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 Oct 2015 AJ
Jedd Ong
I.

Somewhere in a mailroom in China
is my acceptance letter to
Brown University,

fluttering in the
sticky, smog-filled wind like an
unspoken birthright,

vacuum sealed in some shoddy warehouse,
slap-banged next to my father's
porcelain wares and flasks – and my grandfather's,
and his father's. "Son,"

my father tells me,
"you've got a lot of the old man in you.
"I am grateful."

I then retch
in the dingy comfort
of our hotel room bath
before proceeding to lunch.

Dad's Chinese counterparts
congratulate me on
being able to tell them what I
want to do when I grow up.

"Wo yao dang yi ge shangren – zhu fu."
“I want to become a businessman – get rich.”

II.

"Wo xuyao xiezuo."  
“I must write.”

TS Eliot once asked me,
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"

I do not know yet,
but I think I have found fragments
of an answer lodged in
hotel bathrooms,
a Tianhe-bound overpass
on the way to Beijing Street,
heirloom warehouses,
And two Canton fairs.

"To get rich is glorious,"
Deng Xiaoping once said.

But I glance at
My father and mother,
And theirs,

And wonder if all their life, they have but
knocked on the doors of their fate -
chased dreams not
tobacco stewed or gold-ground
by the teeth of an Other.

As to answer your question, T.S Eliot:
Maybe, if just to find where I truly belong.
Well it's kind of a sequel. First poem here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/944876/from-brown-to-binondo/, though I'm not quite sure of the relationship. You tell me.
 Oct 2015 AJ
Victor Hugo
The Grave said to the Rose,
"What of the dews of dawn,
Love's flower, what end is theirs?"
"And what of spirits flown,
The souls whereon doth close
The tomb's mouth unawares?"
The Rose said to the Grave.

The Rose said, "In the shade
From the dawn's tears is made
A perfume faint and strange,
Amber and honey sweet."
"And all the spirits fleet
Do suffer a sky-change,
More strangely than the dew,
To God's own angels new,"
The Grave said to the Rose.
 Oct 2015 AJ
Victor Hugo
We walked amongst the ruins famed in story
Of Rozel-Tower,
And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory
And heave in power.

O Ocean vast! We heard thy song with wonder,
Whilst waves marked time.
"Appear, O Truth!" thou sang'st with tone of thunder,
"And shine sublime!

"The world's enslaved and hunted down by beagles,
To despots sold.
Souls of deep thinkers, soar like mighty eagles!
The Right uphold.

"Be born! arise! o'er the earth and wild waves bounding,
Peoples and suns!
Let darkness vanish; tocsins be resounding,
And flash, ye guns!

"And you who love no pomps of fog or glamour,
Who fear no shocks,
Brave foam and lightning, hurricane and clamour,--
Exiles: the rocks!"
 Oct 2015 AJ
Victor Hugo
The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide.
Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,
Written in April and before the May time
Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime,
We dream that all white butterflies above,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies
 Oct 2015 AJ
Victor Hugo
A Sunset
 Oct 2015 AJ
Victor Hugo
I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,--
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume.

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede.
 Sep 2015 AJ
Riley Ayres
Your body is falling in reverse
As your lips start to tremble,
Each touch a whisper in the wind
Each kiss a word not spoken.

Love is that unexplainable gift,
That seems to fall from the stars unchanging,
You get lost in its tight embrace
And your heart is never the same

When they beat you blind and senceless
And your heart turns forever cold,
Your lips cant speak the words
Even though you need to let go.

You long for the pain to stop
Each blow digging you deeper
Into the fear brimmed hole your trapped in
And the pain only lasts

As long as she sees fit.
 Sep 2015 AJ
Aztec Warrior
POEM 50
 Sep 2015 AJ
Aztec Warrior
Silence Part 3


Sitting here thinking,
pen laying across the page,
waiting for words
to announce themselves
with something profound to say.
Instead
I count the rain
splattering on the window
until I realize
this will be
another wordless day.

8.18.11
another in this series...
 Sep 2015 AJ
Aztec Warrior
POEM 51
 Sep 2015 AJ
Aztec Warrior
Silence Part 4


I am not sure
where conversation has gone.
How it disappeared in the shadows
wandering this room.

Words, thousands and thousands
once flowed between us,
creating friendship,
innuendo,
mystery.

Words, thousands and thousands
once spoke art,
poetry,
the conditions of life;
now they are drapped
over a limb
looking surreal
and found only in dreams,
or heard rustling in the wind
as they fade into smoky mist.

Silence speaks loudest
as you near sleep;
as your mind
holds its breath
against the darkness,
where words no longer exist.

8.18.11
last in this series on loneliness, sadness and loss of a friend...
 Sep 2015 AJ
kizzia
no no no no
 Sep 2015 AJ
kizzia
I told myself not to think about you again
I waited this long for my heart to mend
But when your eyes charr into mine
I fall
   fall
     fall—
treacherous.

And I fall
    fall
       fall—
precarious.

And i fall and fall and fall and—
I choose to be perilous
I choose to be hurt
I choose our love, incredulous
And I opt for the painful curt
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