#038/100 Chair

#037/100 Stroll

inspired by Catherine Singer's 'The Secret Life of Things'

blessing this morning year when the paper cranes shoot through mist:

blue coalescence, bat-shaped clouds & their eyes on the roofs

while we stroll past bricks, windowpanes, national flag

of a foreign country. your grey hair brushes against

the collar of your orange shirt & i cannot turn

in my summer dress to smile, or swap 

places on the sill to violate our fate.

#036/100 Fall

it only happens when you're a haze in a different sphere

i don't know how much deeper i can sink into air 

until your feet touch ground & i'd hurt & run

brushing past the real you.

#035/100 Heart

#034/100 Exit

#033/100 Light

#032/100 Wreckage

#031/100 Christine

for Christine So

when we first met she asked me where my ladder rested
& i said: "in the middle of my bed. against the window."
she told me i was a private person who found compass
looking out, from my inner center.

her answer eludes me now that i've seen her climb stairs
& slopes, her leg & biker gloves an epitome of balance--
her traces awash with colors of dresses, jelly & tiger balm
in rural villages in Cambodia

where women & children stirred. on her return she slung
a small bag over her shoulder: "i don't need that much
in my life except to give it away." the escalator speeds
from the border of our town

to where she finds her steps on quiet concrete, rhythm
ascending on Start Street. so i put a bonquet of roses
in her hand & say: "coz you're the girl who doesn't need
anything except love."

#030/100 Wall

I'm in love with a man in granular paint & he washes down the wall that I breathe. In the afternoon when water drips from my fingertips & bamboo sprawling to shield. At midnight he evaporates into vodka haze in a faraway place; I slip into drone to rock it, rock it like a tunnel pierced by canary. 

Every night I crave for the gun in my stomach. He does not know about it, for I have held him at life's length. Whenever he comes & sits in the light, I want to butcher myself to pull the trigger. Only then will he see the turmoil I live, in music of shattered time.

'Wall' is a variation of my post 'Retreat' at Meditations in an Emergency.

#029/100 Disquiet

#028/100 Emergency

your words crumble on glistening concrete to find
my fingertips on mechanical glow. shattered hour
& a murmur: "this should be a better way to go."
liquor's cradle, your shell a rocking reflection in
the windshield. despair opens its passage towards
those who don't share it. me, a gulp of composure
at the night's breakage. "i know you hate drunks."
the crash would float above fire, remains in grey.
arm hanging to touch ground. to kiss your pathos.

#027/100 Waiting (II)

#026/100 Corner

#025/100 Nightmare (II)

Included in Language > Place Blog Carnival Edition #8

Inspired by Janelle Stone's 'Reflecting'

she wades cactus-shaped reflections in the mirrored glass.
the pedestrians are living souls in her fargo & she is
a statue haunting a foreign city. the road signs say
'Go' to where the snowflakes fall like paw prints,
away from light, from the station clock ticking
to traffic. she would never shed the granite
to taste her flesh which nobody sees.

#024/100 Escape

#023/100 Green

people say plants grow better if you talk, play music
or sing to them. i have only muted songs, pure touch
to moist dirt after a thunderstorm. tearing dried leaves
off the stems, i wonder if they hurt--do they eye me
with distance, or do they shake into their new lives,
ferocious spirits in my hand? i inherited the plants
from the ghost couple who haunted my rooftop until
they ran out of songs to sing. no one else, living or
dead, will share their stories with the plants & i hope
they are happy to have me.

#022/100 Score

Inspirations: Night Seventeen by Claudine Metrick & The Sketch by Tomasz Bednarczyk.

for the first time in years i wish there was static on a TV to distract me
the moment i walk into my home. a mistake, a broken vase beneath
the silver blind, a shattered surprise to give name to my seclusion.
but all i find is the score clashing into itself, merciless reminder
of that dream prison--in music, in the night's paint of an abyss
cracking in a wild scream.

#021/100 Shadows

i untangled myself from your muted trap:
accidental, dead at the branches crawling
outside my window. you haven't noticed
my disappearance--i have lost all form in
your new life, love unfolding by the lake
on the fingertips of another. nothing more
than a splitting shadow of your past self,
to be discarded.

#020/100 Heat (II)

#019/100 Doorway

#018/100 Nightmare (I)

she walked down the Brooklyn Bridge, an oxidized statue:
jade, black & light grey through the snow. i cannot tell
the rust from her scars, solarized from days long gone--
her reeling on the platform, amidst woolen coats & hats
& an accordion imploding beneath the sign which said
'34th Street'. 'take me away from here and take me back,'
the music cried. in the crowd she kept her disguise &
moved along until she saw the sun. but the crossroads
led nowhere but yellow taxis & snow on the pavement.
'you stepped on me, bitch,' a fat woman shouted &
pushed her. scraps of metal were falling off her onto
dirty footprints--she could not feel her tears either.
they blended into the rusted cracks down her body,
leaving a dark brown trail in the snow. here came
the Brooklyn Bridge, flashlight & faded bloom
of strangers. there must be a place where
she could hang her mind, while the stone
of her dissolved & faded.

Inspired by Janelle Stone's photography.

#017/100 Heat

heat rips us apart into fragments. he tries so hard
to string himself back together, a puppet baptized
in dirt. at every creak i snap my fingers & watch
him sink once again to the ground. his limbs split
open--his arms, then his legs--& the crack dives
deep into his crotch. 'there must be better parting
words for you to say,' i reach out to draw a few
circles in the air. but his eyes are already popping
out while he shakes his head, a tad too violently.
'no, no, no,' he mutters & turns into a scramble of
paint, glass eyes & shards of wood. so i put my
flesh & skin back on & walk off. i have not laughed
so hard in a long time.

inspiration: COH - Near You

#016/100 Folly

#015/100 Waiting

#014/100 Alloy

he's an alloy of blades & a cigarette between his fingers
a scarred wrist on his knee. she has shaved her legs &
kept them closed all night--if they touched her pussy
would turn into orange peel, torn, scruffy & dried.
nothing can save his inferior breed of manly charm--
trembles in glow, slashed words at every turn of
her face: 'you're the exact opposite of what i desire.'
the iron fails to brand, to torture her into submission--
his hope, flung open, crushed like dirt. not her body
like a red feather. she will not sink. so low.

Inspired by Day 13, Day 12 & Day 06, photography by John Timmons.

#013/100 Bench

i want to stop running up the slope & sit & stuff 

my face with oil-based red or butcher my stomach

through my navel. my dissolved journey home &

home is nothing more than a glimpse of that 

fucking park bench gushing down to quench

my hunger. everybody who has a good heart

should love me except i cannot love them back

on the edge of the ceiling lamp so charmless--

we are all solvent. now sit, watch, wait &

you will not cross the line unless i tell you to &

i will dive down the muddy drain instead. 

#012/100 Unborn

She would put her eyes on a plate & hand it to him. Even the blood dripping down her face would taste sweet, the new-found blindness & its microscope, into a world that vanished. 'Here,' she would say, fumbling until he caught her hands.

Her hands were wings; they broke & she landed where she did. 'Here,' he says, leaning back in the light. When she turns to look at him, she is a bird sewn-shut in fright, diving into the lava of unborn love. She can no longer flee.

Check out Dorothee Lang's image and Susan Gibb's story about Freedom.