Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                                                        Nguyen and Tex

The receptionist calls loudly for Nguyen
Mispronouncing the name Nuh-Goo-Yen
Which is what some Americans still do
Although the patient is an American too

Some usages we need to narrow down
Some usages we need to broaden a bit
This is a medical office waiting room
Where all may diversify on the guest wifi

An Irrelevant Consideration:

The thought occurs that calling for Nguyen in Saigon
Would be like calling for Tex in Abilene

The smoke traveled through my throat all the way to my lungs.
With cloudy thoughts and smelly clothes
I sat on the back row.
Teachers and classmates wonder alike.
I wish I could push the smell inside my Hello Kitty backpack
But I cannot, so instead, I pull myself aside.
I keep telling mommy to quit.
But does she listen? I wish she did.
A couple of years later I discovered a marvelous thing!
Although I had promised myself I would never touch a cigarette, I do.
It happened in the backyard where my volleyball fell.
I simply bent down and picked up a cigarette **** instead.

The skinny, now small cigarette-  still blushing with mom’s lipstick.
I put it in my mouth, automatically.
Just how I’ve seen her do it millions of times.
I inhale and exhale my worries away and become my mom.
Next thing I know, the stench disappears
and it’s me who blows little puffy clouds
into my daughter’s mouth and lungs.
I pass the sickness on.
Later on we go visit Doctor Nguyen.
As we step inside, I can smell the infected air of the hospital’s hall.
And I know.
I know what the doctor will say.
While I see myself on my daughter’s head
I can hardly breathe.
I am choking with the smell of smoke,
The smell of sadness,
The smell of tears and of cancer.

N -ymph of the sea her grace adorn by emerald, pink morganite and
                                                    - carnelian -
G - oddess of love, beauty and trickery
U - nder world shakins and falls its knees upon seeing her into
Y - onder  - wild and blue
E - vil cripples by the lightness of her face, she is phenomenal
N - othing can stand the gape of her elegance.  

                                                -Wit­hin her -
T - antalizing eyes lie  some magic love spell and tricks
H - ow enticing, No wonder she wins every man’s heart -  immortals or
                                                                ­                        mortals especially Win
I - n just a wink of an eye

M - ountains and seas bow their heads
Y - ou'll  fall into her without hope but desperation

D- on’t ever look at her eyes, you'll be
U - under a life time spell and won’t ever wake up but if
Y - ou want to be
E - nchanted by her love
N- obody would stop you except Win.

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”
– Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters

Reading Virginia,
as if I understand her morals.
“Do not,” She has written.

Analyzing Woolf,
“One cannot think well,” she says.
my tongue is dry of new air, to “…love well…”

“…sleep well…” – Nightmares mostly,
leftover sleep and a dew of overdue promises
evaporating off my lips,  purging with blood.

She ended, “…if one has not dined well.”
I began: “Do Not Speak to me about Hunger;
Speak to me about War.”

Here I stay: barefooted in between
airport tile floors –  they tell me,
Gritting my teeth to the dreams,
forbidden desire and will to shining silver linings.

The cruelty, unrivaled, taking parts of a dream,
leaving most to die, but she’s hungry,
they told her the war’s over, but she won’t heel,
filling a God-sized with infused useless poetry madness.

- Emilyn Nguyen

Her grandmother told her that her delicate, intricate, beveling beauty closely resembled one of a rose. On lovely, tender spring mornings, she had soft, rosy pink cheeks complimenting her pink lips, and below lengthy, stem - like legs. Her soft skin radiated with a wonderful floral scent and even when it rained, her freckles seemed to dance across her face like raindrops mirroring the dainty dew droplets that lie upon her white – pink petals. Her whole lively being was recognized to draw in others – to love and to be loved – but without knowing: to capture the victims in her hidden, disastrous thorns. Her heart lived outside her chest, hours away at your window garden, roses were her grandmother favorite. When vines reach up through my head again, and the roots sew themselves to my toes, to be consumed by their splendor again and then realizing she is gone, and there is nothing growing inside you. If winters weren’t so cold, I’ll water from the roots to the vines to become the rose beside the garden inside of her that her grandmother once spoke of.
-         Emilyn Nguyen

