Kokyu Ho

The believer and the skeptic said
they preferred not to hold hands in battle.

They once picked wildflowers together,
forded rivers,
climbed trees.
As they grew older,
arthritic kneed,
they separated.

The believer says they bickered;
the skeptic insists they fought.
Too proud to admit these untruths,
they grew apart.
"I keep you alive," smirked the brain.
"Isn't it the other way around?" inquired the heart.

The moment for reconciliation arrived suddenly:
the tingling hands of the one who drove them apart,
harnessing heat,
hovered.

The believer raced
The skeptic panicked
and finding themselves unexpectedly in the tight embrace
of fear,
they clutched each other's sweaty palms
and renewed their vows.

what they never told you

When every word matters, when there is a word limit,
they never told you how swiftly writer's block would strike.
Your typing fingers are constipated,
your mind clutches for words desperately as you sleep,
your legs thrash off the covers and you wake up in a cold sweat
blinking away the after-image of a computer screen.

You no longer remember the pleasures of paper and pen
those days of carefree spiral notebooks, privacy and poetry
replaced by deadlines and judgment
(these have slowly etched themselves into your forehead
horizontally
you never knew your reflection
would turn to hand over eyes, thumb and index rubbing temples
staving off the ache of words locked in)

A progressive death

There is no adverb
for living in a deathly way.

"She woke up dyingly.
She got ready dyingly.
She lived her day dyingly."

And then she went to sleep
--not the ultimate sleep--
but well aware that with every ticking second,
with every jerking second hand,
that there she was headed.

Time Comes Towards

Cool air, post-dusk air
A rambling mind sees the sky as black,
incessant black.
Drawn from the periphery to the center
a tingly blue.

I don't want to be afraid of you,
man with the swaggering walk
arm bones loose like jellyfish tentacles
your silhouette softened by your vulnerability
your gait so perplexing I can't tell
if you're walking away or towards me

My eyes play tricks
with your tortuous intoxicated path,
backwards,
forwards

I slow
I stop
I am still.

Simplicity is

Simplicity is

a head covered with a white plastic bag
raindrops pit-patting in unpredictable rhythm
infiltrating the cuffs of my sleeve

a dark blue plate covered with striking white feta
more than morsels left behind
radiating a guilty ambivalence

a sidewalk covered with animal crackers
blue-lidded container atop a brick row
sitting humpty-dumpty style

my hands covered with wrinkles
the smell of dish soap
nestling between each fingerprint ridge

Simplicity is breathing,
knowing that in the moment comfort is finally achieved,
all this must be given up.

"Pach'un tzij" is a Kaqchikel noun phrase that refers to a braid of words--or a poem.  Learning languages outside of our own cultures offers us new ways of conceptualizing the world.

Today, I basked in appreciation for this phrase, short, sweet, and poignant.

PhD life seems to be about crafting the perfect braid.  And likely it is only perfect to its creator, and only for a moment, because she quickly goes bald as the process of scholarly criticism unravels and uproots her meticulously woven strands.

This blog is for a different type of writing: one that admits to inelegance, but strives for beauty in the mundane.  One that recognizes writing as ongoing, processual, and simultaneously nostalgic, full of foresight and unspoken understandings--perspectives that cross the conventional boundaries of time.

This is, above all, an effort to write in the tight embrace of imperfection.