Poetry- Love Chronicles of a Blasian Girl (33)

July 10, 2022

 

I wrote some poems. They are amateur and I love them. Enjoy. 

 

Boombox in the Rain

I love you

Boombox in the rain

Blasting Jodeci

Soaking wet

 

Cold rain, too

Bidi bidi bam

In my heart

 

When I see you

 

No reservations

Tongue down your throat just by the look in my eye

 

I love you, no capitalist constraints, the only numbers are the lines on your feet

Rough

From the hours and the navigation 

I love you enough to

push circles into square pegs

And buying a boombox... in 2021

And carrying it on my shoulders

 

The shoulders where both dreams and nightmares

reside

 

The dreams of 

flabby flesh, growing older, and fatter

squishing together

 

Or the nightmares of seeing no more

years,

or weeks,

or days

 

Like having some.. thing and watching it slip

And starting over

with someone

not you

 

I love you,

like I wish it were enough

 

Like... we live in "Love Actually"

 

The pessimists say... it can't exist.

The lines on my face, white hairs on my head, say...

to believe them

 

I love you, praying your come to Jesus shant be in 10 years or 5 or 15

When you close your eyes and see me and realize there was love

 

For the lines will be even deeper then

my love 

---

If

 

If, in 10 years, you look back and there is no picture of us,

And you wanted one

Well... 

 

use your imagination

to build a foundation

for a picture

a worldview

bigger than you

 

--- 

Generations

Vietnamese women in their 70s, 80s, and 90s are

single and strong.

Many never donned a wedding dress

They watched men die and leave and they just lived on.

Going to casinos.

Drinking heineken

Wearing gold.

Raising children.

I wonder if they are happy or 

were they stronger than they wanted to be?

Were they freer than they wanted to be?

 

They outlive men by a decade now. Might be the lack of shits given.

Or the recognition that sometimes shit happens

so they let the universe steer

Generations, Part 2

Black men who came back from Vietnam couldn't afford homes 

They had seen their fathers ride trains 

up North in the Great Migration 

and fail to make a decent living, let along buy homes

Dignity

When not given

Manifests and sours 

Through generations

 

Peeking out when their grandchildren are challenged to create a sense of home, 

a sense of ease,

a sense of love

 

seemingly so intrinsic

but stripped from their DNA

to the point when home is foreign 

---

Good

 

If they were hurt

and they remain standing

We say

it makes them good

 

If the decks were stacked

and they were hardened 

from their bruises

 

We say

It makes them strong

 

We say love is lodged

and hidden

and the toxins are a mask

 

All we say

 

is of them 

until we become our mothers

and pass on the same messages 

to our children

that investment in a man's soul...his

potential...

that is to say...

the lack of current reality

is currency

more valued than

the actual mess he aint cleanin' up

and don't plan to

because the bar is that 

he is standing 

when our bar is that we must lift

--

USPS

 

33 minutes in line at USPS

5 minutes of perfect handwriting

Tape recordings policed, not to sound too illogical

 

That one is insane... too human

Try again

 

35 minutes driving to Nedham and 40 minutes back

Shopping for the perfect gifts that would make you smile

  

Reptilian brain - attached to all the dates and times and hours

 

30 minutes of fenty, versace perfume, hair products, lingerie

each time 

We are on Earth for so brief, what a waste of time

A damn waste of actual energy for stagnant potential... 

for unwinnable battles of your fucked up history

A waste of our beauty... our hearts and brains.

What a waste of joy

you crushed and suffocated

What could've been decency... 

what a waste of pretty stamps

and love notes sent from the USPS store.

White Washed

I'm turned on by the navigation-

the codeswitch, the voice

How seamless you do it

 

 

How

there are no pauses between your words

no umms-

how quick your mind works

No Southern twang, even though you have one

No poverty

No street

No grit

and no dirt

 

Just intellectual calm and a soothing cadence

unless we're in the sheets and then it cums

or we're talking shit 

about those white people...

 

those white people....

 

we're so natural

 

like those white people...

