A speck of dust,
Borrowing the mass
Of the sun
A lone candela,
Denying its basic
Luminance,
Converging
Into an aperture,
A variable slit,
An ardent kiss.
Dancing around
Black holes until they
Trapped themselves
Into the dense
Unknown.
(Note: this was written in 2017 during my MFA poetry class.)
You deserve the deepest hues
At whichever wavelength your monsters
Require. I live your myths before fully
Grasping the lore, even argue with sphinxes
To preserve it. I’ll let you go
As easily as conscience goes.
You can calm the experience through
Verses or claim it as an afterthought.
I’d fondly regret on days when
Everyone else has denied me and go
Back to where we were blinded by
Rose colored spaces – only to awake
As mundane and monochrome.
Yet, I’ll live as you can no longer.
Water ran out. The pipes were dry.
There was no telling whether
The faucet was close or open.
Just tightly turned clockwise or counter-
Clockwise. I still live there, waiting
For random rations or rain. Fooling myself
Of this impermanence. The plumbing
Brittle: from moss to dust to decay. I stay
And rot as the dirt engulf me. On lucky days,
I bathe. At my luckiest, I am clean,
And at my lowest, I write.
I wrote a poem inspired by an artwork at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum.
If Hokusai Depicted the Shore
I found that things do not stagnate
Always inching towards flourishing
Or decaying. Maybe enchanted
By the ocean or engulfed by the flood.
It is water in essence yet functionally
Different. I’ll fixate on this: Could they carry
A drowning man’s struggle for the surface
To the nearest shore? Please send
Help – someone help him float – hope
That it gets to the one gasping for air.
Give it a century, the man is absent
The shore is no more. The water’s
Approach to tranquility til there’s no more surface to cover. It would be difficult
To hope otherwise.
alexisvilla.com 