Poems by Michael Kwong

Hapa Mag - February 12, 2020

ALLOPATHY

Seven layers of infinite seas

potentized

render the star of cosmetic glee

the physician stared

perennial conscience lifting into tar and lime

Now your awaited hope

porcelain rage filtered onto a tarp of unbreakable form

I stand in silence

Cheeks pressed to a doorknob

wisdom

a master of sand preaches four stories to the right

Broken but faded

you emerge, ready to repress again

ELLE

Resolve left untouched

the essence of your departure from the sick

Complicated by time

Complicated by grace

Now pushing paper sand into the mouths of compliant moths, halfway returned

Dissolution of rotting wood, mind breaking over a thimble from stem to crown

Closer Now

Cracks more apparent

Mildew and porches left in abandon

Magnetized forth.

Reset into stone

Sinking forward. Downward

Her purple hair creases the skin of your lips

The fire of your time rakes an internal screech

Wishing you had forsaken her kindness

Cleanliness

Latch and fold

Now a body inverted, you pay penance to a sky which does not judge you

But compels a single shoulder to the earth

AN EYELASH FOR SAND

Ankles for angels

Flesh on the facts of neutrality

You signed a post as pioneer

So I spat blood through a hexagram of ages, marking hallowed ground

A silhouette seven layers deep

Undusted

Ripping sheen from shelter protests and scoured condominiums

The iris of change

Humming goodnight moon to the left side of burnt bodies

Broke the devil, but failed to mention a second course

Now you stand in nightshade

Wonder fading through the confines of open arms

Progress welded to fate, like mirrors on the axis of a spade

Unbecoming

A kiss from crown to solemnity, bounces forward

Waiting

Hands forever untied

SELFISH

Blue is more passionate than the pavilion of time

Her black hair and curved fingers

Weigh in

Solitude of presence, unfounded

A simple lash of lace and ivy

Crescent the fall from memory to savage

Moans of ambition and foresight

Break through clouds

Constant

Unabated flashes of rosemary on lust

Chasing the lines between ages and beauty

She focused on broken

I found her in rhyme

Aching

Motion

Forward shredding creases of tongue

Toes blistering in the neon lights of Brooklyn filth

We could have lapsed forever

The common cause of red on vinyl

She rested

Under

Thinnest of glaze, wrecked in perception

Touching

Through the length of silence she dropped eight notches on a bell

Crashing like sand on a circlet of jade

Standing alone

Selfish

We watched

The parting of conscience from the ghosts that repelled her tongue