3 Poems, 3 Years Later

Immeasurable

Seeing those same basketball shorts from three years ago,

the same muted gold on your pile of dirty laundry and

I wanted it all to came back,

but I don’t remember your back

so smooth and muscular,

I don’t remember your skin so pale,

same with those brown spots

scattered across your body like an inverted constellation,

like the night sky I stared at

laying on your bed waiting for your being

to slowly crawl up to mine.

Before your lips could reach mine

I extended my hands and fingers to touch your head,

this time I had no point of reference as to how long,

or short you hair has grown,

or how long this love would last.

Are you the same man whose used towel I kept

unwashed for weeks because I could not move past the thought

of your body held tightly inside that white fabric?

Even as you walked in front of me on the morning after,

on the same path you had taken with me before,

I could not recognize the back, the shoulders that I was following—

they were much too tall,

and you were moving much too quick,

as though you needed to get away from this past.

This time

there will be no hair on my floor to sweep up,

no hair to remind me that I held on,

for far too long. 

Science (Makes Nothing Happen)

Different Starbucks, different drink,

same city, three years later

I think about that poem I wrote about you.

I haven’t had to face the physical proof of your death,

yes I’ve romanticized about it,

even made art about it twice your height,

but it was all abstract,

I never needed to look straight at your face

like I did last week at your tombstone.

It doesn’t get any more real than that,

to see the black and white

and all the grey tones in between poetically render

the former image of you—

how could that ever be you.

Phyllis, who hadn’t seen you in over a year as well,

told me to wet some tissues to clean the ash

and dust off of your picture.

How ironic it felt,

for a second I thought could somehow

take death and just wipe it away like dirt,

as though erasing the evidence helps,

but would that bring you back?

I can’t say I didn’t try,

I can’t say I didn’t want to rub out your face from that stone

so that every time I return to this city,

this place of my childhood

I wouldn’t have to be reminded that something is missing,

like that 7-11 where I used to wait for the school bus,

that restaurant where we went for dim sum every weekend,

that playground next to my kindergarten, except

you’re human,

not just a thing, an object

that someday your pieces could just reconstruct,

your grey hairs repainted, wrinkles redrawn,

your favorite purple sweater resewn

because they all went into the fire with you—

I was there, I pressed the button.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed;

you are still never coming back.

Stains

Three years ago you left me

with a ten second hug and a thunderstorm.

I thought that rainstorm had washed away all those feelings,

cleaned away the smell of the smoking area at the club

where we always have unnecessarily deep conversations.

We’ve never kissed there,

every time we get close but you’d move your face

at the last second.

It’s a bad idea, you’d say, people might see.

So tell me, why did you think it was a good idea

to bring me back to that same place?

Nothing has changed there,

same two benches and a glass barricade

looking over at all the people downstairs who don’t matter,

they never matter.

If nothing has changed there

what makes you think my feelings have,

what makes you think I could have had moved on

when all you did was leave me to watch you disappear in the rain?

You had three years in the land where everything changes

and nothing stays together,

just the illusion of adhesion because of the humidity;

you had three more years to change yet I was left static,

frozen at these steps on that night.

I didn’t know what three years would mean;

I didn’t know three years would mean buying an apartment

and deciding that you wouldn’t change in such a place

where it begs you to,

just like did all that time hoping your mind,

your heart would change.

Three years meant more of that body have disappeared at the gym,

three years meant the cigarette smoke is never leaving his clothes

now that he shares your wardrobe,

and I would still never have it in mine.

Bangkok Stories, Part 4: Revelations

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.



Sacrificial

Lying
between two bodies, one big
bestial, hairy-heaving, and one
cherubic small;
I sensed holy.
The fear of
doom—to be eaten, my lust
to be consumed
did not move me, but the motions—
the creaking of the bed, my slow forfeit
to their hands, and my cleansing
by their tongues inducing a high
that can only be described as ascension,
to be brought closer
to god, ready
for sacrifice.



Purpose

The other day I saw an iced coffee
placed in a poor excuse of
a plastic bag, cut out and
shaped only to fit a cup—

imagine life like that,
one purpose, regardless
how insignificant,
and nothing else matters;

I can’t

help but stare
at those ornamental
ceiling lamps, softy glowing
in your already luminous room
every time we fuck.



Sober

When you grasped my hand
and slyly grazed my fingers
on your soft facial hair

your face was still
warm in that cold room filled
with drunken indifference;
that alcohol in your breath
has yet to steal heat
from your body—

You know,

I long for those moments
when you're sober,
your eyes
conscious and aware
of the love, pain,
you give me.



A Child’s Poem (Beautifully)

I like to leave my balcony window open at night for
my neighbors, and their apartment
with all their lights on, and everything. Not that
it matters what they do— dinner
tv, magazine? I can’t see without my glasses
anyway. But it’s the movement, the bodies and their
breathing shapes moving in light that remind me
if one can look from outer space, far far away,
we all blend in
no matter the colours, or what we do.

Bangkok Stories, Part 3: The Mourning After

Confetti

The day before Chinese New Year
I keep finding pieces of confetti in my room,
it's odd because I don't remember
being near any celebrations, any place
I could have taken a bit of festivity
with me; this year
I could celebrate,
no more black clothes,
black memories, I'm allowed
to wear bright reds and yellows,
and be loud, joyous, cheering—
but do I want to be those things?
Do I want to let go of the austerity,
the silence we shared in those last moments,
those last few minutes in that hospice room
I listened to you breathe.



Princess

in the mirror
before makeup,
notice

your black hair,
thin, sharp eyebrows,
and the gentlest square cheekbones;
you've matured—grown
as if your father
had mold the beauty of your face
with his own
soft, boney fingers,
your smile
by his suit's warmest greys;

today
in your deep brown eyes
he breathes again
life—the sweetest cigarette breath

that leads you, white
and softly,
down the aisle.




Theoretical

Energy cannot be created
or destroyed—

conversion, potential to kinetic
and everything else;
we learned that in physics class,
high school, before that

I learned from you
food loses its goodness when
its heat escapes from the dinner table
while I stared at my computer screen. I
thought of that today
sitting at a cafe watching
my iced coffee condensate, almost
sweating at the irony of steam
rising from the ice in the cup;
evaporation, heat moving upwards or
goodness, escaping the static cold—

Your body, the white sheets,
the rose they put on your chest, already cold
when I arrived an hour after you died;
your sublimation was
impatient, unlike you.

Energy cannot be created
or destroyed—

I love to think about the invisible,
energies, matters that surround us
in total disregard, stoicism?

How much insensitivity
can matter tolerate,

think about it, if
this world came from an explosion
of invisible matter then
didn't we all—humans so involved with
feelings, emotions,
begin as these same stoic particles
in sub-atomic void? So

when will your energies, heat,
goodness, decide they've had enough
silence. You are out there,
waiting, because you exist now
only as patience; particular,
insensitive to the cold, heat, joy, pain, tears;

How long, before you come back
to me?



One year later

One year later
I look up
at my white textured ceiling,
the unevenness of the paint,
the soft shadow masonry–
I see the history
of your hands.

One year later
I stare at the setting sun,
the orange, the reds;
no words, just colour trusting
its last warmth on my body,
like the last time
I held your face.

One year later
I see the unfolded laundry
sitting on my bed,
patiently waiting
through the night,
as you did
for me.

One year later,
I still see you in everything.



The Towel

The towel you used
has been hanging on my balcony
since yesterday
morning, after you left.

I’m reluctant
to take it back inside, clean it,
fold it, put it away—no I can’t
just destroy the memory of your body
wrapped in white
fabric substance-less in the wind;

lacking.

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.