the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
huddling over a stranger's phone in the streetlamp glare
your skeletal fingers slow and stained with nicotine
pupils shrunken
deer in the headlights
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
plucking pills from carpet fibers
scraping your hands through the couch cushions
snatching my allowance from beneath my mattress
prince of thieves
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
smiling for the kodak
cooing sonatas against her cold pretty ear
nervous fingers tying the corsage
casanova
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
peeking out behind worn fort walls
sketching monsters over saturday morning cartoons
fishing pole in hand
sweet thing
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
rewind the tape
first tottering steps
gummy smile
child of love
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can hear you
hello
yes
what do you need

I am the only Asian in this bar right now.
Be my friend!
I will check the box of your social diversity quota.
Granted, I only speak a mispronounced fraction of
my immigrant parents' native tongue.
Ala Jackie Chan, I do not understand the words coming out the mouths of anyone on that massive continent (Russia included) that I appear to be more or less from.
But, I do eat spaghetti with chopsticks.
I am mystical as
fox, or Kitsune, in Japanese folklore.
I can hit you with wisdom worthy of a fortune cookie as fast as Google can tell you that the Philippines is nearly 2000 miles away from China. I want to say I'm from an exotic island where they play basketball in sandals and drink soda from plastic bags- like, A-level material you could make a movie out of in Slumdog Millionaire fashion and get awarded for your romantic portrayal of poverty you think is three worlds away from home. But nah, I'm just a kid from South Florida. Paved driveways and cul de sacs. But I do pump both fists in the air watching Manny Pacquio PPV fights on a bootleg stream. Beyond that, I'm probably the worst Asian there is. Not the crazy rich kind with a PHd. I dropped out of engineering after one semester and cannot solve a rubix cube. I never learned kung fu. Though I'm learning to face the adversity of becoming a single parent after my daughter's home broke in two. I write marketing proposals to pay the rent and poetry to fight without fighting in the spirit of Sun Tzu. My eyes do not slant in the direction of your narrative. I once ran in a pick up game where I caught the nickname of Yao Ming. Yao, I am 5 foot 8. Though I fall short of expectation, I can still check your diversity box on the way down and do a cool pen spin after to punctuate my intellectual prowess. I also happen to own an assortment of Japanese swords made in China, which I intend to use as heirlooms. This is what cultural colonization looks like: me, in a bar, the last samurai standing confused in an age of melting pots, Korean tacos and Asian slaw made by corporate imposters with names like PF Chang. What in the slaw is Asian? I wish I knew!  I wish I knew the true value of my heritage to be worthy of carrying it forward. Like how my grandfather planted a Malonggay tree in our backyard whose leaves my mother would pick and boil to make tinolang manok -the Filipino version of chicken soup- as a weeknight staple on our dinner table. I can barely soft boil an egg for instant ramen. Or how my motherland's socioeconomic gap tooth smile is so wide that it drove over 10 million of its native sons and daughters off its shores to find work overseas as servants on cruise ships and hospitals to feed the families they barely get to see. To follow their trail blazing footsteps, let me be the second generation tipping point where some form of cyclical tradition breaks. That way, I can raise my daughter free of predetermined scripts. So as the worst Asian in this or any bar, cheers:
to being the first of a new kind.

devil time
and Pyrex pipe

whatever will you find
so late on a weeknight
that is not found
every other night of every other week

Pyrex pipe
and devil time

margaritas, marijuana,
everything i need
and eye drops in the morning

my favorite gypsy
first cut
early take
quit while you're ahead
but you never do

that hammond *****
really shining something through
my favorite gypsy
don't get too friendly
but you never do

Pyrex pipe
and devil time

i was just a star
i meant for you to name
nothing more than that
you were just the devil
if the devil's name was music
and he still stayed up late
writing songs for everyone
takes all kinds
to give power to the name

Pyrex pipe
and devil time

my favorite gypsy
stays up all night
devil's got a lot of songs to write

that hammond *****
really shining something through
if you could hear it as clearly as i do
but you never do

