Tag Archive for Identity

Eccentricity

Silvery Silent

Out here in the moonlight

Half light, night light

When the pity and despair in your eyes

Says a thousand more words

Than could ever be uttered from your lips

Outside

You’re mercury

Fluid and liquid, but steady

Guarded

While inside you’re violet

Transcendent and flickering

With droplets of every rainbow colour

In the furthest,

Beneath your silver shell,

There is no jeering laughter

If you’re not what they expect you

To be;

But this you cannot show them

For fear that they will smother it

Or snuff it out

With their foolish consistency

Guys, Get Up!

“Guys, get up! Breakfast is being served in a half hour. You’ve already missed the morning service!”

I groaned. My whopping three hours of sleep had not served me well. I rolled over and saw Andrew looking up at me. Andrew had dark hair, a yellowish tone of skin and eyes with a slight slant to them—Asian. In fact, everyone in the room was Asian, excluding myself.

It seemed a strange idea initially, but when my friend Alvin invited me to come on a previous retreat of the Cincinnati Chinese Church six months before I figured it was better than gazing at a glowing monitor all weekend. I had been having trouble making friends at my family’s church; they just weren’t the kind of people I fit in with. The youth at my parent’s church seemed to me the perfect stereotype of teenagers—no ambition, only caring about the moment, and doing everything for the sole purpose of fitting in. I dreaded going to church each Sunday; I didn’t want to become one of these people. The Cincinnati Chinese Church offered a fresh start.

I was amazed at how quickly I assimilated into the social world of the Chinese Church. It was the first time I had ever felt “popular,” so naturally I continued to return. It was a wonderful atmosphere—a place where I could worship the God I loved and enjoy the company of the people who seemed like me—not externally, but internally. As I continued to return to the Chinese church, a lot of my “friends” made fun of me. They called me an “inverse Twinkie,” a clever racial slur referring to Caucasian people who are under the impression that they’re Asian. I simply smiled and played along. I found that I cared less and less what they thought—I had discovered a place I loved, a place I belonged, and I was happy. The reason I fit in so well with the youth group was a bit oblique at first, but eventually it became obvious to me. They’re scholarly people, intelligent; they love God and have a knack for computers—which also happens to be a perfect description of myself. I climbed out of bed and got dressed. I was sore from the previous night’s festivities—nothing quite like Frisbee Football, or Ultimate Frisbee as my Oriental friends had dubbed the game. I smiled to myself as I walked down the dimly-lit hallways of the campus. “I am at home,” I thought.

Virgin

He catches the “no” as it tumbles from my mouth

Shoves it back into my throat

I’m choking

Vodka

He is made of granite, of marble: Stonehenge

Stone-boy makes the floor swallow me

Tears

I descend from Irish Chieftains

Recite Shakespeare

Love Vivaldi

It doesn’t matter

My head pounds on the bathroom door

And he hurts me

And hurts me

Blood

I am a child of rape, now I am its slave

I leave my life in the shower drain

I throw up and he laughs

Piercing

Two hours of solitude

I cry as I look for my pants

He took my cigarettes, too

I am not my own

Dried Flower

He becomes fierce

under the constant glare

of his enemy.

He has been given

a bad name

and no advantages.

Highlighted is his bloodstream.

It sticks.

Everywhere he goes, it rapidly follows.

His misconstrued thoughts

make much sense.

His words make no sense at all.

He becomes a dried flower,

pressed between my yearbook pages.

Making Movies

These are the shots of life

that we see translated to vision:

those dramatic slow motion turn-abouts

or artsy fade-outs with unreal light.

Though we cannot feel

voyeurism with public on our body,

we can identify the moments

of distinction

with a flat sigh,

or a cry,

or a gasp

as one of six billion.

And we fall into a

1st-person digital narrative

with nothing to save us

from life,

unless we should be swallowed

in the mouth of madness

and see ourselves as the way we would

be seen

by our own absent minds.

Influence

I never drank Mountain Dew

until you swore it was the beverage of the gods

and I’d die if I went another minute

without chugging an icy cold glass.

I never watched professional soccer

until you forced me to endure game after game

as you gave me back rubs on your cold basement floor.

I never listened to underground punk or ska

until we drove with the top down

and blasted The Indecisives through your dad’s fifteen-hundred-dollar sound system.

So I’m sitting here sipping my daily dose of sweetened caffeine

with the afternoon soccer game on mute

so I can hear my new Mustard Plug CD flowing from the speakers,

thinking about how I like you in a way

that has nothing to do with soda.

The Human Condition

A small

invisible

sun

lights a glass cube

in which stands

a little man

casting his own

small

shadow.