this is me getting the gunk out.

few announcements, i will be trying to tour this year, so email me, bring me to a school or venue near you.

i have not yet slid down the deep dark hole that is depression, and don’t intend to any time soon.

still working, studying and playing hellla fucking jiu jitsu in the city.

i finally put the link to this on my taskbar so hey, expect hella drunken posts homies.

now off that. why does heartbreak and alcohol go together so well?

it’s not just the whole escaping from pain thing… that would be too simple. if it were, we’d talk about alcohol and heartbreak the same way we talk about weed, heroin, or in my case, fighting.

there’s just something intrinsically tight between alcohol and heartbreak. they go together like nothing else. drunkeness enhances, sharpens and yet somehow still alleviates heartache in a way that cannot be matched by anything else i’ve found.

maybe that’s why so many writers i know are alcoholics. or they could be cheesy an living up to the image. though, i kind of sense a chicken and egg debate incoming, so i’ll get off that topic and segue into one of my friends, one of the best writers i know.

http://www.portersnotebook.tumblr.com/.

amazing shit. please read it. someone give this man a bookdeal.

you know, so i can hook up with his hot fiction groupies when he’s rich and famous.

onto my shitty, emoass poetry.

‘on alcohol and cellphones’

gotta love caller id
and I know you knew it was me
but asked who it was anyway

we joked we were OCD
always findin comfort in the little rituals that made daily existence bearable

shared cigarettes after sex
even tho u couldn’t stand the taste of my 27s

the way you’d sit in my windowsill
silhouetted by the streetlight angel
I drunkenly named bob

your whispered I love yous
tickling the space tween my shoulder blades
in the early mornings when you thought I was still asleep

I don’t miss the grand romantic moments
( though god knew we had enough of those)
I remember most how your eyes would scrunch into slits when you smiled
the laughter in your tilted neck
the crooked crescent moon grin you gave
when you’d seen me for the first time in days

no, thas a small lie, one of many told
both in the heyday and aftermath of our bad omened love affair

what I remember most now
is the absence of the above
and how’d I’d hangup yet another drunkdial
after you’d ask who was on the other end of the line

do you know how some people see sounds? they perceive music as an array of colours because of whatever strange connection has been made in their heads. though mostly this is is discussed in relation to the physical senses, i have something similar with emotions.

when i feel an emotion, there’s a tint in the back of my mind that colors everything. when i feel an emotion coming offa person through my physical senses, there’s a subtle flare of colour around them. it sounds weird, but it’s something i’ve grown up and kinda like. it’s unique. which seems to be a goal all its own in this city.

i guess why that’s the reason i describe poetry using the painter metaphor. we are painters, emotions are our paint, every subtle shadow corresponding to the exact nuance of a feeling. i’ve said it before, i don’t like using words like love or hate in my work without some sort of qualification. what kind of love? what kind of hate? what does it mean to have a hate for a person once loved? a hate born from seeing those you care about being hurt by the target of your disdain?

i’m still trying to convey that complexity in my work. it’s hard. one’s control of language, one’s technical skill is the tilt of the head that makes the Mona Lisa forever haunting. i’m learning it as i go, trying to build from traditions before me, but this shit ain’t gifted. it’s earned.

though, i do have enough of the romantic (the era, not the gift card) in me to see the poet as special on some level. maybe it’s my own arrogance speaking. but at the same time, there’s great technical illustrators that are still unable to convey any depth of feeling in their work.

i guess i’m rambling again.

my days have been stormy, the wind and rain that seeps into your bones and steals even the ghost of warmth or light from your being. then the tempest arrived, destroying the mud wattle buildings i’ve built up. now… the calm has come.

that specific calm that comes in the wake of devastation. the feeling of resignation that somehow still allows one to continue with one’s life. maybe the exact shade of emotion as the man who knows his cancer will kill him, so chooses to live his life as he wills. the specific gradation that belongs only to the boy who realizes that these three guys are going to kick his ass, so he might as well grab onto one and keep swinging. the swirling peace of a woman who is finally able to leave and be done, after too much time and investment in an awful affair.