From midnight on, I couldn’t help staring at the light ignited from the phone; waiting anxiously for a message I, for some reason, knew I wouldn’t receive. The night longer than day, so cruel of overthinking and possibility was held in the air. To add, the moon couldn’t keep away, its light kept shining; temping me to call, like the loose thread on my sheets I couldn’t resist to pull – I didn’t. I couldn’t wait till day, so the moon could meet the sun, and the stars could lie in the clouds. The coldness of the night’s snow shown sheets embraced the moon, cradled me into the clean white blankets, but I wanted the embrace of the burning sun as it would rage. Rage for me, rage at the moon.  By 1 o’clock, the sheets became my comfort embedding itself into the heat I radiate, waiting impatiently. Imagining the warmth of my blankets as the radiating heat of your body against mine. By 2 o’clock, I went unnoticed, the sky lightening, my crippling exhaustion leaving me numb. My eyelids heavy at the hallucinations I was witnessing. You became a vision, and like the moon you were fading, fading – gone. My fascination towards phone lights dimmed towards to growing moon – bigger and smaller like the strength of my heart. At 2:45, I became taunted to close my eyes completely. Through withdrawal, I only crash, slipping slowly under my sheets completely. I only fear that I will suffocate myself; deprive myself of air before 3. From the moon to the stars, counted the stars and the constellations like I counted the minutes I waited. The 45 after 2, taunted me, the titanic sinking deeper in my heart. Second per second, minute per minute waiting until 3. By 3:45, I only saw how your eyes lit up when you saw me in the night’s moonlight, trying to count the stars between our giggles in our dreams…

-         Emilyn Nguyen

“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.   Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”                              Marshall McLuhan

You understand where I'm coming from,
Reader Rabbit, you twisted ****? Maybe not;
While you and your boy/girlfriend, later your wife/husband,
Were ******* backpacks around Europe,
I was of a less fortunate, less frivolous cohort,
Like the poor, who always miss the fun stuff.
So I stayed home and waited, dreading time,
Treading water in Queens,
Doing the graveyard shift at the Wonder Bread Bakery in Jamaica,
(No, not that Jamaica, mun.)
Building bodies 12 ways, and sweating out the inevitable,
Praying to my lesser god not to hear from my local draft board.
And who was I to disturb the universe?
“It ain’t me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son;
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, lawd naw.”
(Send  "Fortunate Son" Ringtone to your Cell)  
I was just another cynical working-class hero,
Unlike you, numb nuts, and the rest of your silver surfer friends.
I knew I’d wind up without my teddy bear,
Convinced I’d end up sans security blanket,
With no ****-vacant musical chair,
To plop my sorry non-exempt, 1A **** cheeks
Down into when the music stopped,
When the music’s over, turn out the light--Jim Morrison,
Lizard King--turn out the light.
My horse, my horse . . . no wait . . . **** the horse . . .
My kingdom, my kingdom for a 2-S college deferment!
What kingdom?  
What was it Jesus said?
Not of this earth, anyway.
Colonial Indochina: rich man's war, poor man's fight;
It was such an efficient way to rid trash from poor neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I’ve been having a little trouble adjusting ever since,
Since I got back from that Kafkaesque Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
My personal Cold War thriller,
My Tecumseh Sherman “War is All Hell” war,
My war: 45 years ago next week.
These things take time:
So says the recorded message on the VA’s PTSD Hotline.
45 years ago I packed up my duffle,
Packed for what I thought was going to be my last time in uniform,
Grabbed my Army discharge papers, and
Limp-dicked out the side door of,
The Veterans Hospital in St. Albans, County of Queens.
I’d like to say I never looked back. But I’d be lying.

(cue PSA: VA Reaches Out to Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin,
Contacting nearly 570,000 recent combat veterans May 1,
To ensure they know about VA's medical services and other benefits.)

Today and every day is 11-11, Veterans Day—
What gets me now is that all my time since The Nam,
Is on average two lifetimes,
For all those sent home, bagged and tagged.
Is it survivor’s guilt? I doubt it.

