You write me:
the page is a landscape -
skyscrapers jut up to
stab the horizon
and a rising sun.

Sometimes it is utopia
all blue and white space
barely punctuated
or punctuated much
too much.

I love when you write
post-modern novel-esque
slashes and dots
so heavy the earth
is scored.

So? I spread
a blanket over t's
of your country
and let your steeples
people me.

I keep a continent
in my desk drawer.
I keep it for when
you come and for
when you don't.

Copyright Cristina Cheng

F1
before you
shift-delete
me
control-x me
out of your life

Alt-tab please
before everything else
there might be something else
before you alt-F4
us

Control-z again
and again

Control-escape
I'll give you more
F10 just please
I will alt-enter
and be better
than default.

I can F4
no more control-c
control-v
remember
backspace this place
control-a and shift-
delete

my enter
don't escape
I promise to tab
from now until control-
alt-
delete

F3 how we were
and F5, please.



Copyright 2011 by Cristina Tan Cheng

Note: keyboard shortcuts reference guide: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449

6 AM

Continents slide into the sea,
believe me, while you sleep.
No measurements needed.
Though no geologist would certify,
oh my, the ground shifts
while you dream.
I don't know what science is this.
Just when your eyes close,
the world quakes as if to wake
you and every princess
from here to eternity. Believe me.
I would never fool one like you
who could call Fenrir
to come slobber here with one
whistle, snort, or snore.
What am I saying, my meaning?
Wake up now, my dear,
and hold me near and steady.


Copyright 2011 Cristina Tan Cheng

Nemesis I'm not sure
if this is cure or a whip
against your flesh-
this laying on your shoulder-
for either of us.

In flight, you unsheath
a smile. Here I pluck
at your sun-bright eyes
and bring the night down
to blanket our embrace.

When we met I sprouted wings
made of wax and feathers.
When we met you grew a halo
and sweetened the sea.
Grow a fire for me

because I am ready to fall
as I come closer to heat
and your yellow heart.
I don't know how to be good
anymore, not as I cry out.

I've found a dagger.
Imagine me,undone,
to find the hilt in my hand.
Your head on a pillow
as my skin become scales.

I have to fall on my knees
begging you turn the blade
cut out tongue, ears, jugular
of this beast. I have earned
your cold shoulder.


Copyright 2011 Cristina T. Cheng

Maybe you are Big Foot
stomping near Loch Ness
or wherever dreams go
to sleep. I never did admit
to wanting to sleep
with you.

We used to heat the air with talk.
Eyes fell on lips that fell
on ears and so forth.
We were making words
that erupted between silences
instead of love.

I could have finished
all of your sentences.
You could have ended
all of my expositions
with a question mark.
We were an epic saga

Or a fairytale. While lisps
teased at corners of lips
my vision of you wavered
from phoenix to swan
to grave-digging swain
of the empty cool moon.

We are a paragraph's length
apart and not getting closer
to the denouement. Why
postpone the last page
to linger at the start?
I was never self-denying.

Come visit my cottage
in the spring. Leave the bog
of yesterday for once.
I will lay out sunflowers
on the ground. I will lay out
quiet as a hungry mouse.



Copyright 2011 Cristina Cheng

A Union

Whenever I attempt to put into writing

what a world with you in it has come to be,

a whole slew of words come charging at me.

Wrestling amongst themselves,

they struggle to best each other

in encapsulating the breadth and width

of the wonder that is you, the mystery that is us.

Chaos ensues even before I set my pen upon paper,

and scribble these thoughts as quickly as they come.

But even when I have set ink against the smooth white surface

of my trusty notepad, I hesitate and reconsider,

hastily blotting out what had previously been set

and at the end of the day, have a huge blob of ink sitting

where a bit of prose may have been found.

 

Forgive me then if I dabble in my books and imaginary castles

for words are all I have in this perpetually shifting world

to capture the precise moment

we chose to embark upon this adventure.

For if I cannot set it into words, what then?

Many have gone before us

and attest to the harsh, brackish waters to come

yet also hold testament to the majestic beauty of places

unsullied by previous encounters.

 

My heart tingles with trepidation

(in part because of the uncertainty

that lies ahead, but mostly because

it is fortified by the confidence of your warmth),

as we forge ahead, hand in hand,

foolhardy half-wits possibly doomed to impending folly

yet utterly satiated.

Just flushing out rusty pipes.



A long time ago, in a galaxy
in your backyard, was the birth
of a death of a star.

