I Once Was Lost
but now am found by big fast broken billboard promises graced by the goodness of Gucci saved by Victoria’s Secret yes I hear the noise of your perfect teeth see your many but always the same face put my money in always the same place empty my belly with a Colgate smile yes a wretch like me how I love a good jingle to cap the night let me drink with my glassy eyes under your new neon logo let the Coca-Cola runneth over and may I deserve the hand that feeds or may I at least shake it how sweet the mouth that knows me naked how may I repay you your once-in-a-lifetime offer yes sell me the rain and tell me this time I’ll finally shine like you
After Learning That Polar Bears Are Left-Handed
I thought for a moment about the correlation between left-handedness and creativity and / whether polar bears could have evolved and developed civilization / like humans but perhaps more mindful of global warming and / perhaps kinder to the chimpanzees in their zoos and / in that parallel timeline my ancestors were all law-abiding left-handed polar bears and / here I am writing poems with my right or rather wrong hand and / I see no reason to get out of bed and go about my existence as a glorified chimpanzee until / I recall that polar bears have paws rather than hands and / absent any ability or desire to wield a hammer or spatula or Bic pen / polar bears would not be considered left-handed or right-handed but / would better be described as ambidextrous which / somehow still makes them smarter than me
Intervention
I don’t usually pray but one day I said Hey God instead of Hey Google, and no one answered. one day I found irony, and I stopped answering to God. I don’t love irony, but isn’t it funny how I’d rather say the opposite of what I mean than say exactly what I mean? most things I buy, I buy because they mean something to me. my Google Home speaker doesn’t help me sleep better at night but then, neither does God. one day I’ll be crossing Canal Street with a seven-dollar latte and my oversized hood up and God will answer me in the form of a seven-ton semi-truck with failing breaks. I keep talking about tomorrow like it’s already gone but it’s a new year, which means the future will never be as big as it used to be. Hey God, if the future looks bright as an LCD screen at 4am, should I throw my phone out the window? Google can’t answer that one either, and now God has my phone, so I have to wait till it gets light out before I can write this down. I wish all of this were funny, but instead it’s true. one day God said Wouldn’t it be funny if the universe could talk to itself, and here we are now.
By Jason Chun