It started snowing recently: my first thought:
let me go skip along the ice-encrusted glass,
let me make a snow-angel: my second thought:
let me go skip along the frost-covered pathways
let me slip and fall and fall and crack my skull.

Madness. Stark raving madness.
Leaping flames of the mind. Gently licking
at the heart. Blood set on fire, brought
slowly to a boil. Madness. Stark. Raving.
Madness.

The conversation simmered as such:
"Don't be dramatic."

Is this how we go about
pretending we are shocked
when people cut themselves shoot themselves
hang themselves end themselves when
they are told to simmer as such:
"Don't be dramatic."?

Drama is my eye sockets bleeding
heavily at paper-crumbled past midnight.
But of course I cannot do that.
I cannot bring myself to bleed.

Drama is my hands effortlessly
clutching a neck- any neck, I don't care whose-
and squeezing until my eye sockets bleed.
But of course I cannot do that.

Drama is not a breathless exasperation
when suddenly a wave of the same old
same old begs to drown you again
and once again you must pick up a pen
to survive. Darjeeling you
tire me oh so very much. You hate me
oh so very much I think. You...

No, me
and my madness. Stark. Raving.
Madness.

Which I can't let happen again
because apparently dramatic is
being able to barely
take my next breath
and wondering why
respiration in a classroom
should be a mountain climb.

Weird, long, scary parts of you...
Those hours... Take notes
of them. Dream even
when passing by these old walls.
And paint them...

I would
I wish
I could
I must

I cannot.

Though, if not,
may I have only
this last glance?

Glimpses into dual starlight, twinkling
milky effervescence with
rings

Of infinite, sonorous brown, towards
deep black holes which
cling,
        
To these imagined night skies,
          I utter my utter soft words
The sun in my closed eyes,
          I dream a dream of stars and hurt


Your skies have met my eyes.

I have never written a single poem
that my lovers could understand.

In truth, all my romantic verse is simple,
self-congratulatory applause

for not falling victim
to the virus of sentiment.


I am a gifted liar.

Thesis:


There's an easy way to disprove
that ignorance equals bliss:

                              Your eyes

were puzzles of space-time,
studied through conversations
fervent in their background noise-
where I looked for one single oddity
in what might have been the ordinary,

except it wasn't. Space-time
distorts around things of great

                                        gravity

and your light-consuming pupils
pulled me towards you. Complexity,
hidden in some unsuspecting darkness
that I was dragged into...
things I didn't understand
until I reach our event horizon

      and you and I are one.


(As for my thesis: what great Nothing would we have been
if I skyrocketed away
for fear of the unknown?)

From a distance,
planets look just like particles:
you can't see them.

So when I disappear
into the edge of the sky,
maybe

we won't orbit each other
so much.
Maybe

you'll sleep without my
gravity
while knowing how small

I am,
but still a small
part of you

like a particle
which might be or have been
a planet.

stars shine and world spins
and we breathe
and air sweet
and I me
and you you
and blue blue
and red red
and purple purple
we breathe
and see
starshine and worldspins

Quaint Acacia tree forest:
******, unblemished as it was
when my grandparents first met here-
mountain school.

The chapel beside the administration
office
is locked.

But just as holy are the dark coal
mountain
rocks
that sweetly fell from God's hands before
Jesus set his feet here.

He didn't.
This place is lovely nonetheless.

Prometheus gave fire
to humanity and had
his innards guzzled
by vultures for it.

You gave me the sun
and I
unduly set myself
wholly
to the task of tearing
apart your insides.

Top to bottom, I stripped you
strip you,
will strip you
of all that makes you you and
I don't know how to stop
turning your yellow
to orange
to purple
to black
like my innards too. See,
I too once gave fire
to people and lovers and friends and
then
I set myself to the task of
tearing up apart
those various necessities that made me
me. Things like basic human kindness.
Simple rules like don't
involve yourself with so many girls
that you lose count while never losing
count. That sort of
thing, y'know.

