Let Me Lay Down Like a Song
The anthem of this island has budded
Yet or not yet. It determines if
I can share with people:
I always enjoy handwriting in a planner,
Inserting my fingers into preparation
Inviting all possibilities from a sketch.
I often see myself thrusting into soft clouds, hallucinating.
Even relying on the solidified ground is more comfortable
Than weaponizing my sloppy vigilance.
In fact, my planner never exists:
This country has no schedule.
Clouds are intangible and hollowed.
Perhaps I’m brainwashed by my own creation.
I never told anyone that I’m a coward and can’t
Count the moments when I wish to say Oh yeah but I’m too puny,
Count the times when I allow my anger to deluge,
Count the number of awake, asleep people,
Or compatriots in limbo. I would assassinate
For many reasons, especially for one future, but
No one should be coerced
To prove I belong.
In aerial and artificial history
I request to stand still like any Taiwanese
Mountain
Let me lay down
Like a song
That has not been hurt
The Border Crosses My Beef Soup
through banned drugs.
In the tradition, farmers have not eaten cattle for decades
to respect plowing, vehicles, taboos.
I’ve eaten steaks aka the best friend of older generations
with a silver knife set at the continental breakfast table.
To practice modernism,
my mother cannot spend time delivering the warmth
to cover my nervous system.
She folds microchips and inserts them into
belletristic hearts. Day by day,
types and sews loans on a cellphone.
To be contemporary and supportive,
the boundary assimilates,
I’ve taken a cage-lifter a thousand miles high
to make sure the border
is not a visible line.
The island’s surrounded by the ocean,
the border still cuts across my beef soup.
They say fat local beef causes jabber & SARS mask,
I am reluctant to swallow 30ppb Paylean.
Never happened in Europe,
the governments exchange a free tourist visa with ractopamine.
Finish one bowl of poison,
it won’t kill me unless I’m too pushy.
Artwork © Tsai-Ling Tseng
