Yi Wu
November of 2016
Like a cross-country high-speed chase
unfolding before the checkerboard composed of fifty watering holes
where the scattering motion of droppings of a hammer,
like mice’s, were disguised poorly
despite how a newsman’s grey-haired composure made us feeling
he could be counting heartbeats while he shuffled cards and silently
switched the Joker with a piece of Domino
Stones fell like deferred hails
and we witnessed the freeze-dried compression of facial expressions,
fragile, but potent, they bumped off many electrical switches too
along the way
The power to deny
is the power
of hate
Cowardice and lies
are to what our hands and fate
are tied
Ballots were dissimilar from maple leaves: they were the debris of our bottled
message flushed by the inexorable and ever-lasting waves.
They became commercially available fish food for thought.
They were entangled in dead seaweed and algae blooms.
We missed the crimson edge of the mountain at the sunset’s moment.
We obsessed over the flashlight rays of orange.
They gave vague promises about things to be done at stoppage time:
a clean sweep of angel wings, a clean sheet made by the negation of goalposts.
We misread tides: the wolves had descended from the neatly spread tablecloth,
where we sat and played many musical chairs until the wine spoiled.
We shared an empty decanter nevertheless for the consolation and then engaged
in theory-heavy disputation with each other about the timing of cheers.
We stared at the bread we just broke overtaken by pesticide-resistant flies
and laughed sheepishly about the impending bad smell in the noses
Behold not the chuckle and the puzzle
but prepare for the heavy lift and leaning
when your neighbor is about to stumble,
in the sawdust-and-squeaking-gnats-filled wave of rubble
Title: Neither/Noir
After black feathers have fallen, we now see
the steely pole, standing inside a vase, made of pale porcelain
and I have not seen a human standing within its vicinity.
Not a breath is heard when echoed past howls of diggers reverberate down
to a spinal profligacy, with a vastness of rolling coconut shells.
Meanwhile, the shellings have never ceased
on the coast of Mediterranean Sea,
where dislodged faces floating
make their grimace seen amidst the soughing
waves of hair that remain on the skin of deceased.
Neither have the chattering.
Few layers survive to be touched casually
as lava, into which
all our heated stones go,
ascend into a crest, disguised
as roller coaster tracks.
Dear Barry, where are our stolen ballots?
Thrown into the filing cabinet, they said.
Dear Barry, where is our lawsuit?
Thrown into the filing cabinet, they said.
Dear Barry, where is the gold-plated cheat sheet for the chemically reshuffled keyboard?
Look in the filing cabinet while wailing the notes away like stretched gummy bears, they said.
Dear Barry, where did you make the sermon while the inquisitors never heard it?
Listen to the words in the filing cabinet. Every one of these is a key to eternity, they said.
Dear Barry, where is the man who took the pipes with the barbed fences?
Find him in the soon-to-be cabinet. He was thrown in after slipping out of the sermon, they said.
Dear Barry, where is the pile of hardened unburned coals tossed at the ladybug?
Burn them in the filing cabinet with unused candle wicks, they said.
As he may have also said, any wall or curtain too will be broken by a peephole
where a naked wire through which there is a subtle game of telephone
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