“If someone goes from pillar to post, they are forced to keep moving from one place to another”. I’ve found a weird comfort in this idiom recently as I’ve been mentally moving from one place to another. Along with this newfound resonance, I’ve also been working on my well-being during quarantine. This includes thinking about the future for the first time in a while. My family jokes and says that when I picked my degree, I just pointed to something on a list. Museum Studies stood out from all the others so that’s why I picked it. I wanted to stand out— have a standout life similar to M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled”. Who doesn’t right?
Joining anthology this year, among other self-help things, was my turn at being vulnerable. To give writing a try. To be brave. I used to dream about becoming a writer, to be able to leave something behind and join ranks with all of my favorites like Cohen, Vonnegut, Lovecraft, Foster-Wallace and others. I want to get close for once, close to something I really want. If this sounds like a tale of woe, I would honestly agree, and yet I don’t really care. Ever want something so bad you can taste it?
Hopefully in the end it tastes like the smell of wet dirt, and doesn’t that sound so great? Anyway, these are the type of topics I wish to write about. I want to write of vague ideas and vivify them like the way an archivist would research a topic to death, until there’s nothing left. Thanks for reading my chapbook and this!
poetry's alibi
didn’t mao write poems? didn’t the dogs still fight?
didn’t their yes’s matter? did their dark ever light?
did the birds keep eating,
or did the monks never stop?
could their will be willing?
could their mountains
forever buried,
ever be atop?
offending publics morality
in the name of a non-caution doctrine
which couldn’t fully mount
in the highs of highs
of lives to be account.
inconsistent compatibility
an ill-beating heart within the margins of your uncaged breast
in search of the intrigue they were promised back in the war chest
unsure if it is too late for ablation or
too early for the transplant,
with
much too many actions to hasten
and less words to weep
see numen, see hiroshima, see stirring and see heart failure itch
during your seventh, no! eighth bathroom wall movie this week
the courage to stumble in dirty rain when on the hunt
for the carelessness in sunday nighttime cruelties
fragility on the cusp
shadows we cast grow longer
swept up and thrown into the plausible
deniability that
man’s words could not be prompter
a martyr of truth
a deserter’s guilt
a firm fixed booth
where morals still tilt?
for evil cannot be purged and have good remain
would it then not be pain but rain?
rain that looks like drought
pain only at the hands of doubt
“…they told us suburban pools were migraines
and our ponds arthritis…”
“…i heard the nile river was just a case of shingles…”
they showed me that flash floods was being the lead car in processions
tsunamis, kidney stones
while bathtubs are false confessions
now i see your questions
to hold waterparks with appendicitis
the quickly spreading rumor of canals and heartbreak
a clouds moisture to backache
and dementia with icebergs
in large precise nonnegotiable terms
still,
i asked them to vow
a vow to never ask about the sea
to never listen or believe what they say about it
they shouldn’t ask of what pain do the waves disguise as
and shouldn’t
ask about dark blues or still waters
but man is curious
and for this alone we shall never be a martyr
in the name of the waves pain
or
feelings found brewed
–its cognitive dissonance for the sake of promptitude