You make your home in a crater
on the dark side of the moon.
Each revolution night that
doesn't break; always setting.

Light refracts away from the curvature
of the heavenly body where you live.
The horizon is obvious and forever.
I would have to bow to gravity.

On the right, the devil;
On the left, the deep blue-

A picture frame floated nearby. I closed my eyes against the sun and saw a trunk full of
picture frames, each one older than the last. It was my strongest link to the past; now my
only link. A fragment of memory in the middle of the sea.

Salt crusted in my hair. Water weighed every limb down. I clung to the wood - part of a door - not out of any sense of determination to survive but more out of habit. I've been floating for three days.

First day, D-Day, when a mountain of water rose from underneath the yacht and upended it and everything in it into the sea. I had been in the lavatory, washing my hair. I heard it first and wondered if some speedboat piloted by a daredevil was cruising dangerously close. It had happened more than once. I knew it would always happen. Such was life in a yacht. Or had been.

First night, the cold. The wood and fiberglass had shattered around me as though hit with a giant hammer or the fist of God. Earlier, I had fought to stay afloat. Hard to do, when "up" and "down" changed directions and "here" was a vortex. By nightfall, the sky was as dark as the sea. Far into the harbor, 400 miles away, the ubiquitous lights from civilization were not there. I was a strong swimmer - a necessity for a hobo living in the middle of the ocean - but sometime while I was being tossed and spun around like a piece of lint in a washing machine, I had hurt my leg. Or something, had hurt my leg.

Screw it. I was numb from the waist down.

Four hundred miles in two days would have been a piece of cake.

Four hundred miles in two days and no food and water would have been a push but I would have made it.

I was fish food.

I half-lay on a plank of wood. I recognized the doorknob that was still attached. It was the door to my bedroom. My bedroom where all the debris of my life had been stored, including my body. Had. Now all of it was scattered by currents in the Pacific.I almost giggled when I imagined my underwear washing up in Hawaii.

Second day, the heat. God, the heat! I could only splash water on my skin with one hand. The other held me fast on my precarious flotation device. It rocked and rolled over every small and big wave. At this point, hunger was turning my saliva to acid. I swallowed and grew more thirsty.

I briefly wondered why I hadn't been rescued yet. Why hadn't some great windy beast come to let down its ropey hair? It didn't occur to me that maybe the beasts were busy elsewhere.

Second night. The hope left, evaporated like each drop of moisture in my body. My eyeballs scraped their lids. My tongue was dried meat. My skin crinkled like paper. I was almost desperate enough to drink the salt water all around me. I didn't even want to think what was going on with the lower half of my body. As far as I cared, I was a mermaid now. The other half, lost to the sea.

Third day. Not one inch closer to shore. All around me, my life and escape in bits and pieces. I closed my eyes and prayed for rain.

*****

TBC

Sometimes

at twilight

I dream of you

And of your effervescent presence

How we once were,

How we are now

Separated by distance, space

And time. Always time.

Life, it seems, takes joy

In playing cruel jokes at us

I loved you when we were together then

But you could hardly conceive the words

You love me in my absence

But I now belong to another

When will the games end?

I often wonder

So that life may spring anew

For both of us

That infinitely, we may both find

Solace in the arms of life

For you are but a dream now,

Lovely to behold, far beyond my grasp

If I try to reach for you,

Your essence dissipates into thin air

And like clockwork,

I awake and it is dawn.

My life is small
a tender thing
with teeth.

Sometimes it dances
with other tender things.
Sometimes it bites.

Its hands are mittens
buried in snow.
Its feet are hollow.

I'd say it is a dwarf
wandering in fields
of mud and clay.

I wish my life
were grander and kinder,
would cuddle.

It hasn't been tamed,
caged and afraid.
It's not hard to catch

though hell will be paid
if one attempted to keep.
It flies up to dreams.

It's larger than the world
itself and it snarls.
My life, in my hands.

Copyright 2011 Cristina Cheng

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He sits, quietly, listening to the rest of them ramble. Talking, catching each other up on their individual lives, laughing and telling jokes, perhaps too private for him to appreciate. But he sits.

He waits for the drinking glass to make its round-trip back to him. He anticipates his shot and a half of cheap vodka: his simple joy in these moments of solitude in this crowded room.


