If I could quit poetry, I would

I have a psychic friend

who reads people’s faces

we hadn’t met for years,

one day, upon seeing me again,

he said, “Why? You’re a poet now?”

there was regret in his tone,

so obvious I felt it stung me

(I wonder which part of my face

had changed “poetically” for him

to say that)

it was two years ago

when I only had a thin chapbook

of eleven pieces of rubbish

I was, socially, ashamed of

while watching my students

struggling with their exams,

I wrote a poem about sea of

rickety tables and chairs

cumulated in desperation with

little fish (the students)

jumping crazily;

my colleague, who teaches

poetry, asked me a copy of

the rubbish, looking at me

with admiration

[subtext: ‘don’t you have better

things to do?’]

love poems, rubbish poems,

a poem about a left shoe

a longing

still I can’t stop wondering

where it could go wrong

about being a poet

then, heartbroken poems,

why love seems so difficult

we’re sick of it if it’s too much

go crazy if it’s too little

too tiring but it seems like

we never really learn from

that that creates panic and tears

poems that cut –

an idea too un-American

they go against what my

creative writing professor said

“a good poem should end with

‘a light coming through the blinding.’

what do you call a poem that causes

its readers to jump to the river?”

I don’t know,

Gloomy Sunday?

chatting over the messenger with

a girl-friend of mine at dawn

basically killing each other with

mockery and dirty jokes,

guys around the globe, hair,

chests, and parodied love-making

rituals, joyfully, so it seemed

then at noon a call woke me

the same girl, weeping,

brokenhearted, telling me this

Fatal Attraction-ish thing

she’d just done in the name of

love

things like this

Aristotelian tragedy / comedy

in contemporary face –

a slanted mirror

if a poem can break, can another

mend? I know a couple can

not mine, I don’t know what mine

can or cannot do; I know how some

of yours are

then there’s Ted and Sylvia,

theirs are too fast, too burning,

deadly

on and off the paper

no, let's not be Sylvia and Ted,

or anyone with such

ammunition

is it so ill-fated to be a poet?

and then, in the shower just now

I remembered an idea of a poem:

cigarettes and me –

our 'relationship' – how it feels

smooth, certain, and everlasting

kind of on and off but

everlasting

‘would it be much better if people can

love each other secretly forever?’

mmnn… it would create another

problem with consequences so scary

I quit the idea

still perhaps I can learn a thing

‘no rush, take it slow, let it flow’

…but it’s not exactly the same!

yeah right, to be a poet

what world’s problems can you solve?

if I could quit poetry, I would

2007

Every time I sit there

every time I sit there, smoking,

I have some thoughts,

rambling and pastel,

merging with the weed flower

the crows in the sky,

and the dull rooftops.

I’m ashamed, you know,

seeing those cigarette butts

decomposing

with the dead copper autumn leaves.

what would I say to sanity, for instance,

or to my old green veins which

seem to get along well with the

purple yarn of my cardigan?

it’s still cold, you see,

and having a cup of earl grey

is as plastic and drunk

as the questions in my head.

no promises can be made here

but songs can be rewritten and sung.

I hate the smell of the smoke on my body

it always makes me feel, well, dirty

but it can stay there for a while

and when I speak, it’s in the same tone

and pace, the same amount of ellipses,

borrowed joy and learned pride, too

so it might as well be nothing.

I meet the water color version of you

in every coordinate of the cloudless sky

and the breeze, hatefully or playfully

(I can never tell, but it doesn’t matter),

blows the smoke back onto

my freezing cheeks and fingertips.

“what halts you now?” says the weed to Spring,

“the squirrels are nowhere to be seen.

is it the emptiness, again?”

the crows cry way up there,

the wind stops grazing,

I put off the last flickers, and,

for a moment, all that pulse

stop pulsing. haze.

“Save me some of it; this

madness should end somehow.”

and it does end,

every time I sit there,

smoking.

2006

you

until they melt

you don’t stop

in any way

you, there

and nowhere

until they end

you thrive

wants don’t stay

longer than

heartbreak

you brush

this chapter

on and off

until I simply am

a symptom

wet soil

on your sole

one rainy day

you stomp,

leaves fall

until I subside

dew on your window

wounds healed

and opened

by love poems

minds tell stories

then believe

then sleep

and dream

then forget

inanity

until a night walk

wakes me up

to revive this

until I dissolve

in light

lightness

you breathe

you stay

you

2006