Coffee
by Ho Cheung (Peter) Lee
New shop opens downstairs.
His affair with caffeine wakes
him punctually against every medical
advice. Acting some forty odd years
he enters the shop being a Frenchman
with the slangs and winks and all.
The coffee today as dark as ever.
He thins it with water and honey
for that differs it from the coffee
perceived by him as toxic.
He takes one sip after another;
each sigh a chronic suicide.
What matters now
is not the days in his pocket, but
the forbidden cups in which he still
manages to find his flesh and guts.
First day we meet though.
A pat on the back of my head and
he leaves with glints of gold
in the majestic storm he carries.
Without
Whose good heart —
cursed as he bears his face
poisonously elaborated by this
monstrous bulge of growth.
Other than his right eye,
he gave up every facial feature
in this complex of meat and
feral veins doubling his head now.
I tried to visit him again today.
The Internet inference brought
me to the decapitated victim
of some Israeli governmental
acts though; and in that prismatic
mass, I saw myself kissed by the
Pope as he mistakenly took
me as the disabled boy from
Rhode Island. And why not?
I was inevitably reinvented
from my sacred obstinacy
against you;
your shampooed hair
still murmured the weight of
your sockless feet.
2700 fps
The sag swelled with fluid crystal,
waiting patiently
for the inviting tip of the lean silver
to pierce its impermissible membrane.
A chosen sperm motionless, it
ruptures the wall of life for life.
The pink layer fractured and
shrunk to set off the hungry fireworks.
A translucent orb uncovered in mid-air,
emitting sparks and mist of diamonds.
Her face wrinkled and wavy
like melting glass.
She gushed downstream naked
breaking into an abstract splash.
Left behind her a galactic brook;
A burning tail of a formless comet
to commemorate the ever-ephemeral climax
of a soundless blast.
Eaden
Term breaks. I was a kid back then only
summered by him returning from Baden-
Württemberg. Five years older this ex-neighbour
under whom I was put ―
the only right thing my parents ever did.
My cell windowed every Wednesday as I
could go. This chamber never had light with
the two crumbling vine-encumbered
trees blackening every vitality. He brought me out
from the water of the pitcher-plant,
washed me with his radiance. His room my
wonderland. We read and gamed. He taught
me how to slice like Graf and counted my
new-formed pack. He lifted the shirtless me
during my brittle chin-ups. Our sweat took
most of the dirt from the carpeted floor
as we wrestled like in the movie
we came back from. Two damp vests
dangled from the corner of that tall
cabinet in the whispers of the air-con.
He combed my bare back that night when
I had my first wet dream.
There was a time when I looked up
the cobwebbed ceiling every night just
to find that stone-blocked opening
through which I last breathed
in the outer sky.
BIO
Ho Cheung (Peter) Lee, Ed.D., resides in Hong Kong where he teaches and writes. He earned his doctorate from The University of Hong Kong with a thesis on teaching reading. His poetry has appeared in aaduna, FIVE Poetry Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Red Booth Review, The Chaffey Review, The Interpreter’s House and elsewhere. His short stories have also been published in Eastlit, Miracle Magazine, River Poets Journal and The Oddville Press. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BALLOONS Lit. Journal (www.balloons-lit-journal.com).
