i shouldn't be embarrassed by this poem but i am

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poetry tells you it comes from the heart,

meaning you can bitch about it all you like.

all the colour issues, all the skin issues,

all the unpurged mommy & daddy issues.

 

a student asked me the other day

if i was afraid my parents would see the poems

i wrote about them & i was told

that they were giving it away to relatives for their coffee tables.

 

what i don't say is that i still feel the fear

of saying bad things. the bible says thou shalt

honour thy mother and father & i still dream

that i'm heading to hell after these poems.

 

or at least some part of me will linger there.

then when the time comes & god decides

i won't go up a full person, & maybe i won't

see mom or dad or my sis or my dog.

 

the chinese believe in the word 孝顺,

a word so obscure in the english language

they had to make up the term filial piety

just so white people could remember the fourth commandment.

 

孝顺 [noun]: i am sorry for giving birth to pages instead of children. hopefully they might carry you when you're older, e.g. if i turn my poems into a papier-mâché bed, hopefully it'll have enough filial piety to support an old person's bones.

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Catechism

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Why did you love her?

Because I could,

because I loved her in honesty,

not failing a lie detector test,

not throwing salt over my shoulder

on a Friday night with only fish.

 

Why did she love you?

You were steady

as a statue of someone great

like John Whats-his-name— 

mellow in a morning of evaporated dew

under the lawnmower’s grip.

 

How did you know it was love?

It had to be at first sight

(these are prescription glasses)

for I remember conjunctions like in

carried weight like mud somewhat,

I am stuck now vs. I am stuck in the now.

 

When did you first meet?

The complex process of causation and subsequent… 

hello? hello? it’s me again, from the time…

a quasi-séance of summoning followed

by a ritual of substantive properties—

why have you forsaken me?

 

Are you happy with each other?

The process of transubstantiation is

one of belief, meaning one has to believe

one is happy, not two on a Sunday morning

waking to the sound of thunder.

 

Have you multiplied in love for one another?

In true essence we have multiplied twofold

like the proofing of bread, which is just air—

it has always been that two occupied this garden

though sources say otherwise, otherwise in and

of itself we have been more than just air.

 

Go in the Grace of God.

See! A conjunction again! Truly, we’ve been blessed

in the hour of the night where grace might be in a sock

containing my father’s bones and mother’s ashes

where it is best kept hidden.

In your hands I commend our spirit. A –