Poems Amos Tang



Lines / Origins


It is not my place

Call it fiction or fixation
Flip it over and downside up
What was to be found was never lost

Last night I dreamt of a house
Full of grey pets

Passports wet and torn on the ground
Eyes closed and locked

The final answer
And eternity


*


Up there is full of light
White light or yellow?

For variation’s sake shadows were created

Outlines could not otherwise be formed
God made himself out of him
All God's shadows
Are man-made

God's theory or yours?

Everything was created or nothing ever was
All or nothing sounds
Simple enough

But whose garden is this
Without shadows?

*

If you are sure of where you are going
You can convince yourself again
I dare you to sleep

Where werewolves were
A forest conceived in a mist
Fruits of all colours were buried
Secreting secret glue and passion
Rotten then forgotten
Rotten and forgotten

...

Some fruits disappeared for reasons
Others were found in previously unloved jungles
Those places were recently named the third
Part Africa part Asia part South America


*


A polygamist's belief in marriage(s):

As a concept
(Plant a tree and water and stare and eat the fruits)

As its singular and plural forms
(All statistical manipulations and grammars)

If I lose myself in the smoke within this glass jar
What boundary did I cross
Forgetting transparency?

Two points a curve and a straight line
A loop cradles mother and love
Death and mother

What was it that you were looking for?


*


At last
I run out of lines

My mouth opened but no image was dreamt
Wind slips phonemes between lips

In cinemas in churches in rain
Doubts seen in dotted scenes
Dubbed in faith in succession in doubles

(Silences later)

Still love grew in circles
In time
In darkness

At night
A shadow prays to its secret other
The one and only half
Tu me manques

Have you been imaging all these?
Last night
Was the last
I said





i remember the garden you ironed through to get here
and how i laughed at your attempt to dismiss the
beauty of those flowers as you wiped their dead bodies
off your shoes it was clumsy after all it's their
lives and your benefit i have no love for flowers like
i have no love for sex they are just footprints on mud
to fruit i did not mention this to you until you
stepped onto my new manolo blahnik i felt flatfooted
instantly you called the path behind you sacrifice do
you think what you have become is worth the lives of
those useless flowers you pretend so much you become
what you pretend nobody can tell the difference
between genuineness and calculated becoming if you do
it long enough but men think they are moral beings
when they attack you i don't know how to help you



<#15>


So many poems in my head, there is only one thing in
my mind. I won't tell you what. This girl in
headphone keeps on singing ‘Flower’ non-stop.
Japanese are crazy. All the past relationships I
committed cannot be locked into a white paper box.
Neither can they be framed, by anyone for that matter.
So leave, before it goes out of fire. I remember every
time love expires, my imaginations go wild like
viruses in hot blood. When I was young, some cartoon
showed fighter robots malfunctioning when their
lifespan is over. They splutter, with sparks. Then
they go out like TV sets switching off, rusted pieces
of metal collapsing on the ground, one by one. My mind
is standing tip-toe at the instant of a kiss. That
precise moment, that same spot, when you poured
fluorescent down my throat, I thought I saw you
swallowed all the darkness in me. My eyes were closed,
I could only feel. Illusions make things bigger. Your
mouth, your last words in my head. I remember I was
the last to go.


<#17>

You feel it all the time, the weight that drags your
voice down. At night the moon buttons all the notches
of your nakedness, a rock hangs on your bowing spine.
Out of a sudden you are carved out. Honest words were
spoken. A mouthful of air weights more than a bronze
bell. Look how the air rises and falls like smoke as a
glass shell is formed and sealed one more time. It is
a strange feeling to press your face onto the
transparent and look in from outside. You know how it
feels like to be in two places at the same time, to be
both in and out of your form, to be emotional about
your detachment. Some secret yearnings are dreamt, you
hold on to them like counting sheep. You use those
numbers to calculate the distance between dreaming and
praying. You wake up the next day drinking water like
drowning, your mind whirls like muddy water in a test
tube. You put your hands on a new day's paper and it
yellows as your coffee evaporates amber dreams.
Everything is about the sun at noon. Sunlight is a
metaphor for happiness. It is time to smile harder to
drag through
another day.