You may not understand this, but I miss that freaky jungle.
I felt safe there.
How quickly I learned to expect the unexpected,
And that meant to expect the worse,
Finding my comfort zone the more uncomfortable, the worse it got.
I miss the wet weight of the air,
The cloying heat and humidity.
Humidity: a plain and simple meteorological miracle,
When you have plenty of time to really think about it,
Which I did: 365 days and a wake-up.
You know that whole gorgeous hydrologic cycle thing?
I miss the rain, the sound of falling rain.
I miss the other sounds, every buzz and click,
All the arcane and dismal things that go screech in the night.
And that relentless insect hum,
The jungle vibrating and intense,
The colors vibrating too, especially that electric green,
A green so vivid, every leaf and vine,
"The world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity,” I read in some nature magazine,
Lying naked in bed while my therapist ****** me off the other day.
All those freaky creatures great and small,
Every miraculous living thing that’s really alive and thriving.
And this is why--I think,
Getting obnoxiously philosophical for the moment,
This explains why it got to be so easy to waste what was alive and thriving over there, including and especially our selves.

Death never seemed that permanent, that final over there.
And besides, you couldn’t **** anything for that long,
The critters all looking their wet and slimy same.  
Two minutes in The **** and you were
Killing every ******* gnat and bug,
Every leech and snake, anything &
Anyone that just looked at you sideways.

And the flora? Did I mention the flora?
Soupy Sales: (Smack! Bam!)  “I told you not to mention that.”
The flora:  the plants grew back and they grew back quick.
You chop a path on recon and the next day it’s not there anymore,
So you chop the whole way back to the L-Z.  
Chop, chop, Hop Sing!
You were one smart ****, Hop Sing,
Safe and sound in Lake Tahoe, Nevada-side,
Cooking up Ponderosa pork bellies for,
The Cartwright Clan: Ben, Adam, Hoss & Little Joe.
Meanwhile, I’m not earning any frequent flyer miles,
Aboard a chartered TWA, coffee-tea-or-me,
Royal **** airplane to Saigon,
A place called ** Chi Minh City today.
I remember looking around at the faces on that airplane,
As we landed at Tan Son Nhut,
Those forlorn godforsaken faces,
Black and Chicano and poor white trash boys.
Scared shitless, of course,
But we really were jolly green giants over there,
American conquistadors, Cortez and the Boys,
Seeking gold and glory and, of course,
*******, (www.urbandictionary.com):
That sweet wet hole we all crave,
Can't go for too long without,
Center of our life's desire,
What gives women the upper hand in almost every situation,
Except when you pay in South Vietnamese piastres,
Your basic exchange rate $3.00 *******.

Yes, we were American conquistadors,
But traveling light this trip,
Our black-robed Jesuit fathers having missed the flight.
That’s right, for us no Ad majorem Dei gloriam this time,
Our mission so simple and so clear:
SEARCH & DESTROY.
But mostly, Destroy.

And pretty soon you worked your way up the evolutionary ladder,
From bugs, to fish, to frogs and snakes,
Small varmints and reptiles, birds and rodents;
And by the time you taxonomy out to the runway,
You’re pretty much whacking anything that moves,
Anything you feel like, pretty much any time,
All the time, sometimes just to pass the time,
Just to break up the ******* monotony of it all.
So making the anti-personnel leap got sort of easy:
They all looked the same, didn’t they?
They all wore the same pajamas,
And it was never conducive to grunt longevity,
To nitpick the civilians from the soldiers,
Never a good idea to waste time distinguishing friend from foe.

Good Morning, Vietnam:
We really were nerve-gassed-Adrian Cronauers over there,
G-2 Army oxymoronic intelligence stiffs,
Having a little difficulty finding the enemy,
Having one hell of a time finding a Vietnamese man named "Charlie."
They're all named Nguyen, or Tran, or Thanh or Trong or Bao or Phuc . . .
Oh, ****, I get it now.
I grok the how and why,
Of all the names we’ve used for centuries to dehumanize the enemy:
***** and Nips, Chinks and Slopes,
Huns and Krauts, Redskins and Ivans,
Redcoats and Rebs, Zulus and Mau Maus, *****, Ragheads and Sand ******* . . .
To dehumanize is to be dehumanized.
Nominal dehumanization; linguistic trickery.
It made it easy . . .
Well, easier . . .
To **** you.

