Toes
Posted by Justin Ching | Filed under Poetry, Print
Feet,
dangling
At my eye
level, that is
how I remember
you best. Wish I could have
stopped you, too bad I had
the chance. At night, I still avoid
trees, scared my nose will run into toes.
I wonder how the view is from up there.
Michael Jackson
Posted by Justin Ching | Filed under Poetry, Print
A King dies in California,
And the whole world falls to its knees,
Michael Jackson is dead,
And I guess even gods can’t live forever,
I’ve never seen a man walk on water,
But I have witnessed one in a rhinestone suit moon-walking his way across the stage,
As if Martians had invaded his body,
Too far ahead of his time for any us to understand
So he had to run it backwards,
He only grew younger,
Call him Peter Pan,
Because he taught us all how to fly,
Step by step,
Baby steps for man,
One giant leap for Neverland,
But now,
Even the children are crying.
And they should be,
Because no one loved them more,
I remember when I was six,
The first time I saw Thriller,
Only possessed the courage to stare at the screen long enough to know,
That I wanted to grow up to become a man who dared to bring the dead back to life,
Looks like Michael cracking jokes in a pediatric burn unit,
As if he could resurrect their smiles
A gloved hand scooping chocolate ice cream to the starving children of Sudan
Looks like a little boy in a cancer ward with Michael by his bedside,
Telling him stories of chimpanzees named Bubbles who shake hands with the Dali Lama and all the places he’ll go outside the hospital walls.
Where has the man in the mirror gone?
The one who always looks past himself to give the world a hand,
I wonder if Atlas ever stops dancing,
Or does he rock the earth as if it were meant to tremble
Maybe that’s why our knees still quake when we hear the sound of his voice,
Michael Jackson,
Lay down your load
It’s time for us to walk on our own,
I hope heaven is more weightless than the moon,
And no longer need rhinestones shine.
Thank you,
For reminding us how it feels to be a kid again,
We’d almost forgotten what it’s like to play hide and seek with our best friend,
And end up losing him forever.
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.
