This poem does not matter
This poem will talk about life without living through one: a real one
undiluted by coffee, by the flurry of kissing the mug and leaving it be.
This poem will talk about love without daring to denude itself of words
and it will talk about grief when it only grazed sacrosanct wrists
treasured with a mannequin’s hold
This poem will talk about principles like reporting on wind-crooked roadsigns
This poem will talk about philosophies like reading an instruction manual
This poem will talk about apologies like an academic study
researching and formulating a verbal strategy
to remain printed and nailed to the bedroom wall.
This poem will talk, and its silences will not be punctuation –
its silences will be that distance between both ends of a metronome
I said this poem will talk about life
when its most lucid hours are spent when sleep is drunk outdoors
nestled in concrete in streetlight misery
and this poem will imagine the night pressing on,
pressing its palm against the world like a bottle
I said this poem will talk about love
without knowing how to describe an on-looking gaze
without knowing how to touch and clarify the apostrophe between skin and heart
the heart’s skin
I said this poem will talk about grief
when it lives assuming the year has already ended
when it foresees the end of the sentence
without peering over to the white lengths of the page
This poem does not matter
if it is any consolation this
poem does not matter
Austin Ong is a college student studying in Singapore, and is inspired by W.S Merwin’s “Berryman” to continue writing poetry.
The Kindling 