Do you know how long I've been
trying to write you a poem called
Darjeeling? I've been trying  for
so long that I drink coffee now.

I've been trying for so long that
when the restaurant menu finally
reads 'Darjeeling tea' for so and so
price, I don't pay it and order
some mediocre hot-chocolate instead
(and even a Strawberry milkshake. What
does that say about me, I wonder?).

It was lukewarm. It didn't scald
my tongue like you did.

I suppose it never will.

I hesitate to talk to you afterwards
because I'm not in the mood
of insulting your intelligence

with excuses or love songs
or whatever else.

the one time there was no light
a second of absolute blindess
the pit of fear, hard like a dried pea

you can only do so much
(so much is probably beautiful
(so much depends upon))

god, almost.

World watch me,
aflame; hear me
roaring strange emanations
of inner dreams made external,
made vivid made real made me
made world. Watch
and wonder: How
did mere mortal learn
to speak in godly tongues?
World I'll learn, world
I'll learn. Just
wait, wait for me
to

grow.

It is not
time to go.
Much time was left
all so long ago;
bold favours, unfavoured by my
nature. Thus I
processed what I could, how
I could and, I could not,
of course,
many lesser of me
exist. This is
not enough, it is not
       enough. How does
one write? To inhale? Most
not likely. Rushing through this
won't help much. Undiscernable
        rhythm. Many dances
were velvet. This leads not to knowing
much. Much is all a softness.

Watch me, world, I might
breathe  on you  so gently.
             Much. Much is all softness.

Were those your tear drops or just
your temporary diamonds
of gentle morning dew?

You couldn't reasonably expect me
to be able to speak over
your immense silence,

my little flower.

He lingered on in the cold,
her voice to his ear;
saving him
from the frostbite of a lonely earth.

All on her own,
all on that phone,
he heard her soft and
held out to reach her
against the bitter cough
of nature’s cold.

His heart his mind it
beats of it,
thinks of it;
them.
And therefore it,
because of it;

he speaks to sleep then.

I used to laugh at my mother
when she told me that I'd go crazy
from reading all of those books and that
I'd lose my mind trying to get my PhD
attempting to unclothe the universe.
Now I wonder why she didn't laugh at me
and my ignorant smugness and speeches
as I struggle to piece my sanity back together
from the countless blows of all this learning
which has failed to make me whole.

He asks himself,
To ask himself:
    
    “What’s self-referential humour?”

THE SCIENCE SECTION IN THE LIBRARY.




Why is it hard?

To suggest to me, you;
that I do not love you,
as Einstein and Newton
glare at us from their spines,
in truth and in shelves,
here?


Because when months pass you’ll be both here and not here
like a creeping silhouette: a black cat in shadow
-though within the boundaries of bookcases
instead of inside some sad quantum box.

Because when I am here, you will always let go
again of my hand or may not. Regardless,
I begin to notice- the bookcases expand…
…leaving space for more spines to glare at me.


Stupid, stupid questions;
curious, unanswerable.


Why is it that

I will then hear your name,
as rusting papyrus
is turned by young fingers
crossing yellowed ruins,
for truth in these shelves,
here?


Because today passes; you‘re both here and not here
like how light makes your tired iris amber-
by absorption of all visible rays but one,
which when reflected, leaves the rest forgotten.

Because when I am here, you will always let go
again of my hand or may not. Regardless,
memory is vacuum; you won’t hear me choking
in the Brownian motion of reality.


Thus the library is such
an awkward place to break up




*T.W.T Mulalu

I like breakfast.

Just as how a little stick-man could not perceive the pencil that drew him
I could have never seen God and didn't see him when he had molded me
from His depths of clay, profound as a rock- that is to say still, solid,
silent, cold, old, disquieting... All fancy words for 'not much.'

