I hear there’s a kind of human being
that appears to be, but isn’t
I think they call it a “human doing”
An unnatural twittering thing that lives to act
They say this juggernaut of motion
is addicted to a succession of multi-tasks
so that it doesn’t sleep and eats only to feel alive, with infinite thumbing of keys and characters, a parade of digital doings, on virtual spaces and books with faces
The other day I chanced upon this human doing
Staring at me with eyes (that looming with discontent)
Reached out from darkness in the bathroom mirror
And was forced to see, to listen, to be
Author: Son Trinh
Amnesia
AMNESIA
Why can’t I remember the way you smelled
the way you felt, the things you said
the day that grandpa died
When you held me to you
The only hug I can salvage from my past?
Why can’t I remember what you said the first day of kindergarten
When I slapped the teacher’s face
and squirmed out of her arms
Like a bar of wailing, wet soap slipping down the street ?
Why don’t I know how you felt those many years I left you longing for your son
In the silent house, that empty room,
With your restless maternal hands
Grasping at the ghosts in my room?
Why can’t I remember what you said that final Sunday
When your voice scratched across the miles
A phone line heavy with forgotten words
In a moment that will never be again?
Why can’t I remember?
Poetic Ponderings 