More of Val's Poetry

Demise of a friend's pictured youth

We sit late at night in some Parisian cafe, Morgan and I,
Sipping our beers and talking to a wasted Frenchman
From Singapore with a very peculiar accent.
He tells us his name is Pierre.
"I have travelled svery far dans ma vie. . .
It tis a plezure speaking with lovely people like vous."
I keep on giving Morgan the eye,
Partly because of this strange, incessantly babbling
Frenchman from Singapore.
And partly because I'm a little bit drunk.
And also because I believe Morgan to be my soulmate.
But he ignores me. "Pierre," he says,
"What do you do in Singapore?"
It's 2 AM and my droopy eyelids meet his
Eyes, well-integrated into the shape of his face.
With the shape between my eyelids, I try to convey
A secret: "This guy is out of his mind,"
A smile.
My soulmate looks downwards;
Rubbing his gray hairs as he exhales a yawn.
This man is old enough to be my father.

Ode to the Ground

Blue is your main theme
But glittering with asphalt
Miniature chunks of rock
An unappreciated mosaic
That comes alive like liquid
At night time. If you touch it,
The reverberation of all movement
Stops solid. You are solid.
Cracks belching green, non-
Moving string. Or moving
Things when an outward
Breath caresses them.
Every speck of earth
Serves a purpose for life,
Gives life in you, the ground.

Road Trip

Hours into the tedious drive,
The monotony of black highway
Augments my doubts of this being a good idea.
My traveling companion, driver and lover
Hunches over the brown steering wheel,
The whites of his eyes reflecting coming distance to cover.
Hours before, he spotted the green sign with flashing white letters.
Passing it, my lover squealed with the delight of an overly-excited dolphin
And decided, as an exclusive group, him and the sign, our destination.
I can't be sure if this is the right direction,
Or if this is really an existent place.
For all I know and feel now, we could just drive for the rest of this eternity.
Now after a few more green signs that say nothing
And a few orange construction lights that blink to the techno we let loose in the car,
It is 5 o'clock AM and I'm in the car with a madman and am beginning to worry.

Love of God

Inside me,
Outside there,
Between your toes,
Lingering in the sky,
God resides.
He is everything, He is part of you
And you are a part of him.
Constantly, With such a persistant existence,
He is everywhere.

Communist Poem

He wanted to be a robot.
Constructed metal skin bolted together
and internal computer chips programmed with commands
to carry out under certain conditions.
To act and speak and feel consistently,
not to have emotion erupting and spewing conflict.

And he wanted his programmer not insane,
who wouldn't program little bugs
lying dormant in his robot heart to go into an infinite loop
when someone enters the wrong value.

And when he gets hurt, self-inflicted or external input,
he wants to feel the keys and wires loose in his shell
and then someone would unlock him and connect the right wires
and then he'll be completely recovered
instead of bearing pain and scars afterwards
and having to live with permanent retardations.

And then when they say it's time to move on,
to grow up and stop being innocent and start having responsibilities
instead of dangling on a traumatic adolescence,
he can just get himself upgraded.