Here's the point: there isn't any, but
just as how this little stick-man cannot perceive this pencil that draws him
closer and closer to the last panel of his, this, comic or graphic novel:
beings of smaller dimensions know nothing
of those so much higher, smarter, and more poetic than themselves.

Does this have to do with why you disappeared onto an airplane
like a bird searching for her freedom...?
Am I, in this mess of metaphors, your little stick-man who couldn't
get out of his paper sheet and fly with you...?
Of course, in existing on a dried white flap, I could not, cannot, fold
my own two dimensions of existence into even one crumpled paper plane;
so I could not, cannot, follow you through your freeing air
and ask you, or beg you, to answer my silly questions...

Because I have both length and width, but no depth;
no depths of clay.

Though I figure the answers to these questions are the same.
The truth is that, in this mess of metaphors,
neither of us got to pick what we didn't want to be, bird or stick-man.
In reality we had only one choice: to hold hands when we could.
So we did.

And when we did- everything became dimensionless;
and Everything made sense because Nothing did.
Because the value of the distance between our hands
meant that Nothing was our Everything.
And from that dense Nothing our Universe was born-
Bang. Thus tiny strings of new Everything rippled throughout old Nothing...
making Everything matter, almost literally.
We then made our stars, our galaxies, our planets; our classrooms,
lockers, and lovers: each other. All of this brilliant Creation until
we only had one last choice: to hold hands when we could...
...so we did...

... again and again,
in the distant dreams of a troubled theorist
who chains together pages and birds of poetry,
looking to find you, again and again,
in the mess of metaphors
of our Universe,

and I did.

                    Almost.

Morning:
how to undo a bra-strap
(almost-girlfriend).

Afternoon:
how to use chopsticks
(former drama-teacher).

Evening:
how to know if she hasn't yet let go of her baby
(mother).

Monet, Impressionist Sunset
Spacetime diagram of Blackhole,
Einstein equations,
pictures of Hawking radiation,
pictures of Newton, Einstein, etc
The solar system, the universe, etc
A pair of eyes
Conversation with K
Four Quartets

is simply to believe
that some thoughts
are so beautiful
that they could not
not be shared.

You wanted the truth so now here it is:
I want you to **** me up.

I want you to eat me alive
and tear me up and
rip out all my pages
and then struggle to glue them back together knowing
that you probably won't try because -oh!..-  there's another page.

Open me.

End my being with your marginalia.
Write on my skin with ink if you have to,
but stain me. Stain me
with your negligent splashes of volatile
explosions of how your name tastes on your tongue.
Show me what it is to cry until you cry out blood
off of your throat. Let me know  
why your vivid hair always curls like that
without your permission. Tell me that I don't need
your permission to do the same to you
because everyone says my hair isn't combed
and you say you can't see the difference when it is so
bite me.

Bite me.


Bite me.



Bite me.





Tear apart whole chunks of my flesh until
you have had your fill. Smile that smile
that smells its smell of blossoming blood
like a poppie that decided to implode outwards.
Do it so that Faust is not even a second too late
to offer us his bargain because we were eons
ahead of him. Do it so that I understand why
you called me a hurricane. Am I your disaster?

Take me to your hell. Your eyes
excite me and I want to know why.
We should burn out violently.
Not be put out. Not gently.

Yes.
In the silence I don't grab you.
Next time I might.

Elle a un certain

je ne sais quoi
je ne sais quoi
je ne sais quoi

que
j'adore.

Mais.

so we began to be swallowed.
in my case, first, by the trees.

And then I thought that
those big, endless dark spaces
between the stars in the night sky
had to mean Something

besides

how much nothing is in
Nothing.

Crimson dream held a glass of white;
last thought I thought when mind matched night.

