Silence Ajar - a poem

Wonder if I’ve felt like this before,
Standing about, talking nonsense.
The door to my heart ajar,
no welcome mat to greet.
Only periodic cries of silence,
Wafting from the windowsill.

And here I am, watching the clock,
Watching the door.
Watching my life like a movie reel,
Reality tepid brown and faded.
Heart’s grown bland,
No use for the door
Just no longer here anymore.

Shards of my heart,
Fragments of my mind,
What is it worth?
Palms on the windowsill,
Scream out into the night,
And silence retorts,
Sneers mockingly at me,
My mouth agape, face aghast.

Then turning once about,
Even silence disappears,
Slips ‘round the corner,
Sarcastic lips upturned.

And still, watching the clock,
Watching the door.

Herman's Birthday - a fragment

It’s Herman’s birthday today. I have not seen that guy in so long. It seems like ages ago since we sat on the steps of the Asian American Activities Center, puffing on cigarettes and sketching plot twists with dramatic, overkill enthusiasm and complaining, forever complaining, about the love or past loves that soured our hearts at that particular moment. How would we incorporate our own rich (oh, but rather trite) life experiences into a dramatic catharsis, shouted from the very rooftops of over-privileged college youths playing playwrights in between classes? But what a pleasure, what a thrill, truly, to eke a bit of drama from our daily microcosms, mold it into some metaphoric butterfly or melancholy melody, and send it fluttering from our souls to grandiosely greet the world, inevitably flying smack into the concrete wall of reality. Every event could be fodder filling a scene, every personality a character building a cast. So completely self-serving and self-indulgent and so completely gorgeous was life back then.

Perhaps this third post-collegiate year that I am now living has broken my optimism a bit. This rut that I have freshly dug for myself proves even more suffocating and unfulfilling than I predicted. So happily ambitious were these plans, to move on once again and start anew in a cosmopolitan urban sprawl, new position, new title, new team of happy investment bankers, new friends, new apartment, new neighborhood, new country. So long Midtown, Soho and my beloved Meatpacking District, sets once called home yanked across the plankway and off the stage during the second long intermission of life post-college, curtains opening to a freshly painted backdrop of Central, Causeway Bay and Midlevels.

And in all actuality it is a rather fresh new act that I’ve stepped into. Hong Kong is fascinating, there are roots here that have broken through the topsoil, entwining the core of who I am to the undercurrents of this city. My relatives, the language, the general Cantoneseness that pervades with its callousness, materialism, trendiness, all enshrouded in the sweet and sticky musk of money. But dramatization aside, career-wise I am definitely unsatisfied and stifled. [tbc]