Jedd Ong

Jedd Ong Jun 2015

Gavroche

The littler man walks up to the little man and asks for a gun.
"I wish to join you, and fight for justice."

The little man coughs.
"Young soldier, why do you ask for a gun?"

Gavroche, with head held high, answers:
"Because to be a soldier one must have strength,
"And to have strength one must quiet his fears."

Upon hearing this, the little man smiled and handed him a quill.
"Your gun, young soldier. Use it well."

Remember this as you watch him fall.

Jedd Ong May 2015

Seymour is an Introduction

There is a Seymour in all of us - not more a fragile name but perhaps not less. We are all equally cut, strings loosened past our own internal metronomes, flashing bits of poetry past those who will listen. Or rather, those who must listen - the longer no one does the faster these strings within us snap piece-by-piece. Soon we will become balloons that float away and pop. We, leaving Earth for space. Note that poetry is not just the meter that stirs heat and snaps foot-beats within our tongues - but the needles that ***** them too.

In these poems are buried stick figures and falsified diary entries - excepts of a language wrought from our own souls. Today I wore a baseball mitt scribbled with bright green verse as to not get lost running around the diamonds. We are all, in our own way, misunderstood and that’s where I feel Seymour’s got something over us. The innate, misread poetry of our collective consciousness is pervasive in his entire life. Maybe this is less of an introduction. Less of a poem even, than a eulogy for Seymour Glass - the most delicate man who ever lived.

He threw a stone at the one girl he truly loved, as we drew stick figures.

Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters can be found here: http://www.ae-lib.org.ua/salinger/Texts/RaiseHighTheRoofBeamCarpenters-en.htm. It's not necessarily a poem, but I hope it's poetic enough to pass as one. It's been tough.

Jedd Ong May 2015

From Binondo to Brown University

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.

#self #dreams #thoughts #university #discovery #travel #exploration #china

Jedd Ong May 2015

Horror House

we, go, God,
to, where, the, house, upon,
prairie, darkens,
snaking, through, nonsensical,
fear, and, slip,
death, a, song, quickly, lop,
at, its, paw,
in, the, din, roaring, as, it, presses,
we, whisper,
having, borne, it, scars,

A thing called alternate reverse consonance - every ending word of every other line punctuated by the last letter of the previous other line. It's like "ABAB" only with ending letters. E.g "God" and "darkens", "darkens" and slip", so on.

Jedd Ong May 2015

Untitled

We are not warriors yet.
We still gaze at stars
that predate the dawning
of time - heaven-sent
crumbs bowing to Earth.

This is all that becomes of us.

Our bodies will explode.
We will chase the other off
shadows nursing our blood.
Moonlight will ground whispers
into long-drawn screams.

We, reduced to streaks.

Jedd Ong Apr 2015

We won't go gently

For amy fight*

You and I,
Into the good night -
Wrought by bleak
And scattered by twinkle -
We won't go gently.

Gazing the pink
Leaping the blue
Painting the sky
A thousand hues -
We won't go gently.

Screaming the fat
******* the know
Clothing the brown
And clotting the snow -
We won't go gently.

We, winding the tunnel,
Pinking the red,
You, look out below
As we're coming up dead -
We won't go gently.

So you guard the keys,
key the louse
And watch these hues
That guide our house -
We won't go gently.

We bleed this city
Pink and blue
And skip to these twinkles
And wrinkle our Lous -
We don't go gently.

Jedd Ong Apr 2015

Untitled

Jay-Z sounds like he's underwater. And the showerhoses tilt shut and the bathroom door opens to reveal - well, what I thought was a sealing wound thankfully turned out to be headphone covers and my brother's obscured big toe. Trembling.

He walks as if he was the rapper himself - chest hunched, back lurching forward like that of a street cat who doesn't know he's made it. Shaky feet, wet hair, darkened eyes that hadn't been shut for days.

''For my father was black, and beautiful, and beautiful, therefore, black. There was a blackness to him that was beautiful. A blackness entirely clear and his own.'' -James Baldwin, Notes on a Native Son (paraphrased).

His legs if you roll up the pajama bottoms are filled with quilt patched mosquito bites and blacks and blues. Self-inflicted. Eyebag patches punched back into his face resurfacing in the hidden contours of his thigh. Trembling. Allow me to reintroduce myself. Trembling.

He is and he isn't. No native son of ours black but yellow covered, yellow but eyes tinged with red, and awash in shadows black and blue - he is beautiful - puffy eyed, brickfaced boombox carrying screamer of profanity and tongue tied silence all and still - he is black, and he is beautiful.

An underwater mixtape taking shape to be a broken record anthem.