Letter From an Old Poet

 I

Day two thousand 

one hundred and ninety-one.

Our little blue marble

has made one modest revolution 

around our honey-sweet sun 

since this 900-square-foot home

fell into our eager laps.

The walls have learned us

the way our abandoned stadium once did,

though we are forbidden to mark them.

They’ve basked in the scent

of butter popcorn on nights we devote 

to serial killers and sitcoms.

II

The floors know our heavy tread,

have grown attached to our cat mats. 

The marred glass coffee table 

with the sweeping legs 

(you hate so much)

has seen every cozy kimchi stew,

food delivery and late-night nosh.

The creaky blackhole of a couch —

now the dominion of a surrendering

palms up patchwork cat — 

has a gravity all its own. 

Beyond the event horizon is where

it stores our awakeness. 

My insomnia is inscribed into the cushions. 

III

It’s our iron anniversary 

and it never ceases to marvel me 

how conversations unravel between us

like a runaway roll of toilet paper —

with dramatic gusto 

and a blind stubbornness to keep on going. 

Your spark of intelligence and idiosyncrasies,

my curious creativity make our table tennis wit. 

Each flying orange ball is a new pun

brought to the table.

IV

This year saw our vow renewal to fantasy, 

to chance on a 20-sided die,

that we may live a thousand lives

as children of gods, meaty warriors,

cursed charlatans, and conduits of creation

before we lay our corporeal selves to rest

only to exhume our corpses for the coming workday. 

My artistic prowess is a self-effacing 

candle flame in your cupped palms.

Pride swells in me like a tidal wave

each time you breathe in my handpicked words. 

V

We are six years in 

and your touch has only grown more tender. 

I fit into your arms’ encirclement 

like they evolved to meet my mould. 

Six years ago I decided it would be you,

and we grew into each other with entangling roots. 

We crest the hilltop of our twenties, 

slide into the lates of them, 

shedding old skin cells of our youth, 

finding refuge in wine and song,

and still meeting for the first time

in every conjured newborn world.

Four out of Forever

I. 
Day one thousand,
four hundred
and sixty one.  

That abandoned stadium 
with the black rose perfume
wafting from the baseboards   
is a distant red pin 
on our creased, coffee-stained map. 

The years have been kind to us — mostly.
We have tightroped on telephone wires 
during the dark days, and fluorescent nights
when distance was not the only plague.
And once out of the allegorical cave,
I was reassured that you, 
my tall and lanky shadow cast by firelight
were not merely that. 

II. 
The shadow was not you, 
but it was yours. 
Tethered to you by the boot heel 
in the days of our bereavement. 
When you returned, ash at your feet, 
to reclaim it, it was like meeting you for the first time. 
Along with the gentle hum of your voice,
was the valley of your chest, 
on which I lay to gaze upon my starless ceiling. 

Your once immaterial hand was now secured mine 
and like the beginning, I fell asleep
to the whooshing of wind 
through the caverns of your lungs.  
And like an explorer, 
I discovered anew, the deep rumble of your voice,
the rippling aftershocks of your earthquake laughter,
your touch — softer than silk but as sure as a surgeon’s. 

III.
This year, we are twice as grateful 
yet, twice as existential
as we strap more age to our backs. 
We sometimes forget what youth tastes like,
though it still lies like an almost melted candy
at the back of our tongues.

We are house-hunting nomads,
with the hearts of gypsies.    
We sit in token candlelight,
drinking Tuscan wine and eating Camembert 
atop salted crackers and charcuterie.   
We exhume our old skeletons and talk of them, 
over the clinking of monogrammed cutlery.  

IV.
Now, I sink to sleep
and awake to find you’ve surfaced with me. 
We chase the hours and I, ever the stenographer,
have our every moment at my fingertips. 
I believe our cave days are over;
the world is bright and blinding
and if we take it together,
it might not be the Everest we think 
is beyond us.    