First thought I think when mind matches day:
Crimson dream is miles, miles away.

idontknow

Xclarity about this very real figment
of my imagination is
not possible,X                      (pigment)

actually, I don’t want to think

I don’t want to think about this

Xthese problems never go awayX

I’m not black my name’s OJ

        XokayX

I Xcan’tX breathe
I Xcan’tX breathe
I Xcan’tX breathe

        XokayX

I stopped writing love poems when I met you,
and started writing psalms instead: I took
your lips as the body and your hips
as the blood of a Holy Spirit you’ve been
hiding in your eyes, your eyes, your eyes
that I’ve been praying to
worship, worship, worship. Some would call
this feeling blasphemy, but since it is winter,
I am willing to take a little trip down to hell
to melt the cold in my bones, especially
if that means I can walk you back
to Heaven. But don’t take this all too seriously
because
I stopped writing love poems when I met you,
and started writing psalms instead: I took
your words as Gospel and raised them to my
tongue and matched it with yours to bathe
myself in your waters to wash away my sins-
and yes, I am a sinner, for I have undertaken
many a Crusade to prove myself worthy
of you. But the blood of my enemies is your
hips. The lips of those I have left for you is
your body. And still in your hell I find Heaven.
But
don’t take this all too seriously because
I stopped writing love poems when I met you.

I graduated fresh and ****** from my mother's womb,
a gift, greater than any other.
My sister before me too.
My brother after me was swallowed up by Him
mere hours after drawing his last breath his first.
Behold:
This is my unambiguous declaration against
this universal truth: my unparalleled defense
of the dignity of man
against the temperature-empty, relentlessly inhuman
universe unconcerned with these ventures
which characterize knowing it

not. For one day I shall call
my teachers by their first names. One day
they shall call me doctor. This is the totem
declaring the worth of the living and the dead,
my sister and my brother: myself. The totem
of the disenfranchised and  barely and disabled
and black. Even also less including I guess
the enriched the cup overfloweth and mighty
and colourless. Our skin and bones and graves
and blood and ****** and lust and chest and
******* and being and nothing and isness is

beautiful

regardless of everything. It is mine.
It is yours. It is yours.

Votre.

WAKING FROM EVERYDAY.

The chords of your laughter, unexpected,
echo from the clouds above me
and scatter
like fragile light; dancing
across the green tips of grateful trees.

Briefly, I shuddered. Behind the bricked wall
of the cemented dreams I have of us-
I had head your little song of life.
But now I am smiling.
Your fragile light has made me grateful

to see the world in colour.

We jump

to our elsewheres
somewhere
most likely in the stars
beyond sky limit:
we were told we could
were we not? (some
were not, nevertheless we
jumped
because also someone
somewhere to
elsewhere
jumped).
We will come tumbling
down. Heaven some lightyears
away, we cannot
escape it, we are not
fast enough, we cannot
reach the velocity necessary
                            to not
stumble,             to not
trip on our feet, to not
rocket ourselves back
down home (come home
mama cried), cannot
go elsewhere:
world is all that is the case
the weight of it
soft heavy caress
it will always bring you
down, you will
always
skin your knees
         your ankles
it will always bring you
down, you will
always
look towards that
elsewhere
with eyes
light beams
telescopes
film screens
numbers
words
but it
always, always
brings you down
this great weight
not only the Earth
but the everything
that attracts everything
with mass, even you
and your smallness
are heavy enough,
even light and its
flickers
is heavy enough;
elsewhere
is
somewhere
is
home
are
words which grasp
at that thing that we
tried to remember
before our eyes
close finally and

we fall.

O
The Who
belted out adolescent
stress
through edgy
guitar riffs
like they still had
pimples
long after they
became
famous.

And me
I
I
often forget
that
I'm
I'm
supposed to be
becoming
a
Man
or something
like that.

My hands are bleeding surely:
my guitar pick isn't my fingers
but soon I'll write these nonsensicals
in blood. But nobody should scream
out for that. Nobody should buy
my words like rock-albums.
Nobody should ask Who
is he and Who
am I because

me
I
I
often forget
that
I'm
I'm
supposed to be
becoming
a
Man
or something
like that.

