I am the only Asian in this bar right now.
Be my friend!
I will check the box of your social diversity quota.
Granted, I only speak a mispronounced fraction of
my immigrant parents' native tongue.
Ala Jackie Chan, I do not understand the words coming out the mouths of anyone on that massive continent (Russia included) that I appear to be more or less from.
But, I do eat spaghetti with chopsticks.
I am mystical as
fox, or Kitsune, in Japanese folklore.
I can hit you with wisdom worthy of a fortune cookie as fast as Google can tell you that the Philippines is nearly 2000 miles away from China. I want to say I'm from an exotic island where they play basketball in sandals and drink soda from plastic bags- like, A-level material you could make a movie out of in Slumdog Millionaire fashion and get awarded for your romantic portrayal of poverty you think is three worlds away from home. But nah, I'm just a kid from South Florida. Paved driveways and cul de sacs. But I do pump both fists in the air watching Manny Pacquio PPV fights on a bootleg stream. Beyond that, I'm probably the worst Asian there is. Not the crazy rich kind with a PHd. I dropped out of engineering after one semester and cannot solve a rubix cube. I never learned kung fu. Though I'm learning to face the adversity of becoming a single parent after my daughter's home broke in two. I write marketing proposals to pay the rent and poetry to fight without fighting in the spirit of Sun Tzu. My eyes do not slant in the direction of your narrative. I once ran in a pick up game where I caught the nickname of Yao Ming. Yao, I am 5 foot 8. Though I fall short of expectation, I can still check your diversity box on the way down and do a cool pen spin after to punctuate my intellectual prowess. I also happen to own an assortment of Japanese swords made in China, which I intend to use as heirlooms. This is what cultural colonization looks like: me, in a bar, the last samurai standing confused in an age of melting pots, Korean tacos and Asian slaw made by corporate imposters with names like PF Chang. What in the slaw is Asian? I wish I knew!  I wish I knew the true value of my heritage to be worthy of carrying it forward. Like how my grandfather planted a Malonggay tree in our backyard whose leaves my mother would pick and boil to make tinolang manok -the Filipino version of chicken soup- as a weeknight staple on our dinner table. I can barely soft boil an egg for instant ramen. Or how my motherland's socioeconomic gap tooth smile is so wide that it drove over 10 million of its native sons and daughters off its shores to find work overseas as servants on cruise ships and hospitals to feed the families they barely get to see. To follow their trail blazing footsteps, let me be the second generation tipping point where some form of cyclical tradition breaks. That way, I can raise my daughter free of predetermined scripts. So as the worst Asian in this or any bar, cheers:
to being the first of a new kind.

we'd wake up and play with magic
like any other game of pretend
bath towel tied into a cape
we'd approach an empty plastic top hat
wand in hand
 
we were tapping into an ancient power
that we barely even knew
we've played a superhero, Sub-zero
and now, a miracle worker
there was nothing we couldn't do
 
we'd climb trees to the summit branches
as high as we'd dare to go
we'd lower the hoop and dunk with ease
alley-oops, 360s
sometimes in slow-mo
 
there was nothing but room
to grow and explore
frontiers of the imagination
seized on roller blades with plastic swords
 
we'd tie skateboards to the back of bicycles
and Jamaican bobsled down the street
we were free ninjas in the 90s
off to adventures no one sees
 
we'd front roll down hills like hedgehogs
we'd scrape knees
we'd footrace to the stop sign and back
to pretend we're going faster
we'd kick clouds of dust in our tracks
 
we'd steal bricks from the neighbor's garden
and throw them into lakes to see the splash
we'd throw pebbles to see how high they'd go
or paper planes from the top of the staircases
one time, we jumped off:
it was a dare
we did it though
 
we unscrewed the air cap from the tires
of our enemies' parked cars
we clapped back with super soakers
the block was truly ours
 
we'd play until the streetlights came on
with more discoveries left unseen
and in the shadows while sleeping
we'd play catch with our dreams

Mr. Hippo, you are 3,000 pounds. How is it that you are able to swim? Tell me, Mr. Hippo. Your legs are so short that your belly drags against the ground. Your head is huge, and your body is intensely round. Yet you are able to stay afloat and not drown. How is it that you are buoyant? And how is it that those stubby legs of yours can propel you forward in water?

