Bangkok Stories, Part 2: Measures of Love

Bangkok, ผมรักคุณ

When my motorbike driver made the turn
my body was only inches
from the brown pavement I travel on everyday,
it was so close, and fast,
that the masonry looked
too smooth, too refined.
Somehow I felt
it just shouldn't be that way, it was
like how rocks become polished by moving
sands on the beach—

my love life;

if only there were
no secrets, no scars.



Hypothetical

As our footsteps echoed through
the wet streets of the sleeping market
I wondered why we always meet
in this kind of scenery—dark, surreptitious,
but romantic;

you don’t forget these things,
first impressions, his speech
effortlessly assonant and
never a silent consonant—
they all belong to him
even after you realize
it’s not just him,
the rest of Europe speaks the same way.

These impressions, they become just as real
as the hazel of his eyes or
the musical inclination of his stare;

one year ago
our gazes connected through the rhythmically beating
air-conditioned space, yet
I still don’t know if I was just
paying too much attention to his creaseless white shirt
or the way he says “fantastic”
not as an adjective
but a nominal metaphor of us:

the staring bronze Buddha, and the papier-mâché pig,
artwork scattered on the floor of his apartment
like a gallery exhibition that’s gone on for too long.



Colors, Body, Parts

I.
Golden hair,
violet-reds and blond gives it
that warm autumnal glow, you,
the naturally occurring
biological complement.

II.
Bisexual eyes
verbose green and quiet brown;
I can't help the blush you cast
on my body, confused
by this twofold arousal.

III.
Powder white skin
freckled, almost to say
the pale in you is fighting to harmonize,
as I am submissive, blending in,
to your body, colors.



Cigarette Smoke and Songs

Every time I look
the strokes of browns he made on the white
of your neck
just above the collarbone speak to me
of Van Gogh and his
Starry Night, how hard
he had to fight with his canvas
to lure the psycho-passions
in the calm blues, greens;

I want to fight with your canvas—I want
to learn how to draw those
reluctant cedar reds, I want
my lips chapped and lost in your
five o'clock shadow so nobody could see
the pain and my thirst instinctual;
artistic martyrdom, how
you do that to me. No matter
how deep, how dark it grows;
my lust will only be a stained mistake
unexplored on that tender vacancy
of your neck. No matter
how much of myself, my saliva,
my scents
I try to leave, or should I say,
belong on you, until
the next morning.

I will never get it,
how he excites the quiet, insensitive
darks of midnight—
your cigarette smoke,
and songs.



Measure of Love

I found a piece of your hair
on my bathroom floor, I knew
it was yours because it was brown,
soft, and slightly curly, unlike
the harsh black of my own. I picked it up,
looked at it for a moment,
and tossed it in the bin; I do not
need to be reminded of how
my fingers noticed your hair getting longer
every time I stroked you head
thinking that love
is something
I could forever measure.

Bangkok Stories, Part 1: Perspectives

Crumbled tissue with coffee stains

A rose, perhaps
dying, its petals
giving in to yellows
and browns, or

a vagina,
tired
after unwanted sex?



Postpartum

Trying
to stretch into an arabesque penchée
in the pool, at the
four feet mark I bend forward
feeling the lift of my body
in the clear water,
chest dipping in;

the muscles in my leg
hesitates to rise
up, and out
to break the liquid surface.



The cold air between my fingers,
yours, and his;

I couldn't help being distracted
from the lights, the screaming noises
of the movie screen in front of me, how
even in a moment like this—moment of
public darkness, the two of you
so subtle, as if unaware your fingers are
madly intertwined in what I want to imagine as
sex positions.



DJ Station (Scents)

When bodies gather,
moving to the speaker’s bass
skin to skin; there is
no place for fabric,
no containment of
this shared body heat—
scents of perfumes
and sweat, a marriage
so perfect yet
tragically fading.


Red Candle

This year I grew too old
to have that many candles
on my birthday cake, so
they just gave me one
big red candle to fulfill
my wish;

how funny
life’s metaphors can be.

