What is it that stops a heart,
one that has already been slowed down?
What makes it yank on its own emergency brake
when it has already seen that pile of rubble
already driven around the junkyard in circles before
already pumped the hands that tried to salvage the scrap metal
that tried to recycle
that tried to digest
and abandoned the project when the scratches drew too much blood?
Sometimes the seat of emotion
has to take a seat
and it needs a cane to get back up.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
the uncertain future
when will your culture become a blessing
instead of a curse--
perhaps on your deathbed as you mutter
an unintelligible soliloquy heard only by
the particles of dust lodging themselves in your nostrils and mouth
and maybe God?
when will you know that he is "the one"
even though you stopped believing in soul mates long ago
as your heart deadened to higher orders of magnitude of passion
you are only comfortable with double-digits
yet you still struggle
to understand why romance novels reduce you to tears?
when will the breaths you take in
fill you with peace and joy
and release the despair that has knotted your stomach
into doubt about the order of things
and the ways they will never be?
instead of a curse--
perhaps on your deathbed as you mutter
an unintelligible soliloquy heard only by
the particles of dust lodging themselves in your nostrils and mouth
and maybe God?
when will you know that he is "the one"
even though you stopped believing in soul mates long ago
as your heart deadened to higher orders of magnitude of passion
you are only comfortable with double-digits
yet you still struggle
to understand why romance novels reduce you to tears?
when will the breaths you take in
fill you with peace and joy
and release the despair that has knotted your stomach
into doubt about the order of things
and the ways they will never be?
Saturday, May 4, 2013
cracked shell
"disturbing news from a foreign source"
you are fated to receive.
You are addicted to this horoscope,
this evil fortune cookie, because you
cannot stand the anxiety of uncertainty
you read greedily, hopeful for something better
than yesterday
when you are so isolated behind the bars
of your brain
every source is foreign
and all news is disturbing
you are fated to receive.
You are addicted to this horoscope,
this evil fortune cookie, because you
cannot stand the anxiety of uncertainty
you read greedily, hopeful for something better
than yesterday
when you are so isolated behind the bars
of your brain
every source is foreign
and all news is disturbing
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Parrot
This experiment with mediocrity
tolls like a mournful bell:
rhythmic clanging at unpredictable hours
sunset
sunrise
Her name was Melinda and I was fourteen and she asked me
"would you rather be subpar at everything
or excel with a demon perched on your shoulder who
reminded you constantly of your imperfections"
I smiled with sealed lips because of that
crooked tooth I hide
on stage, narrating with nonchalance
(Melinda went to California)
that teenager could not choose
and decades later did not have to because she had option one down pat
and the demon of option two arrived like an unexpected houseguest
tolls like a mournful bell:
rhythmic clanging at unpredictable hours
sunset
sunrise
Her name was Melinda and I was fourteen and she asked me
"would you rather be subpar at everything
or excel with a demon perched on your shoulder who
reminded you constantly of your imperfections"
I smiled with sealed lips because of that
crooked tooth I hide
on stage, narrating with nonchalance
(Melinda went to California)
that teenager could not choose
and decades later did not have to because she had option one down pat
and the demon of option two arrived like an unexpected houseguest
Monday, April 22, 2013
#22: True Dat
I am God and
God is love.
--
prompt: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” –Hemingway. Write a short poem that is also “truest sentence that you know.”
God is love.
--
prompt: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” –Hemingway. Write a short poem that is also “truest sentence that you know.”
Monday, April 15, 2013
#15: The Bop
The young pale-skinned red-headed English teacher
(the thin one other teachers complained about for breastfeeding
under a blanket at the faculty meeting,
the one who inferred my fourteen-year-old secrets from my writing portfolio and kept them quiet)
blows her nose, how she weeps as we
write for the fifty minutes until the bell jars us awake.
Every so often I look up to her silhouette at the black chalkboard,
did she know someone in New York in those clouds of smoke and
panic and terror and frenzy, coughing up their lungs until there were no alveoli left?
It takes years for the young to understand the pain of their elders
Time passed and the bleeding, the amputees, the horror
etched into their faces like rushing rivers that make a canyon
echo, oh, Boston, we flirted for a mere few days before your streets
charmed me, and I loved your chic quaintness even post-heartbreak,
and this stomach weathered enough since New York to sink
and burn and spill its acid from my eyes.
It takes years for the young to understand the pain of their elders
I remember her encouraging handwriting
the wide cursive letters, friendly but elegant,
the angled imperfection of the stem of the "d."
Twelve years have taught me the depths of her love for
strangers.
It takes years for the young to understand the pain of their elders
--
prompt: Rules, Schmules
"Experiment with a poetic form. Break all the rules! Not sure where to start? Check out this list of forms: http://bit.ly/3JIt9K"
(the thin one other teachers complained about for breastfeeding
under a blanket at the faculty meeting,
the one who inferred my fourteen-year-old secrets from my writing portfolio and kept them quiet)
blows her nose, how she weeps as we
write for the fifty minutes until the bell jars us awake.