While
The Who
O
The Who
belt out
out adolescent
stress
through edgy
guitar riffs
like they still have
pimples
long after  
becoming
famous

like Who?

(after Sarah Manguso)

The darkness of your eyes is a curious darkness.
I mean when I close them. Old dances are equal
in distraction, like the shifts in subjects in a song.
That's just the different voice in a choir, I mean.
I mean, I mean to mean: Meaning from the random
statistical patterns of this... "world"? Is it right
to call everything "this"? "World" seems to mean "here" and yes,
with "us". Like the positivists told the scientists, "yes"
this thing with our eyes-- expansive eyes,
microscope eyes telescope eyes large hadron collider eyes mathy eyes
--these eyes are "I". Would I be comfort,
--and yes, the substance of that word and not the action
that entails the substance being a thing that can be
--would you be comforted by the thing that sees
being the thing that sees you as you? Imagine
some other singer singing that no other such thing
exists besides ourselves. Is that comfort? Is that
a person or a poem? Is everything in that the same? Wonder
with me back to empiricism. Knock on the table
and think of it not as Idea (that beneath our own
that we wished to wish). Wonder
with me on this song, back-of-the-envelope
calculated tipsily, alone, at the edge of a party
--okay, the party of (this) life. Wonder
with me, there, here,
always. And open
your throat.

Go, small song. Make yourself
known. Stretch your arms as sunlight,
glow. We humans’ leaves’ greens need you,
so, will you love us as our ears do you?
Wonder with me, throat, as you say
your notes and lengthen their dull to
soft nevers. The crowd still hears you
tomorrow, the last song before the final
closing of the eyes before godless sleep.
Coffins vibrate with your enthusiasms,
corpses know remorse, finally, like a
cracked ancient bell with some something
left. String me as *******
screaming in pillow fields. String me
as hazardous Lazarus sinewed neck-string
plucked as flowers, as slave-ships docked
upon the shore with gentle endless thud. We’ll
keep singing spirituals forever, we’ll keep
saying things about skin. We will win. Win
like mirrors lastly seeing smiles. Come with me
as stars die and are still witnessed. Inscribed
as pride in a mother’s voice with small
black boy joy, with tears, first cries, blood,
water
and the mother’s song mountain-heavy
and living.

I.

This year I've done nothing remarkable,
because that wasn't on my syllabus.

But,

I did learn how to make conversation
with an empty locker,

because you weren't one of the students
who'd had gone off on Exchange.


  II.

This year I've done nothing worth remembering,
because my timetable had no place for memories.

But,

I did learn how to inject meaning
into moments were there were none,

because you weren't one of the poems
in my last English paper.


  III.

This year I've done nothing for my soul,
because I'm just a candidate number.

But,

I did learn how to learn how my examiners
think. Past papers are the future,

and you aren't one of those questions
that I'll get full marks for again.


  IV.

And this year,

time will pass itself,
killing everything

but my memories,
but my final grades.


V.

And this year,

time will have passed itself,
having killed everything.

Even my memories.
Even my final grades.

VI.

As everything

becomes everything again,
the year next;

with another you,
with another syllabus.

YOU.


  I.

I enjoy the simple things:


kissing You Goodbye
since that's the only time
when God will let me have You-
when I can't;

the occasional glimpse of this God
when Your skies meet my eyes
since that's the only time
that I'm allowed to have You-
when I can't;

Your hands on my chest
and mine on Your waist
all until the school bell rings-
since that's the only time
that God will let me have You-
when I can't.

Which seems to suggest
that no,
I cannot have You.


No,
I can't.

No,
I won't.


  II.

Once upon a time


when eyes and skies met
and ignored the sounds
of lockers closing
bells ringing
and other people talking-

an invasion would flood our vision.

A friend of Yours', or mine's, hand
would cut across the space between
eyes and skies
and block the exchange of poetry
that I liked to imagine
happened between our souls.

