Poetry: Adam InTae Gerard

Let's do a roleplay

let’s do gender roles. you

will play the part of the good wife

and I will play the husband.

you will stay home

because pie

is a sacrament.

correction: you will be (re)named Cheri.

someone half your age.

let’s do all-work no-play.

you are the play -

right. you follow the

lead. just cut that poet out -

out you will say.

follow my stage direction.

I am the fool. no doubt

full of high sentence

but a bit obtuse. counting

my raining clouds.

let’s do a doomsday.

I will be a boy

and you will be a girl.

we will hold hands nervously

like we know something is afoot.

we are in our teens

and full of hope.

the wind will pick up. suddenly

the backdrop will disappear.

you will hold me tight saying

this world full of angry sounds -

with its strange fury -

it scares the hell out of me.

now we are playing gender roles.

let's do a (s)wordplay.

we are distantly related.

we go back to the same

guerillas. I will complain.

I like my ancestors peaceful.

you will get cross.

say men cannot be apes.

say we are not just a prequel

for a better sequel. 

then tearfully. with all our cities

in ruins. our blood everywhere.

remembering then that we are brothers.

let’s do a party. 

you play your part

and I’ll play mein.

I will say struggle -

on -

my comrade. we'll have a dress code.

they will call you the party animal.

superior in all ways.

but you know it’s only about acting

right. a man will salute

you. will take a ride in his car.

you will feel sick to your stomach.

now you wish you hadn't joined

the party.

let’s do humanity. 

what do you mean let’s not? 

don’t be mad at me. 

hey blame the big guy. 

that guy behind the scenes.

mystery man in the machine.

The tempest

I walk with drunken swagger

into that

abandoned glance of stars.

upward the thousand lights

for a mire.

and straight ahead a descrying

finger. the chasm pokes

existence in our every disdain direction.

which surmounts a capacity to dream.

still she figures my imagination.

an enigma of what could not

and could be

here. in her presence old pains

up-well and whisper

their dim lamentations

of the man I once was not

and the failures that I am

now. in her presence. my hands

are not balanced.

the stare which seeks

goes unfound.

here she is a ghost.

or a calamity

of what I could not become.

All rights reserved to Adam InTae Gerard