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JoJo Nguyen Nov 2015
It is a measure of time's passage. An ancient way intertwining all cultures, and yet this time the changing is different. The leaves cycle colors and fall from the branches. I heard the chainsaws the other day, and thought that they were trimming the bare branches back for next year.

I was wrong.

They had cut down the entire tree.

It made sense.

All last winter, I heard it scrape against the building during stormy nights. My modern utility agrees but the monkey is lost with old rhythms cut from the base, and looking out a reflecting window gives no sense of where the time is going.
JoJo Nguyen Jan 2015
When brand becomes bland
and routine and rituals
move in rigid homogeneity.

When monocultures spread
like healthy cancer
and our volatility meter
sits still at fever.

When popular financial service
say, that "the center
can't hold anymore."

When sleeping frogs
never wake even
though the enthalpic
belly satiates fully
and any tiny misanthropic
speck will spark
nucleation around
a waking me.we

When these blocks
fire in the deep,

then our dog clan stirs,
a smiling hive feasting
on dead amphibians
left motherly as sustenance
to begin a Trickster's
journey.
JoJo Nguyen Sep 2015
And what about the days
that don't come,
or the Hours not spent
buying flowers from Edeka?

Where do they go?

Do they join Walter
in some daydreaming
intermittent reality?

Is the Time
evaporated by Entrepreneurs
burning our candles
at both ends to turn
steam driven carbines
for our adiabatic work
cycles underneath Caves of Steel?

Is it enough to live
part of someone else's
dream because we know
that our's Comes this
way Wicked?

Actuators, cogs, brain bit,
and organoids all on Chips
or ships setting sail
into rosy fingered robots
of dawn.

Ahoy mateys!

We set sail for a Manifest
Destiny without O Captain,
My Captain; though the civil
struggle continues dressed up
in some ******* suit.
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2013
2x9
fertile cross  
every day      
art up
science wake
pattern make
live box
martial art
pattern mark
build real

2x3
see hear
smell touch
taste there


2x5
episode deal
memory fast
procedure feel
compiled base
cute interlace

2x5
influence cross
ad here
art van
age psi
advantage sum
JoJo Nguyen Oct 2022
The I is not the me.
An AI is not an object
merely to pass methods

They Keys connect I
manig Ah moments HA
to a Forceful ki-AH!
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2016
The Alert
says I
should take a shower
now
but
the spray comes thin
like Twiggy from
the 70s
like Kate Moss from
magazines that can't turn a
profit like David Lehman's
warm shower trickling down
a cold April back
but
now
it's the tip of March
and the thin rain
comes
like my Blood loving
into mist memories
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2013
This is it;
the deepest I can fathom,
the fastest I can light
the flying arrow quick
released from not
so sure cocked
finger.

This is it;
the flattest I can color
the plainest I can reek
thru silicon weaving
densely threaded cloth
fibered shirt,
insignia emblazon
on Polo front
pocket.

This is IT;
the peak,
the twin peaks.
The n-peaks?

I realize
the game continues
and IT sets to zero,
derivatized as partial
IT-equations, is easier
to solve.
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2019
the time she
slips away and i
am desperate
as a cod wiggles
in my hand

This is not it, but if
she were it she'd have
skin as smooth as a new dollar bill
lips painted like a street corner
and proper dark eyes like coffee
on a suburban living room
table

This is not it, but if
he were it he'd have
shoulders as broad as a Titanic
arms smoked like an oak
razed by wild fires to a fecund
ash that grips our waisted
tomorrow

life is Good
this is not it, but if
it were Deus, it'd live in the sky
above us in a squeaky clean bath
tub
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2017
It is the sheep in
wolf's clothing
killing with
a smothering love it
is a viper in the eye
**** the amygdala
condition

It is Zod kneeling down
with both Hands
on the wheel

It is a tied die
shirt we wear an
autoimmune shooting
a Lupus in disguise
an Ewe in disgust

Can I get a witness
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2013
In the Beginning,
just 1/10^1,000,000,000,000,000 second
after a Big Bang,
before Strong and Weak
segregated,
before Strings formed
from broken Circles,
Song, Dance and Word
were One.