—————————————–

colours

a mother’s love, an earthy red
oceanic in its depth
and temperament.

the feeling of the first nice day in spring
the pastel yellow of the sun
seen through freshly dusted douche goggles

infatuation is the whiteness of halogen lamps
haloed by a blinky, misty red, blinding
so that all else is relegated to the periphery

the satiated guilt of indulged gluttony
is the white of institutional light
reflected from the melting richness of vanilla ice cream left out

the contentment in the willingness to wait
is noon sun through a teal window pain
dust motes idly dancing

an adolescent’s frustrated rage
is the intense, pulsating red
of an infected cut

the frustration of hard work proved wanting
the sandy red-brown of the specific layer
of pit dug in the desert that is just kissed by moisture

a parent’s grief is a blurring
a twisted distortion of colour
that strips the senses of perception

the desire for cold vengeance, pallid
blue-grey of apprentice’s iron
fit for plowshares, forged into a sword

interpersonal ambivalence, the blue black green
of healing bruises, timorous
in its betweeness

quiet resignation is the ochre red
of dried blood, spilt and wasted
without recourse

a boy’s artsy-pretension depression, the cliched
inky blackness, thick with its self-imposed weight
a hungry dark, its smoky contrails reaching

my love for you, even now
the brown-gray of petrified wood, no longer alive
but always persistent

goddamn it has been a long month.

which is why i only got 8 days into the poetry project before giving up. too caught up in too many things to keep it going. my personal life is all a shambles, my school life is overburdened. and to top it off, i lost a month and a half of work on my thesis because the file got corrupted and is completely irrecoverable. luck loves me.

but imma keep my head down and bull through. i can’t wait till i finish, graduate and go apeshit. go back to the gym, get prepped for a competition at the end of the month. god i’m going to enjoy feeling tired from physical activity.

i’ve given up on the poem-a-day project for the simple fact that my everyday life has to take priority… and because i realize i really really hate posting poems that aren’t polished. such is life.

wish me luck.

i’m the type of poet who writes in great spurts. and i am currently hella blocked, so no new poems until i can get over it. because of this, here’s two old poems, slightly done up to presentable. appropriately enough since it’s a horrible, nasty, get into your bones wet and windy day, i’ve decided that they’ll be love poems. as happy as i ever write ‘em.

big smiles.

even when you want to cry.

oh… and if’n you’re interested, i should be there and it’s dope as heo… the apia summit. a great gathering of artists and just generally dope people. and dude, it’s in the bay area this year. how dope is that?

—————————————–

jokes

the imperfections of our bodies
give shattering testimony
to the perfection of the moment

shared knowledge
of sex
being too sacred
a meeting
to be had
without laughter.

touch is a ghost, is
a memory, is flame
and salty sweet moisture,
is the tracery
of sparks

touch whispers,
touch grips fluidly
and straddles
the fault lines
between
pain, pleasure
playfulness.

no self consciousness, not now
when we lose track
of limbs, the parts
yours that become mine
mine that become yours.

for an instant
entwined, no
me without you, identities
defined only in relation.

and then i rolled off.

———————————–

untitled

my fingers walk the outline
of your silhouette, trace the tightropes
holding our tenuous miscommunications,
trusting in our unspoken tensions to hold us up.

we sequester whispers in the corners
of half-hearted smiles

man, fuck NYC banh mi.

The NY Times had an article about banh mi places in the City, and goddamn me if it wasn’t written by a white person. While i haven’t been to the places in brooklyn, i’ve been to pretty much every place in Lower Manhattan and ain’t none of the banh mi places down here that ain’t wack.

folks, you gotta remember, i’m from a vietnamese-heavy neighborhood boston. i’ve been eating various banh mi my entire life. hell, every time i go back to boston, i GORGE on banh mi and cafe sua da (vietnamese iced coffee – crack). so whenever i’m in the city, ’specially when i’m homesick or missing that good ole vietnamese cooking, i go searching for pho and banh mi. while i got my pho joints, i still haven’t found a good banh mi place.

imagine how happy i was to find out that there wasn’t just one, but TWO banh mi places opening up near me. imagine how heartbreaking it was when i tried the sandwiches and they were wack?! fucking a’, one place had goddamn char siu in their banh mi. hell, most of the places in this city sell banh mi with goddamn char siu. can you say sacrilege? and though one of the places had decent cafe sua da, better than any i’ve gotten except in my favorite pho place, there’s something even more fuckin’ awful and evil about it…

every place i go is at least 2x the price i pay in boston, some places are goddamn 4x the price i pay in boston. and there’s the really core problem… this shit’s marketed to yuppies.