What was it Pope Innocent III’s legate advised?
“**** Them All.  Let God sort ‘em out.”

Is it smell of burning flesh that makes me so digress?

Yes, I miss that freaky jungle, my friend.
I miss knowing what to expect and what was to be expected.
And most of all I miss that absolute confidence,
My self-liberating soporific certainty,
That I did not give a **** whether I lived or died,
And no one else did either.
I miss the peaceful place to go,
Coping with fear by letting go,
By writing off my life,
My future "in-country,"
My 12-month tour of duty,
My 365 T.S. Eliot Ash Wednesdays,
Learning to care and not to care,
Cultivating indifference as to,
Whether or not I ever made it Wee, Wee, Wee,
All the way home again.
The answers were right there,
Always there, all the time,
In nursery rhymes, and counting songs,
In psalms and arias, and every blues and rock lyric,
Right there, so right ******* there,
In Kris Kristofferson/Janice Joplin parlance of the times:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

And life for me since then--
ONE BIG, FAT-TITTED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY!

What was that Walter Sobjak in The Big Lebowski said?

“This is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules.”

I want to imagine falling fast because you’ve pushed me off a bridge but before I go, kiss me quickly while making it last so I can determine how much it will hurt when you say goodbye. To determine if it was too soon or too late because I had understood that you were the one that didn't feel the same. Yet, I understand that people come and people go but I don’t ever want to say goodbye to you. I question why you couldn't let the future pass and simply let go. I only ever so slightly want to say goodnight to you. I only hope that the good in our good-nights will mean I will see you in my dreams and goodbyes will mean that we will always end up meeting again tomorrow. I want to see you, even if it means for a slight minute like the moon meets the sun just before daylight forty five minutes after five and after the late eight o’clock orange-crimson sunset. You were convinced that there was no good in goodbye; no good in goodnight, but at first hand it may appear too hard, but look again. Always look again. I promise there’s good in that.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

quiet evening beach, "Nguyen Tat Thanh"
long stretch sugary brownie field
two strangers  by the shore
the waves crawl with lure

succulent are the thoughts
two caught in bait of mind games
exchanged soft kisses and caress
as her eyes met the sea

yet they're in control in their heads
no dramas but
a feeling of detach
no promises to profess

the voyage of time runs a race
tailored moments kept hidden
morning comes another day
yesterday a tale story to say

It took a long while for you to find me
through our treasure trove.
Look for me, and an acquisition it was,
my heart treaded to your tarantella.

Through the white desert sandy blankets and the spilled seas,
you came to search for me.
Closets, Hidden Hatches, Attics,
I told you to find me, come protect me.

Despite the tedious counting, you told me you were coming.
I questioned if you had surrendered to your fear of fear,
so you could win one battle against these chromosomes.
I thought I’d be lost forever, that you’d be lost forever.

Marco to the Polo,
crimson tie-dye on your childish shirt,
Colors wanting to collide, to bond but only,
Stuck between two intersecting ways of a chromatography-inked maze.

I yelled, “Over here!” to help you,
only to confuse you with the echoes drumming in your ears.
I was paralyzed in time, tick to the tock, dusk to dawn.
Waiting – hinting you by ruckuses, pots and pans,
making it easier for you, from my love for you.

Only until you reached my hiding spot,
your face became blank, striking with fear in your soft cheeks,
I had realized you weren’t looking for me, in a childish game:
You were looking for a hiding spot of your own.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

It was windy that night, all those questioned agreed,
when the woman was struck by some falling debris.
It was here on West 12th Street,at the corner of Seventh,
by the condo they’re building on the site of Saint Vincent’s.
A section of plywood had chanced to fall,
driving “Tina” Nguyen head first into a wall.
She fell to the pavement and she struck her head.
They rushed her to Bellevue, but she was already dead.
Was it chance? Was it fate? Was it some Divine plan?
Her death was so random, so hard to understand.
We walk these same streets, so I think you’ll agree
It could have been you. It might have been me.

