for poetry should not be therapy

- chen chen

Yaeji sings This product is called Depression

& I think about how I haven’t been out dancing

in a year, & how I say Because I’m a homebody

when my body misses the way bodies become song

& light.

- Chen Chen

This isn't black and white. It's rather pink.

 

I can’t decide

whether the university

is a refuge for the bookish lonely

or a T-shirt store

run by a soda company.

- Chen Chen

we’ll be gone after these brief messages

chen chen

god stopped by in his magenta rowboat

i said god you have to stop stopping by

if you’re never going to tell me the meaning of life

god said life is meaningless

while language often means too much

my grandmother stopped by & said no

the meaning of life is love

the kind that produces children

why don’t you have a girlfriend yet

my mother stopped by & said look

he’s busy with his studies stop asking

god got back in his turquoise steamship

life is a joyful thing he said

it’s probably very good for you

All beautiful boyfriends are transitory

- Marilyn Chin

I cry for you     but no sound wells up in my throat

- Marilyn Chin

Knock at emptiness    a house without your love

- Marilyn Chin

Ornamental     Oriental     techno     impresarios

      I am your parlor rug     your chamber bauble

Love me     stone me     I am all yours

      Pound     Pound     my father’s Ezra

- Marilyn Chin

Metaphor     metaphor     my pestilential aesthetic

- Marilyn Chin

Why cry over dried flowers?

They’re meant to be straw.

- Marilyn Chin

As Robert Frost said, the best way out is always through.

Or as Alanis Morissette said, the only way out is through.

- Chen Chen

Your emergency contact has called

to quit.  Your back-up plan has backed

away. 

- Chen Chen

Life is a sack—with holes—and you carry it, you carry it.

- Marina Tsvetaeva

JASON2

But I didn't know I was unhappy. That I was just existing.

Doing the things that humans do, like pattern recognition.

AMANDA

Sounds like depression.

Dark Matter, S02E04