My Future’s So Bright I Keep Sneezing

Writing down my problems to mull over,
oh, wait, that’s poetry.
My problems were just autocorrected
to pro elms. I wonder
what it means to be “pro elms” and who these people are.
Chinese periods interfere with my writing
just as much as the female variety.
My elbows hurt when I write
like this,
which is especially weird
considering my fingers can spew electronic ink
onto this piece of plastic.
What’s it mean
to not know the meaning of your memories?
I want to go away, or at least
a way. That way may be back, or it may
already be long gone. I don’t know
what I’m doing and why,
I just know that I’m losing
confidence, direction in life, patience
with not being able to think
of the words I want to say.
Fuck it, I can edit later.
As for life?
Bless me.

I had forgotten Shaun existed and myself as well

Looking through old poems
is like dusting off memories
and then sneezing.
You find friends and follies, the things you wished for
and wished you wouldn’t have, the things you ran to and from, as well as
archaeological finds like
the principal’s office at Central and
going to used CD stores in Minneapolis
on that one avenue you can’t quite remember the name of.
My life has been cut in two, like a cake.
One half is currently being enjoyed, the other
has gone missing.
That doesn’t mean it was enjoyed
but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t, either.
I’m going to go looking for that cake, allergic as I am,
and I’m going to enjoy the heck out of it.

变态

变态，屌丝，
一种宅女，
恶搞之家和手机编程，
不太正常的照片，
一会儿用中文，一会儿用English，
一会儿用你的眼睛来交际。
我还记得那第一天
在动物园儿的门口见到你，比我想象还好，
任何尴尬的感觉立刻消失了。
我努力讲汉语，你努力听懂。
我也还记得后来，胡同和面条，
你的公寓，你的室友，
好为人师的我谈论博客，美式橄榄球和六四。
然后呢，我还记得然后呢
因为你还记得看这个博客，
我还记得呢，
因为这些回忆还没结束。

Seeing adults deal with tragedy

Seeing adults deal with tragedy
is more depressing than the tragedies
themselves.
It puts my small problems in perspective
as I go looking for positive quotes
on the internet
and for reasons to believe that you’re not
lying to me.
They had all gotten over their small problems,
made it to the final stretch only to be
pushed down by some imaginary force
called life.
Life, why does it push us,
push us forward, push us down,
push and pull, push and pull, leaving us spinning
in a revolving door.

Rainbeams

How do people just
die? Is it like a computer, accidentally
hitting the shutdown button
instead of sleep?
Do computers have dreams
when they sleep? Does the internet
give them nightmares, like it does viruses?
Are we all just
addicted to addictions
and obsessed with obsessions, attached to an attachment
in the email you just sent me?
All this talk about loving myself first, working on
myself first, well, I’ve loved myself first,
I’ve worked on myself first but
what comes next?
Life and love experiences bounce within and between beings,
ricocheting without rhythm,
connecting and missing connecting flights
I’m planning to take, or which will take me,
far, far away, my troubles
getting caught in the clouds.

Shitbowl

They dropped me in the shit
and let me swim around,
a goldfish in your toilet bowl,
don’t flush me, don’t forget me,
don’t forsake me for fuck’s sake,
it would hurt my hand to write but it hurts my mind
to write this,
I’ve forgotten how to write, to type, to spell,
boil, boll, bowl,
I’ve forgotten how to be forsaken,
went straight to humble in a handbasket
held by someone, you, giving me the middle finger,
I don’t want to think of my memories, I don’t want new ones,
I just want this moment, here, now,
swimming and slimming in the shit

A feeling of disconnect, faint little flickers, like a radio signal popping in every so often. When it connects, I can feel it ricochet all about, a muted jolt, sending me awash. And then it subsides, and the dream picks up where it leapt off.

 

I can stare down old pictures and fill myself with song. I can send emails to glasses half full, but I can't send myself back in one piece, unopened, a gift to those who gave me everything. Home, the fainter it becomes, the stronger its fragments are, shining like stars, making up the only universe I know.

 

I don't know the way back or the way out. I don't know how I make these decisions in the dark, in this great, big swamp of mist and fog. Silence on the inside, and dewdrops on the outside of the car.

 

I feel can't feel clearly, I wish I had a guide I could go out and buy, like one of those yellow "for idiots" books. I would check out a whole library of them, and take the secrets to my grave, like those before me, and those before me.

 

Mountains of pressure held behind a cloud, held amidst a blue sky. What a wonderful facade it all is. The dream shall never die.

Waterfalls

I should've bottled up all that maturity
I thought I had
and saved it for moments
like these,
but there it goes,
down the stream and
into the river then
out into the ol' big blue,
better go swimming,
something about
staying afloat and growing up
makes sense together,
it's a message in a bottle:
it never gets easier, and sometimes
you need to be harder
on yourself.

Substantial World

Reconnecting with my emotions
like they're old friends,
it's awkward at first, but soon
everybody's crying
and laughing
and reminiscing about how long it's been.
If they could ask me how I've been,
what would I say?
I'm a material girl in a world full of substance,
I know what it's made of
but I don't know
what it's made
of me.

Twilight

I used to think twilight
meant something in the middle of the night
or after midnight,
I still wish it did,
something about the t and the w
twirling together,
clouds so dark that they're almost purple,
deep greys and blues submerged
in a void of black,
lit here and there,
nothing natural about it.
Here I am in the twilight, listening
to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
and swooning over Chinese girls,
"They're so adorable,"
I say,
my words bumbling and bumping
into bittersweet
in the twilight

Conscious

I've begun to become
conscious
of myself
growing up,
I can feel it,
it's surreal,
sometimes it feels good, other times
I write about it.
Every poem a growing pain,
I've begun to become
conscious
of my poetry
and when I write and don't write, and
why.
Why, that's the big question,
how and why,
but there's something to be said
for the who, what, where, and when's,
I need to be conscious of them
too.

