There is a debris field ahead
Two light years away
Two seconds away
Two lifetimes
Two minds
Mental debris ahead.

In my viewport looms a galaxy
Of courses not travelled
Of marks not hit
Of species unexplored
Of systems
Stars going supernova.

Set a course for home
Mark nine warp seven
Stardate six
Point five four three
Two minds
One ship.

Going
Nowhere
At the speed of light.


Copyright 2011 Cristina Cheng

old stuff

*something i dug up

my thoughts are consumed by the entity that is you

you who warmed my bed not too long ago

your scent still lingers on the surface of my skin

your weight still borne by the rusty bed frame

your sweat permeats the air, masking the emptiness that remains

your eyes enquire if this is real

and my body obligingly responds

a shiver runs up my spine

my lungs expand to take in a breath

and all too soon, the moment passes

and we are back where we had begun

you wondering what all this entails

and me, imagining the sensations of our bodies entwined.

A Wanderer's Thoughts

**did you guys ever read the Host? mas maka relate kayo if you have. hehe. But read this all the same. I hope I've done the character justice somehow.

This is all I can offer,

take it away,

this grieving heart,

and rend it to pieces

while you’re at it

for if you can bear to suffer through

this then surely, you’ll understand.

Is this what it means to be human?

To experience the depth and breadth

of what being flesh and bones entails?

No wonder you aren’t so civilized.

Unlike us sentient beings, who

persist in your consciousness

because of your stubborn resistance

(or is it reluctance, I wonder?)

to changes that are instituted for your own good,

so your species may thrive for another

thirty, or even a hundred more years.

Yours is a world much younger than

most others, I fear.

Would you know how to nurture

and care for it, long after we have gone?

And yet

And yet there is this

abstract idea called love.

I’ve yet to understand how it works.

It gives you strength when you are weak,

pushes you on when you’ve lost all else,

drives you to go beyond what you are capable of.

Such a beautiful, altruistic potential,

yet gruesomely ugly at times

for it can push you to hurt numbers

even when you are protecting others,

it can even drive you towards violence

if it would mean salvation for a precious few

for it is all that matters, it seems,

and that is all that matters now.

So here I am, a sentient being

trapped in this human shell

that loves not one, but many others.

Will they see the love I have for them

in my sacrificing myself tonight?

I have no idea, no qualms whatsoever.

For if it will be for their survival, their happiness

then that will be all that matters.

I wonder what it is that you see

every time you look at me.

My eyes, my smile, my smooth skin,

my small thin body and my long hair

make up this specter that you behold.

Do you see the sadness that lingers

as my eyes look carefully into yours,

drinking in all that it can?

Do you sense the gentle flip-flop in my heart

as my fingers slide across your features;

Your crooked nose, your soft wispy hair,

the subtle beauty in your eyes,

asking you yet again to tell stories

about you and your past?

Do you sense the ghost of a being

that I once was

in spite of my bright lackluster eyes

or seemingly guileless smiles?

I am but a ghost,

a measly being who does not exist

if not for you, for this.

This semblance of an existence

I have succeeded in putting together,

for the charade of life, of living,

falls into pieces now--

made brittle by the essence of your elixir.

If not anything else,

then what else would I have become?

In my solitude, I await

for the darkness to reclaim

this specter that I am

as I fade into nothingness

yet again.

A strange one from 2003.

8/16/03
Smoke comes out of your nose
Fire-breathed dragon
half-human, half-fey
sleepy eyes do not drop
while your handlers peddle.
speak gibberish why don't you?
in faux leopard skin
gobble down chicken's head,
feet, rabbit entrails, blood.

you're advertised a monster
de-monstrating the wild man
remonstrating the wild child
suckled by wolves
weaned on regurgitate
your mother's child.
your mother a fox.
your father long dead in the war.

the carnies take you into the tent
make you one, make you whole.
dragon, ostrich, lady, beast.
siamese twin to a simian
strong man to a goat
dwarf to the devil.
you are man and woman
strangely in fusion
smoking your cigar
powdering your whiskered nose.