V.
I choose you like the sea chooses the captain,
like the moons choose their planet. 
Natural. Unforced but intended. 
As everyone begins to drift apart, 
overcoming their tidal forces,
and bowing to the Big Bang,
we hold fast in mutual gravity. 

Two hundred and eight weeks.

Two million, one hundred and three thousand

eight hundred and forty minutes. 
Four years 
and forever to go.  

Twelve, Four, Twenty

Day one thousand and ninety six.

I
It is day eleven and our blinding stadium lights
have been shut off, the scent of black rose
drowned out by the petrichor,
as the rain weathers the paint,
our little up-and-comer
does a three-sixty and becomes abandoned again.

II
It is day thirty-six
and my skin is forgetting your touch.
Two thousand five hundred and twenty billion
cells of mine have died and been replaced
and I worry soon this body
will not have known you. 

III
This year, I stand by the window,
a cigarette dangling lazily from my fingertips,
fingers-crossed my smoke turns signals
and the suburban breeze wafts into your home,
carrying my heavy sighs
that here only fall on deaf ears. 

This year, you pluck guitar strings
instead of brushing tears off my cheek.
The notes you sing come through the wire,
and for a moment, I forget the one I am walking on.

IV
Three thousand is why the trains won't run,
four thousand is why our cars won't start.
It is the modern dystopia building barriers
of brick numbers and cemented chance,
of chaos in the capital, of household prisons,
and all we have in common:
the rolling numbers, the music, and the stars. 

I still wake to see your face
translated into ones and zeroes.
It is a mere mirage of you
but my desert desiccated heart
believes itself to be beating beside yours,
next to you and
two hundred and twenty-five kilometres apart.

V
Time does not seem to have any bearing on you.
As they slander, abuse... forget me,
my pain shatters me, speaks in saltwater streams,
I am all empty shell and shattered stained glass memories.
You have been there to pick up every last piece,
grazing your fingertips as you dust gold between the cracks,
as if to say after this golden repair,
my beauty is twofold.

Take me with you on your wandering days,
even those you walk with your shoulders hunched,
head hung as you hold a map that has no markings,
as a million voices in your head
screaming which direction to take.

We have a home, you and I. 
It is not here, it is not now.
It will smell of spring and aged books,
down the line perhaps several thousand more days.
where my heart will lie down next to yours
and never have to move again.   

Ten Years of Age

The girl with her viridescent fingerprints
through her first act of life,
whose ground she has paced for a decade,
traces her fingertips on the teal fences,
that come away flaking auburn powder.


Her black school shoes
with chalk-white prints
gently graze the crewcut lawn.


Her checkered dress swings in the wind,
seeds of weeping love-grass
catching on the cotton hem.


The mid-week midsummer wind
blows a thousand needle pricks
on her molten milk chocolate eyes.


She plucks a stalk
and with the same fingertips grazed from the rusted fence,
ties a knot around the iron,
tethering her plucked, withering sanity
on the fence that owned her youth.

All By Heart

I 

The first utterance

whispered with the scent of

black rose mingled with lavender lingering in the wind,

seven hundred and thirty days forward 

and even road signs do not know 

of all the towns we have been to.

II

Last July slashed a gash 

that strapped years to me.

These trembling fingers 

that try too often to count 

the ticks of time I can’t take back,

and the saltwater that trickles down

these circles of twilight eyes 

and the violent velvet tempest tremors 

that take the voice from my throat

and leaves my chest a vacant vacuum of ember haloed gravity. 

You know them all by heart.

I read an almanac of secrets all mine in your watchful eyes. 

III

This springtime, our old stadium 

with the bolt scratches on the bleachers 

reopens for its last hurrah,

the lights brilliant like their lumens were of stolen starlight 

and we are somehow standing burnt out but star-bright,

our hands cinnamon dusted from building towers. 

You were alight with an ardent zeal,

as the songs slipped from your lips

all recalled and awaiting the strains,

you sauntered across the stage 

like it was yours to begin with. 

IV

I have been ghosting, 

been slipping in and out of daytime comatose, 

confused my soul with pineapple smoke,

pirouetting in a fog of fragmented panic and poison envy.

