just some old poetry

It’s a slow Sunday afternoon. I’m camped out at a cafe here in Strasbourg’s Old Town, trying to do some writing, but nothing’s really coming. Usually my Sundays are filled with packing up after worship, Explaining Faith, going to the mosque, and preparing my heart for a full week at the lab. So, it feels strange to have a whole Sunday afternoon with nothing really pressing to do.

It’s been two hours, but I think I’m going to give up on the writing now. It’s proving too hard and I don’t want to force myself to say things I don’t mean. On the plus side, though, my writing block did inspire some retrospection, and diving into some of the poetry I wrote back in the day (and by that I mean, back in the days of Princeton, when I had to write a poem a week for a class I was taking :P).

I had fun reading them, so thought I would share, because after all, poetry is meant to be shared and enjoyed.

This piece is about the way memories of our exes can haunt us at weddings.

It actually reminds me of a Black Mirror episode I watched a few nights back on what life would look like if we had devices that allowed us to replay any memory we wanted in full vividness.

As someone who loves reminiscing, I started the episode thinking it was a great idea, but at the end, seeing how a romantic relationship was destroyed by that ability, I now think otherwise. And this piece alludes to some of that. 

flickering but steady flames

mesmerized

I memorize

Wax gliding down, pooling

liquid turning hard, fusing

two becoming one

(covenant      ceremony)

seems like just yesterday

we were lying in those hammocks

you bought me strawberries and

we had a watermelon-seed-spitting contest

you won

and I lost

the feeling of my hand fitting into yours

and the way you brushed away my hair

and asked if you could kiss me

you disappeared one day. the you I knew

replaced with this man

of blank stares and jokes, like nothing

ever

happened.

(but it still haunts me)

the sea bass flakes into

my fish-sauce-fork

red wine burns my throat

I swallow

hard. and usually I’m okay, but it’s only times like now

when I’m staring at candles melting.

and somewhere between the kobe beef cheeks and amaretto flan

I think of

you

and wonder how you are

what you’re thinking

and if you’ll ever stop this crazy

amnesia

they kissed after the amaretto flan

and after the candles merged

two becoming one

and I clap like everyone else

so that no one else can see

that’s not really how it should be

I desperately want my heart to be free

but I remain here

(waiting)

Okay. That was a lot of emotion haha. Now for something lighter.

This piece is a Petrarchan sonnet (that was the prompt of the week) – a 14 line poem with iambic pentameter and a flexible rhyme scheme, although I don’t think this is iambic now that I read it. 

It’s about my grandmother, who chides me on not being Chinese enough and how I use chopsticks very poorly (hence the situation with the 小笼包 that leaked – a very, very sad day, indeed). 

Chopsticks fumble around an evasive

dripping pork dumpling. disgraced.

it’s only been four years, the murmured tea-pouring continues:

only four years out of the land of the oily woks,

plastic hose showers, and you’ve forgotten to perch

porcelain skin on poles of wood.

I breathe hot and my uncultured fingers tremble to the

clatter of blue and white bowls

Grandma, I wish I could read your eyes.

and you could tell me if I have your sharp eagle nose, or if salt

and bitter gourd go together – unlike your healing herbal soup and

my wooden tongue caught between

Walmart and these corrugated walls. I stammer and

you stare back.