You look so strong yet you are so light in mind and soul,
with your lofty skin.

Doll face

Bright Eyes's eyes cannot leak,
his ribbon lips cannot curve to the floor;
he has nothing to say (what good is a
mouth that cannot twitch?), yet clutched
to his cotton spinal column is a
string wire that - when tugged - induces
the routine purging of optimism:
"I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy,"
he caws, every syllable withering one
letter after the other:
after the rope is pulled like child's play,
runts that dig their fingers into firecrackers
exploding on fine wire, fit for executions.

I was in a classroom. It seemed like kindergarten. The class was asked to make cards for somebody. Not sure who, but it didn't matter. I didn't have paper to work with, so I looked around the room. There was a card on the desk -- navy blue with a large red heart lined with lace hot glued on top.

Inside the card, though, led to some disappointment--and intrigue. The card had already been filled with someone else's words. Words of passion, regret, longing. Words not meant to be read by me. And yet, the card's recipient shared my first name.

Was there a mix up? Maybe this card was handed to me because someone thought it was for me:

C---! C---! How I long to see you again! I'm sorry for what happened. I miss you so much. It was all my fault. We will meet again. But first, I have to let you know what happened.

I was invading someone else's world. Perhaps two lovers, who knows? And yet, the card was with me. And I continued reading:

* * *

I had to leave because things weren't safe. If there had been some sort of infection teeming through my body, you are the last person I would be with: no matter how much I want to stand by you, stroke your cheek, or share a smile with you, I could not bear to see you like me. Sick. Weak. Gross.

I joined the military after we parted, perhaps because I was scared. I wanted an excuse to leave you behind. The time me last met, there was something I never told you. That fountain where I last saw your almond eyes and tan skin bears all my secrets.

You left for a minute or two. Or three. Or four. I had forgotten why. In your absence, I felt a paroxysm finely creep through my stomach. A subtle tremor at first, leading me to ignore it. Then almost instantly my body urged my conscience to kneel at the fountain's side and hang over the edge. My insides reverberated uncontrollably, and I began to spit out worms into the water in a continuous cascade. The worms swam in the water after the dive from my tongue; if you were, I could only imagine the mortification in your eyes. The regret exposed on your forehead. The fright tethered to your lips.

So I left you, never to return until I was better. Until I had some answers.

That is why you never saw me leave. That is why I never saw you return.

* * *

The teacher came in to collect our work. "C---, I need your card." She told me.
"I'm not--"
"Please turn it in. You had plenty of time."
Defeated, I handed it in and walked out of the classroom, brimming with questions and regrets. I found myself walking by the routine forest trail I use to go home. A shortcut.

Suddenly, an impulsiveness to stand still paralyzed my body. Whatever finger I tried to move wouldn't even point. Whatever foot I attempted to kick wouldn't even tiptoe. My stomach then lit with a brewing flame within that could not be seen or extinguished.

I tried to run, and I kneeled.
I tried to holler, and I gagged.

Liquid streamed from my mouth onto the dirt path like a creek. I tried to cry and realized that my tears could not even comfort me with moisture--all my fluids were decanting the floor beneath me.

And inch by inch, I felt it crawl out. It grabbed my aged molars, first, then wriggled its way through my esophagus to have a good look at the outside. It grabbed my front teeth and stuck its nose suspiciously toward the floor, attempting to discern its whereabouts and safety. After deciding that everything was clear, I felt both its elbows touch the corners of my lips and its abdomen sliding down the apex of my tongue. Its legs made one firm kick out of my throat onto my bottom molars. Then it swiftly took a plunge onto the dirt and ran off to the trees--absolutely noiseless.

Wrote this on December 27, 2009. Recently unearthed.

1

What is the use of the day and the night? I’ve often wondered about why a sun should need to perturb the sleeper’s eyelids. Perhaps it is among the most despised disturbances in life, waking from a much preferred—or much needed—slumber. Yet waking up also assumes that there is a life you belong to; chores that need to be fulfilled, jobs that need to be worked, people that need to be loved. The same cycle is the concept of life simply going because that is just how it is. I concur with Robert Frost’s draconian opinion about life: “It goes on.”

Conversely, sleep is as much a foe as it is a friend. But who can hate sleep? A patient, perhaps, etherized on a lonely hospital bed with an absent mind and soul; a widowed grandmother alone at home, hiding from old age; or even a youthful boy clinging onto his blanket-shield to evade his fears of a dark bedroom.

I’ve never been a spiritual person. Sometimes, when my story leaks to unctuous others, they talk of incubus and spiritual attacks with perverse conviction. That Satan had been summoning demons to intrude my nightly relapses. I know, in all earnest, that the events that took place were far from the norm. But I can never judge if someone was trying to “tell” me something; a human, a demon, an angel… maybe even my own conscience had something to say.