ain’t no vietnamese folks gon’ buy this ish. tastes awful, costs hella. whoa. let’s sell it to the white folks.

holy hell does this ever break my heart into a million pieces. and worst of all… almost all the sandwiches at these places are fusion. dude, i want me some traditional, legit vietnamese food. i come from academia so i know how problematic the whole ‘authentic’ thing is, but dude, don’t be messing with this vietnamese boy’s favorite foods.

i can’t believe i just went on a massive spiel about banh mi, but what can i say? i’m tired. haven’t really slept in awhile and am burned out on this whole academic hustle. and for whatever reason, jolt soda makes me hungry.

but no matter how emo i am, i can’t help but smile about having my hair back. live i’ve said before and i’ll say again and again, my mohawk makes me strangely happy. i like getting my hair cut, cuz the whole thing of it is that there’s hella things i ain’t got control of in my life… including how many bookings i get… but i do have some say on what my head. and the reactions from folks to an asian boy with a mohawk are just full of epic amounts of hilarity.

btw, im exhausted so i came home and watched tv. i’m watching the racism/diversity episode of better off ted. shit’s problematic as hell, but not much more than any comedy club i’ve been to… and it’s hilarious. it’s irreverent, well-written, grounded in both realities and archetypes and is able to pull off the straight faced satire thing. which is hella hard. and it doesn’t even depend on awkwardness for its hilarity like the office does. win.
——————————-

(this poem is a little wack, but hey, waddya expect, im churning ‘em out like whoa)

barback nights
(after ed bok lee’s real karaoke people)

real bar people have accents, speak
with lisps and slurring, at home
in the cacophonies.

real bar people have faces
carved haphazardly, striking
bas-reliefs in shadowed lighting.

real bar people know all
about their bartenders’
lovers, vicarious wish fulfillment

real bar people know intimately
both the sun and the moon, have breakfasts
after closing with the bar backs

real bar people are all broken hearted poets, failed
screenwriters and investment bankers with no nose
for the trade.

real bar people make snide remarks
about frat boys barfing, college girls
leaving with ugly guys

real bar people know the signs of a fight
make bets if it ain’t regulars, make fists if it is
jokes if it’s the bouncer

real bar people have droopy eyes
and sagging shoulders, their favorite seats
and usual drinks.

real bar people share drinks
to split loneliness and laughter
as a middle finger to fate

i know more real bar people
than i know any other kind.

————————–

life is like lost… you might think you know what’s going on, but even the writers have no idea.

yeah, i’ve had a long day. those types of times that drain you, of energy, of joy. maybe it was just ‘cuz it was a shitty day outside today. then again, i go through periods when everything’s hunky dory and then periods where everything’s bloody awful. i can see that as a near universal. we are all at the whim of the wild fates, bend and weave to the wiles of their wings.

if you can’t tell by my poetry, i’ve been hella fascinated with alliteration recently. there’s something about the way the sounds just roll off the tongue that gives me a simple aural pleasure… what billy collins believes should be the first thing you look for in a piece of writing.

on some level, i agree. if it doesn’t read well, if the first few lines don’t grab you, you’re probably not going to want to go through the entirety of the poem. you might do it anyways and thereby find yourself pleasantly surprised… or you might do what i do, skip ‘em over till i have nothing else better to read.

c’est le vie. i’m going to try to make it to jits tomorrow, work off the excess emotion. sweating has a cleansing quality all its own. and working off my aggression is always nice. but bloody hell, so much work to look forward to. at least there should be more sun soon.

and it’s kinda ironic how fascinated i am with 80’s hair considering i think i’m going to get my mohawk back tomorrow. we’re ’sposed to be agentful beings, i know… but sometimes, i feel like i have so little control over my life and the things going on around me. thas when i get haircuts, because hell, i might not be able to control everything, but at the very least, i can cut my goddamn hair.

yay mohawk!

now from that high, back down to a low. for whatever reason, i’ve been writing hella emo poems. at the very least though, i hope they still present multi-dimensional characters, still have some decent imagery, some fun sound and most importantly, some connection to the greater.

tell me what you think.

