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 Dec 2014 April Koh
Irate Watcher
I know why girls travel in packs —
it's to prevent unwanted attacks
from losers in bomber jackets.
 Dec 2014 April Koh
Irate Watcher
You say
I am turning
into the lady
with the large book
and CD collection,
with isolated friends
and few dates,
whose only love
will be a cat man
one day.
But I'm enjoying
my Saturday
with Kerouac
and kin,
dreaming of
yellow lines and
the open road
instead of
yellow lights
and bars.
Plus,
I'd rather write
these lines alone,
than spend my night
talking in code.
I got places to be, but no will to be there.
 Dec 2014 April Koh
Irate Watcher
When the beat of your heart
is the alarm clock of my dreams.
I still have three more hours of sleep.
Crusty eyes nod off
as I put off the inevitable —
to empty your promises
of being faithful.

Cause last night I couldn't hide
red sober eyes that realized
I just wanted the wings
from your back.
I just want you to text me back.
And you did for awhile.
I kept you from texting your ex
for a while.
And for a while,
the strings of my heart
sewed yours together again.
Broken wings healed,
but fearing flight,
tearing mine.
 Dec 2014 April Koh
Irate Watcher
I am just scrolling through people's lives,
wasting mine.
 Dec 2014 April Koh
Irate Watcher
She sat across me
in Starbucks
for 10 minutes.
I smiled shyly.
She said nothing.
Held a black plastic bag close.
No coffee.
I wanted to say:
Hey, how you doin?
But I thought such electricity
might shock the plugged round us.
I wanted to say:
Hey you ok?
Cause she wasnt
Looking at a phone
Sittin alone.
She didnt drink anything.
Where was she before?
Looking up at an
Angle like her bun
Weary like
Military fatigues.
I wanted to ask
Where she come from.
I pretended to read.
And everytime I
Looked up she was
Lookin at me.
Black eyes waiting
Expectantly
To hear a salute
To humanity.
My lips parted
But my thumbs
Texted: Hey how
You doing? to an
Acquaintence in England
With the same brown skin.
In front of me she sat
Time to waste and
I feared wasting her time.
So after 10 minutes
With no glance back she rose and left
Three bags she shouldered.
Must have been a traveler.
I wished I had heard her story.
I apologize for random caps wrote this on my phone!
 Dec 2014 April Koh
unwritten
she was a poet,
and he was her pen.
in him,
she always found words to write,
songs to sing,
thoughts to think.

he'd smile,
and kiss her softly,
and say,
"write me a poem."

and she would.
she'd put poe,
and whitman,
and shakespeare to shame,
and she'd write a poem that made his eyes water.

she'd compare him
to a rose with no thorns,
a book with no end,
a world with no poverty --
the things we all wish for,
but can never attain.

//

he asked her one day,
"what am i?"
and so she picked up her pen,
and began the usual:
you are the shining sun after a hurricane,
with rays that open the eyes of the blind.

but he stopped her after those two lines,
and said that this time,
he didn't want any metaphors,
or similes,
or analogies.
he wanted the truth.

and so on that night,
as he slept,
the poet picked up her pen,
and she wrote.

she wrote,
then thought better of it,
then started over again,
and this cycle continued well into the early hours of the morning,
until suddenly,
she wrote, frantic,
if i can't love you for what you really are,
have i ever really loved you at all?


this, too,
she thought better of,
condemning it to the trash.

the next morning the poet was gone,
her final work a mere two words:

i'm sorry.

(a.m.)
this is more of a story than a poem but i like how it came out so leave thoughts & comments please
 Dec 2014 April Koh
Irate Watcher
She was a child wild
wearing a white dress,
galloping through fields of unrest,
inspiring anxious warheads,
for a hot second.

Off to the next.

She was
anxious like a feather
caught in a breeze,
far from that child
that minded none
the weeds.

Backhand compliments
more potent than
misogynic critiques.
She was Marilyn Monroe.

Where was Norma Jean?

Living in a man's dream,
pinned up in a
concrete bunker,
a porcelain poster
tearing each time
she wasn't taken seriously,
or spent nights
alone aside a dusty phone,
with no home but
Norma Jean,
Marilyn's martyr
long at peace.
This started as a poem about feeling far from yourself, and turned into a poem about how abiding by other people's expectations corrupt our true selves.
 Dec 2014 April Koh
Irate Watcher
I wake up and find
comfort in closed beige blinds,
and laying by my side,
tousled hair, I don't have
a pen to describe it.
I laugh after the 5th time.
We love too much.
We kiss too much.
We crave soft skin, pillows,
me you in contorted positions
too much.
And as I sleep on my side
bearing broad shoulders
sharp pangs permeate.
I can't turn from your face.
I actually like you,
I'm not lying nor blinded
by a post-coitus haze.
*Are you?

— The End —