Always just saying

A father is not

just the giver of x or

y. Why is that hard?

The looks on our faces give it away

as we, my cousins and I, all notice

our fathers are gone now many a day,

following their lives with little remiss.

We search the party, crowded rooms and see

laughing kids, smiles we once wore long ago

before our dads started new families.

It gets better with time; the hurt does slow.

We leave it behind like they left their pain –

right away, so there’s not telling whether

it’s still there or it’s the numbness we train

ourselves to feel, yet there’s still that tether.

But we’ll know, when we become parents too,

to stay true and do things we thought you’d knew.

we are eating

the bún that

mom

spent the morning

cooking

at the dining

table

with one more black

chair

than we

need

or ever did

need.

What was it?

The bearing witness to

it, seeing it all fall

apart.

The new life, other foods, and different words.

The stresses of day after day that revealed how

you couldn’t be as strong as our Mothers.

* Originally submitted to Threads of Memory, an anthology of Southeast Asian poems, on March 16, 2010.

Untitled #04

All of your pretty words don't do a good enough job at hiding the ugly truth. They are lacking depth.

But I just want to find some sort of understanding here. Anything that will last longer than the skips and flashes in our heads.

A feeling. Why won't it wash over? Gah, why isn't there escape, or at least pause, from all these pre-programed imaginations?

I want to create something new that isn't created merely because of routine. I want to inhabit a moment free.

Is there time?

At times

I forget to smile and laugh and live for all the people who cannot.

Or who forget to as well.

And maybe that will re-mind them to again.

rend me

Some times,
I
don't know which is worse:

the feeling that I can no longer have any meaningful impact on the world, or

the feeling that the world and all its pretenses have
so
broken my spirit that I feel that way,

even when I know it's not true.

thanks

The rain sits down next to me, asks me for a light.

I'm sorry, but I don't think it'd work with you here.

A fishing pole throws its line into the puddle forming near the bench we are sitting on.

It's no problem -- I get that a lot. Hmm, wonder what's being fished for.

Splashes surround the puddle. Out jumps a fish, a scaly green and shallow purple. It flips from side to side, playing a crooked hopscotch, until it plops up and starts walking toward the pole.

Thanks for the lift! I appreciate you coming to get me on such short notice.

The fishing pole retracts its line, making a whirring noise that seems to say "You're welcome."

It is, after all, the holidays.

Mark it

Green is the new HD.

And HD was the new Extreme/Xtreme.

A Green HD Extreme product would sell like seashells by the seashore.

Pourquoi? Parce qu'il combine trois types d'excellence (the eco-friendly one, the state-of-the-art one, and the edgy, dangerous kind of cool).

Untitled #03

He's an excuse.
A pseudo-
in
tell-
ectual recluse.
Please excuse his reclusive behavior as it
excretes prof
use
ly
through the airy
juices.
Wishing around
for

She is a hymn.
Impossibly invading
our innocent
instincts.
We are lost in the taking,
sin of scents,
of inks
left on leaflets of day
dreams.

Day
break fills with
laughter and when
night falls,
he falls
a
sleep,
without a thought about him
self.
She lays her
self
down,
ful
filled.
She laughs once more
for good measure.

navigating a wild stream

I'm almost done with Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and it is one crazy ass book. I am reading it and trying to make sense of it and it is challenging me with every turn to not get lost.

I keep asking myself, when is this happening? or who is this character? or is this the same character from before?. It's all thrown together and confusing the hell out of me, but I'm enjoying myself. I can't wait to finish it, go back and reread some sections to make more sense of them, and then reflect.

That was a side note. What I wanted to mention is that, while reading The Sound and the Fury, I got an idea. An original idea, although I bet if i did the research someone has thought of it before.

My idea is to use some canonical work, like the Christian Bible, one of Shakespeare's longer plays, Invisible Man, Ulysses, Catch-22, The Great Gatsy, one of those "great" books and write a story using all the words in one of those books. I'd get a computer to get a count of how many times each individual word is used.

And then I would plan and outline and I would write a book, using the exact same words from another book.

Would that be art
plagiarism
intellectual dishonesty
literary ingenuity
or perhaps a bit of everything?

Has it been done? I'm not sure, I'll look into it.

But yeah, that would be an interesting oeuvre, something original from something already a fixture.

I got that idea while I was reading and saying to myself, where the hell did he get that from? or why does this make very little sense?. I like it though, that ambiguity. That discomfort is great and has me all sorts of feeling weird.