——————
april 6th

chi dem, co ngay gap ma

the touch of ghosts
like the ache
of a last kiss or the touch
like mortality, the memory of illness

she told him she could love him no longer

his moods, more a burden
than she could handle, her shoulders
too narrow to hold a tempest
the sunflare of her temper
too hot for his inconsistencies

he drinks

she painted his portrait
with water colors, he wrote her love poems
on napkins and by email
they declared their love
under an unlucky moon, eyes
like will o’ the wisps

he fights

she caresses the purple cataracts
like twilight starbusts
across pupils and knuckles
visiting hours ticking away
through the iv, he courts danger
like he had eyes for no one else
she left him once before, but always answers
his call

he cheats

sleeps with women who fall
for his sleepy eyes, futile ego-stroke
and she forgives him
once, twice, too many times
her attempts to punish him
backfiring like misloaded bullets
or the vain cutting across forearms

he smokes

she says she quit, but can’t
knows he hasn’t even ever bothered to lie
only tells her
he loves her when his voice slurs
his head lolls, forgetting
he’s broken. her muse
splayed across the bartop

he tell hers, he needs her

and she weeps for a moment
mourning a fantasy, all she tastes
in the dregs in his stout glass
the fortune she reads
a signal to wander on, lips set
fists clenched tight enough
for fingernails to pierce

her phone left
in the bus station bathroom

his languid arm reaching for shoulders
and finding emptiness enough to startle

——————————————-

life is a process of humbling.

yesterday was a beautiful day in the city, and other then some work stuff which we ain’t gon’ talk about because that ain’t the point of this here blog, i spent the sunshine time out at tompkins sq park. i was napping and writing, writing and napping and generally doing my goddamn best to avoid the pressures and deadlines of real life… choosing instead to enjoy sun, wind, laughter and young twenty-something ambience for a little while, imagining that maybe it’d recharge my batteries.

a coupla things came out of it… a bunch of writing, two pieces of which will be shown here as a general bit of sharing and part of the poem-a-day project, as well as some realizations.

first and foremost, toddlers are goddamn cute. there were these two kids at the park with their hipster parents, both of them not more than two and half, maybe three years old, stumbling and tumbling around the park on still-awkward legs. smiling, giggling and just generally enjoying the strange environment, taking it all in and loving every minute of it. and i was just floored for a moment by the carefree laughter coming from me as i watched their antics. this is what innocence is supposed to be and once was, before doubt has really crept in and all the insecurities and neuroses of civilization have had a chance to take route. what wonder they saw the world with… and new yorkers, who tend to be very touchy about their private space allowed these kids in. talked to ‘em, made funny faces at ‘em, giggled at their antics.

it reminds me of the parable of the bandit and the girl-child, which is used to illustrate that all people, both those perceived to be ‘good’ and ‘bad’, all have some element of humanity in them. kids are one of those universals, its deep seated in us to enjoy their innocence, to desire to protect them, to envy their ability to see the world anew. little kids can bring a smile to the most cynical person. having kids have fundamentally changed folks i’ve known. which is why i can’t understand how folks can ever treat kids badly. wtf world?

now, a coupla realizations. dude, you gotta bring a blanket if you gon’ chill on the ground in the park a day after it was raining or you gon’ be trying to get dirt stains offa you for the minute. more over, going to the park by yourself unless it is for the purpose of reading and/or hanging with your dog can be hella awkward, ’specially when you’re surrounded by couples. spring love’s in the air alright.

further, my thesis sequester is going to suck balls.

but then again, like i said to my friend last night, we do what we gotta do. our lives are not our own. and duty weighs on us all heavily, but we continue cuz we gotta.

