Blue side

What place is this

A hostile defense

A victim and a tyrant

That I heedlessly chose

For myself

Cecil Walden

When we step into time again

Memory is slow to show

The truth of discontinuity

And the silence that has grown

–

What time has left, what we have lost

A spectre blooming overblown

Conversations we still carry on

With the ones we used to know

–

If the unspoken can be a legacy

If disbelief can make life so

We can forget what has been changing

And the silence that still grows

–

https://ottawacitizen.remembering.ca/obituary/michael-ip-1082083615

What I am missing

You told me I was missing Monster

And until I saw the insides of

Doki Doki Literature Club

I would be incomplete

But I am always looking

Away from darkness, unless

Mundane worries lurk

Or there is the perfect niche

To hide my messes away

I believe you even though

I will never watch or play them

And if you were here, I’d gladly hear

You saying it all again

https://ottawacitizen.remembering.ca/obituary/michael-ip-1082083615

Time limitless

Night grows reflective

When on your way home

There is another tempo

For being alone

–

Image from Wallpaper Flare

Shizuo

You know, a look can kill,

He said,

And that makes this self-defense

From then on I was walking home

With eyes for no one else

The decision-making process

Certain heavenly bureaucrats

Could have told the tale

Eons of analysis (note: pleading)

And single-sided briefing notes

Convincing the gods that this,

This was what they wanted;

A least-bad option for

The creation of All

The trouble with melons

Bobby Werther, at a luncheon

Partook of melon medley sorbet

And then reacted so badly, he

Was laid up the next four days

So he called for an appointment

And two years later, duly went

To be plastered with little patches

Of potent allergens

“This is the fruit sampler?” he asked

To which, “Oh yes,” the nurses said

So Bobby went home and itched

The next week and a bit

Then he returned to the clinic

With its exhorbitant parking rate

Unshowered, as instructed

Since his last appointment date

That day, the doctor appeared

And seeing him, declared

“You are quite allergic to shelfish,

And that is all I see – take care!”

“But what about the melons?”

Bobby asked as she rose to go

“Well, we didn’t have all the samples,”

She said. “They’re a hassle to get, you know.

So you may be allergic to a melon

And it may be prudent to abstain,

But its the shellfish and the crayfish

That would surely fry your brains.”

“Oh, but that I knew,” said Bobby

“I always avoid crustaceans

Had I known about those patches

I’d have asked to skip them.”

But the doctor was long gone

Nurses hustling in her wake

So Bobby shrugged and got his coat

And went to pay the parking rate

From within

Wait for the crabapple

When at last its leaves fall down

Then stand vigil for the fairies

Sprinkling the frost around

Sleepwalking

We have grown glad of slumbering

And making in ordinary time

Small changes to our realities

Days we count before we find

–

When a dreaming is a sadness

For all that it grows rare

And outside loses the wonders

That were its breath and fare

We can sleep, and we can sleep

Or go to the sounds and lights

Yet the remedy waits in the dreams

We lose after the night

Homeland

I never knew my homeland

Until I let it lie

Beyond the crowned escarpment

On the river’s brighter side

Give me again the easiness

Of one who does not know

What serves a delimitation

Or where wanderers go

That place that is a childhood

In itself, the world’s own heart

Never lost and never aching

For anything a river apart