Carbon Copy
Posted by Joshua Bennett | Filed under Poetry, Print
He may never know
that there are fireflies
growing inside him.
Wings threatening to sprout from his spine
if he would merely reach toward the heavens
my father
is no hero.
He’s a postal worker.
A Vietnam vet
with a Jim Crow education
six children
and enough regrets to fill a casket with
sometimes sleeps with his eyes open
as if he’s looking for 3 AM redemption
from whatever insomniac angels
may be still watching over his body
and with all his flaws
I still love him
with every bit
of the jigsaw puzzle heart
that pumps life through this thin frame
the exact same blood
that runs through my daddy’s veins
because no matter
how many miles I put between us
the undeniable truth remains
that I’m a carbon copy of my father
exactly 5 foot 10
170 pounds with not a muscle in sight
love to pretend
that we’re really good at basketball
and have this amazing ability
to emotionally damage
the people we care about most.
Take my mother for instance
the woman who gave me life
and the person my dad
and I owe the biggest apology to
for our unwillingness to be vulnerable.
Mom, I’m sorry
for being so ungrateful.
for not being satisfied
with the fact that most times
it was only you in the audience at performances
and watching me on the sidelines
But if growing up as a Black man in America
has taught me anything
it’s that there is nothing more dangerous
than telling another man
you care about him
so at this moment
right now
I’m choosing to murder the
monster that hides inside me
the one that keeps me from crying when I need to
and telling my little brother I love you
Dad
no matter what this world may say
you are an inspiration
a poetic painter on par with Pollock
turned being a mailman
into a metaphor
because for as long as I can remember
for 10 hours a day
every single week
he would sling a 100-pound sack of mail
over his shoulders
carry the hopes and dreams
of the masses
on his back
like a 60 year-old Atlas with
an Alabama accent
and though he may not know it
there’s not much difference
between the work he does every night
and the way I write poems
see my hands turn into carrier pigeons
when I pick up a pen
allowing my words to rocket through
the air like I was on a first name basis with the wind
and so as i long its cool with my dad
I’ll continue to believe that
the lights I write to every night
are coming from within him
the fireflies on his insides
the sunbeams that gleam
from his gut
as a constant reminder
that my father will never die
even when we forget to act like family
and he doesn’t have the insight
to see
that I’m the only 19-year old
I know who still wants to grow up
to be just like his Dad
that I’m fully aware
that no one else could possibly bear
the weight of my Earth-sized
insecurities the way that he can
and even when no one else gets him
his second- youngest son understands
that life ain’t easy
when you come from war
with a purple heart fastened to your chest
and a shattered one behind the seams
when you come home from war
and post office realities
are spawned as
the bastard children of your
law school dreams
I know what you sacrificed for me
and I promise
that i’ll use this God-given gift
to repay you one day
but for right now
Let go.
no one’s watching
it’s o.k. to be broken sometimes
let the lightning bugs loose
so I can illuminate the path for my children
and provide them with undeniable proof
that they are the descendants of a man
who held the stars in his stomach
could crumble a mountain with his smile
and spoke truth to his son
as if the entire world
were watching.
For a Dancer
Posted by Justin Ching | Filed under Poetry, Print
What do you say to a Mother who has forgotten how to dance,
It’s been two years,
And I promised myself every anniversary I’d write you a poem,
To guarantee your memory lasted longer than the trendiness of a pink wristband,
But this year,
I’ve decided to write one for your mother,
Whose melancholy calls like the lonely songs of ravens dressed upon her shoulder blades,
She wears black these days and I don’t blame her,
Her constant tears run like blood from virgin toes freshly en pointe,
And her eyes have cried out so much of their color,
When I gaze into those pale blue pupils,
They look more like binoculars staring at your first Nutcracker Ballet burned into a stage Across the back of her skull,
What do you say to a Mother who woke up one morning to find her little ballerina taking That last pirouette between a tree branch and the dance floor,
Graceful as ever 19 years kicking legs through the air,
A canon of limbs spinning in motion to Billie Holiday’s first commodore album,
Caught by her throat in time like a daughter’s last gasp of breath before defying gravity at A dance recital,
Those photos still line the walls of your home,
Every last one of them now a gorgeous face on a headstone,
And I wish your mother would bury those acrylic obituaries already,
Because she doesn’t need to be reminded of what your body looks like hanging there.
They say dancing is all about the line,
A choreographed path of righteousness
Ending at the crossroads between Heaven and damnation,
Your mother was always a good Christian,
But there’s a special place in hell for you,
So when she found you,
I heard she hesitated to let the paramedics cut you down,
Too afraid that that rope around your neck was the only thing holding you up in that audition with St. Peter we call judgement day,
Like a soul bungee jumping into Hades.
Maybe one day,
I will grow the courage to tell your mother
That these hands where the last to embrace your waist and slow dance to the rocking motion of a two step.
Tell me, whats more blasphemous:
To blame myself,
Or God almighty for making life a gift so precious,
That suicide was reserved for Jesus Christ,
And all those willing to be crucified,
But I’m still on my knees every night,
Palms to the sky,
Praying that someone up there bends the rules just this once,
If only so I can see you one more time.
But this poem isn’t about you,
It’s for your mother,
So that the next time I see her,
I have something more to give than an apology,
Because she has enough of those already.
