Coffee House, Open Mic

"This is a poem that I just wrote" translates as a way to feel better about yourself, because if your poem sucks, your excuse is that you just wrote it and didn't have sufficient time to revise. And if it's great, you'll appear to be a prodigy child, a genius, to write something magnificent, or just very good, in a short amount of time.

It's okay,

because when you die, people will take your possessions, your kitchen plates, your empty glass jars, your rings, your canes, and they will use them. They'll eat dinner on your plates after washing them and airing out the water and your warm soul that remained in there. The plate is now cold and the sunlight bears witness of its old fork and knife scratches. And then the people will dine and have an estates sale, and a young girl will carry bundles of dollars and find your jingling manual machine that sings an old American melody. She doesn't have enough money, but the people tell her that tomorrow will be their final sale and they'll reduce all prices. She heard that patience is a good thing, so she tries to be patient. She places the machine down and goes home in the cold, autumn wind. When she returns the next day, the jingling machine is gone.

God

Not the gluttonous delight,
nor the pleasure of orgasm.
Not the way salt sticks to a hard-boiled egg,
nor the tornado,
but the one quick sunset thereafter,
the musky pink sky darkening
and now your hair tangled and dry like weeds.
The sadness of overhearing a song through thick walls,
and singing it achingly slow while the real words have passed,
a new song is on. You have an epiphany.
The ripple of water after turning off the stove,
and the miraculous inflation of your bellies,
breathing healthily now.
This day only happens once in your life,
or thrice,
or never.

The End of the World Through a Child's Eyes

When God would join us, too,
and kneel down on the floor with the rest of us,
snap his fingers or flick the light switch,
and we'd all go to sleep.

Duplicate #32527962745813041724

And what different am I from the others who have written about the leaves jingling like bells? And why is that so wrong? because of this force pushing us into what we ought to be? a damned species made to die, and to fear it throughout our lives, of listening to the leaves and sight-seeing in Nashville, and then passing on that dying life to other little humans?

Then what makes a species, Eve? And what is so wrong about being the same when you have the ability- and choice- to  be happy, though it feels as if you don't? Then you searched and searched at the different, yet similar faces, and looked hopelessly into your hands, and then you saw it- your fingerprint- different from them all, unique and authentic. Then Kitty read your palm, her breath smelling like sour cinnamon. And you looked at the sunset, dark blue and orange, and you said to the sky, "For me?"

Rest

My roommate heads to the bathroom and the bright, setting sun beams on the bundle of clothes she's about to pack. A Chinese translation of Sophie's World is on her desk, an English translation on mine. Coincidence. The threads of her black wool sweater flicker under the air condition.

Everything is still, as if every job in the world is done. The world claps its hands, says "okay", and puts its hands on its waists, looking around at its completion. Nana Sinam's curtain is pulled over the edge of my bed and the sun shines through as if it is her soul. I can hear Jesus saying, "It is finished."

I could see flecks of dust conjoining and I remember hoping to have a part of me linger after death. And maybe bits of my skin and nails will flicker in the air, and the sunlight will expose the dust like a ghost at night. It will be like cutting up pieces of paper and calling it confetti, cutting our long hair and calling it donation. But it feels more like burning a rose and calling it ashes.

We will put one foot in the water and the other on the pebbles, one in Virginia and the other in Maryland. And we'll be like gods, in multiple places within the same second. And we'll finally be those objects, the ambiguous rock and the lunch box, the pearl, and the crunchy leaf. We'll finally know how it feels to be a carpet. We'll remain like a strand of hair dangling on your shirt, annoying your arm.

I tell him to tell me things, that the snow sleeps calmly up north, that there are miraculous oddities with certain animals. I sleep with the phone in my warm hand and await the feeling of Christmas morning in September.

September in 2012

I always liked looking at things rather than living them. I remember when I was a child, I thought there was some royalty to stairs, that dresses would dangle and brush against each step, slowly and teasingly. When we finally moved into a two-story home, I went up each stair carefully with my elephant slippers, but I was forcing out a feeling that did not exist, trying to feel what walking-up-and-down-stairs must feel like. I want to take pictures of the homes I see on the brown line and the stairs that lead to the balconies. But I don't want to walk on them. I want to glide past each building and see snippets of lives through windows all in mere seconds. I don't want to be at a party on the roof; I want to see it, to see all the different lives that are in one life, one planet, a person with a million problems handing a bouquet of flowers to another person with a million problems. I want to stand on a ladder and paint my apartment light blue and red and to watch the sunset and the cross out in the distance and hear the "eeeeeeee" in the wheels passing by behind me, blowing my hair. My shirt lifts, too, and they can see my belly button.