I was perpetually asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
And perpetually answered:
"Yes, I do. But can't I have friends?"

Then suddenly I understand
what 'perpetually' actually means
when You tell me
that in a few months
You'll be off in some plane
going somewhere
for some reason.

(Question:
is it thus
too soon
or too late
to say that I love you?

(Or do I at all?))

Therefore there was perhaps no choice-
You and I momentarily disappeared
and we momentarily came into existence
in the briefest of
separate deaths
then
singular birth
then
singular death
then
separate births.

Separate all again, perpetually

asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
Then perpetually
answered
with nothing.


Well,
then I did,
now I do,
tomorrow I won't.


  III.

We are together now.


Sometimes You talk
as if in an expository monologue
in the grandest and most acclaimed of stages.
Sometimes You don't-
and the threatening silence
makes me wonder if I should go, or stay.

I was attracted to the mystery of You
and am also now angered by it:
I have no idea what to do
and often don't even know
what to write.

Prose and verse often fail
when the author has nothing to write of.

(What I'm really saying is:
Do You plan on maybe
replying my messages
anytime soon?
Preferably while we still have
any time left

at all?)

And then, hours, or days
later.
I still have nothing to write of
so I instead write
this.

I also write how

"I will never know what structures
exist in Your mental architecture: You couldn't
bring Yourself to give me
even but a blueprint."


You still won't.


  IV.

Exams are over. School has closed. We near our finale.


Of course what about
those fights that You and I
never had. Perhaps
we should've. Perhaps
we would've. Perhaps
there was no point in anything. Perhaps
there is no point in everything. Perhaps.

See, that's why I asked You
what You thought of Yourself,
Because I too would like to know

Who are You?

But then again...
I've changed my mind
about the end of this...of our...
literature. Let us instead say that

Your eyes are the stuff of poetry,
but look at the title of this-
it's only just... You.
And that's all I want
to talk about today.


But...
we won't.


  V.

I count the days until the airport.


Take note of what I will say tomorrow:
"Listen, for I am…”

The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.

"...a poet missing his muse;
who wished he could have told her,
everything he could think of..."

The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.


Even now,
I can't.

Even now,
I won't.

You are dead and you made us in that hospital.
     That lump of flesh in the pit of you: clay.
          With your hands you grasped it, pulled into yourself: mouth:
umbilical. Like a snake consuming itself. This is what they mean
when they say that circles are perfect. The water
     was warm. It snowed outside for days. I visited
my sister
and wondered about brains. She speaks of her therapist
as a friend.
                       I speak as if I don't know I am
a person
                  and imagine
the rush of light in each of our heads. The heady fire
revealed in MRIs. The showerhead can barely contain the steam
and nothing cools me off. Back to our younger years
                                             in the libraries
when we were still constructing ourselves. You said
                                                            ­                such lovely things
that when you died it felt like deaf. I can no longer

     hear

you singing. Except now, I grasp
at the hard body of a psychology textbook, reading,
some exam tomorrow-- listen, you could've come to Harvard, too,
if that is what you wanted, if your body would let you-- and your quiet
suggests the problem is that I am stuck in the frame of my

nakedness   cross-legged      bottomed

laughing     souped  into the bottom

of the shower curtains: and they open: the steam: the still

images of sliced brains in my textbooks: coffee-cups

emptied by the lips I have taken from you: quiet,

yes, no wonder why. When your hands

did their last thing,  when they reached into your own mouth
to spool yourself into you and the books we sent you
that you couldn't read because you were dissolving
                          
                           ­                When your hands

did that: did you think: could you: and if
                                          you could: do you
                               think
that was what made you: you the whole time?
Or was it: the departing of the air: as if to sigh:
when it gets so cold outside that every whisper:
feels monumental because: you can see: the clouds:
you speaking before you: before: your own eyes.        And then you blink

for a very long time in a single still flutter, stuck.