 

we're so smooth, like those white people

words not traumatized.... like those white people

 

So now when there's no you-- 

I judge those who aren't able to paint themselves White 

with ease

 

I judge people who aren't able to hide... with ease

 

amateur chameleon skill sets

 

even when the hiding and the faking and fading

in and out

 

left scars on my skin

--

 

Mixed/ Matched

 

Josh Madrey was an army brat 

smoked cigarettes

had the curly, wavy hair that came along with being a Black, Native American 19 year old

 

And those green eyes- like Jesse Williams

 

It was when NaS and Jay-Z fought for supremacy on Direct Effect

When Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans

When Vick and the Black QB brought shine to the NFL...

 

My baby had no degree, drove a cranky car, and worked at Wendys 

 

How beautiful!

 

Carolina twang 

Baggy jeans 

NaS' "One Mic" playing in the background

Fuck the system. Fuck the racism. All I got is One Mic. 

 

But I would go to college. Date scientists. engineers.

Go to grad school. Date businessmen. Academics.

 

All with degrees- all with code-switching abilities

All with vast vocabularies 

All with language of wokeness they didn't embody

All with so much success and money-- the ilk my family would love for their Viet daughter

If she had erased her Blackness

 

Certain seasons, I would think of Josh-- 

not knowing if he's alive

Not knowing where my values went 

 

Maybe to the degrees and money 

and comparison

Maybe to the dream of a house in Belmont with 4 bedrooms

for the private school kids

Or to talks of systemic racism amongst Harvard grads, waxing poetic over NPR

 

I am just a mixed kid who loves the smell of old cars,

the chubbiness of imperfection

And the vulnerable green eyes, clouded in cigarette smoke, begging to be seen.

---

January

The synapses shoots the touch

of his forehead kiss 

into the belly 

The belly sings

The moment

disintegrates

By definition

To January wind

melts its softness

back to the Earth

Evaporating its joy

up to the clouds

Reverberating down

Through spring rain drops

Kissing her forehead

 shooting sentimental flutters into the belly

into a gut

that despite moments that fade 

moments which gut

still stands deviant, choosing love

 

New Money

Of 8 billion souls,

You are one.

You grind. You push. You speak.

There are 8 billion voices speaking

You create paths, you maneuver… 

Our DNA is 99.99 percent the same.

You feel unique. The voices in your head fill with art and expression.

Song and ideas.

Joy and sorrow… you want validated.

You grind

Hoping to break through. Hoping to be heard.

 

Pushing away the basic

The mundane 

The forgettable 

The boring  

The calm 

The ease 

The time that makes you one of one to someone

You grind

The name in the books shall be written with your blood

The wood on the bills 

Shall be stained with your fingerprints 

 

You will open doors 

Create paths 

Become legend

You grind

You don’t breathe, you don’t love, you demand it

Pushing through to be 

A man 

 

You are a man. 

You are one of one.

 

But only for the masses

 

New Money, Part 2

Money is filthy

Passing through unwashed fingernails

 

Lifting up faces of slave owners, filthy

Chasing money is the reason Black boys die

Not having money is the reason Black boys die

 

Or their dignity does,

Which is one and the same

Love is invaluable but money gives you voice

Money gives you the head of the table, the whole damn table, the wood to build the table, the forest, deforested from poor communities

You are unique.

Your voice matters. 

You deserve to break through.

To be big in a world that makes you small

You are a king. We can’t all be kings.

---

Viet Girl with a Dollop of Black

Viet girl with a dollop of Black

A spiked lemonade

A refugee kid

Chill as FUCK. Chiller than a basketball player, on his home court, up by 25, in the fourth quarter.

Chill as fuck. Watching the Puerto Rican kid cuss out the 23 year old well-meaning but overmatched white teacher. White teacher, you can’t let a teen see you sweat. It’s fun and school can be kinda boring.

Chill as fuck. Driving through Boston traffic at 8 am, never honking, even when the pedestrians and the drivers will test your life. 