Circles within circles clenched in a fist,
finger prints of mothers, fathers, of fathers oncle, ma grand-mère et grand-père,
Vietnamese blurred French – English dialect – adopted.
Held captive by four corners – owned by simplicities of mind, lesson well learned.
Combination of two sides, cinching an aged tradition,
Recycling words, welcoming of solitude in circumference chasms.

Plated orange-yellow poles upon, crimson grading pens upon, pink erasers upon,
yellow painted light wooden pencil between the webs of my fingers,
foreign and forced upon my uncoordinated hand,
ached and cramped knotted upon them, strung upon my tangled fingers – alien.
Blind to possibility, possible to the blind,
your warm hand guiding mine, gliding streaks of graphite-lead onto smooth bamboo paper.

Inked loose leaf paper upon sheets of bent thoughts meant to be traced upon.
Handwriting of the foreign, different from the raced,
language to be taught, words to be learned,
syllables chopped, from tongue to lips, to be refused by air,
my lips followed yours, by a semblance in matter,
your dashes guide me, synchronizing to your hand before smooth, a poem you wrote.

Sawed cut chopsticks to count upon mixed upon erasers, grips upon,
wrinkled skin between clenched newborn fists,
opened wide, exposing the wings they possessed between each finger,
creases created to count with father’s hitchhiker’s thumb,
until one realized that there was more to count,
with the spaces between mother’s joints on her wide hands, and long fingers.

Canisters of undeveloped films, reminders that one has not rendered,
Fluent spheres develop in your mind, death-sentence tolled,
A color and composition – segments of hued breaths you took between shutters unraveling that you belong—intertwining my foreign fingers in your hair.
Words you’ve forgotten, shriveled hands cracked,
I wrote the words you could no longer teach me: to have met.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

I have been trying for days after days, hours after hours, minutes after minutes, seconds after millisecond to figure out a way to describe that echoing in my chest as my heart cries out for you. It beats fast, then slow, only to be fast again because my mind relapses with images you, and the connecting breath from my lungs begin to lack air as you leave me breathless. With every full thump that drags in every breath that catches in my throat when I realize how intensely you lack a need for me. I only hoped your bones were captivated by fresh air they never get to feel; is that why they peek through your skin stretched taut as if they’re trying to putt through your nerve endings or is the air chilling your epidermis making goose bumps arise? Why do your hips and ribs jut out like they crave the atmosphere’s breath? The very act of breathing reminds you that you’re not whole – not without me, cried the heart; cried the skin’s drying touch; cried the eyes; cried the muscles aching. Save her, save me, for my heart won’t live without her breath. Yet the tattoo on her chest, her heart’s fighting beat contradicts the hope the lungs held: Do not resuscitate.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

The difference between a boy and a girl in moving on.
When it's over for a girl, it's hard at first, but it gets easier later on for her. At first, she'll be devastated. There will be many days she'll text him and show him that she wants to get back together. There will be many nights where she'll lay in bed and send him paragraphs before she sleeps. There will be many occasions where she'll lurk on his social media and see if he's with another girl or around other girls. There will be many times where she'll get mad when she sees him doing things without considering her feelings because in her mind, they're still together. She'll isolate herself and not want to be around other people. She wouldn't be in the mood to do anything eventful. She'll lose motivation in life and feel like it'll never get better because she depended on loving him for so long that she doesn't know what to do without him. But then, after some time, she realizes that maybe things are better off this way, maybe it just wasn't meant to be as she had hoped, and maybe it's time for her to stop waiting for him to come back. Eventually, she remembers how to be on her own. Eventually, she realized how she was fine before him. Eventually, she recognizes that the only person who deserves her love more than ever is herself.
When it's over for a guy, it's easy at first, but it gets harder later. At first, he'll feel relieved. There will be many days where he'll ignore her text messages because he doesn't have to deal with her anymore. There will be many nights where he won't care enough to reply to her messages because he's too busy partying. There will be many occasions where his Snapchat will be full of girls and it wouldn't bother him that it bothers her. There will be many times where he'll argue with her and remind her that they aren't together anymore so she should stop being crazy. He'll enjoy being around his friends. He's be up for meeting new friends and having new experiences. He will so happy that he's finally free to do whatever he wants because being with her was so straining that he had started to love her less and less until he didn't love he hard enough to try anymore. But then, after some time, he realizes that maybe the single life isn't what he wants, maybe it was foolish of him to treat her the way he did, and maybe he should step up and be everything she needed. Eventually, he remembers how much he adored her crazy personality. Eventually, he realized how much he misses her when he stares at the other side of the bed where she used to lay. Eventually, he recognizes how he ****** up on the one person he didn't deserve and was so lucky to have.
words by: teddie nguyen