If only he spoke their language.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Of Love and Chance and everything in between (In honor of happy hearts day)

I have often been characterized

as being faint of heart

not because of my spindly stature

and measly weight

but more for not leaving much to chance

I stocked up on the essentials early on:

went to a good school, got good grades,

furthered my education to ensure a good life.

I provided for the needs of the ones I loved and cared for

but wasn't really too big on the L word.

I didn't believe in its profundity then.

All I saw was a predisposition for pain,

for disappointment, for incalculable risks.

I relied more on rationality than anything else,

thinking through every possible thing in my head

leading to some lost opportunities,

some wounded pride and more essential

small parts of me lost to chance.

But love, as I have learned,

should not be a shackle that binds you.

It does not overcome all the troubles

the world most frequently has to offer.

It is not an emulsifying agent that will make us

better able to go against the world.

It helps us become better than what we are now.

It's paradoxical nature has escaped the tenets

of logical thinking for as long as I can remember,

but I understand it now. At least I think I do.

For all the craziness in this mortal world,

I feel safest in love's sweet embrace.

The more you love me, the more I am able

to fully comprehend what love is and isn't --

at the same time--it's about boundaries

and chance and adversity and letting go.

'Cause its when you leave things to chance

that life comes right back

and surprises you with something better.

Words fail me often,

but I'll try to say it the best way I know how:

I love you, babe.

There was an execution tonight
On the hood of a jeepney.
It was of a crazy woman.

There was no blood, just eyeballs
and entrails wound around two wheels.
Maybe a fingernail embedded in rubber.

That was all. No one cried
though there was plenty of water
Under the bridge.

The executioner didn't even blink when the scyth fell.
Maybe it was just as well.
The screech of reprieve didn't come.

Tomorrow the platform will be
shining stainless again. The doors
keep revolving. The wheels keep turning.

The road goes on for the riders
and the damned sitting on wooden benches,
patient for their turn at getting home.


Copyright 2011 Cristina Cheng

If only

if only i'd met you sooner

i wouldn't be as jaded as i am today

i wish i could turn back the hands of time

to a time and place

when i had half the experiences i have now

and met you then,

my innocence would have been your glory

my childlike curiosity would have been

more easily sated and subdued than it is now

this thirst for adventure would not have been so curbed

nor skewed to irrational extremes

if only i'd known you sooner

my life would have been less complicated

by the savage twists and turns,

it would have been less riddled

with ruts and scars strewn here and about

i would have been more perfect

more suited for your kind of living,

your kind of loving

but things are irrevocably what they are

i am the product of things

that have come to pass,

made all the more complex

by what i've been through

yet everything that has happened

has brought me infinitely closer

to where i am now,

to where you are,

to where we now rest

and i wouldn't have had it any other way.

jessamine you bow
even as you break.
I could pick you now
or later,
depending on the sun.

your arms creep over the fence
of our neighbour's home.
I could see where your smiles
had taken root.

jessamine you promise
sleep without dreams
a small dose for large sighs
a handful for thoughts.

how will I touch you:
test with two fingers
or by tugging at a fistful
of your hair?

how will I taste you:
full on my tongue
or by nibbles at the edges
of your feet?

my fruit of knowledge
in a garden of thorns
I should like to take you
into the kitchen
and bake you whole
into my lunch.

all parts of you are potent;
so it is said.
you are more ravenous
than the curse of a full moon
although
you aren't nearly as wild.

jessamine my salvation
rests on whether you bloom
where I've sown. or will you,
curse your sweet name,
spoil like dreams in the sun?

Note: Yellow Jessamine is a poisonous shrub. NOTHING else :P Yuck to kimp for even suggesting *gasp* pedophilia!


Copyright 2011 Cristina Cheng

I fear not the least
but the lukewarm
and the whole.
Bread on the counter,
a full moon, a stop, a kiss,
three sighs in the span of
five minutes. I fear not
your smile but the joy
I will find lacking, or not.

We see three children in the street,
unclothed, unabashed, unclean
and you take my hand, saying,
"That will never be us,"
I nod to myself, knowing you mean
those words with pride. I mean
to make them a ward. I fear,
you see: that will never be us,
us like children's laughter.

My mouth runs away from me in horror.
My legs keep me still.
Here is a wreck of a body
trembling in an aftermath.
There is so much to fear.
You are so much to fear.
I wish three times for succor;
puddles are steel sheets on the ground.

When we are old we will shout
to each other across the strait
and love each other through
binoculars.

Is this
this
this
life, lukewarm and whole?


Copyright 2011 Cristina Cheng