Poetry Archive (中二病)
An archive of a voice learning how to speak, which holds poems I’ve written over the years.
The earliest ones are from my 中二病 (zhōng èr bìng, or pronounced chūnibyō in Japanese) phase.
A time of intense, awkward teenage passion. I’ve included them because they were the start.
This is a partial collection, from the beginning. My later poems will be on a separate archive for clearer segregation. The later poems show my attempt to refine that raw feeling. I hope my poetry became more mature, and clearer over the course of it all. But I’ll add them in the future, not now due to my current tight schedule!
I have a lot more to add over on this 中二病 Poetry Archive as well, but likewise; I’ll only add them when I have the time to do so.
Thank you for looking, and enjoy.
Same Constellation
Two men,
birthed from different suns,
different soil on the tongue,
different maps of the soul,
(could their hands meet
in the same light?)
Then how…
how could men
from the same well,
the same ancestral breath,
the same song
ever
draw
blood?
Failed Instrument
I weep with a pen.
I rage with my mind.
(transcribed into words)
I am immature.
A faulty instrument.
I cannot translate
the storm in my head
into the calm of my tongue.
I am slow.
A failed model of my own psyche.
A flawed iteration of this
God-given gift.
I write,
because my throat
has forgotten
how to shape
a scream.
Quiet Lie
others will swear
to find you
to love you
no matter the count-less seas
no matter the hun-dreds of miles
no matter the scat-ter-ring of mountains
(no matter the separation
of
Heaven
and
Earth)
But does it hurt-
when they know, deep inside,
that beneath the breathtaking language,
the beautiful poetry
(a lie)
(a lie)
(a lie)
The Logic of the Unwanted
no one
no one
would open their skin for the root
would welcome the thorn in the spleen
would kiss the hot horn of the empty
devil
i admit
i am
i am lonely
i chant for a someone
a someone who would
for me
(for me)
let their own instinct crack
let their own pulse slow
and be pierced
be pierced
be opened
(naturally…
this hand will not turn on itself.
the bone knows
the blood knows
to survive.)
how logical
how logical
how cruel a law
the very cell-deep will
that keeps my own flesh from the blade
is the very cell-deep will
that guarantees
i am
unpierced
i am
unwanted
i am
alone.
Ode to Being Used
a hundred mountains, and a hundred seas and a hundred more
hundreds of the hundred miles,
i haven’t touched them, i haven’t crossed them.
what am I? who am i? the memory is a stump.
(what did i forget?)
they severed me the world with its teeth,
the humans with their clean white teeth
gnawing, gnawing off a leg, a thought, pulled my roots
from them, and them, and them, and them!
i am less, i am less than the man who is not a man
a thing limped rootless a tuber pulled up and left to rot in the sun
a tool does not rise, a tool waits.
to be a tool is to be gripped, is to be useful in the hand that cherishes it.
to be a tool is to be loved, without having to stand.
to be a tool is to have a purpose, without having a face.
let the hand lift me, let the task fill me.
I will not get up; I will be picked.
I will be used.
A Breathless Thing to Be
I want to be a dandelion.
my history should be a short one.
only the wind, only the swallowing of time.
I want to be a thing without a name,
to be cared for not like a daughter or a lover,
but like a damp spot on the wall,
a strange and ugly mold.
I want to be loved without a heart,
for the heart is a rotten plum, is a tangled nest.
I want to be cherished for my ruptures,
for the way my skin is a poorly sewn sack of seeds.
Love me because I am just a body, a damp and breathing field.
Love me because I am a wound, because I am,
I am, and that’s a terrible, breathless thing to be.
Mother, This Body is Too Heavy
(a sliver of light in the mouth)
&the bright moon
&the shining moon
the crescent moon.
even a borrowed glow
can burn
in the coldest, loneliest night.
&
listen:
the cicadas’ static hymn
listen:
the stream’s silver thread
(this beautiful, beautiful life)
…is why the fall hurts
when beauty catches your ankle
a betrayal from a beloved hand
a wound wrapped in velvet
a beloved, beloved stabbing of the back
this beautiful cruel beautiful sublime rot
mother mother
this body you gave me is too heavy with feeling
take it back
swallow me back into your dark soil
I want to go back, i yearn, to leave this beautiful life, you hold sacred.
Hollow
My body is a stem that drinks air,
is a stem that drinks nothing at all.
I have no roots, I have no roots
They say a flower must have roots,
must belong to a patch of earth,
must have a mother that is dirt, dirt, dirt.
But my mother is the wind, is the nowhere.
I opened from a cut in the sky, and love me
for the emptiness below
love me for the hollow at my base
love me for the way I am not tied down
(not tied down)
love me because I could blow away
love me and become my soil
let me put down roots in you
let me put down roots in your looking
let me put down roots in your voice
and if I wilt
(if I wilt)
and my petals fall onto your floor
it is because I was never meant to last
it is because I was only ever meant to be held
By a hand that does not ask for roots
By a hand that does not ask for roots
By a hand that asks only for wilt.
All I Ever Had
i carved my name
into a stone
a deep and
bleeding
groove
i returned
in a century
of rain
the stone
was smooth
the only legacy
is
weathering
how cruel…
my name was the loudest
thing
I ever owned.
Some Things
Some things will never change
they change form only
because they themselves are formless
(a language a rhythm in the blood)
Will you understand
a people’s blood taints the dirt and is not washed away
The rain of empires comes the rain
makes the stain sink deeper
the roots drink they drink blood
Remnants so beautiful
a song a way of cooking rice in a millennia dust
but to last a hundred years to persist
to stain the ground
with your story is a miracle
a miracle growing from the dirt
a miracle that tastes of iron and salt
a miracle to cynical pessimistic me
The Kindest Water
The kindest water,
is the water
that drowns you.
I wish to drown.
Sleep, far beyond
an ethereal realm.
I do not want a hazy vision.
I yearn for the complete silencing
of body
and
mind.
I want to be far away
from
humans.
This nothingness,
this quiet amnesia,
is a kinder water.
Let me drift in your black boat~
Far away, from jackals.
Another Life
in another life,
could I smile; a real one,
that starts in the eyes-
and simply say,
“This is my mom.
She taught me that song.”
or
“That’s my dad. His laugh is too loud. But it’s mine.”
or
“These are my friends,
we have jokes no one else would get.”
with pride?
with a velvet-like happiness,
a yellow-tinted lens?
oh, but I’m stuck in a life
of which the seams are frayed,
where my love is a language
no one else has learned to speak.
Child’s Logic
I was a child.
I learned for isolation,
for freedom, for independence,
for the sake of being unbothered.
I have matured now.
I am confused now.
My avarice remains:
I yearn for people to leave me alone.
But then, why
can I hear
the silence?
It cries, and aches for a single voice
to fill it.
But then, why
do I yearn
for a person’s touch,
for a person’s warmth,
for proof that this wall that I have made,
has made me cold.
even a child knows its own hunger,
even a child cries for what it needs.
I have outgrown my own wisdom.
First Thing To Die
if this life
drew near its end
i would not hesitate
to have always been
this
i would not care
but for the slight
increased beating
of the heart-machine
the breathing
of the lung-bellows
the final flickering
of the brain-thorn
my mind
is empty
and is the first thing
to die
upon the news
the news that the world is ending
the world is ending for this body
this body that I was.
