I.
A lot of people say that writing is their therapy.
Me, I go to therapy.
I never really wanted to write poetry. I just like coffee.
That's a lie.
I want to scream some days.
But then I gotta ask myself,
Does this scream really capture
what I'm feeling right now? Does it have
the right sonic qualities? Is this how
I want people to remember my frustration?
I'm a perfectionist
When I'm motivated. And today
I might only be motivated to make cookies.
Really good f**in' cookies
I'm tired of smart-a** motherf**ers
Making some crack about how I'm a writer
when I'm quiet and I don't much to say.
I got sh** to say. I just don't know what that is yet.
Too many people don't want to think before
they make noises.
I can do that too. Buy me a drink.
II.
I do like people. Sometimes I like you so much.
I love the things you say, so much.
And I sit here, muttering under my breath, “I'm about to cut
that f**ing mouth right out of your face,
You wonderful motherf**er.
That's my mouth. You have my mouth.
Why can't I say sh** like that?
III.
Imagine we're in a room, and everything in this room
has a mouth except for me. I feel that most days.
My mouth wants misanthropy. It wants to spell
“misanthropy” in front of little Asian spelling bee champions
And tell them to step back because I'm still the future of Asian America
Most of the time I feel I am without my mouth. Like my mouth
Has been seeing other people. My mouth
Has been using other tongues.
My mouth has been screaming on someone else's picket line.
My mouth just can't get over this sh** already. My mouth
left the house today without me. My mouth left because
I watch it all from the wrong side of the window.
My mouth always got one foot out of the door. My Mouth
looks back at me, heart clenched,
telling me if only I spent as much time making use of my mouth
as I do coming up with metaphors for where my mouth is...
And the only song I know is, “Baby, please,
baby, please.”
IV.
I am a poem. But I don't want to be a poem every day. There's too
much person here. Person sings sometimes too. Badly in the shower.
Person sings off tune. But we sang before we talked, didn't we?
Before the first person
could call a thing a thing; before we could share exactness, be able to say, This thing in my hand means the same thing to you as it does to me. Before all of this, there was song, a switch in tones that spelled “hurt” or “happy”, the shape of the melody so we could know there is a thing that feels and wants to be heard. And that the mouth waits,
and waits.