Every so often I look up to her silhouette at the black chalkboard,
did she know someone in New York in those clouds of smoke and
panic and terror and frenzy, coughing up their lungs until there were no alveoli left?
It takes years for the young to understand the pain of their elders
Time passed and the bleeding, the amputees, the horror
etched into their faces like rushing rivers that make a canyon
echo, oh, Boston, we flirted for a mere few days before your streets
charmed me, and I loved your chic quaintness even post-heartbreak,
and this stomach weathered enough since New York to sink
and burn and spill its acid from my eyes.
It takes years for the young to understand the pain of their elders
I remember her encouraging handwriting
the wide cursive letters, friendly but elegant,
the angled imperfection of the stem of the "d."
Twelve years have taught me the depths of her love for
strangers.
It takes years for the young to understand the pain of their elders
--
prompt: Rules, Schmules
"Experiment with a poetic form. Break all the rules! Not sure where to start? Check out this list of forms: http://bit.ly/3JIt9K"
Thursday, April 11, 2013
This is not a poem
I find myself waking up everyday wondering why I am doing what I am doing with my life. The feeling began to gnaw at me a few months ago. Now it bites me at night and I wake up to find blood all over the sheets.
I used to enjoy cooking. I used to relish the creative process. These days, my ATP is scarce. I'm in Guatemala. I mostly eat out of a deli. I bring the plastic-wrapped food back to my room and gulp down whatever sandwich I've picked. And then I breathe a sigh of relief, because I have avoided social interaction with the friendly Canadians and Koreans who currently share the communal kitchen with me and the hostel owner.
They're sweet, but the itch of what I haven't resolved pulls me upstairs behind a closed door and into a faux-solitude. I half-heartedly and unsystematically respond to emails. I close facebook windows as quickly as I open them. And I procrastinate on filling in the outlines that stare at me from black and white word documents, because I am afraid of what I won't write: a masterpiece.
People told me over the years that most MD/PhD students go through mid-PhD blues. They say it has a lot to do with seeing your med school classmates graduate and leave you behind to your life of fairly unrewarding tedium--you're typically still at the stage where things are not working.
That's not what it is for me. The wiser ones have told me about another struggle: accepting that many of us will just be "good enough." We will not revolutionize our fields, but we will be good-enough researchers. We will not be mind-blowing clinicians, but we will be good-enough doctors. The recognition has been sinking into my bones slowly, but I'm still trying to fight it.
There are dying embers of hope that I try to stoke in the hearth of my heart: embrace imperfection, this uncomfortable feeling of straddling two horses, and maybe you will again be able to craft words as easily as you did when you were ten, and the poetry flowed through your veins.
The child, imagination wild, possibilities endless, barely lifts her quill from the parchment. The twenty-six-year-old is lost in an open space, full of potentials, but confined in her mind, too worried about the future to think freely and scribble and doodle and make a literary mess.
How I miss that freedom.
I used to enjoy cooking. I used to relish the creative process. These days, my ATP is scarce. I'm in Guatemala. I mostly eat out of a deli. I bring the plastic-wrapped food back to my room and gulp down whatever sandwich I've picked. And then I breathe a sigh of relief, because I have avoided social interaction with the friendly Canadians and Koreans who currently share the communal kitchen with me and the hostel owner.
They're sweet, but the itch of what I haven't resolved pulls me upstairs behind a closed door and into a faux-solitude. I half-heartedly and unsystematically respond to emails. I close facebook windows as quickly as I open them. And I procrastinate on filling in the outlines that stare at me from black and white word documents, because I am afraid of what I won't write: a masterpiece.
People told me over the years that most MD/PhD students go through mid-PhD blues. They say it has a lot to do with seeing your med school classmates graduate and leave you behind to your life of fairly unrewarding tedium--you're typically still at the stage where things are not working.
That's not what it is for me. The wiser ones have told me about another struggle: accepting that many of us will just be "good enough." We will not revolutionize our fields, but we will be good-enough researchers. We will not be mind-blowing clinicians, but we will be good-enough doctors. The recognition has been sinking into my bones slowly, but I'm still trying to fight it.
There are dying embers of hope that I try to stoke in the hearth of my heart: embrace imperfection, this uncomfortable feeling of straddling two horses, and maybe you will again be able to craft words as easily as you did when you were ten, and the poetry flowed through your veins.
The child, imagination wild, possibilities endless, barely lifts her quill from the parchment. The twenty-six-year-old is lost in an open space, full of potentials, but confined in her mind, too worried about the future to think freely and scribble and doodle and make a literary mess.
How I miss that freedom.
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