(after Marylyn Tan’s ‘re: origin story / ARCHETYPAL EVIL’)
Being immortal is being
sated about being salted
in cycles – day and night
the pry and shut of eyes.
Once, Ah Kong was young
and fleshed out, peachy
with beginnings. A fool,
not knowing that fruiting
is the end, or figurative –
how time is tried, tested
as a painter being tired
of the biggest canvas.
Not the cosmos, but in
housing a weary start.
*Ah Kong: Romanization of the Chinese noun “阿公”, meaning Grandfather.
Tonight, I deconstructed love
into a thousand paper cranes.
I don’t even like folding cranes,
like the long wait. Like teleology,
my hands were always destroying
paper; fold my neck to cognize down.
Crane, just to be blinded by flight.
My hands were always sweating,
slipping thoughts of you into vacuum;
all directions evaporate in departure,
and these hands cannot give warmth.
One night, I swallowed a planet.
Two moons later, a wrong word
shifted a wormhole via bad praxis.
Using language as a fork for soup:
these tears I stippled on my cheeks
where they should be rolling down.
Another night of failed application.
When you deconstruct my apologies
in a black hole, all sentiment is lost
like the wormhole above. Speaking,
when I cannot hear myself in space.
It’s not like you heard, or replied.
Between us, the brane that
makes universes parallel.
What is perpendicular: pain
if we ever intersect. Your foot
pressed on my stomach is an
allegory for rejection, and up
for it: more unloved things
aside from me; Or geometry
where two points make no line;
The star that failed to shine.
As constellations, we are near
on paper. In paper you blazed
like an unwanted poem you
& I line break. & I felt cold.
Determinism was true. See:
All events from the start
end in us not fated to be.
I placed it at knifepoint
just to cry at the impossible:
Somewhere in the Ming
you were sipping wine.
In 30s Shanghai, I drank
to serve men. Always
a disservice to myself.
Servicing these timelines,
they turn into a square, an
opposition. Stars aligning
into queues into spirals
into nadir into breaths
of what has always been.
Somewhere in here I died
during the war. Somewhere
was a place we never met.
As I dragged a sunbeam you stopped
smiling at me. Made my own morning
like a nostalgic breakfast. Found the sun
in these eggs, scrambled and dispersed.
This stanza is diagnosed with Jaundice
and not the above conditions. I escaped
from dreams, coming to terms with yellow
eyes; Things uglier than the summer heat
frothing inside me. Brushed away yellowed
teeth instead of your rays that pierced me.
I watched you, having the autonomy of a star.
Words she took out of my mouth,
she wrote a poem; Found the moon.
I take back what I said about her:
You Gorgon, with a bite you created
the Crescent. If that is not beauty,
there is still the phrase about phases:
On your face, figurative expressions-
All frightening the cores of stars,
showering praise as I cried the night.
A lump in my throat turned to stone.
Which was hard. Difficult to love.
Love too difficult, gravity too easy.