A few more notes on dreams

I remember when I used to have
"shower dreams,"
when I was so tired
that my head, still half-asleep,
functioned in a dream-like state
in the shower,
sometimes trying on
in vain to continue the dreams from just
minutes before.
I usually only "dream" when
I sleep in, and not when I stay up late
and sleep in even later, but
when I get to bed at a decent hour
and sleep in a couple more hours than normal,
that's the magic hour—
that's when I dream.
I've heard stories that
certain foods cause you dream,
but I've been too scared to purposely
try them before bed,
something about manipulating my mind scares
me, let it manipulate itself for all I care,
I'd rather there be some magic to it,
let dreams be dreams.

CNN

Watching my ten minutes of CNN a day,
I want to tell Anderson there's a wolf
in the Situation Room, but I fear
he won't believe me.
Soledad,
I would've had your babies
if you hadn't already have had
seventeen,
ditto Andrea Mitchell, oh wait
that's MSNBC.
As for Fox, well,
I've never been drunk and gone to the bar
and picked up a chick
who I couldn't recognize,
but if I did,
it would be you, Judge Jeanie,
you could judge me all you want
and I would say I'm honored!

Not really scared but plenty of loathing in Duluth

My social circle consists of my computer, my keyboard, my mouse
and the cords that connect them.
Not so much a circle,
but a square—fenced off, top secret—
a myth yet to be busted
like Area 51,
a place where
paranoia doesn't run deep, it runs wild.

Buckwild.
Look there it goes,
running off in the hay of Kansas,
how'd it get there? Who knows,
not me, I'm still here,
my social life has become a zombie, self-aware
and self-loathing, more undead than dead,
an afterlife that haunts the living,
and an afterthought which haunts
me.

Nights with Lady Yunalesca

I enter the bedroom.
The Lady sits on the bed,
ready to read over to the scriptures with me again,
"How about we catch the sunrise?"
I say,
almost tripping over the rubble.
"Ha,
you're full of jokes tonight."
I sigh a small sigh
and shiver a small shiver,
the pyreflies wrapping up around the undead lights,
misgivings and fear spilling into the air.
"I'm not a necrophiliac,"
I protest, weakly, faint and final.
"Spectro,"
she says,
"it's
Spectrophilia,
and don't kid yourself."

Grocery stores

With everyone I know, I've gone to grocery stores,
whenever I go to visit them,
big, small, expensive, cheap,
different stores for different lifestyles,
I wish I could take them and put them all together,
a conglomeration of foods, locales, and people,
真的丰富多彩，
memories dictated by food,
digested, absorbed, becoming
part of you

Natural light

The orange plastic light, the dark cupboards,
the naturally-lit kitchen
and the snow piling up outside the window
over my memories.
It's Winter, when I can feel
them being compressed under
another year, another Winter,
when I wonder
if I can make new, naturally-lit memories,
instead of buying pieces of the past off eBay
hoping to put them together
like the puzzles in the screen porch,
snow and squirrels and chickadees watching me
in all my silliness...

The Brule's illustrious hat collection, I put one on,
one says it's 1994, another 2002,
the difference between the life I have lived
and the one I thought I wanted
is the people who have loved me
and those I loved back,
natural light shines when the snow comes down
and I can see clearly, what I have forgotten,
but not what I will remember.

Backpack

Pick up a backpack, it makes me
want to write, it makes
sitting in this room bearable, it makes me turn
on the Cinematic Orchestra,
it makes me realize there's a world outside of this,
places to go, take that backpack,
take my hopes and leave
my fears in the policies that got us into this mess,
I'm grateful for my car, I should use it more,
maybe I should get a job,
but does getting a job = getting a life?
Check the math, the arithmetic,
doesn't add up,
my hourglass of luck is running out,
I'm running out of Doe's on Christmas Eve,
it's cold, Christmas lights
and outdoor lights,
shining like headlights,
the wood siding of the house, so much warmth
and so many people inside...
The good old world had a good run, where do we run to now?
Pack a backpack.

Now and then

Girl at the Philly bar in Westwood, sorry
I haven't been writing,
not to you, not for myself, you
deserved better, I was coming off
the tail end of a Great Depression,
all out of that jazz and ain't got no swing,
I couldn't have known what was good for me
if it looked me in the eyes, which it did,
luckily it didn't hit me in the face but
oh, how I wish you had,
I wish it had hit me in the face then instead of now,
why is it always now instead of then,
why now?

My language

I couldn't hear the rain before I turned the computer off, maybe
it's a sign, I was already shaking my hand
in fear before I started writing
this, and as I wrote
the first few words of the first sentence I started
to feel cheesy like a dinosaur, this language
feels so big and clunky and awkward
after learning another one, I wonder
if it's raining
on the army of Chinese babes halfway across the world,
connected via the internet and OkCupid,
I wonder how much I'll edit this, I wrote in pencil
because I don't like pens anymore,
ink washing away in the rain, lead fading with time, there is nothing
permanent to record your thoughts,
I wish I could carve them into the universe
and let my inspiration flow freely,
sucking up and absorbing the debris,
the split-second—sometimes second decisions
that go into writing surprise even me and my pencil and those
millions upon millions of Chinese babes halfway across the world,
would it surprise them that I was writing about them,
would it surprise them that I know less about my own
language than they do,
that I know less about myself,
that I don't know when to stop and am too
chicken to go,
that I still can't help falling into nostalgia whirlpools
and feel the pain of having to learn my language.