… which is why i don’t get it when folks describe me as complicated. i feel like i’m a relatively simple to understand kinda dude. i’m just a boy doing the best i can. what’s difficult to understand about that?

faults and foibles, vices and virtues, contradictory or not. and with my demons, which ironically returned to me last night in a big way. after having marveled at innocence and simple pleasure, i got a rude awakening from those parts of myself that are not so happy. it’s fitting considering the weather outside. but then again, we fight our demons ‘cuz we gotta. we keep moving because if we don’t what do we got? how can we look at ourselves after letting others down?

let me just leave you with this piece, On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning by Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors and one of the most genius minds in the world. oddly enough, i was introduced to him by two very different people, one, a woman who broke my heart because she didn’t think i loved her enough even though she was like the air i breathed, the second, a man with sharkeyes who taught me that there ain’t no such thing as heart or love when it comes to business.

the reason it’s odd is that murakami is such a romantic, yearning type of writer. there’s a vulnerable loneliness at the core of his work that touches something inside of the human. even if he’s ironic and has one hell of an acerbic wit, there’s an element of the human there that manages to shrug aside defences and reach for that part of ourselves that’s delicate, that’s affected by the subtly poignant (it’s no coincidence that poignant and poignard are such similar words) . the fact that two vastly different people both connected with his work smacks of the universal to me… maybe we all desperate seek something or someone that will soothe the loneliness within us. ’specially in this city.

april 5th

the swagger

he plays the audience
like a maestro, his body
his voice, the bow and the guitar pick
thrumming with life, never so alive
as when the stage lights hit
that first breath, eyes closed
and he embraces the hubris
of momentary divinity

afterwards, spent
he hardly drinks, sometimes
blazes a little, takes the edge off
he says, his voice subdued
as he dons ironically sardonic
pink-framed sunglasses,
jaunty scarf hanging just so, wandering
aimlessly from bed to bed, bar to dive

it’s now that he grows most miserly
when you can tell that every article of clothing
is expertly chosen
for maximum impact, every gesture
weighed against the memorability quotient

it is now that he gives
least of himself, fragile construction
fabricated at the clash between arrogance and insecurity
showing in between cracks in the facade, his structure
hostage to his neuroses

in the wake of the rush, his demons come
as regularly as the moon’s phases
or the shakes before a show, the doubt
that asks if the boy inside
matches the man the world is meant to see

———————————

expository

i have not been completely honest. i’m not very good at that, the whole forthcoming thing doesn’t really work for me.

that’s why they call me emotionally unavailable. whatever that means. i don’t know, always thought it was a bullshit description. i’m an artist for fuck’s sake. and i exude emotion. if my bartender can tell, shouldn’t you be able to as well?

words don’t come easy for me in speech. i don’t mean being witty, or telling my exaggerated stories or spittin’ game (whatever that means). those are part and parcel of the role i’ve taken on for myself. story teller. acerbic wit and gregarious charisma like sunglasses and cigarettes. and even then, text has always come more easily. i can be more clever when i get time to think (maybe thas why i’m on the computer so much).

my attempts at vulnerability (even when i’m at my most vulnerable) and honesty (except the brutal sort) are halting, like the stutter and speech tics i’ve spent my life overcoming. you didn’t know that, did you? no one really does.

so let me tell you how i feel then (as ambiguous and PC as that word is), here, with anonymity as the perfect medium. i don’t like gaming. i reach out to women when i’m at my weakest. hope on some level they’ll be what i need to make it through the storms and the turbulence. i know that’s not fair. i can be selfish, self-absorbed to say the least. get stuck in my head. only good at leaning on one person at a time, and always with hesitancy, even though i have a monumental fear of loneliness, get the shakes at the thought of being surrounded by ocean. fear drowning in isolation.

i think i could fall in love with you. that past infatuation there might be something more, which is more of myself than i’m usually willing to admit to.

i don’t know how to do this. i wish i was better at it (whatever it is).

this is as clear as i can be. not an ultimatum, but an exposition. ‘cuz it’s what i got to give you. i’m broke. i told you that, but still insisted on buying you a drink. money’s everything, but ain’t a thing. i confuse myself. sorry ( i don’t know what i’m apologising for).

ps: i miss reading your writing. it’s what i fell for in the first place.