Yes, who am I to know? A first year college student, at the time, and I had yet to explore the strange world around me. It’s fascinating how after meeting only one person, all the difference had been made in my narrow world. Yet, I was still nauseated from the high school bubble—the social awkwardness and the criticisms for just being. I wanted to be alone, forever. I wanted to believe that life held more meaning—that I had more purpose to breathe the intoxicating fumes of Southern California than to die and have my ashes inhaled by some other living creature.

If anything, the experience only kindles my spirit.

Timekeeper

By ten o'clock, I said
to watch the time;
I heard the muffled sigh of evening
rub the grass fields that had been
licked by the sprinklers.
I heard your eye
insisting that it was only eight.
Tickled by my voice, it laughed at the sound
and fanned itself with two billowy folds of silk.
A white ribbon landed in my hand
after it rolled off your cheek
when you turned your face from the window.
I tied it back onto your neck
and wrapped the same cord onto my arm.
It felt like eight o'clock.

frivolous; levity - characterized by a lack of seriousness
salient - 1) prominent or conspicuous; 2) projecting or pointing outward; 3) leaping or jumping
docile - 1) easily managed; 2) easily trainable; "A docile dog"
demur - to make an objection

Lick the wounds;
scratch&smell it. Remember it;
remember how the dead skin wears down,
and how proud it is; knots on canvas,
bounding, trapped together.

Lick the saggy interpretation;
smile or frown:
"Happiness is a decision."
Tread in the sand,
imbibe yourself--
drown in each other; swim.
Balloon to the surface, with
appropriate detachment; nick the ropes
off colored air balloons;
let go-- let go-- let go--
Inhale, mesmerize. Exhale: trance.
Forget the little things (let go--),
forget the big things (let go--),
forget yourself (let go--),
forget it (let go--).

Baby Bird made an irenic proposal
away from the nested; an adamant
recoil from the twig pile, a yearning
to soar--off the unlidded cage--,
(never again) to relent to Eyas.

Fork, spoon, bowl, plate, paper, glass, porcelain:
disseminate. This court is in session; let the trial be--
(Oh, the pain. Nevermind that. We will continue,)
--begin. What did you see the other night?
Behind the pristine counters and knobs,
behind stiff waitresses with braces twice removed.
I saw on the glass door, upon walking in,
a snooty badge of hypocrity--two lines
converged and attached at the hip.
(Oh, the pain. Nevermind that. We will continue,)
Who handled you in the ostensible shine,
fit for the obsessive; glistering metal, flawless glare.
Tell me now; my mind begs of pencils and pens;
my body? Of bananas and bread.

3/1

Oh quaint and loving Jesu,
heal my battered wounds and morbid aphorisms.
Mend my fogged brain stem and stiff myocardium.
(I feel so hazy, like the white daisies
billowing on the hillsides--cloud-like.)
Ambivalent moodswings (perimenopausal, perhaps),
attract me to You like the chemotactically enamored
lymphocytes (with the immunogens).
Bless this bracketed heart,
Jesu--it's the soul of a nurse I must build
a rapport--a concord, a companionship.
(Perhaps a pedigree would clarify
the type of harmony I mean.)

I'm lost in the drizzle of the truth;
and it's more difficult to return
to the unlikeliness that is of You--Dear Jesu.

ideas

I have a strange attachment to music that I can only hope to express through poetry, eventually.

a poem that i felt needed to be written:

I feel like a tidal wave had just come and
glossed me over. (Sad, trite analogy.)
And look at me--musing since twilight to noon.
(You'd think I'd gone over it soon,)
but deciphering pixels through
an antique cornea:
over, over, over,
while feeling the same tremor
over, over, over;

Natural disasters had brewed twice in my room;
first was the monsoon. Then the paroxysm.
Then the gaze of the moon smited me,
and down I went into a funneled slumber.
I had only thought about the numbers. And
it hadn't left me since.

Peed thrice in the dead chamber. Tiptoed
my way to the pee hole everytime,
covering numbers. (then again, over, over, over),
and in my endeavors dreamt hyacinth myths
mondegreen scenes I'm CERTAIN was salty:
I hadn't heard it right. Nope. I cannot read. I'm blind
(when I decide to be).


I hadn't heard it,
but expected--
hadn't heard, heard, heard, heard, heard.
lubDUB lubDUB lubDUB lubDUBlubDUBlubDUB





so let us go, then,
you and i;
when the evening is spread out
blatantly against the sky--
like a patient
etherised
upon a table.

The edema I spot is mutual,
erect on my upper left quadrant.
Yet it haunts me and taunts them, lucidly
waving its skin like a whore--
its flesh sweeping and decanting incessant pools of glossolalia:
Less-s-s-s-s, small-s-sm-small, small-er!

the adulterous letter, my decrepit badge,
(rewarded by Hitler; the yellow star).

Flagged for greed, implicit of weakness;
the best consequence is that the women gossip
over tea. But not with me, and not with their boys.