Update notice

For the two people who read this blog... I'm just putting together my Bangkok work right now, I'll have them up ASAP! Look forward to it!

Preview: Bangkok Stories

Place

The art on my walls are falling

down, one by one

the glue that held them up

through last winter

is letting go—

they say

it's the humidity of this place

that makes things, people,

never wanting to stay too close,

too long, together.

L(ove) Words 2009

journal p. 529

Your eyes, a kind of brown

I dare not describe, because to say

they are ambers

washed in the raw seawater greens would be

obsessive, I am

so eager to take you in,

your soft hair, pale skin

so easily flushed, embarrassed, resistant

like your facial hair’s subliminal

feedback, the pricking as if to say

no, you don’t

actually want me.

The Rejection Kiss

When our lips not only touch

but lock in the saliva of our

acquainting tongues,

our faces tilt with our bodies

moving to spill body heat

flooding in the fabric of your bed;

and almost colder than

the air conditioned room

you stared,

eyes wide, hazel

on my face has never been

so harsh—I used to like that

eye colour.

Pale, pale skin—

do I, or perhaps you

read too much into those

panda eyes

not so much brown as they are

earthy, no, reflective.

I imagine you fallen,

restlessly staring into ground beneath

not with scorn but a sense of wonder

why

has the earth pulled you down,

taking away the strength in your legs

and forced your body upon

this bed, unwilling to absorb you back

into the creation?

I want to be this earth,

this entity so familiar to your body,

your mind but incapable of

taking you in—

I want this longing

of flesh, to become one,

forever alone

with you.

Floss

Be the floss in my teeth,

the angry non-flosser who

for the first time in months

was made to floss

so hard, so frustrated this

intrusion of white

brighter and more critical

than what he’s used to. Blood

is his only release—

this jealously rushing

to the surface because it’s

better to hurt now

than stain forever.

Shower steam,

warmth, moist—

The skin (or callous?) of my feet

touched, mid-stretch

and they stuck together;

a second,

enough to looked

as though the cells decided

today

they didn’t care for the divorce,

the split—the want

to become one again.

Perhaps they were confused

that moment, dazed,

wet, ecstatic,

but strangely

romantic.

Death/Songs

This is a collection of poems I have written in response to my grandmother's illness and degeneration in the last year.

* * *

The Leak

…the brown crawls
through the white unfallen
ceiling tiles
like salt into watercolor,
painful flowers
inside fleshy tissues—
beautiful, cancerous;

my grandmother’s lungs.

* * *

Her feet and the elevator doors

Every time
our neighbors, strangers,
run ahead to hold the metal doors of the elevator,
when silver chair legs are dragged
on carpeted floors
at the sight of her in restaurants,

when she is lifted out of her moving seat
into a real one;

my grandmother’s moments of silence.

She stops
all conversations, stories
of her past, and knows only to stare
at her heavy legs, silent
even to her late sons and daughter’s
eagerness to stay alive in her words—

I never realized
how much she has lost
already, two sons and a daughter
in memories that want to slip
even further with her brown eyes
into the less laborious
blind-eye blues around the iris.

What does she, or I see
reflected the glint
of these momentary metallic surfaces—

the cold iron elevator door,
the impatient glimmer of moving chairs
and the wheelchair handles mirrors.

Is it her static lethargy
loveless silence, or
the portrait of her final loss?

* * *

Beauty in Death

I don’t remember what she ate,
all I recall was

yellow—
because there’s no point of
embellishing the color of vomit. It was
dark, viscous with grains of rice
cascaded down her mouth. Eyes closed,
not cringed,

there wasn’t enough strength
to hold back.

She let it happen
almost naturally, hardly gagged
just small coughs to clear her airway.

Strangely pale and
violet-analogous, her lips
almost the lavender on the shirt
she was wearing, loose and
rippling as her stomach contracted,
purged
complementary colors—
pain
in such beauty.

* * *

Carriage

I don’t want to die—

my grandmother looked at me;
her tarnished
sclera, and eyes moving
like rusted gears.

