The Sea of Fecundity is acne from an eternity of puberty. The dark side is always covered by hair. Acne erupts in a forest, unseen. There is no face without hair. There were phases without hair. They still insist on long hair being a phase. Being new was supposed to be the absence of a phase. Being new is being unable to face having no face. Especially without hair. Gibbous curls shift in an eclipse of a hundred years and everyone watches. An oblique profile. Picture it. Eclipses are a return to hiding. To be full of courage for one night a month only. To phase out every other day. To be up every night. To return to light pollution as home. To smile or frown without eyes to see yourself. To see eternity as a phase.
Category Archives: Poetry
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To be lost in the city, there is a need
to be found. Turn on GPS –
There is no button to mark yourself as safe.
The Assistant says, “The traffic is safe,”
you are insignificant on the map. The party is
a beer and a stranger’s unauthorized arm away.
The Assistant has none of that, so it bosses you
around the map. The high school friend you knew
is at the party and in past tense. Knowing them is a
tense continuity. The Assistant knows present grammar.
The Assistant is remote yet takes control. No stars since
you fell from the sky, a graying dot on milky roadways.
Lights clubbing at your shine, you control filters that
have been filtered for you. The Assistant ensures that
it is safe. That your friend lives in the future.
That they will send a card in a scroll.
Moonrain
(after Issa’s 「露の世は露の世ながらさりながら」)
And yet, what can sleep
restless in complex glitter –
Not living nor dead?
Naked gossamer;
So nude are these lamppost tears
touching solitude.
Transpicuous song –
Light centuries of spire
to the still, and yet.
Listening Post
When the city is too small
for the heart, a walk in a bar is
travelling the horizon of the moon.
Each crater a landmark of progress
but in the same shade that is
unreliable since you circumvented
twice. If craters were large enough to
contain our warmth the universe
compensates by echoing loneliness –
Still, no one can hear the moaning
or the smell the alcohol that clogs
the futility of memory, the taste of
names that spill off your glass onto
the lunar soil. The next civilization
will question the evidence, likewise
aching for why aren’t there more.
Small Talk
My chiffon floated your irises;
Your raised glances were gifts to
a well of emotions kicking and
shoving to provide space. This
dress almost couldn’t contain
the breath I had imprisoned,
just so my eyes could escape
their corners to meet yours
tracing frills and sewn-in flowers
along my curvature. But it was
laughter we blossomed into –
The fruits of which an excuse
for us to face each other.
Your name clumsy on my ears
but those blue eyes were how I
recalled a cloudy day. I dared to wish
you meant ‘french kissing’ not as
‘the french way of kissing
as a form of greeting’
after we shook hands, so I
diverted my attention to your
dress pockets and their rarity
since it was impossible to find
my tongue cuddling against the
warmth of yours, anyway. Before
we parted at last I was an oriental
embracing western customs –
Your left on my right, vice versa
Until bold lips added blush to
my cheeks, softer than my brushes,
and I returned the favor, memorizing.
Off-Hours
An empty room jostling with space,
lit by the city and the stars.
Brubeck and his quartet taking five
minutes of contemplation,
thoughts freeing thoughts
to construct using constraints.
Fingers glinting under moonlight
like your bones against darkness,
solace rewriting time signatures
from metronome interiors.
Midnight transcended,
smiles escape windows
to become light pollution.
Walls will reverberate
emotions singing in the shower.
Silence returns as a lover,
whispering sweet nothings,
listening to how
you are static.
Sandbox Yearn
There is a sidewalk,
waiting for shoes while
I try to hear another pair.
Who will sparkle in moondust?
I disperse clouds with inertia
that tends towards anything, but
love is friction.
There is a city composed in
beams of starlight, within them
a window of distraction –
Of future lovers,
their quavers.
Can I improvise my desire,
to share a cloud,
in the entropy of my cells?
Anyone that wants to measure
the transparency of space
by my flickering eyes.
She was Never Able to Drink Tea
(after N. Wang’s ‘She Never Drinks Her Tea’)
Her house is personal in a way her Father
freeloads upon, paying rent by accusations.
She cannot hear her own footsteps over the
din, being unwelcome in her own house is
a swelling of feet, lights that refuse to work,
lao hua* glasses on a 20/20 past, one where
the tidiest living room has a worn-out tile
with edges that she cannot vacuum out,
where her calloused feet steps on blame
where a divorce must be a woman’s fault.
A headache upon trigger-happy migranes,
triggered by happy things from chocolate to ice.
For which, she was always brewing drinks
that were never her cup of tea. Drinks scalding
like a hot shower routine where she boils soap.
He was the pot that called her a black kettle;
The only black she sees is when sleeping it off,
dozing in bed with a Korean soap on an iPad
that distracts a scalding mouth, since tea
keeps her calm and awake in a nightmare.
*lao hua (“老花” in mandarin Chinese): Presbyopia
Resolution
When you disappeared my thoughts
went along, grew cold and died.
Somewhere, there is half an automotive
from our last days, bruised, steam long lost.
The dirigible you used to escape yourself
has decommissioned. Even I stopped
purchasing recycled balloons – Nothing left
to fill what’s inside. The doomsday clock
exists for centuries, and i’d rather hear
the double ticks of your demise than no pop-ups.
But your mind was never uploaded, even when
people tired of a billion-year paradise, servers now
empty. Empty like the memory of your hair.
Space is warmer than your desertion, still
twinkling against the shapeless dunes where
we left off. I dance alone on these slopes,
kicking sand where every grain is possibility,
away from your spell to a dead end,
the terminus of your web of power struggles.
I dress the clouds that flow on my movements,
grasp the sky as my parasol, and stroll past our next lives.
CNY 2018
If your blood is red Chinese heritage
why does it spill like everyone’s.
Do you call family, when they can’t
hear you burying your heart in pillows.
Embarrassment is the same color
as chatter as anger as weather.
No rain this week to wash away
questions; It is easier to sweep bad luck.
Does tradition imply and implore
speaking things people don’t mean, in a
language that expresses by choking throats.
How I look in my cheongsam speaks
hundreds of stories when there’s only one.
For people we care about, there are more
chances every day, than in a week.
Lune L. 
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