So I scuttled up, until I found a voice like Japan, I read him his rights, turned out the lights, and laid right back on the sand. They said, "Sir, he was much of a father to me, but we were labeled his kin, right in our family tree." "Oh wow", I said, with a gentle, smooth voice, he went missing last August, but now he wants back you boys?" "Oh yes, he sure is a feral man. We think that's why he dried up and flew to Japan." Right then, the two of them went silent just like two second story men, so I inquired, "What happened then?" "From Monday thru Sunday he took to prayer from the bible, and on every other weeknight he watched Japan's Top Model. He threw gallant parties to a harem of wives, he read each of their palms, and looked in their eyes; some time later, when everyone was about to leave, he'd turn on Happy End and start a wild ****." By this time I was tired, the sun began to set, I grew tired of my beach patch and yearned for my bed. Although soporific, I tried to be polite, I said, "Let's finish this conversation some other time." "Of course!", they said, "We're off to bed. We'll see that you'll do the same." Then they stood up quick, and reached down and picked up my chains. The beach we laid on was black top, asphalt and tar, the bed I craved was behind a row of private bars. The two of them, them both, were children of mine, because my memory is shot, this might've been their millionth time. i got locked up in a county that's dry as a beach, like Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where I was raised till 13. No one, not even the warden, knows really why I'm here, even some man from Cell Block Five, asked me last Sunday, why was I here. My beach perhaps, it's love at last, concrete, gravel, and stone- a 6' x 10' room with bars and a porcelain throne. It's mine I cry, each night I die, with glee, with smile, with rite. But it makes the other guys run at me, and try to start random fights. I don't remember the boat I took, but I remember the tour, going to Japan at Epcot Center since I'd never gone before.

I collapsed the seats of my Rav4
You watched my *** the whole time
And saw an opportunity
As I bent over between the front seats
One, two, then three fingers
While fumbling to turn off the hazards
Biting a seat to keep quiet
Accidentally turned the music back on
"Stay In My Memory" by Bim
The song from Him
**** him, I'll ******* instead
The hazards were off
The music still on
Your fingers making my body quake
From the inside
Twice
Strong enough to throw me around
Like I was someone cuter and smaller
And put me on my back
With a hand around my throat
Kissing at me like a dog
Making me submit like a *****
Three, four, five
"On your knees"
And you threw me there, too
Six
Around we spun
Getting rug burn
Lost count of the quakes
They started to blend
With the aftershocks
"Are marks okay?"
And then you left one
A hickey on a weeknight
And a Monday, no less
Next time, we need a bed
Rug burn is a *****

At the end of this time with ????, I will look back on my emotions and force myself to believe they’re lies; this is in order to save me the burden of missing him but no, they’re the biggest lies I will ever force myself to tell. I think I love him. I love him like a friend. No. I love him like a…I’ve never loved someone before so I cannot make a comparison. I don’t know my limits or boundaries. Love is a limitless emotion. We have the capacity to love all with no end. I love everyone. I love ????. I want him to drown me with his presence, but I don’t want to dominate his time. I see him rarely in comparison to, most of the people that go about this relationship business- even those long-distancers with their Skype.
Whenever I do see him I want to hide in his arms, his kiss, his passion, his slumber. I want to lie on a space of grass with him, smoke and stare at the sky. We will look at the blue for so long that when we come down and look at each others faces we can see the sun circles fill our pupils. Then they will clear, revealing the space in our eyes. Unlimited life, galaxies and possibilities. We will claim we can see the future, our souls intertwined in a dance of laughter and stumbling. We ignore the stumbling, unsure of what disagreement may do to us. We debate, but on meaningless things which just spark our conversation and ends up in heated kissing.
I’m scared of his eyes. I will die in those eyes, when he inevitably leaves me for a pretty girl with a smaller **** and bigger rack. But then I see us bumping into each other in town later; he left the girl and wants someone less vapid. I giggle, he chuckles. We look at each others eyes, and like blinking back the burning sun spots we blink back our old, shared feelings. Our terrestrial sphere. Our insides whine, we ache, and we leave, part. A weeknight later I go to a party, I get drunk, I see him. Sun circles. I sit in the garden in my solitary hallucination, smoking the hell out of a pack and imploding into ash-ened lungs. I see him again, meters away, smoking. I call his name, he wanders over; and then we drink ourselves blind and make out. It starts again the same way. I worry.
I love to say his name, it’s like my tongue has turned to smoke and is floating away from my mouth in dissipating curls; I don’t say his name often. If he says my name I disintegrate, my shell chips away, my love for him increases. When he laughs and his face cracks into light, I want him. I want him to want me. I want him to think about me when I’m not around. I want to make him happy. I want him to love me. I want him to lust for me. I don’t want him to hurt.
He used to hurt himself when he was a small kid. He burned and he cut his neck. He was hospitalized a lot. He moved from Scotland when he was young. His favorite color is purple. His ex was…I just don’t want him to hurt. I ache when he tells me about everything that hurts him and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want him to hurt…I want him to skin me alive and use my layers as a blanket; if that means I can comfort him then, so be it. If that was the only way, I would let him, just so long as he can drown and suffocate his hurt. I will strip and hold the blade against the flesh myself if it spare him the damage. It’s such a ****** way to think, but my heart and brain agree that I would do anything to make him happy.
I would time travel, and cuddle him before he even started entertaining the thought of harming himself. I will dress up as one of the main ***** fairies from Zelda – I don’t ******* know, those fairies creep me out. If one of them told me not to hurt myself I wouldn’t out of fright towards that face. Argh those fairies faces…
...????….
You’re turning me obsessive; I smell your scent and I feel like you’re wrapping yourself around me. You’re so, so, so intelligent; I don’t care that you think you’re not…you are okay. You are the most intelligent guy I’ve ever met and ever will meet. You’re a sucker for keeping people happy, and that’s adorable as ****. You will never leave someone looking a bit sad, you will strive to make them smile and spark their inner fire. You’re a lighter. You’re someone everyone needs in their life at some point. Those who are lucky enough to share your time own the world, you are the greatest honor to accompany. I will continue to praise you because you are the embodiment of good. I would say perfect but, you’d argue against it. Why? No-ones perfect, but people are amended, think karma…yours is balanced. You’re perfect for your friends, your elders, your peers and me. I am an unrequited love for your entity. You drive me mad; mad with every emotion I can think of. I feel so happy. With you. Happy. Light. Sun circles. Usually I’m empty. Passive. What I know for sure is that, I love you.

