Hello.
I am the trending poem.                                                            ­            
         you see me and I make you feel alive
                                             so you like me and re-post me
                                                              ­    then you leave me alone to die.
Hello,
I am your forgotten lines.
             you created me with a careful love
                                                          an­d decisive rhymes
                                      and then to the bottom of your page I'm shoved.
Hello
I am forgotten, alone and unloved
                           a faded smile a broken dove
                                               I once was beautiful, touching.
                                                       ­   now, I've been replaced, I'm nothing.

“When I was in Graduate School…”

“When I was in graduate school when I
Was at Oxford when I was working on
My doctorate at the Sorbonne when I
Was on my fellowship when I was hiking

The Andes on my gap year learning from
The Colourful Natives when I received
The Something-Something Prize for Young Poets
From The Oppressed Grant Recipients’ Front…”

One notices that

Literary articles never begin with
“When I was busting my knuckles on the drilling rig…”

Roses are red
Violets are Blue
The government's
******* us
Let's have a coup

This terse verse was not
coerced or rehearsed,
the characters dispersed,
automatically, erratically,
forming statically cohering
patterns emphatically stating
my state of mind unwinding,
binding to the page,
for my pen is but a player and
this paper is its stage.
So now these thoughts have autonomy
despite their bond with me,
they're free to be a part apart from the
constraints of my mind, and now without
restraint they find their way to yours
as you perceive them.
I emit, the pen transmits,
now you receive them.
Adopt the words with
your optic nerves.
But be warned that these forms
Do not appease norms.

I write, but why write? Well,
because it's my rite; and
to spare you my tears,
I'll make sure to be clear:
It's not rite as in 'right'
as opposed to a wrong,

like a discordant note
that's misplaced in a song
or a 'right' so bestowed in
divinity's throng, handed down
by a deity mighty and strong, but

a rite, like a ritual, rather habitual.
This you will gather, and
this you'll process, and
with deepening fervor,
we'll further progress: It's

addiction to diction,
to poems, to fiction
where syllables,
fill up whole pages.
The friction, of
pen against paper, just
gives me the vapors. The

clacking of keys, makes
me weak at the knees.
Some may call it disease and
express their disgust, but
my lust for these words
I just cannot appease.

So with all of my might, and
from morning to night,
I equip with my tools, and
I write and I write.

Stanzas a few times read  
and I must tell you I have become a tad sad

I regard it is as if you are talking to God
and you are ****** correct on the right spot

I know you uttering the most devotional prolific prayer
retrieving tranquillity balm of a blissful joy.
you are gracious and humbling in your devotion
you exhaled fresh divine air in our community.

Your stanzas are a great pleasurable read
and the Blessings in Abundance be upon us all

thank you so much that I may be here to see you praying
to make my dreams come true and be forgiving
I do hope you would follow too,
then happiness would come to us so true

in creating this sweet reality nowhere but
now here….


© Sylvia Frances Chan
Copyright Protected

Dear literary journals:

I'm a millennial American male
who came of age in the aughts.
Do you have ANY idea how much
RAP MUSIC I GREW UP ON?!?!?!?!

And now you want me to write some
sort of rhyme devoid, metrically impoverished
modernist dross which is REALLY

just prose that's written in line
and stanza break, in order for you
to publish me? Please do clarify:

HOW THE HELL DO I DO THAT?!?!?!?!

I have SOOOOO much more in common
with Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and MF DOOM
than I do with any of that ridiculous nonsense
that your stuffy Imagist deity Ezra Pound
(who was also an ardent FASCIST, might I add)
churned out page after page. I mean, look

William Carlos Williams:

"I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold"

Now, look at Kweli:

"Yo, I activism, attackin' the system
The Blacks and Latins in prison
Numbers have risen, they're victims lackin' the vision
****, and all they got is rappin' to listen to
I let them know we missin' you, the love is unconditional
Even when the condition is critical, when the livin' is miserable
Your position is pivotal, I ain't bullshittin' you
Now, why would I lie? Just to get by? "

and please explain to me, just exactly how the former
is SUCH a higher form of art than the latter?

It's beginning to seem to me that
The REAL issue here is that rhyme and meter
were co-opted by a group of writers
who evolved
the usage of
said literary devices
to such an advanced degree,
that many of the older styles
paled in comparison, and
ESPECIALLY in terms of technical prowess

It just so happened,
that to the great misfortune of those
brilliant auteurs
they just so happened to be
not only POOR,
but also BLACK,
thereby barring their innovations
from serious consideration
by those in the ivory tower
of so called "HIGH ART"

As if to say:
"Oh, RHYMES?"
You mean those old artifacts
of the outdated formalists, and
favored staples of the lowly rappers?

In a way that as if by magic, makes Williams'
Inane single sentence about eating plums
written in line and stanza break, somehow
better, more enduringly creative, and
of greater importance, than
Kweli's incisive social commentary.

But, you know. I'm always open to being wrong.
Since, I usually am wrong about most things.
But, it seems that every time I pick up a lit journal,
it's the same type of broken narratives, with
the occasional token verse or rhyme
thrown in for good measure.
Maybe I just don't read enough lit journals,

but I can just about GUARANTEE that in 100 years,
people will have a much more distinct memory of Nas's
"Illmatic" than they will Ezra Pound's "Cantos"
And in point of fact, most people with whom I speak these days,
do not even know who Ezra Pound WAS, but they SURE know Kendrick's verses from "Alright"

So what gives, lit journals? It seems obvious at this point
that rappers are now creating the most successful and
widely disseminated forms of oral poetry currently in existence
So why is it that your publications seem so averse to
styles which bear a written resemblance?

Just a touch of
CLASSISM, perhaps?
Or am I just being ignorant?
Paranoid?

Arab scarabs
wielding scabbards
staggered with hilts
laid waste to
idle Cherubs in
garments
embroidered
like quilts.

They're off kilter,
with no filter, and
wear stilts where
leaves wilt, sir
please lilt yr
tactless

anachronisms
through fractured
refractive prisms
to help the mind
unbind from
shop, office, and
factory prisons

Listen:

there's a
penitent androgyne,
speaking
sentence in pantomime
as though rhyme
were no longer
a kind of
berated
creative crime: But

who
the
hell
CARES?!?!?!?!

Shyly curious you smile at me.
Tender, delicate I lightly stroke you,
friction ridges of long index finger
brushing fine hairs to attention.

A sensory meeting, pupils contracted,
I impress upon your pale skin
from the glenohumeral joint to your elbow,
Then our mouths align, entwined,

Soft lips parted, eyes closed and tasting;
Your worldly generous thighs slightly ajar
pressed apart by a firm hand, the sensitive
multifingered extremity searches out,

Reaching for where you’ve been waiting for years.
Beautiful, wide-spread in close proximity,
Touching and sizzled by that sweet odour
from your neck, pleasing the soul,

I do not ask for more delight
Upon slipping into your wet and woven silk.
But you suddenly unglue our lips and ease me
back with a firm hand,

Your voice articulates a silent pause.
There’s a fierce and undeniable attraction here,
Tempered as I sit back for a moment,
Excited, quiet and praying for nightfall.