———————————-

life is sisyphean, in all senses of the allusion.

dude, weschler’s currywurst is fucking bomb. because my plans had fallen through last night… yes i got ditched… i hit up my local watering establishments for some late night alcohol and food.

how was i ’sposed to know i would find my new favorite watering hole? massive, amazing german beers poured by a hella efficient, friendly staff. currywurst, which i will officially say is one of my favorite foods ever. a wild boar sausage that was literally to die for.

alcohol and pork. how the hell do you go wrong with that?

but yes, i just needed to make a quick shoutout to the place before i got into the poem of the day. i hella recommend that folks should roll through there whenever they’re in the east village. and hey, since i live near there, you should hit me up, if’n i’m not already inside.

oh yeah, i won my slam last night. made a pretty penny. i’ll be back next month, alcohol money is worth slamming for.

but let me say again, this posting schedule is kicking my ass. i never realized how difficult it’d be to turn out a poem a day. jeebus. but yes, onto the poem’s intro. this piece comes from the fact that i really do have goddamn weird dreams, that are, to me anyways, completely believable while i’m in them. so i really will wake up thinking i was the bodyguard to the president and ate a bullet for him, or that i dived into a computer and rode on top of the fail whale.

awkward i know.

april 4th.
dream fail

i dreamt one time
the earth was invaded
by polkadotted unicorn space pirates
and the key to saving the world
was saving the stripper

one night, i thought i was superman
the asian dude who failed in math
and gave up the violin discovering
his gift for rescuing fair maidens
and cats stuck up in trees

the time you hadta carry me home,
drunk, i saw us as intergalactic ballerinas
our pirouettes encompassing
star systems, our soubresauts
like sun flares

when i passed out
at that party, i saw myself
as leonidas at the springs
holding off a legion
of fratboys with nothing but a braut

i woke up this morning
after having dreamt
we were still in love

turned to see you
next to me in bed, the assurance
in some deep part of myself
that all was right with the world

and realized how much
i hated dreaming

it’s weird what you remember at odd times. as i was writing the original draft of this piece for yday, i was thinking about what my father told me… that back home, there was no meat anywhere to be found, relatively little of any other veggies, because he grew up in the hill land in the middle of vietnam. like hill peoples in other parts of the world, his region was poor as hell, the lack of fecundity causing the folks out there to depend on daikon to feed they families. like the irish with potatoes, they found a hundred hundred different ways to prepare daikon, it was fundamental to their cooking, to their way of life.

along with this, came the memory of my asking him how the hell the vietnamese managed to shrug off the yoke of french rule way back when. my father told me vietnamese are goddamn good in a fight, ’cause we’ve been fighting since light dawned on people, since lac long quan and au co went their separate ways. conflict is what we’re good at. we’re stubborn, we’re tough and we’re broke, so we can always make do. he went on to explain that this is also the reason why we can’t rule ourselves for shite… and why when you get a lot of vietnamese people in a room, give them alcohol, there will inevitably be at least four-five fights by the end of the night.

oh my people.

btw, fuck vivid dreaming. i had one of the most bittersweet dreams last night. woke up with a broken heart. shit was awful. i want normal people dreams.

i will be slamming tonight, 6 o clock at the bowery poetry club. you should roll through if you have time, i’d love to see your faces.

also, my team, Ronin Athletics, will be completing at Naga today, so wish ‘em best of luck.

april 3rd

daikons, donnybrooks, processed meat

dolan’s eyes widened
in incredulity
as i folded three weeks worth
of now-clean laundry, crammed it
into just one sports bag,
my smirk replied, if you think this is good
you ain’t ever seen asians on a road trip.

i remember my father and mother insisting
that because we were an american family
we’d eat meat with our meals, that their children
would have what they didn’t,
so the taste of spam, canned tuna and eel
eggs and devil ham
wreath my childhood like the aroma
of my mother’s heavy hand with the garlic

my father’s family back generations
could not coax anything but daikons
from the stubborn, war-weary womb
of their hills, so they made a hundred, hundred recipes
for daikon, depended on it
like the irish on potatoes, because hill folk
can always survive

i was too lazy to go to ikea
to buy bookshelves
so i made my own

… in a gas station bathroom
my friend david made good use of the wall street journal
after too much wack-ass chinese food

the vietnamese used rifles scavenged
begged and borrowed
to rise against the french, had no uniforms
‘cept what they could scrounge,
no armour but faith in the cause
with such they beat a power

david’s uncle hates his life
but will not abandon his family, his job
as a line cook in a pho restaurant
so every night, he drinks a bottle of cheap cognac
till now his face is splotched red
with cirrhosis, his sweat reeks with fermented sweetness
but he has never missed a day of work, his children
have food every night, clothes on their backs

they call ‘em field expedients
yah make do with what yah got
my life is full of ‘em

but you do what yah gotta with what yah got
it’s in my blood.