Have you ever wondered
About the youth of your parents
How do they look like
How have they been brought up
How did they meet
How did they fall in love?
How did they make us?

I had these questions with me since i grow up
Probably because my parents aren't that open up
Probably because they were so busy raising us up
Probably because its an Asian thing i assumed privacy as such.
So somehow, to me, parents’ life before us were so blurry and doesn't seem to ever existed
Not until the day i had my mom on the back of the scooter
As we rode to the temple where we store the leftover of our beloved dad

She told me about their past
A young guy in his teenager days
Lay eyes on her as they met on a communal working day
He asked for her hand before summoned military service
Not directly to her but through a relative
She forgot him as soon as she left for college
Busy chasing her love life, never heard from him in thousand days, he was too far away.

When the war over, he returned home, she was working in a distant village
He refused my grandpa’s arrangement, went on a journey to seek
For his first and only girl he ever fallen in love with
He found mom after her 5 or 6 failure romances.
They started distant relationship for a while before getting married.
She continued working in the faraway village and he returned to military service
To serve in another “nonsense war” (this is my words)

And honestly i still cant imagine how did they make us
‘Cause i never seen them holding hands, showing affection in front of us
But its real - they do fall in love
They do have their heyday before us

And even though i never seen them talking about love
I now realized its just a different way of showing how they love
By fighting; yet, taking care of each other for better or worse
By sometimes hurting each other...
But at the end of the day, one can change other’s diaper when he can no longer move

I cant tell if he was the love of her life when she decided to tight the knot.
But looking at her shivering shoulder, her teary eyes now every time we talk
About our beloved and only man
and whatever reminded us of him
I can think of nothing to explain but love

Have you ever wondered
How did our parents live before having us?
And how would you tell your future children
About your youth...

A blank verse worked,
A page with empty lines,
Not a word was written,
Precocious or sublime.

     I think I can go deeper,
     No title, lines or words,
     Just a blank white paper
     To ponder and observe.
     Smaller than a quark,
     Just think and it will work.
     Even greater than the singularity
     That banged our universe.
     Something was there,
     But nothing's here.
     This is a nothing verse.

It teaches nothing's worse
Than worthless words
That have no meaning,
No emotion, zero girth.

But you can make an ode of it,
A sonnet, or Rondeau,
Choose to please your fancy,
But please don't choose Haiku.

There's a private, invisible flock of comedians chanting soapbox knock-knocks in my parking lot
            Noisy, clang, boom thingy aloft and clipping the air around the slimy snow
And why does ajax keep butting its nose into everything I’ve got?
They’re all just boom-lost facades in a canonical, sly-faced rant.
So slanted, frankly, and poised toward a milder pace that the clang clipped the frosty branches beneath a drunken frat-house party.

Ah, the dandy-clang : native to the sandy graves and morose olive branches.
            But only on the night of the dandy-clang, candy dances
for the branches are not partial to missed solid caches
            of want and woe
            of tongue and toe
and seldom shaken beneath the overbearing heat of a white-faced predator
for times it was that here and now, because
the wind had bitten harder
What am I saying?
That if the dandy-clang came. And if it produced the branches of the dancing eve fame...
with but not together. The clouds up in the ether
that lake and earth should wither

In the caste of what the fir trees denoted what should be or what should not be,
I clasped the fig twigs and watched them split as if to say that all must come to an end.
And in the end, who can the charred leaves blame if there should be tire rods and hubcaps strewn  
                               across the forest's floor?

After totaling the costs of what should not be,
the last mast of yesterday's trade boat could skiff along the shore,
with flag flailing like the playground children's hands.

Irrationality piquing: birds dip and dive like a boxer's fists made of shadow
from one powerline to the next.
Training for the changing, biting winds, watching the unconscious cars staring.

And the skiff oozing through the unmentionables littered in the creek : what will
become of him?

Lodged in stale, fossil bones -- floundered between the swingset and the droning, dusty traffic at 3 a.m.
Metamorphic scarabs stolen from the gusts and pants of too much play.
Basketballs stained with carrion, precarious gusto in the wake of money suckling and ripping alongside                            
        the skiff.

Cross here with two pennies.

Goaded by the solitary abandonment of the 1930's, the used ******'s mouth gaping open like hungry carp, dusty trails of light from the past lamplight hanging in the air

Birds measured up along the powerlines, moving mindlessly along with the flock
Bird drones, feathery spines
Birds perched along the playground.
Bird play so far as to say
        does this not look familiar?

Bobbing, weaving, slathered in cadence and involuntary muscle jerks.

First we were here
Then we were not.

Au(Or)al Tune
When (O)ppo(u)rtun(e)ity knocks –
            Ah, pour that tune into me
               n(O)t
just write or speak
            but
                        /zIg:zAg/
            gut--
                        --teral mut--
            --ter yarns
                        With
Mouth-churn--
--ing-beat-lick--          
                        --ings.


Half-grown seedling ([her]bal:e(X)ssen(10)ces)
                                    into sm(O)ke
adolescent (O)re worn from being p(o)(o)r—
                      it was nE(X)CESSary for:
battles
birds
beats
b(O)(O)ks
bottles
bucks
b(O)nes
boys
bei­ng(bad)


sm(O)ke-rings w(ear)y with surr(end)er      
      stripped
            v(O)wel
                    for
                       v(O)wel
thr(OU)gh the yawn: (O)nly
            “(O)h.”

             (O)h
              … foll(O)ws

                        the
You’re w(or)th-knowing-ONLY-(O)nce
            type of l(i)ke.
VERSE/VERSUS: the
You’re-w(or)th-knowing-AT:LEAST-(O)nce
            type of l(i)ke
VERSE/VERSUS:
                        for (u)s

it’s the worst type of verse
                        when it’s
            them:VERSUS:us
                     (verses)

likewise -- (O)r worse --
it should really be about//
      a bad in (u)s: Y(O)U:ME


(O)h after a
                        kn(O)ck
(O)h after a
                        t(u)ne:://
(end)-verse
for worse – it’s an
(end)-versus-us
                        type of verse.


(O)ppo(u)rtun(e)ity
            pouring
            ringing e(X)cesses
like
                     ear-worms to
                     hear words to
                     heat hearts.

Ah::rest that mouth-verse onto me.
            (restful//fluster)
Ah::rest that mouth
            (silent//listen)
soulless gall(O)w r(u)ng
lipless v(O)wel sl(u)ng
            like
ARTS::between::STARS
            then
VOICES RANT ON::into::CONVERSATION
            then
PAYMENT RECEIVED::yet::EVERY CENT       PAID ME

worst-verse:
           Y(O)u//like hanging
                        your dipTH(O)NGS
on (O)pportun(e)ity’s d(O)(O)r
            like
                        sm(O)ke-rings
            like
                        being(bad)
            like
                        Y(O)U:ME
            like
                        (O)h. n(O).

(end)-verse:
worst-verse:
            L(I)ttle.Kn(O)wn.V(O)wel::
            n(O)(O)se big for (u)s

            ALL.