faeries in my coffee

last post on this mushy shit for now.

Dizzy — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:41:23 +0000

Last night was one of those nights where I felt like I could marry him and grow old with him. It was a wonderful feeling, where you forget you’re still young and whether you want to admit it or not, still so naive. But not all young people can hold their love down for 21 months and still have love left. So I woke up to a feeling of internal compromise. That was a wonderful feeling too.

telephone sailing.

Dizzy — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:35:27 +0000

he plugged his guitar in, and played it over the phone. the beginning sounds like whales. he says that’s intentional. and that the song is about us. my bedsheets are blue. I lie back, close my eyes. the guitar strings quiver, the amp catches it, passes it to the shitty secondhand phone he borrowed from me, and then to my ears. by then it sounds staticky, underwater. it’s long, too. he doesn’t usually make long songs. he’s in one of those one-minute bands, who scream. but the song is long, pretty, and poignant. I float until he lifts up the phone and asks me how it was. I’m technical, I say the last minute was drowned by static. Well, he says, it’s about our arguments. And our crazy differences, the language barrier, and constant misunderstandings, but how even though they happen over and over, I’ll still love you despite of it. I… I don’t know what to say. Would you like to hear it again? Yes. I even say are you mad, I want to hear it all night long, but he has already placed the phone away, and is playing again. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’ve never had a song made for me before. I am trying to learn and memorize, in case he forgets this tomorrow.

we are so different.

Dizzy — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:34:29 +0000

There needs to be noise, perhaps. I can’t stand silence in the car when I am alone. It’s never silent in my room, there’s always foot traffic out the window, rain, the city. Or that beautiful sound passing cars make; full, curvy, searing, a sound comets would want to borrow. I can’t stay in a kampung, I’ll go crazy. There needs to be something, always something. When I sleep the silence is perfect, but even more perfect with the noise of the fan.

Most of the time he is completely silent, and I’m ashamed to admit every time he is, I fill in the silence with even more noise, noise noise noise in my head. I wonder what he is thinking about, whether he loves me, and how he can love me if he doesn’t talk to me. I try to listen to the sound of our skin rubbing against each other when we hold hands, the sound we make when we kiss. Sometimes I think I hate, it, absolutely HATE how he is so silent, why doesn’t he have anything to say, and why doesn’t he have anything to say to me? Why can’t we be catching our breath on conversation topics, why does he say he loves me when he can’t stand how I need to always be movement, noise?

I think above all, I secretly resent the fact that he has silence in him. That it looks so good on him, and he is happy. He can be completely at peace with all that quiet while it inhabits him and taunts me and my endless search to punctuate a word, an action, with another. Then I think I want him even more, or at least want what he has. I wonder how long it took for him to acquire it, whether he looked for it the way I did when he was younger, whether he can’t stand my inability to stay still because he knows I am just chasing my own tail.

I will never know what he is really thinking. I ask and he says “Nothing.” in the most amazing way. And if that’s true, then I don’t resent him, I envy him.

ice cream.

Dizzy — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 05:57:34 +0000

my life is small, small enough to ask a few free tastes of. but I’m not sure how much to give out. how many tiny pink spoons will get you to the bottom of all thirty two flavours in all its deep cold tubs? I’ve lost track. but okay, we can do this.

now pick a flavour.

untitled.

Dizzy — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:49:16 +0000

I will not sleep tonight
until I have written something;
the curse is set in motion.

But then cigarette smoke
sashays out my window
with flair

seizing words
off my lips on their way out,
for company.

They share a private joke
as they glide into the street,
mocking my paper insomnia.

I wonder if it is too late
to go out there and
find them.

freewrite: wedlock.

Dizzy — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:35:51 +0000

A quick one responding to Robert Lee Brewer’s poetry prompt: to write one about marriage.

This is amended from the shaky first draft. I’m still not fully happy with it.

—

Marriage came for my grandmother
the penghulu’s daughter
at 13.
She is the only survivor now
everyday, she calls out to ghosts.

Marriage bumped into my mother
in America.
She took it back home but
It screamed until she ran.

She was 20,
and now I am 21.
Our family friend is further and further away.

I ignore it like high school girls ignored me
at recess.
I know it wants to breathe down my back,
but then I remember that marriage
is a person I choose not to speak to
who wants to crash my party

and so it’s forever parked by the mall
waiting for some guy to call with
directions
on how to find me.

—

*penghulu = village leader

right this way, hedge your bets!

Dizzy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:39:53 +0000

I know that even though I seem vegetative to myself, I come off as doing so many things. But I never cared. I thought it’s okay to be adventurous ambitious experimental and fickle now (in alphabetical order), even if it’ll run me into the ground. When I grow up, I didn’t ever want to have regretted not trying something earlier. I needed to know what fit me better and what didn’t. Even at the price of being accused, ignored, denied or forgotten. If it really mattered, I will make people remember me again, or at least ask them to. Better than being old and remembering something I never got the chance to do.

Obviously this rationale backfired on me.

Yesterday, I lost a valuable chance. The biggest chance of my life. And ironically, I wondered if it was because I was trying to do so many different things that pleading for that one thing I loved more than anything else came off unconvincing in the end. Maybe my future work, my entire being, should have been pointing to POETRY POETRY & NOTHING BUT POETRY instead of ’situation: everywhere! who knows? that’s the fun part!’

But you know how it is. I just thought I could have been both all along.

rejection letter.

Dizzy — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:41:27 +0000

My pen is telling me to stop crying. Come on,

it says. I know you’re crushed. You’re not getting out of here. But even though we’ve been in the same place for 21 years, we still had fun times, right? You and me? We did. You don’t need your passport to travel. These books on your shelves, those journals in your closet, they say we’ve crossed seas. Hell, we’ve crossed stars.

It’s not over yet. Don’t think about putting me away. Here, I’ll make a deal with your fingers. If you hold me, I’ll dance. And they’ll sing. Anywhere you want. They can still sing.

theatre virgin.

Dizzy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:13:34 +0000

I want my leg to break.

It’s almost like a one night stand. No wait, a planned romance. Or recurring dreams of a planned romance. Except you’re reciting someone else’s words with all your heart to a tune of a million eyes. Yet you know the plot, you know how it will end. Sometimes, you can get away with anything. Everyone here has done this before. So I act before I even act, I move forward like I know exactly what I am doing, right into the light. It makes me want to curl up. But I shout. I shout every night. And I pray that when I’m done, they will clap.

the new kid.

Dizzy — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:10:06 +0000

You’re new here.

Yes sir, I am.

Took a good look around yet?

No sir, they haven’t allowed me to take a good look around.

And why haven’t —

They love me.

They do?

I believe that’s why I’m here.

Fair enough.

Besides… or…

Yes?

They love me. That’s what they said. But I haven’t been here long enough sir, long enough to dare raise the possibility that they love themselves more. And want me, to prove it. Does… does that make sense?

Well, I’m in no position to say.

Maybe they do though, that would explain why they haven’t allowed me to open my eyes. To really see where they’ve put me. Maybe they don’t care, or never thought about it to begin with.

I imagine you cry enough without having seen anything.

I believe one day, I’ll stop.

You will. We all did. You’ll see that crying changes nothing.

No. I’ll still be here anyway.

Why, you’re getting the hang of things already.