You keep pouring sorrow
into my glass that is
already full.
You pour
and you pour,
until it overflows,
and then you pour
some more.

Can you hear me,
with your hands cupping your ears

I'm speaking to you,
wiping away my tears

Can you see me,
with your hands covering your eyes

I'm giving myself to you,
I have shed my disguise

Are you listening to me,
Can you make out my pleas?

You couldn't see me
You couldn't hear me

Now I'm gone.

Congrats.
You’ve done it.
You know that scar isn’t going to heal.
You went too deep.
You lost control.
You’ll have to live with that.
You now bear the insignia
Of the anguished.

As the eastward Monsoon winds blow
Dark clouds hover above
The summer sunshine fading
Dawn and dusk now look alike -
In the same nightly hue.

Inside, my insides echo a nasty white noise
Of the rain birds' incessant caws

Lightning flashing, illuminating some
Darkest corners - wh're I haven't ventured yet
A rapturous thunder, in shocked wonder
I break into a silent sweat
As the pregnant cloud precipitates
My frozen heart aches - in shades myriad
- An unwilling contrast against the crystal clear vapour of a cloud
surrendering itself as the monsoon rain!

The heard wrenches - in agony
With each thawing drop of rain
Of a lost hope and frozen wish
A facade of happiness, I feign.

What unspoken grief
Have you hid in your depths?
What reply do you seek
That, you visit the shore
as a recurrent wave, incessantly?

What is it that you look for?
Bowing down your mighty self
To a shallow wave that wets my feet
And the sand underneath

You roar in fulsome furore
Yet grieve in silence
I cannot fathom
The depth of thy grief-
You are borne out of your own tears

Don't waste perfectly good loneliness.

Don't waste it on the wrong person.
Don't even waste it on the right person.

Don't waste loneliness during the day,
When there are things to be done.
Don't waste it in dreams at twilight,
When there are dones to be thinged.

Don't waste loneliness at night
When your time should be your own
And could be filled with anything
Other than everything you're not.

Take your loneliness
And denigrate it.
Crumple it. Crush it.
Throw it in a blender.
An industrial oven.

Take it out
For a few drinks too many,
And a few more after that;
Lull it into a false sense of security
That congeals with its drunken state
To create a blinding dichotomy
Of vulnerability and arrogant invincibility,
So it suspects nothing
As you lead it
Down a dark alley
And beat it to death with a brick.

Have a too-close-to-call
Fight to the death
With your loneliness
In a public toilet,
With it almost getting
The better of you
Until you smash it
Teeth-first
Off of a porcelain
Sink basin,
Before dragging it
By the hair
To a cubicle,
Where you hold its head
Under the toilet water,
Long after its body stops convulsing.

Do what you can
To transmute
Your loneliness
Into solitude,
And wear it.

Inside-out.
Back to front.
Upside-down.
Right side up.

Wear solitude so well that
It ends up wearing you,
As its skin.

Use solitude to learn thyself.
To feel thyself.
To know thy changing self.

Let solitude remind you that
The existence of loneliness
Begets the existence of
The antithesis of loneliness.

So definitely don't waste
Perfectly good loneliness,
Especially if you're forgoing
Perfectly good hope.

The Gains of Loss by Robert C. Leung

As I begin to lose
my sweet memory
The flotsam and jetsam
and ephemery.

The regrets, the injustice,
the pain and despair
The resentments, the insults,
the hurts and the fear.

The timeless reminders
of not good enough
Pale yellow post it says:
“Hasn’t got the right stuff.”

That time that you said
what no one would say
“I don’t really love you
now please go away.”

Most of it gone now,
I can’t quite remember
It whispers to me
from a foggy December.

Am I better off for it?
Well perhaps in some way.
Have I gained from the loss?
It’s a bit hard to say.

I need no longer sit here
and artfully languish
In all the sad fury
of my piquant anguish.

Like my father before me
I’m one of those old timers
Reaping the benefits
of beneficent Alzheimer’s.

Robert C. Leung © Copyright 2015