When we dance,
when we sing,
when we write
these written words,
don't we glimpse
that 1/10^1,000,000,000,000,000 second
who's name comes
close only when
these three
whirl in me?
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2013
Three Wise men
were dividend on money.
The First suggested drawing
a circle in dirt's poverty,
and casting fortune to the air.
If cash lands in circle dare,
give it to the job creators.
No, said the next Scholar fair.
If luck falls outside circle's care,
give it to the job suppliers.
The last Magi quickly realized
that squandered worth never returns
from Heaven, and interest earns
nothing in God's keeping.
JoJo Nguyen Dec 2023
Seasons change but we're still
the-- Same same:

Ugly beautiful as cotton wood
Viciously kind as killing home

Monster baby as Nile serpent
Sweet w**d as burnt braid

Queer queens like many bladed
Grass-- leaves on the Sword Tree

Windless in the wind like Named
nameless-- Cyclopic nobody

the-- Same same:  Different odyssey
The 4 letter word that has been sanitized starts with "w" but we are not weeping like blades of glass burning from pesticides. We burn like smoked stuff, legalized.
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2022
Well. We eat cake well from the Well.
Farmilar castings weld, fastens together
Winfalls gather from the wind
Wheat chaffless from our daily grind
Without husk and worrisome bustle
Bound together with we,
our wherewithal, the water
Wielding weirding ways
We make cake
We eat well from our Well.
JoJo Nguyen Mar 10
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 Apr 12
The instructions are usually ordered by number
like counting sheeps before we can slumber

The dice came up 1 in fun
and Down the Black Hawk flew

Love me as prime number flow

The 1st prime, a coupling two
taking random chances and singular risk
in the first and second kiss

The 2nd prime, trois menage a fright
flying by in our Kobe final flight
makes it all come undone

The 3rd prime, a pentagon trace on floor
protects but leaves My love an open door
I wrote the rough draft at Writer's Club - Humnkind Collective (2024-04-10).
Here is an edited, final draft. Enjoy.
JoJo Nguyen Dec 2017
.symbol

A child traces animal ghosts on a cave
wall Left
pictures we had before
our memories and youth
were in them

.family

We dig down Trees in primordial
dirt Left
hidden as roots-- a Dad our Moms
found still loving us diverging
green offshoots

The furrowed brow on an infant's
face Left
impressions within a big sister's
emerging intelligence the natural
heir

to an ancient
matriarchy Left
here full of media streams
saturated with siblings
nieces and cousins

.network

Will social constructs
connections Left
on neural networks firing
locally across our communal souls
be remembered?
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2013
How could it be
that it's just me
wondering when we
will laugh again with glee.

What scared ghost do we flee
into Summer's buzzing bee
passed a late Falling tree?

I grant that he
has a good degree
and a family pedigree,
but aren't we all free?

I feel tainted with frosty
touches of Northern fee,
invoices billed from a Cree
living in tent or tipi
while burning my effigy.

Down on one knee
at a Maypole jubilee,
drunk and happy,
tragically at the end greedily
eating too much Sandra Lee,
that's me!

Half squinting a dopie
smile and slanting queer
boats with rhyming keel,
I barter with a misty sea,
wanting badly to ***,
but instead shade my eyes to see.

Discarded to dry.
JoJo Nguyen Feb 11
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 Aug 2013
I'm not religious.
I'm not even spiritual.
I'm just a cold, soft Vulcan.

The system of the down
has isolated me here
to think, which is what a Vulcan
does all the time.
It's really pointless.

It is desert, hot and cold
served in deprivation,
meditation, and
solitude.

The system has been doing
this for eons.
It's called increasing
systemic risk when stressed.

I make a cognitive chunk
for you to cogitate
over coffee.

Picture this.

Wandering Boy Scouts (BS)
in their pickup trucks,
helpful, strong,
vicious when aimless,
efficiently cruel,
mechanized abattoir makers
mass pit diggers,
merit badge takers.

Smell the BS.

It all goes into baking
gooey brownie BS,
repugnantly pungent,
and redolent of sweet
burning flesh.

Stressed, the down system
spits BS out
randomly to nucleate,
and procreate if possible.

Breeding a new Brand,
with Cult leader Classes
and all the -isms.

Visionaries with their caries;
Pushers with agendas hidden;
Leaders steadfast in conviction,
taking a nation, against
all odds, in Battling Bulges,
****** lines hidden
within clean, pleated
leather skirts
that still reveal penciled
seams up straight
shaved bare legs.

This is how the system
shakes itself; auto  
****** asphyxiation.