Three months,
the doctor said
like somehow he saw
her life mathematical;

the angles
of her twisted body looking
for a point of comfort,
and the decline of her body weight
exponential—

I cannot hold her up,

I told
the mother who sought help
carrying her child up the stairs
today at the subway station,

I didn’t even look at the baby
fearing that in those eyes,
in those involuntary
blue inquiries, I would see
just how little life my arms could hold onto—

I don’t want

her loose skin
and lightened bones,
I don’t want to hold her
up, closer to the sky and feel
how quickly
she’d ascend—how
easily I would break…

If only
I could tell that mother
every time
she asks someone to carry her baby,
that she takes a moment
to remember how light her child is, and
how quickly she will become impossible
to hold
in her arms.

* * *

The Emergency Room List

The doctor’s face.
Needles and five vials of blood.
Crushed white pills.
Green fluid in plastic cup—30ml.

My grandmother’s face.
The nurse’s face.
My grandmother’s face trying to swallow the medicine.
Water spilling from the side of her lips.
Her teeth in a grimace.

The salvia and sweat in her cough.
Stained white hospital sheets.
Crumpled hospital sheets, no longer clean-smelling.

My grandmother’s breathing, short and labored.

The electrocardiogram, blue electrodes, ten.
Her body, unblemished.
Her breast, white, healthy-looking.
Her stomach full.

The skin around her eyes, wrinkled and loose.
Her eyes, yellow and bloodshot, staring up.

The intravenous, slowly dripping.
Her gown, parted.
Her buttocks sagging onto the bed sheets.
Her buttocks, soft.

Her smile—

* * *

Her X-rays

She had me feel her stomach
once, at home, when she first complained
about the discomfort. It was warm,
too warm, as if
it contained the body heat of two people.

She said something angry
is growing inside her, impatient hands,
small and multiple, pushing against the
skin, almost stretching it—

The x-rays showed
images of her chest,
her abdomen, her pelvis,
and the spots,
more spots than what I remembered
three months ago.

Her belly a garden
of many self-pollinating flowers, black
and white,
each blossom a hand
of pain growing,
spreading.

Perhaps cancer
is like having a child,
there is
the surprise, the wait, the pain,
and the hospital ward.

What is different
of new life,
and that which now grows inside her?

The part separating from the whole,
a consciousness
inobedient to what the body—the mother, wants.

In the end,
don’t we all wait
for the relief of deliverance, and the spirit
waits for ascension?

* * *

Body/Fear

Grandma
didn’t want my hand,
without lifting her head
she said it was heavy and
burdensome. How
does love become
a burden? The weight of
tender body heat; my hand
on her back caressing
suffocation—

As I lie in bed after
he and I fucked, this

random guy I just met 

I asked him to climb
on top of me;
outside the sky has turned
dark, his chest heavy
against mine, my hands
pinned in
supplication,

but not suffocation—
I could not
recreate that cold, black
of dying
where even warmth, body,
and love, are frightening.

Soft Lips and Listerine

The first time I kissed
those lips,
you came
up to me
in midst of all the bodies
and their loud music,

you said, come,
and I did with you
to the corner of the bar
where the middle-aged men have been
staring at me from
the moment I came,

but that doesn’t matter, I was
with you just kissing
before we made out
each others’ names;
your lips were
so soft, so cold
and minty that
I was freezing from
the beads of sweat on my forehead
from dancing before

I held you
closer, tighter
without questioning what that
familiar sweetness from
your mouth was…

The next time I kissed
those lips
I came
to your apartment,
no more bodies
or loud music,

just you and the same
minty breath in candlelight
not bright enough
to see your face,
only your tan tinted
by wicker glow,
and we kissed
more this time,
with tongue
and everything began
to melt-

my shirt, my belt,
my pants, my skin,
my penis
you kissed
and I came
unseen by our eyes clinched
so tight,
and cold…

Later you kissed me again,
with lips fuller
and you mumbled,
as if you were careful not to spill
words,

there is mouthwash
in the bathroom
if you want.