In this white room, I wish to remove the nails from the wood I stand on, so that the floorboards could be peeled from the gravity grounding them. I’ll find the authority to do so because I've already filled their cracks with my thoughts like the dust-like-sediments that have already piled up. When I do, I mourn to lie beneath them. Hammer the nails back on them if you please – tight to the eye, but loose to the touch. When I am ready, I’ll rise and face this fear of mine that is if the silence treats my broken soul. As of now, there, I could hide in still silence, but then again it still wouldn't be completely silent because I cannot leave my mind behind for a minute. The rug that lies above me would soak up my wandering synthesis of lost thoughts helping me until it’s to be filled to the maximum. When you find me lying there, I couldn't tell you what I’m thinking, even if I wanted to. I thought that I had words for everything, which I could always find refuge in my ability to arrange letters into feelings but I can’t. My emotions are the fickle disease floating in the atmosphere of this room contagious to those who enter: I. When I hear you walking on top of the wood, your toes I see from the cracks, you check if I’m in bed but I have hidden underneath the floors waiting for you to apologize, but you've let the silence do it for you.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

Days pass in a timely fashion:
Slowly by daytime intervals, fast in a scale of seasons.

Moments happening without hurry,
quickly turning into memories –
with the quick approach of a future.

The world spins tilted,
in sections of dry lands, wet clouds, white blankets, misty fog.

Our minds are open, and our hearts are given.

Full view of and in full view:
sealed memories,
bottled ocean water,
brilliant minds,
endless miracles –
in a year of given time.

There are summers missed,
in a Secret Garden hidden under one tree:
barefoot dancing in our summer dresses,
talking of big dreams with bright eyes,
feeling like moments were timeless,
and nothing could change.

Yet leaves fall,
slanted, never straight;
unless, “it’s the way you look at it.”

A view of covered backs,
packed with essentials:
pencils, pens, paper,
dried flowers, devious secrets,
strengths, weaknesses –
of yours and mine.

to hibernate
and dream,
of a season
left behind.

To what we know best:
there is time,
a countdown,
an event,
a time,

to wait for,
to tell us:
when to return back – and start again.

- Emilyn Nguyen

Dear Diane,
introverted
beautiful,
underappreciated Diane.
your beauty glows
underneath the mountain
in the crystal lake of which
your inner you go to rest.

your parents treat you,
in a way too familiar,
the toxicity choking you
to the point that you scream.
life has gone to ****,
yet your pride wants them to say
that you are good, little darling
and mommy and daddy love you that way.

despite the pain,
the mental ball and chain
that they put you through
time and time again,
those simplest little words
make you forget everything.

you gathered the courage,
to leave given the chance,
found an eccentric romance
and a job not many would say
are in their bucket lists
of things to accomplish one day.
nonetheless,
you find a small portion of happiness
in the acknowledgment
of knowing your worth
is far beyond a bag of chips.

when you get this letter,
probably written in red,
know that which each syllable
sheer admiration and aspirations
are meant to be said
and that you deserve so much better.
as you slip into bed
with a sip of Dom Perignon,
typing away
the ideas of your new book,
I could go on and on
in my own little tidy nook.

~a Shakespearean sonnet~

Dull in the dark brainsick and bootless
Encave to the darkened corner
Lightning direct then hit the back
Emotion was hurting inside of leman
Thy mind tired holding inside the head
Sorrowful let fiery out of
Hold off with drops of tears
At mercy, hidden away from others
Now innocence reveals that thee fools.
        Wipe thy cheeks, cease your tears
        Vanish slowly and start the gears.
      
--Huyen Nguyen