Mr. Hippo, I hear you can run up to 30 mph on land. *******. You don’t even need to run. You’re regarded as the most dangerous animal in Africa. I hear you can snap a crocodile in two with one bite. What do you eat, Mr. Hippo, to get that big? I hear you only eat grass and you don’t really fight. Yet you have those giant teeth that lions do not ***** with.

Mr. Hippo, you’re that dangerous and feared, but still in a good enough mood to wiggle your ears. And maintain such shinny Hippo skin. It is for all these reasons that I would like to have you as a pet, Mr. Hippo. I’d walk you down the street and show you off to all the neighbors and let them gossip. You could swim in their pools and feed on their blossoms. You could stop their cars in their tracks and their yards, you could cross them. They will say, “Mr. Antonio, you are strange.” But it will cost them. Because later they will say, “Mr. Antonio, we are sorry. Mr. Hippo, you are awesome.”

If my heart was drawn on paper,
it would never fall apart.

I'd hang it on the refrigerator
like my daughter's works of art.

Though it bends
and crumples over time,
it cannot be erased.

    Where real hearts are heavy,
this one would be weightless
    folding easily into pockets
    like money
for betting
    
    win or loose,
    it unfolds unphased.

This is child-like thinking.

    If my heart was drawn on paper

it would rip, break
I would throw it
in every direction
until it went missing

They'd return it to me
deformed,
no longer the drawing
I made
when we were just kids
K i s s i n g

I'd barely recognize it.

1 2 3 4
I delcare love a war.

So I'll make myself
a new drawing
and let go
of the past.

I'll leave the missing pieces
where they are,
with who I am
intact.

I'll pretend nothing is broken
and that my heart on paper
is meant to last.

This is childish thinking.

Still, I'll pick up the pieces
and start over
as my drawing goes up
in flames I'll rise above

Though the heart on paper
burns to ashes,
in the embers
I'll find new love.

Poets are annoying

When regular people are busy,
they sit and wait to drop
words into the toilet
that'll make you dizzy

They stare at the blank page
the way one stares straight
at the bathroom wall
when taking a
"shhh"
as in, "shut up" and "listen"

the few who stop to do so
won’t be impressed at all
they’ll hear only…sounds
and get headaches, or frowns
they'll choose to forget it

poems are misunderstandings
and the few who dare write them
are nameless turds, wiping
their words onto paper
and calling the stains "art"

my "shhh" is fresh, they'd say
when their breath smells like brain ****

so the moment this poem comes out
I’d like you to throw it in the toilet
and flush it down

ha ha
maybe that’s why poetry
as an art form
stays underground

it stinks
to write what no one will read
or have thoughts no one will think

poets are lonely creatures
locked in stalls with too much ink
not enough toilet paper
and the ironic need to be heard

or worse, to sound cool
with every word-dump they take
only to emerge from their solitude
the way one emerges from the bathroom:
feeling great

Fall.
Run-down places are the nature of things
the decay that the gentrified smile of each city tries to cover up as trains move past them.
The empty strip mall, the mid-nowhere gas station, the vacant lots and bordered windows and all those hollow ruins for lease between the lights of the rented spaces we call home at night
So when you reply with silence as the answer I have no choice but to accept,
I think of an entire ghost town built on the sincerity of those run-down places where no one goes
And I go there, alone
not lonely,
if only to seek the company of the quiet truth that demands no explanation for why she left
or why I returned
to walk down each deserted lane from memory toward what I once called my hometown, my old stomping grounds
I ask if I am okay
with the absence and let the replies
come in echoes against the shell of my former house
carrying the sound of far-off ocean waves
maybe, a Rocky, sandless beach
in the Pacific Northwest
where we'll meet again someday
okay at last with the silence that comes from leaving everything behind and just going.

Rise.
Spring is you
reborn.
a re-learning of steps
needed to stand alone.
Spring is the water
from the sink that hits you between the eyes with the cold, hard fact that love dies
and you live on.
Spring is a face-off
with new realities
a rising to the ocassion as the weight of colder and darker days thaw off bent shoulders under the cleanse of April's first shower.
Spring is baptism.
Your re-newed steps pound the same pavement like falling petals this time around
And you remember, finally,
That you loves you
And you're forgiven when you did not.
You remember where it was you were going today
Spring is hello, good morning
Let's go for a coffee and talk
about what we dreamed
until we wake up
early enough to greet the brightness ahead.