On Not Writing Enough Lately

I drink too much. 

I’m losing weight, I don’t look well. 

A fleeting quip about going from jaundiced to Jon dust makes me smile in the mirror and

I am alone with my recycling--with the bottles that stack up on shelves like books

Each with 750-1000ml of whispered prayers, swallowed regret, every murmur in between

I hope will reach across an ocean, translate into a language I don’t speak.

There’s no wind today. 

If I exhale hard enough, I can send these gallons of messages across the waves

to a familiar foreign shore where the ghost of a childless woman wanders, waiting.

If I drink enough,

waste away enough,

I can fold her shadow into mine and

tell her I'm sorry for not writing sooner.

Overstuffed Egos

Chipotle is run by motherfuckers. I was thinking about that today as I watched my all white office scarf down over-stuffed burritos as we dealt with financial aid at a for-profit school. This poem was going to be about that. It was also going to be way longer and better. It was a long day.

On a side-note, Chipotle "lost" one of our orders. It was giggle-worthy.

4/4/11 No Title Yet

She aced the English class on symbolism,

even though she thought it was a joke--

the concept, not the class so much.

By default the expert on any hyphenated-studies,

head of the class talking head with her mind

on defaulting--she got a part time job,

sacrificing, longing so, suffice it to say,

she was everyone’s Cinderella story fantasy--

mostly for worse.

Dad worked himself to death,

mom as the real racial other, unknown

with influence in two ways on veins;

Dad’s veins swelled from work,

pride swelled for his daughter.

He asked her what she learned at school,

in half truths she told him lots.

She never did a keg stand;

she didn’t have time for that shit.

Words in a Quiver--maybe that was too esoteric

NaPoWriMo update: I am Robin-Hooding internet in my apartment so my poem posts might come as weekly installments from a coffeehouse somewhere. Weekly installments of mediocrity. Be excited.

Backdated 4/3

4/3/11 It Gets Better Bitter

Some time in the near future,

A little Korean-American boy with his Scandinavian-American mom

(either Swedish or Norwegian, depending on the year)

will look in the mirror, both in their new red turtlenecks and say

“We look just the same!”

Later, he might ask her what she said

when other kids on the playground

called her mean names like

chink or slant

she’ll smile sadly, and answer as best she can.

Some time between puberty and

becoming a man,

he’s going to sit in his basement

working up the courage to slice into his

wrists with his dad’s scalpel--

endure the pain like a Samurai

(he doesn’t know what the Korean equivalent is),

let the lowest common denominator color

drain out sorrow he can’t understand.

He’ll never work up the courage.

Some time in college, he’ll tell a pretty German-Irish-French-American girl

“I’m basically white, when it comes down to it”

in a misguided attempt to get in her pants.

This will fail both immediately and

more profoundly, years later, when an Asian-American Studies class

shows him history is more than dates and dead white people.

New friends who look like him will

help him develop a pride of being, hope for a future.

He’ll make friends, influence people,

grasp a new American Dream of achievement,

walk tall until an ignorant old woman asks

loudly and slowly:

“DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?”

Backdated 4/2

Fuck You and You Stupid Bangs

There was that day we all died

(no cult bullshit, mind you)

when the make-shift wooden sidewalk

above

the

abyss

above, the pipe construction

that carries our waste into the

Mighty Mississippi

We fell, together,

finally united

a congress with air and impending doom

toward those pipes

carrying our shit and our toilet paper and

our pets we got tired of,

the remnants of the wood walkway falling with us

Above us, pigeons circled,

in our last seconds, we thought they were

startled by our noise but they had seen this coming--

they had sensed it for weeks.

Above us, they circled cooing a

melodic “fuck you” since this was

their sidewalk first.

NaPoWriMo 2011

I'm doing the NaPoWriMo Challenge again. It looks like linebreaks are going to come and go on this site. Maybe this is blogspots way of keeping me from posting poetry at work. I'm kicking it off with a poem about snuggles:

She likes it best when he

holds her tight, sleeping,

holds her to him like

she’s a handle in a storm, a

tree rooted in soil and history.

She likes it best when he

breathes her in, inhales

her scent and murmurs

prayers spoken in tongues of slumber,

holds her close again.

Rain plays rhythmic on the window

pane only sometimes,

she wonders what he dreams about.

He hides it best when he

sleeps, mind at rest, words

form and he smiles, thinking:

“I’ll squeeze the life from you.

I’ll squeeze the life from you and eat it.”

And then Jon lost all his blog-followers

TO: Politacally-Minded White People/Well-Intentioned White Liberals/Most Christians
FROM: Jon/The Cold Shoulder/Guy who's been called Chinese, Dog-eater, Slant, etc.

I actively associate your actions and identity with Sarah Palin. How does that taste?