They say only in infinity
do two parallels meet,
but in this house at 6 pm
every weeknight when we eat

the finite get a touch of love
as food is more than just prepared,
when you cook it with the thought of us
it’s more than taste that shows you care.

Through acts alone you give us life
beyond what’s seen upon the surface,
despite the cause of any strife
you give us all a purpose.

Forever to you we owe a debt
to be paid in love and life beget.

this society of ours is so gargantuan,
policed by the daylight we hold at night for ransom,
Like a Jesus or a black Aphrodites,
I'll be your daddy if you let me call you my mommy,
give me your milk, the nectar that forms at your eyelids
We can go out in public on a weeknight Ireland,
I won't drink, but I'll wrestle every penny you
throw into each fountain, unless each wish
you make puts us together in California. At 55º it's as
cold as it seems your heart is, you whisper the omissions
of lies over mute. Every silver trinket on this charmers'
bracelet abused. Be the freeway and I'll be the car, drive around my circles, and we can drive the map of the Hollywood Stars. This circus- paddy-wagon, sewer stardom, I've always been the over-roasted beans from your local Starbucks. I grew up to grow up, I got up to throw up, I sought you to show up, and give you this leigh garland. Egyptian or pitiful, critical mister 'are not.' My words were worthless and wounded by such ardor of this perfervid martyr. Enveloped by threading the eye of this tempestuous hourglass, just another sign of being extremely intolerable to the minutia, the worried, and nervous curse of being so human and the fear of being, quite heart broke.

You only wanted to get up early
out of fear of missing the sunrise
Sometimes you'd wait, thinking
soaking up the night will make you wise.
Sifting through our own demise,
we find comfort in the passing of time.
Do not forget that we do not rewind.
Moving fast through moments to find
some peace of mind.
We lose these minutes like dimes on the street
Trying to escape our own feet
Disengage from the moment we meet.

I wanted to die

This house This place I can't

Tried to drown it smother suffocate deprive ******* life-force

I felt feel I belong to some Otherplace

I still feel; weeknight dim-dark

Streetlamps cities and my eyes swole shut a silly haze

No sugar or milk please thank you and could you

The owls sound off—or owl they all sound the same don't they

One too many passersby

Screams far away terrible

Wait for prescribed calm to take hold

Crows are not like owls are not like vultures

No thing is like any other thing

This I've come to sense

I can't shake this pain from my belly

I miss:
Daytime drinking and
Lazy mornings and
Student loans and
Living with friends and
Lecture theatres and
Essay deadlines and
Empty weekends and
Fancy dress and
Coffee on campus and
Weeknight clubbing and
Petty arguments and
Academic writing and
Walking into town and
****** TV and
A queue for the shower and
Un-ironed clothes and
Library fines and
Simpler times.

I want to pick you up on a weeknight and take you down to Beirut, to alleys and streets you have never been to.
I'll take you to my favourite place for a happy hour drink, and after 9 p.m. we'll share one of the best bread loaves you will ever taste from the bakery I love the most.
Then you'll see me dancing while driving, for the first time, to one of those upbeat radio tunes.
And we'll end up in Jbeil, at the beach, running into the water for a late night dip; splashing each other and screaming like little kids and kissing each other every once in a while like the lovers we are in this very moment.
Then we'll sit by the shore and play games till we dry up.
And the clock will remind us that I should take you back home, wishing I could stay with you for a couple more days. And I'll try to make you stay in the car and you will hug me very tightly and then you'll forcefully leave because it is almost 3 a.m. and I still have a long way back home.



- LynnAA