alone is a house

please don’t say it
don’t
speak
don’t recite 
lines
for my sake
for the sake of
you’re counterfeit
i wish
at least
my chest is glowing
for someone
for ghosts
but everyone
every ghost
is you
i wish
right now
at 
least
that’s all

sofa

i live in a small white apartment in a small white apartment building with a small white apartment neighbor who screams loud black obscenities to his tiny purple wife at every hour of the day no matter what color those hours are and honestly i would like to take my frail red fists and sock him in his stupid small white face but i don’t believe in violence and i don’t want to think about Lance H. Robertson Who Is Not A Nice Man any more than i already have to. my apartment is full of my life and if you were to take a peek inside you would say “khuyen, your apartment is an empty mess” and i would say “yes, exactly” and be unsure for the rest of the day as to whether you understood me at all. my apartment is an empty mess. my apartment is empty, and a mess, because the mess is on the walls, and the emptiness is on the floor and in the air and in my heart which i like to keep tucked away in the cabinet under the drippy sink so as not to disrupt it’s empty beat because it is a very important thing or at least it is to me. in my apartment is a sofa that i found behind a tall green apartment building that is not mine but there is a very pretty man who lives there and he lets me visit him and his name is Thomas Thompson Ygetti The Man With Many Thoughts and he has 2 cats and is 72 years old as of this sunday so behind that building is where i found the sofa. my beige sofa is of utmost importance to me because on the upper right corner is a giant yellow splotch of paint and if you flip over the cushion underneath the splotch of paint there is a love letter in thick black sharpie written to Dear Jean from All My Love Kevin. the love letter says ”Dear Jean - Thank You Forever For The Good Dreams And The Extra Day - All My Love Kevin”. i know this is a love letter because it is from All My Love Kevin who lived in the apartment above Thomas Thompson Ygetti The Man With Many Thoughts and went to art school and he greeted everyone with “what’s good” and had a dog named Albertini The Great and Dear Jean was his girlfriend with braids in her hair and they were the most in love of all the in loveliest love people i have ever met all before All My Love Kevin shot himself in the head. when i want to cry i flip over the right cushion of my sofa and i sit on the coffee table which is made of plywood and not for coffee and i reread the love letter and water comes out of my eyes.

i am not an arsonist

I did it so I could be free of all this nothing. So that I could feel things when I’d forgotten how. The things I felt before were not my own. Force. I could feel heavy, heavy, footsteps coming down creaky halls. I could feel sandpaper hands crawling all over me, no matter how many times I told them to leave. I could feel an angry empty chest that felt nothing at all. I couldn’t say he deserved to die. I just couldn’t say that. I would never say that. But I can’t say he deserved to be alive. I can’t say that.  I’ll always remember his ruthless hands. I say I couldn’t feel, but it wasn’t me. It was him. He couldn’t feel so he made me feel for him. Do you know who wants to feel those things? Nobody. Nobody would, nobody ever. And now nobody will. I will be the only one to ever know his touch. He is gone, and I don’t regret it. I don’t know if anyone would understand. They wouldn’t, I know. I’m not a criminal. But seeing that smoke, those pillars of hatred, I was full of feelings of my own, thoughts I was never allowed to have. Things I never knew I was able to feel at all. Flames reaching higher and higher, consuming memories I couldn’t wait to get rid of. I couldn’t stop watching. I kept my eyes on those spires reaching towards the sky, and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

leslie

This is the story of a lanky young man
Who never broke rules & never broke crayons
And every night before going to sleep
He counted people instead of sheep
One fateful day in the month of June
His mother walked in, 3 hours til noon
She spoke “Leslie, boy, get out of bed,
Or you’re going to dumb your smart young head.”
Leslie replied “Oh mother, you’re right!
But I can’t get dressed until I leave your sight.”
So his dear mother left & Leslie arose
So very prepared to put on his clothes.
For every night before resting his eyes
He organized his outfit by shape, colour, and size
For every shade of the rainbow there must be one thing
Or poor Leslie breaks down & drips out saline
So when Leslie stood up and gazed at all that,
Where in the world was his bright orange hat?!
“Mother!” he screamed, and his mother waltzed in
And the sight he then saw felt like needles on skin
The whereabouts of his orange hat were now plain
It danced upon his mother’s brain!
Leslie fumed “Take that hat off your skull!”
His mother replied “Leslie, baby, doll…”
But Leslie kept going, his whole world askew,
“I cannot believe how low you have stooped!”
Leslie screamed & screeched & wailed all the more
Finally curling into a ball on the floor
The poor boy wept & sputtered out a last phrase
“from this day forth I will only wear grey.”
 