Livid lipid

I am saturated
fat

An exercise in
heart attacks
A motion across the salty
ocean of my luscious lips
with tortilla crisps chipping
away at cactus dips

A trip down your intimate tunnels and byzantine canals
funnels me to an organ most banal
your beat, beating heart
priceless, worthless, priceful, worthful
and I will take my cymbals
and not give you the satisfaction
of hearing them crack, hiss, crash, grunt

Rather, a series of clamps, of heartbreaking
pinches, unnerving, out muscling,
intruding
How rude, I know
but that's food, now go

and eat me again
and again
and a
gain

We spin miniature chairs,
burn furnaces below ground
as our elbows grind on dusty
furniture.

Talk tanks of tachyons into
taking taffy toward
Tallahassee
to tame tangerine tigers.

Except
of course, there are no
feisty felines to be found
floundering in Florida.
We flaunt their falseness.

Put on more wood
this fire needs food
this

Basketti and Bballs

Yum goes the net when our shots are all wet,
"It's been days and nights since I been fed right."
We hustle and hoop to get that ball through that loop,
Knowing how it is when your stomach acids fizz
And there's nothing to slurp, just empty, hungry burps.

My friend Tony and I have known one another for 10 years this year, ever since the seventh grade. We only went to middle school together, but he's good at keeping in touch and even though we didn't go to the same high school or college, he's one of my closest friends. It's a good thing he's been the driving force behind our long-lasting friendship 'cause I'm horrible at keeping in touch. It's something I'm trying to work on so I can be a better person.

We hunger too, our famished egos know no surrender to
the taller, beefier, more practiced players, and we
feast on the succulent tissue of our opponents'
apple turnovers, forced oyster shots, and bricks of cheese.
We breeze by, pour on a little seasoning, bring out
the fine dishes, and cut -
cut into the fat, the garnishes, all the meaningless
bullshit, and get right to the main course.

Basketball is one of the activities that brings us together. There used to be skateboarding, but I messed up my ankle playing basketball. There used to movies, but the economy ain't doing so hot to be spending money at the cinema. There still sort of is computer and car stuff, but I'm more into the computer stuff and he's more into the car stuff. We sorta just keep up with the other's interest to be agreeable.

Our bones beg to be rested, our muscles burn like lactic acid
barbecue sauce bathing on a rack of juicy pork ribs on a hot
Southern California day. We sweat like we've got a fever for
even more of these gargantuan phở bowls that
make us perspire, funkily inspiring us to finish
our meals, at least gobbling up all the meat, just like
our mommas told us. And this weariness, this languor that
threatens our moment, is overcome knowing we can't
leave food uneaten, can't stop struggling for the
win, even when we've already
won. The fatigue instincts are chewed
up by our thirst for change. We are telling the
world: no matter how emaciated we look, or how ravenous our
appetites were when we began, we are here to
dine and to finish this. We will gobble while you wobble,
We will ingest with no rest, our voracity will unlock
as your ass is rocked, by us.

So we play basketball because it's fun, it's cheap, and it's healthy - healthy for our bodies, healthy for our friendship. And then sometimes, we'll go eat afterward and talk about things like, you guessed it, basketball. Not always healthy food, usually Yoshinoya, sometimes Del Taco or Rallies or a drink from 7-11. I relish it 'cause I know it's not going to last much longer. We've gotta grow up, gotta settle down, have kids, and be honest, hardworking people. Everything in its seasoning.

Untitled #02

On sand so soft I can't figure out how
It could make sense to step on such low sky,
These clouds are fallen, hiding from who knows?
As I go on, an imprint from my sole
Decides it'd like to stay; it's tired of all
My pushy ways. It wants a new reprise.
I'm too old now, forgetting what it's like
To be a young child, chasing after waves.

Ode to my towel

My towel, green as a forest, thick as a tree in summer, stares down sadly on a post, because I at most use it once every earthly rotation, if even that. My towel wraps me and dances a caressing tango on my nudity, shrouded in a hot fog of steamy mirrors.

You know me like a drenched basin knows a well. You dip in for a while, drawing water from me, hoping it will rain soon so that you can find fulfillment in me.

Like a winter cape I wear you in, the fur of your skin akin to the thin pinch of chocolate mints, a tint of December wind in your appearance.

I forget you along the way, cast you off and leave you hanging high to dry. One day, we'll fly again. One day, I won't forget why we went.

ergonomic pisces

Fish that fit
in dishes that sit
adorning the round table
just outside the kitchen
we ditched just a moment ago
to sew closed our appetites
a petite organelle in our body cell
semi-permeable like your hair on
a sea salt air day