Vulcan's never shake
the bars of their cells
because there's no barring
except Great Walls
forbidding, with a wink,
killing each other.

To be thy Greek brother's keeper,
is to cut not that brother man,
but the other brother man
down with BS fervor and ***;
madness, before bondaging
his wounds in mummified
State, taped shut  
with a healing kiss.

To have dominion
over the animals
means a bludgeoned
pleasure, or
transplanted
desire.

Dominion to exploit
blunted, unconditional,
emotional resources,
until the system
gels again, vaginally
or astrolly whole.
JoJo Nguyen Jul 2016
all I wanted was a Coke
with careful tendency you

call me a loser suicidal
baby
so why don't you **** me

cuz at
19, 19, n nn n, 19
I'm not gonna do it for you
anymore the days

to be more patient tries
my patients separated

by hospital bed
and hospice care into
one love and loved

ones separated by popstar
Purple curtain Rain
call

This is my life compressed time
SVG Maginot lines

that impossibly pixelate under
our modern scrutiny
they Blur

under
the heat giving off distant
Mirages that promise

reunions in death's
false Oasis
JoJo Nguyen Jul 2022
for Gwendolyn Brooks

War planned black
Warpland blue

Hard manna to mix
In Spells form a deep
Hurt placed

the River comes
around turns and flops
after a terrible
Weather channel

We build now
here almost near
Future-- love from
lion licks
wolf hurts
and worreid aunts
JoJo Nguyen Sep 2013
The threads wave
around, interferometric
process that form my
sock.

It's a long white
one with green, thin
stripes, the sporty
kind on
top.

I pull them
old school up, knee
high in Cooper-fashion,
running, executing
a fast-break Worthy
enough for MBA Network
court.
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2013
How do we do it?
How many quests?
How many fellowships
formed and broken,
going on to separate ways?
Doesn’t the heart rub a bit
sore after each parting?
Are we fools thinking
our’s the most arduous journey,
a long trek into Mordor,
to scale the heart of Doom?
Are we a bit of Merry weather
and Pippin riding on a shoulder
of an ancient forest?
Do we fight the Nazgul?
Are we foot soldiers
once more going into the breach?
We go truth be told
with no magic, no ring,
just cheerful Hobbits with secondsies,
snacks between full meal,
brief taste between breakfast,
and lunch, filling ourselves with joy.
JoJo Nguyen Apr 8
Lie or lye?
steal or stye
in the right eye

A mortal coil
on Kombat soil

Finish him
or hit the gym

I'm lost
in our galactic thrift
saving cheap coins
exchanged for hot *****

I'm found
in our sector drift
sold thru wooden skewers
over white hot embers
JoJo Nguyen Oct 2022
(As a great wizard said, "a journey is done solo; an adventure is shared")

So many Mickey Mouse wizards
And I'm just a magical broom

bringing buckets and buckets of CO2
down our yellow Brick Road

in a Submarine
crossing Downton Abbey

to reach Emerald City
to find no One
in Das Schloss

I bid u peace or pence
for there will be no Trial
only execution
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2015
We live at a precipice
afraid to move for falling
into what we don't know
but it’s certainly not death
not in a Modern's sense

Inertial fear keep us
still prey rabbits
in a North Baltimore
street lined with manicured
homes while row houses
in sweltering heat sweat

He will lead confident
loud taking action because
we all eventually take the same risk
but need to push off fear
to one point so absolute
terribly white and beautiful

Take Us out of harms way
and deliver us to paradise
or some other oasis stuck
between commodity and stock

He leads and
if he fails we’re ****** but
if he succeeds, fortune’s his
and survival’s us
JoJo Nguyen Oct 2015
This daily Trial
has transformed
tadpoles to chicken
liver-- a Metamorphosis,
a selection process
most Unnatural.
Darwin's joke,
light humor
to ease our
quest for Waze
into the Castle.
JoJo Nguyen Nov 7
We voted Nixon
     For Change
We voted Kennedy
     For Change
We voted Obama
     For Change
We voted Trump
     For Change

But the Calculus remains
     The Same
But we Kin folks remain
     Divided
But we circle our Wagons
     Indifferently
But our painted face remain
     Hateful

You asked
     in a Movie of my Birth
If our Methods are sound

I replied my scripted Line
     "I don't see any method at all, sir"

"I've been having dreams
     Jumping on a trampoline"

We ask how am I so much in Love
JoJo Nguyen Sep 2013
In my child-like
eye I say
white.
Black.
No.
White.