I could take you away if you wanted
if you knew beyond the tarp
if you saw beyond the twisted limbs
unwanted pounds, extra height.
your home with the geeks
the freaks. the humans being.
to me. i don't want you human.
i don't want a museum piece that moans
i want a private audience
prophet.

More old poems. Coz I'm frickin' tired and un-creative lately :P 2005 din ata ito.

Old Lovers

My hands are old women,
without the aged's sensibility.
You touch them to your lips
and they don't know any better.
They imagine they are limber
and bend over backwards
only to break under your too-careful kiss.
My hands are eager like dowagers
to capture youth in its sensual forms.
They'd like to dance, to dip,
to cavort, to exclaim,
to be like sprites in the rolling valley
between your breasts.
They'd like to swim in your
underground spring.
But they break again,
under your knowing kiss.
My hands are not senile in the ways
of celebrating your landscape
but they are blind, deaf,
insensitive now, aren't they?
Their wild fingers weighed down
by the breakdown
of your lingering kiss.

Another recycled poem. Don't remember when I wrote this. Circa 2003-2005 malamang. Dedicated to my mother :D

My memories of you are of calloused palms,
lifelines sunk deep like knife wounds,
and the whorls, arches - rising sharp,
defying an erosion of use and age,
palms branding into my own,
leaving your prints, imprinting me
with cautions, admonitions, warnings.
"Don't slouch in your seat,"
"Smile more. Nobody likes a grouch."
"If you throw one more spitball out the car,
I'll show you!"
You did. Against my eyes the reel rolls,
of shopping trips, of being handed over
to others who could provide what you couldn't.
I held your hand in the lobby
of countless doctors' and dentists' clinics.
I held your palms in the market,
on the way to school,
to sleep.
I remember. My fascination with hands
began with yours. How your fingers
tapered like mine, shaped like mine.
Our hands are the same color at the back.
we have the same blue bulb of a vein
crossing the broad V behind the knuckes,
like a desert caravan. The backs of our hands
were always dry, susceptible to a nail's
scratched down white blossoming.
But our palms are different. Yours
are my grandmother's, washing your brother's
dirty clothes up until her last breath.
Mine are smooth but for a single corn
near the nail of the middle finger.
Yours are pale in their starkness,
a martyr's beatific face.
Mine are flushed with life and youth,
a stag leaping into the woods.
Yours steadied my thoughts with a tug;
mine constantly worried, fidgeted,
sweaty and cold, tried to break free.
In my mind's eye,
I align them side by side,
judge yours the better. Or rather,
the memory of yours.
the real things have long since retreated
into the coming of my adulthood.
I no longer hold on to you
except in remembering your palm,
hot and solid against mine, a bulwark.

A recycled poem I wrote in 2005. When I was a prickly pear :D

“I want to tell you that I am afraid,”
her mouth confessed. Her eyes denied all knowledge
except for a thigh splayed in the dark, a white highway
she had traveled many times. Her fingers sketched
a drawing on the table top: A head, two limbs,
a fish tail, skewered in a trident as an afterthought.
I could feel hair prickling on my arms,
Electricity that is blue, pale skin,
As her arm bent and flaunted smooth strong
something slippery and razor-sharp.
A flick of the wrist sends hair crashing into her nape.
I think of pebbles polished by waves
washing up onto shore. Her eyes are dark like that.
I think of salt mixed into bleached desert sand
carried up by wind. Her mouth stings like salt
rubbed into the hollows of sweat-wet pores.
“Do not tell me,” I finally answered after her interest
turned into boredom. I see her homecoming
in the glint of pebbles in the sun, in sand kicked up
as she walked home alone.
And I stayed.

Isn't that what you wanted
to fall through the cracks-
to die like a distant star-
to live under a rock?

And when mud covers your face
and you become a black hole
and your insides crumble to dust
shouldn't you tremble with joy?