A-Side

Phillip Chee

2:22 a.m.

I

steaming cup
honey-sweet milk
in the kitchen
where we first
tasted bulgar pilaf
between strangely nervous
kisses, three
in the morning
bodies anticipating
the quenching
of erotic thirst

II

i sleepwalk
thru the memory
of you, hoping
to touch the figure
of my imagination
like a wayward ghost
i haunt my own
dreams wandering
over the fens
of my broken
heart

III

we can never change the past
but the tender heart has
brought its own portable
time-travelling machine
in the hopes of replaying
History and rewriting the script
ready to insert a telephone book-thick
stack of revisions footnotes annotations
apologias errata & addendum
maybe a new prologue
preface to the latest edition
a postscript & epilogue of
emotional reforms edited
with hindsight & kindly
constructive criticism

Who's Keeping Score, Anyway

It's like a game
Where all the rules
Keep changing, altering
Or don't apply anymore.

It's like a game, isn't it
With no goal but
That of staying in
For your own sanity.

A game whose
Greatest players are
Only a fiction
Only a play.

I can handle the days
—it's the nights I can't get by

The price of staying in
Hanging in, hold tight
Here she comes round
Again & again, hold tight.

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