———

that’s probably the only upbeat poem i’ve ever written

recluse

trees. i could climb trees. i could climb to the top of the tree and let the sky stare down on me. the sky is nice, he could look at me all day and never have anything rude to say to me. sometimes he shines, sometimes he cries. so he’s a lot like me. sometimes he’s just grey. he’s a lot like me. but still, i avoid him, so we’ll never be friends, and i wonder if he still even thinks of me as an acquaintance. he must think i don’t like him at all. he probably talks to the moon and says “autumn? oh, we had a falling out.” but in fact, i like him a lot. he’s very beautiful, and so is the ground. what a pretty couple. but i don’t see either very often anymore. instead i see walls. walls are very rude. they’re nice to your face but stab you in the back. they’ll get dressed up all pretty so you’ll think they’re safe. walls speak in a small hushed voice, so seemingly innocent and sweet. “autumn, autumn, please don’t leave, we love you, we need you, oh please stay.” and i do. i stay. though i know it’s a lie. the inside walls coo “you’re safe with us” and the outside walls scream “we’ve got her now!” some are different though. a few outside walls don’t feel the same. they’d like to turn to eachother (if only they could) and moan in unison “oh how we miss her pretty face.” and the ground would chime in “i miss her touch.” and the sky would reply with a sigh, “i know.”

winter

I found you laying in snow that was the whitest of whitest of white. Your body was as cold as your father’s heart, if not even more so. Short grey puffs of air floated out your mouth as you gently exhaled, and I just stared. I stared at your life escaping your mouth and your chest didn’t look as opaque as it should. I brought my face down to hear your heart fluttering in it’s cage.  I kept it there. I was there for what was a long time to me, but a short time to a watch. No clouds flowed out from between your progressively blueing lips and the soft ticking in your ribs ceased. You were still, serene, you matched the snow perfectly. I didn’t want to move. Maybe I was imitating you. My hands were growing numb in the cruel december air. By the time I clasped my fingers with yours neither of us could feel it at all.

red

It would have been obvious to anyone else, had they been there. It was easy to see. When the wolf’s gaze met this young girl, you could just tell. She was the most beautiful piece of existance he had ever had the pleasure of coming across. There was something about the long slender fingers of her mottled hands, grasping her basket so sharply you could be sure the wicker was giving her one thousand tiny splinters. There was something about her coarse ebony hair, flowing into rivers around her sickly arms. There was something about the way she reached up to her shoulder to awkwardly caress the gleaming velvet of her long scarlet cloak. And as he kept his frost-bite eyes locked on such wistful beauty, you could just tell. You could tell that he didn’t love her at all.

quiescence

 When I found you it was dark, so incredibly dark. It was darker than night. It was darker than an absolute emptiness, darker than nothing at all. It was as if all electricity and fire were outlawed, it was as if someone had angrily wrapped this whole planet in long black sheets in an attempt to keep us hidden from even the smallest ray of light. It was darker than absolutely nothing, but it was very much something. In fact, it was so much something that I don’t think I will ever feel something with so much somethingness ever again. Your body was so cold it almost hurt to touch, and such a ghastly pale…cadaverous, is what you were. And you know, that’s what I thought you were, truly. A cadaver of sorts, I was quite sure you were only a body with no life left in it…but maybe that’s what you always were. No, no, no, it’s wrong. That’s all wrong. You were full of life, the most full anything could ever be. However it wasn’t your own, it was mine. You were full of my life, because you were my life. In fact, you were so full of my life that I don’t think I will ever find anything so full of that much fullness ever again.

            It was September. Perhaps. Perhaps it wasn’t. I do not care for the flow of time, and have long strayed from such painful things as clocks and calendars. All I know is that it felt like September. Perhaps. Perhaps it didn’t. It at least felt very much like how I remember September would feel, which is listless and reticent and a bit dreamlike. A dream you are unsure of having, a dream of dissasociation, a dream where you watch yourself like a film you begrudgingly agreed to see. And so that is what I did, I watched myself find you; I layed my dreaming eyes on me as I layed those sleepless eyes on you. Had I even thought about it, I might not have tried to lift you at all. But I didn’t think about it or think about much of anything, because surely I was dreaming. So I continued to stare at myself as I acted without my full consent. Somehow even with my body as malnourished as it had become, I managed to drape you over my hunched back. And I left. I drifted farther and farther from the junk heap, I stumbled closer and closer to what I had been reduced to calling home. Your body against mine felt like frostbite. Your cold grey arms dangled over my shoulders, the whole way feeding dust to the wind.

translucency, a fear of mine

it wears, once white, once grey, it’s gone

the realistic is

you never were

the realistic piece

of heart you had

but didn’t have

a beat of yours

you held, the last, the only, the one

it was mine

and mine alone

i held you high

and high you fell

or was it me

who broke, with you, the false, the fake

and all this time

so solitarian

a belief of two

without

a one

viscera

along such streaks

of unknown roads

amidst a swamp

a love will grow

caressed with mud

and hands of toads

unruly love

kaleidoscope

of mess and twigs

unsightly woes

disastrous

love

you overflow

across our lines

into our homes

amidst our viscus

you dare impose