But each night I try drifting down to

our post-code and pretend the sun rises 

only when I want it to —

and when the illusion splinters 

the storms roam again like wild, absconding animals 

and I have yet to outrun the slithering snakes in the rising water. 

V

Still you have been the stronghold,

the anchor arms that reach meters deep,

into trenches alongside all my once-was’s 

that still prick in spite of time. 

You have built bomb shelters from

bricks of patient promises,

sanctioned in the reigning monarchy

of a soft disapproving polar bear.

In our den, I salvage enough peace 

for slumber enclosed in a hold

that will not halt winter 

but may unfreeze scarlet rivers

just long enough to relearn 

a little forgetting 

and the simple act of breathing.  

Firefighter Logs

You need to know
that while I don the gas mask
and fireproof jacket every smoky morning,
I do not pray for fires.

I do not french kiss the tongues of flame,
do not shower in gasoline rain.

What fireman slides down the pole thinking
“I hope the fires will be unquenchable this time.”
What dispatch personnel holds the radio thinking
“I can’t wait to hear the silence of lives on the line.”

I am no certified firefighter.
I do not pray for fires.

The Restructuring of the World

I am fashioned full of rhymes
and half forgotten things.
You are staccato bass beats
and immortalized memory.

And in the temporal symphony
of clicking heels and west tornados
all the dichotomies congregate
find marriage in harmony.

Luck likes the taste of us in her mouth.
We linger —
like mushroom smoke in the aftermath
haunting the rivers
and coloring the winds,
having an era named after us
be it a coronation of destruction
or majesty.

No Man's Land

I.
In all the hollow stadiums
never did I imagine it would be us by the vending machine,
cranking out old war stories,
eating expired skittles and drinking cold coffee,
our bodies silhouetted under the bleachers.


It was a sweet nectar, black rose kind of evening
and the fog made it seem like everything wasn't in focus.
It made it easier stumble into sinkholes
pretending that we were all along
puddle jumping.

II.
I could've told you then
and there were so many things.
But to you, I suspect they would sound like nothing but a sordid tale
spoken only to lull youngsters into shaky oblivion.
You'd take it for nothing more than folklore
and from my lips, even more fraudulent.
Not to mention the lack of trust I had for words during moments like these.


Because all that you have said, all that I have done -
nothing but wild reflections throwing cast iron heat in the daylight.
Through the breaks in the bleachers,
the sky looks down,
a tender gaze, a knowing smile,
the constellations spelling sin like G-I-F-T.

III.
You propped yourself up on your elbows
held the can to your mouth,
wincing as the cold aluminum paled your lips.
You planted a coffee stained kiss at my jugular
and pulled back only for me to lock my arms around your neck
and fasten my lips to yours, cold and warm,
a thermostat romance we knew too well.

IV.
I dread the lightening of the sky; in truth I do.
It becomes the dispelling of illusion,
the bottoming out of sleep deprived drunkenness into harsh sobriety.


The glass pieces now we use
to make picturesque iridescent tinted windows
will open cuts on our fingertips only when the sun rises,
only when your head hits the pillow,
only when you forget that ours is just a temporary world.


Like most things,
you can only start getting hurt when you start waking up.
Maybe that's why we're still here.
Maybe that's why we're hiding in abandoned stadiums
underneath bleachers that creak in the slightest gust of wind.

V.
I haven't slept in three days and counting.
It is such a cruel trade off.
It is in your presence that I feel the most at peace -
thoughts barely any energy to run free.
How rare it is for me to find someone I can fall asleep with.
And yet it is with you that I cannot waste the hours with.
You and I - we are already a dream. If I close my eyes,
the world will wake up with me.

Regarding the Overflowing Trashcan and the Ever Empty Page

I long for the day
when I hold fear by its beating heart,
feel its breath come and go
in the racing pulse below its neck,
when its legs are two stumps
finally incapable of pursuing me.

I will crush its windpipe,
pulverize its voice box
for all the lies it spewed
that I believed to be truth.
And as its vitality slips through my fingers,
the eviction will be official.