Later in childish
shyness I'll
say
blushing
red.

Seconds later,
in a blick,
a moody moment
my teenage
love turns
blue.

Will I love the color
of an old man's
milky white eyes,
smiling black teeth,
red drunken nose,
and blue cold feet?

I'm still too
young
to abstract
a color
for endless sky
or grind
powdered
dye to paint
a color
love.
JoJo Nguyen Aug 2015
Is love like riding a horse?

Is it like straddling big
powerful steeds, jumping
over rails, and lazy
brown foxes?

Sometimes we need a crop
to whip our pony to that final
spurt, stretching a Black Stallion nose
across spent finish,
glistening with sweat at besting
the crowded rest.

And if we fall
we're suppose to just get
right back tall
into that saddle set
Superwoman like

rather than some crippled
ghost rider, a Ritalin
paraplegic Reeve coming out
only to fake her maudlin bout
around another racetrack night.


Maybe love is like jumping
out of a perfectly good aeroplane
without a parachute
hoping
falling
watching
to see if a ridiculous Bond
James will HALO
drop
us desperately out of danger, a ripping clutch
released
at ten thousand feet.

Love sure is like an action-adventure movie!

Our love in mundane lives
spills laughter till our sides
burst,
till our hearts explode
sending
pieces too far off
cities
shell-shock
amnesic
and hungry for new horse races
with a spotted Mustang.
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2019
Give me liberty
or give me...
what the heck
was all that about?
It was good in effect
and in moment I agreed
but in passing
what the heck
was all that about?
Impassioned flee,
logic remain
and I...
what the heck
was all that about?
context.//post breakup poem
JoJo Nguyen Jul 2013
When you meet someone,
you only see the outside
even though you peer and peer
but after awhile,
if you're with her long enough,
you start to make the inside
feel like how it looks outside.

You start to make your
inside a little like her.

When you meet someone,
you only see the outside
even though you preen and peer
but after awhile,
if you are with him long enough,
you try to make the outside
look like how it feels inside.

You start to make your
outside a little like him.
JoJo Nguyen Nov 2016
I'm down with OOP
You down with OOP?
Yeah you know me

Somewhere before
the code was
the Word and
the Word was
the Class and
the Class was
the Word

In the beginning
the Word named
the Class God and
called an instance
ourUniverse

This is ourUniverse
There are many like it,
but this one is ours
ourUniverse is our best friend
It is ourLife
We must master it as we
must master ourLife

There maybe many
other parallel instances
but ours is our favorite no
butts about it

Yeah you know we
Who's down with OPP?
We're down with OOP
Happy Thanksgiving!
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2015
Stir straw my gripe berries of writh
while
Tae do drinks wedges for tumorrow.

do, Do, definkate times 5
else
numb, burrrr, 2 it's cold drop whate
doo doo merrilies.
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2015
Some days I wish I were an X-men
and not just an ordinary mutant.
Some days I wish I had Magician
level magic like Bink,
just enough to negate other's.
But then I look around;
The Irish and English don't have it.
The Pakistanis and Indians don't have it.
The Chinese and Taiwanese don't have it.
The Hutu and Tutsi don't have it.
The neighbors in Bab Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen,
don't have it.
Why should I have it?
We’re all just a bunch of Muggles.

Maybe it's a good thing I don't have superpowers.
I look around and in fits of frustration,
in bouts of rage, I might destroy all the Husnock.
I'm kinda glad now my only mutations are thoughts.
Thoughts that I put here,
viral like - infective memes - hemorrhagic e-fever.
Outbreak? Snow Crash? Virulency? Survival rate? Epicenter?
Futile epidemiology because I know
exactly what and where I am.
>sync.Fb.JBC
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2015
At first we sent them two brands
they denied them both
left and right in
blue and read
so we strengthened them
with a third
and in three voice
the Brand said
to them "Verily
we have been sent
to you as instant messengers"
JoJo Nguyen Mar 3
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 Jun 2022
"Big Bessie throws her son into the street"
interlacing with Gwendolyn Brooks

It's a winter day
in July chimes
a chipped cup
precisely etched - eternally empty
- forever gainst the flame
the candle's imposition
Rooted here
in the future - down the Street
- We cool
- We fool

— The End —