Tea and Poetry #5

This week's favorite. Young is making me rethink the concept of poetry altogether. Enjoy!

Tell Me and I Will Know

BY MIKE YOUNG

Most of my time is spent displacing want.

In some of it, the water heater's bugged.

When I turn my face under the cold kind,
what I'm trying to do is divorce my head.

I am most proud of my existential friends
and secretly embarrassed by sweet weather.

We follow the road back to the missed exit.
That is the worst mood I can think of.

My moments of inward congratulation are
offset by meals alone in pants I really like.

There is a harmonica under the river.
There is the time we kiss our own wrist.

Now I have talked my way through dawn
and then some, hot up with promises.

No longer do I pack my own face towel.
Trust lives by its own impossibility.

One girl sat in the shopping cart, almost
asleep. Her friend didn't know what to say.

There are things you keep dust off.
There is no way to explain this.

What they don't tell you about God
is that it waits for one kind of laughter

to appear in two people at once.
This has never happened. Wait.

Downstream stood another set of bathers.
We felt like someone was writing a song.

Give me something to give into.
It will be weird. It will be so weird.

The Disguise

BY JULIE CHEN

The sun prances across the wooden floor,

Patterns of gold are cast upon the door.

Blankets are rustling. Hear the alarm clock go off.

There’s a thump on the table; the ringing stops.

Arms extend to reach for a mirror nearby,

Fingers trace the bags under hazel eyes.

Leftover eyeliner stains pillowcase. There’re sheets

Crumpled and piled where her two feet meet.

Lope to the bathroom, water washes away

Debris—stale remains of make-up from yesterday.

But no, how in this world could she tolerate

This natural, naked, unfamiliar face?

With this worn-out brush and greasy foundation,

Free this girl from worries; pure salvation.

Rub glitter and shadow over tired eyes;

No one gets to see the tears that she cries.

Take lipstick and gloss. Proceed to thickly smear

It across upturned lips: her heart’s frontier.

Bronzer carves cheeks and fancy exterior disguise—

On the inside, she searches for corners to hide.

Done. She’s finished painting the ideal facemask

To protect her from truth, reality and facts.

What facts? You ask, but her lips are tightly sealed

For life’s unfair treatment makes courage keel.

How much more concealer can her soul take?

Wait. Stop, stop, stop. This is all a mistake.

Tomorrow morning, just after she wakes up,

Tell her she’s beautiful. She doesn’t need make-up.

The Unknown

From within my heart comes rush of wind so fierce,

Sweep me off my feet as my back grows cold.

And through my body that raw wind doth pierce,

I, too, am sure t’will haunt me till I’m old.

As I stand solo and shoulders brush by,

My place in this world held by feet alone,

Those monsters do try to smother my sky,

Through desolate fields and forests I am blown.

Fingers on my neck, remind me of my bounds.

Dread, it does bind me with chains to the floor.

This fear of the unknown swirls me round and round,

Till the flame within me dwindles forevermore.

Alas, as I live my days in despair,

What is it? What is this thing that I fear? 

BY JULIE CHEN

Written Words

BY JULIE CHEN

Opened oak door sends whiff of wind against

Cool walls. Breeze kisses blank pieces of paper,

drifting like slabs of flimsy white marble that

Flutter to the ground. Man walks into dark, dark

Room. Legs curl, knees bend. Reach down and pick them up,

Gently, gently. Such like sympathetic

Elder to tender child. Pick them up, smooth them

Out. Rustle and crinkle as stack lands on table, come

Silence as envelope—empty, damp and cold.

Ears that listen ring in moment’s silence.

Eyes that adjust see halo in blank darkness.

Solitude, so leads to thought. The chill within

The dark room so settles. Sedate, creeping

So deep into his mind; the nooks and alleys of

A human mind. Those thoughts they leak, rushing

Out of his pen, entwining with dark, moist ink

Into loops and lines, gliding into stone.

Man at the desk, sharing secrets to empty

Surface, marring purity of paper so

Fine. Pen gushes trails of hope, morphed into

Symbols of a heart’s desire. A lone, cryptic

Human heart’s desire, drenched in a veil all soaked

With vision behind a door on worn hinges

In a dark, dark room. Cabin amongst swaying

Reeds. Language blurring the edge of wild notion

With a man’s down-to-Earth articulations.

Bottomless human mind spilling infinite

Substance through barricades of pencil and paper.

Lonely human hearts selling their souls to

Pieces of flimsy, flimsy white marble.