Chill as fuck about presentations and deadlines. About her own abilities. Her corny writing. Her “eccentric” beauty.

Viet girl of dollop of Black 

Hates those Instagram “affirmations”, those “zodiac signs”, those books about “love”, people trying to give advice about boys this and girls that.

Those daily pick-me-ups. What are we? A wall at pier one? A white girl slumber party?

CHILL

You cannot control what you cannot control.

It is what it is. Waste no tears for no one. Everything is nuanced… 

CHILL

Her people fought wars. What is there to cry about? 

The young Black professors at Harvard are always the toughest, with the least emotion, Chill.

Never to raisin the Asian, never to crack the Black… these Gen Z’s gotta breathe. 

She tough

Except… embarrassingly… for the BOYS- 

Always the boy she wasn’t into at first

Always that one

Who was too thin, too short, too heavy, had too many white friends, or Asian friends but they went to HAHHVAD, god damn get yourself some Black friends. Always that one.

Who typed your when it’s supposed to be you’re and made one corny joke too many

She went on date with him because…. Well because she had to get out, her cute outfits were being wasted, talking to the cat was pathetic and then he would open his mouth 

Perfect cadence 

Voice calm as the ocean

And she would drown

Viet girl with a dollop of Black shoulda sat her ass at home instead of going to Starbucks that evening 

Shoulda sat her ass at home instead of putting on make-up, and heels, and riding the red line for an hour to Felipe’s Taqueria in a fly jumpsuit, only to get won over by cheap tacos and too strong margaritas…basic dudes wearing t shirts and SHORTS.

Always those ones.

How could they have the audacity to leave? Chill. The audacity to fuck up her chill? Chill. 

They are not the professor who woulda given her an easy life.

Or the shy Viet boys she curbed because... No flavor… or more likely… some fucked up internalized shit… about being too Viet… and their kids being too Viet 

Or the fear that Asians, if you’re rich, in America may lean right, or lean white or lean away from solidarity and hell no, nice Viet boy, who woulda given her

CHILL 

Chill. The game is not fun, we are down in the fourth quarter, and he does not have her back.

Chill. Chalk it up to history and oppression. Give him a thousand excuses.

Chill. She chose this. It is what it is. It is a corny love story like every other. Her Scorpio guy fucked her up like every other. Nuance sucks as an explanation. Will these cars just hurry the fuck up so she can get to the destination of healed? 

Viet girl with a dollop of Black didn’t even like that dude except that he made her feel alive, he made her heart vibrate, he made her eyes glow, he made her hurt and cry

It is fun to see a Viet girl with a dollop of Black sweat, especially when life is kinda boring. 

Her chill was kind of boring.

And he made her feel alive. 

Alive  

Blame

I judged my mother for being too forgiving

 

Typical Asian woman who would turn the other cheek whenever she was wronged

 

I blame them for the world they left behind

Filled with men who lack accountability and women who suffer indignities

In silence

They

are all that way

My grandmas -- my aunties -- my friends --- me

 

We

are all that way

 

We are perpetuators. We live

in the gray

in the space of love

in that space where the struggle 

is the journey

is the prize

where there is no cancellation in the life we share

 

We live it strong,

healing mistakes through our stitches,

softening the dirt so the grass can grow

and the house can stand

 

So our men can mend--

into a better imperfect

 

We are strong but we are weak

We tell ourselves a story of

 

nuance 

and 

multitudes

 

That we don't quite believe--

just fight

and defend

 

Immigrant women with the sleek black hair and the soft flesh are the baddest

 

Black women with the quickest wit and the coldest smirk are the biggest

 

soldiers marching toward an inevitable end

---

Moraccanoil

My hair had been shedding with the introduction to the cold

and the looming alopecia

But it is still beautiful

So I straighten it

and curl it

and color it

and grow it

to let it fly in the wind of your open window car

to let you grab and pull

your hands sticky from demanding freedom from every pent up cell

and from

the moraccanoil curl defining cream smushed in with garnier fructis butter cream

the combination of classy and cheap

of easy and hard

in your hands