And in the extra space I will plant my ego.
and I will water it daily,
trim it should become overgrown.
I will have conquered one demon.

Drawbridge

At the end of it all,
you can have the door cracked open
time and time again,
expose the world inside for a minute second,
wear your outsider heart on your sleeve.

But it is never truly open
until the hinges break
and the wood falls to you feet,
breaking free of the frame and all.
There,
an open drawbridge
an open world
slowly blending into yours.

They do not belong to themselves any more.

You — 1.48am

It was all I could do —
holding onto your barbed wire fingertips,
your candy cane arms
beguiling yet, humane.
For all the agony that ensued,
it was all I could do
to swallow every burning bite,
force-fed and bloated,
metal crunching — bits and bobs
grinding my pearly whites
till every gate
was golden.

Izora

It was the scarlet rebellion
of a young woman.
Blooming she had an expiration date,
and plucking destroyed any further extensions.

And they negect to mention
rebellion simply means
not taking death with a smile.
And young is just a synonym
of descending into hell
with sweet heaven still
on the tip of your tongue.

This is What it is to Live on the Edge

For as long as I have known,
I’ve been on a precipice,
too far back to be called the edge
but too near to be just nameless woods.

Close enough to the end
to imagine rushing it to feel the rush
but far enough to feel like standing with you,
withstanding brash wind is even rougher.

The High Road Does Not Call for Tall Egos

Listen, tell them you are going to take the high road. 

They, with strings of pearls around their necks 

blood red lipliner and candy coated whistles, 

they will nudge each other in anticipation, 

thinking you will give them a show

thinking you will give them something to cackle about 

over cold tea and finger sandwiches. 

Tell them you are going to take the high road 

and as they are watching the trails for your footprints,

break right through the mountain. 

You don't have to scale with your nose to the air. 

Tunnels work just as well as modesty. 

Funny how even after how many times
you’ve torn at my heart
time and time again,
at the end of the day,
it is still me who runs to your aid,
massaging the soreness from your hands. 

To the one who will never read this,
to the one who has earmuffs on
whenever I am screaming your name,
I know you've been wandering the desert
so long that everything looks like a mirage
but I am as solid as they come.
And I might not be relief
but I am at the very least, refuge.
And if ever I open my mouth
and nothing comes out
it is only because I have already given you everything,
every word I know.

Roses are Red

It's been a whirlwind
since the last rose was presented.
It sits decayed
and getting less beautiful still
beneath pages rarely opened.

The Size of a Heart

Lean into me
and you shall know
the exact measurement
of the heart in this vessel
often equated to a lion’s.

The Human Race

Beads of perspiration descend.
I am in a forsaken race,
desperate to meet the finish line.
The earsplitting gunshot
echoed throughout the hollow caverns
and the people are off
with energy they bought.

The ground is harsh and hard,
those that fall sustain bruises and grazes,
upon the skin, upon the heart.

We all wear similar roadrunner garments
tromp upon the earth
to glorify or vilify forefathers and fathers.
The race is governed by fools.
Infuse your bloodstream with chemicals.
There are no rules.

What we all cling onto
is the childish hope
that the riches are reward enough,
a golden trophy doused with age.
But there is no first place.
And we are all running,
running to run, running to survive.
Because being abandoned
to camouflage in dust is unthinkable.

We all have to play
with our innocence dying slowly
day by day.
In the end,
with madness we all contend.

I Hope You'll See My Love

Note : I did NOT write this. But I love this. Hope you guys will too.

I have so many things to say,
But I cannot find my voice
Because you take my breath away.

I hope my eyes will speak for you to notice
As I wait in silence for you to notice.
That a craving soul has something to impart.

I am in turmoil awaiting your glance,
Yet again trying to appear normal.
While my heart flutters its loving dance.

Each day I endure as it passes
And maybe then you will see me
Until then I'll try to keep my feelings at bay.

I desperately want to place you
Between the pages of my book
And keep you forever, I really do.