So here it goes:
Brenda,
The world is not a stage fit for ballet,
But an endless waltz between life, death, and eternity,
Liz is a teen-angel,
Hugging the walls of heaven on prom night,
Waiting for her mother to give her that tap on her wings,
And offer her the first dance.
The Manhattan Project
Posted by Justin Ching | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Announcements
We held the Manhattan project in our blood line,
So we danced around New York City lights like we were born to,
Electrons with an affinity for lamp posts and all the glowing things in this world,
Tell me how to get closer to you,
Because I believe in a science called fusion,
And I want the atoms of our hearts to mingle,
To create energy and explode starfire into the night,
“Yes this means I love you,”
And I thought we would glow in the dark forever,
But I was just a boy,
Caught playing hookie in one too many science classes
when you were already three grades ahead,
And I was just too good at fakin’ it with the advanced curriculum.
So I never learned that even the sun will burnout sometime,
No longer able to kiss two protons into one helium smile,
She too will die,
A collapsed star,
I never liked how black holes sucked all the light from everything,
I said I’d rather not go out like that,
I think there’s more energy in parting,
It’s best if we go our separate ways,
And you said gladly,
Just give me what’s left of my love back,
But I never realized that breaking hearts is like splitting atoms,
How chain reactions fill chest until it weighs critical mass,
Until ribcage becomes radioactive chamber,
And my heart, a nuclear reactor,
Erupting into the three mile island of my sternum,
This is the stuff bombs are made of,
This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
This is Doomsday,
Screaming “My God what have done” from the Enola Gay, with mushroom clouds in our eyes,
This is fallout:
When the nuclear winter blocks out the sun,
With the ashes of everyone,
because everyone is dead.
Reminds me of times I wondered if you would be with me if I were the last boy left alive.
And it’s a curse to survive,
Radiation’s fried my immune system,
So I’m left defenseless,
To rot in my skin,
The napalm of my bones burning me from the inside,
Only I will know what pain is,
The horror of amputated limbs,
After my family tree returns from war,
And fate hacks off all the branches of our future children,
My genetics feel more like genocide,
And I’m not quite human anymore.
So lets start over,
Bring me back to the Stone Age,
And show me my basic instincts,
Whether cavemen throw rocks at storm clouds to pierce nimbus for sunlight,
Like shooting through fog for the moon,
Like cigarette burns in Brooklyn back alley ways,
Like rockets blossoming in the sky at midnight,
as if we could replant our love with explosives,
Remind me what fire feels like,
Because I’ve forgotten how to glow,
And I’m the only living boy in New York,
And you were more than just another “F” on a science test,
But even Einstein flunked out of chemistry,
And look what he gave us,
Limitless energy and a nuclear holocaust,
So I don’t know what about this project scared me more,
The possibility of success or the chance for failure,
But I’m willing to accept the consequences now,
I know you’re not here tonight,
And I know it’s my fault,
But when all seems lost in this experiment,
Lay by my bed and teach me,
That even uranium, rapidly decaying in half-lives not lived,
Does not die,
It just grows old together.
Player
Posted by Justin Ching | Filed under Poetry, Print
Summer breeze fills the room like August at the Hollywood Bowl
The air mingles with clouds of cheap cologne
Raining down upon a young man below, suited in an Abercrombie polo, and acid wash jeans.
He is ready for his performance
A hush whistles across the room as it collectively inhales,
And his ringtone crescendos through his pregame sound track,
He checks his inbox,
To find he’s already being holla’d at by a girl
And as he reads her text messages aloud,
He reads them like lead sheets ready to conduct a private symphony in his honor
You see,
He always thought the sound his voice was music to his ears,
And as he dims the lights to his private concert hall,
And exits his room,
He places a condom in his back pocket
Like the dropping of a baton
And the first movement begins with the words, “I’m getting some tonight”
He liked to keep track of girls
Track them into songs,
So that he trace their curves like amplitudes of sound waves into coke bottle figures,
Track them and arrange their names into playlists,
Like the contact lists of his cellphone,
So whenever he got a song stuck in his “little” head
He knew where to go to play his booty calls,
He kept track of girls,
Put them on shuffle like the greek letters that scaled the walls of the frats he cruised to pick up on girls.
And, with cheap liquor as his instrumental,
He laced his tracks with beats he produced on the sound board of his mattress in a private studio beneath his sheets.
He kept track of girls,
Never owned a complete album in his life because he was only interested in singles
he could turn into one hit wonders,
And, even though there may have been a time when he dug oldschool,
He shunned a relationship with vinyl,
Because he didn’t wanna commit to a girl from start to finish once he laid his needle to Her skin.
In fact,
He’d rather go out and buy his songs on the corner.
So he kept track of girls,
Wasn’t even afraid to pimp smack a girl,
Didn’t trip if he left scars and bruises upon her body
Cause scratches upon his mix CD’s only meant it was time for him to skip to the next track.
He kept track of girls,
He said “I love you’s” like curse words on the hottest rap singles,
Uncensored audio accents spoken into her ears in the privacy of stereo headphones
But blipped and blanked out in the public sound waves of broadcast radio,
yet, how could he possibly love some one else when he didn’t even love himself,
So kept track of girls
sometimes just to listen to their bodies breathe by his side while he slept,
Like a subliminal self-help tape that gave him the confidence to say he was “the man”
He kept track
So that someone would listen to the soundtrack for life.
Well, if music be the food of love,
Play on.
