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JoJo Nguyen Mar 2024
We put together these TO DO list, but life rushes by and the
list gets longer and longer and we
feel worse and worse because we
can't
keep
up.

But we've always known this, oder?
Haven't we lived with the motto
that whatever is unnecessary
will
fall
away.

And it did, didn't it?

You fell away.
Our "career" in science is falling away.
Our chances of a life as husband
as father
is
falling
away.

And what is left? Just a clean blade, waiting?
How many clean blades are waiting?
An army of clean blades waiting?
Waiting
for
want?
I wrote this in June 2012. Here it is only slightly edited for clarity.
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2024
Because you asked for it I
conjured up magic I
made us our breakfast

Because you asked if this was something I
wanted-- weekend mornings with you
eating at home, feeling family, you
longing like we all hope for, to find the other me
to cook for, to work with side by side thru lunch
to nimble snatches late into the warm night

Because you asked for it I
unweaved our tapestry I
unbounded the Sympathy
drained the alar and cut the threads
that interlaced us to an imagined future

Because you asked for it I
move to be there but you
were already here
hurt, breaking the fast
splintering our finality
with another man's hammer.

Because you asked for it we
lived the long years together
until the children left
and stale taste returned
and the golden years wished
for are spent in separate beds

Because you asked for it our
habituated movements at the Calvinistic
start have transmogrified to a Calvin
& Hobbes' relativism

An alchemy changing holy union
to mundane diaelectrics separating our
storming forces within a
spotless sunshine

You asked for it my mind
to be emptied but still it
blindly seeks us
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2024
I live like a vampire s*cking life energy from snapshots;
to stay young, to feed on, to live on-- if not forever
at least until it matters.

Living in Twilight as an ancient being amongst beautiful people.

I don't wish I knew you when I was young.

I did; I was but today suffer my mood with me.
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2024
But past distant times
She filters happy

I'm Bumble time
look for me
Again
look for us
Again
look for unfiltered
Time again

Drones at the Edge
of our Tomorrow
All our needs Killed

Live run dare

Set the butterflies in formation
Habituated motion
Irimi
there is only Irimi

Love dare repeat
Thanks for reading parts of my soul organized for aesthetic appeal. It doesn't sell well. It never does.
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2024
unspoken Voice say nothing
as well
as unwritten Words

Deeds done unnoticed,
unheeded, are beheaded in quiet
Solitude

private Executions
in a Smokey courtyard, pulsing
with Electronica

It's a Plain world
and Fancy words don't do it justice

I rap Words ordinarily
Lisping the loop to synch
with a Caller:

Chattel, chatter, and chatting
under azure Seas thru black
Cables

I hear skin and touch tears

I lisp loops like a f*g
being Scratched on an 80's
Turntable
I wrote this poem in 2008. I was in Germany. I was almost 40 but not yet!
The derogatory slang for a gay man may trigger. It has been sanitized to f*g.
I hope you'll still be my friend. I hope you still trust my message.
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2024
In our mid-50s on a poetry site for our kids in their 20s. Not on top of the world. Not really. Not in real-time.

And you'll be with me
won't you?

In Paris, never really seeing but always trying not to step on all the sh*t.

And you'll be with me
won't you?

In Berlin, looping around endlessly on some Bahn, making crosses.

And you'll be with me
won't you?

In Rome, running another marathon. OK. Maybe you'll run it and I'll just cheer you on.

And you'll be with me
won't you?

In Los Angeles, in the end-- at the peak looking back to see us coming and foreseeing us going.

You'll be here in our seething cities, cities by the river with me.
Won't you?
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2024
Furious Flowers
Flowers mal
sick in
bunches & bouquet

Flower Power
razed from fields
sustained by tech
living in vase
on a table
with synthtic
sap and stale
water

Her scent
drifts across our bustling
city, city of concrete
drifts down another Los River
full of Angels

She reads dead Latin
Canta vernacular
half remembers
some Lost Inferno
where even concrete
burns, burns like Sylvan fields
forgotten Green
in her bob
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