbeat that fluttered by
Of every moment my ribs caged butterflies
Of every time I uttered “I love you”
Of the moment you stuttered “I do”
Pictures may be worth a thousand words
But your voice, Firefly, deserves to be heard
For infinite lifetimes and more
I used to collect seashells that came across the seashore
To recapture this moment of meeting this girl from my dreams
But now that I met you in real life it seems
Like the shells are decorating the exuberant amount of sand
I’ve collected just to forever hold your hand
