Poem – Page 2 – ↠ Emilyn's Journey ↞

Dear New York,

Posted on April 25, 2015June 13, 2016 by Emilyn in Life, My Journal (My Life), Photography, Travel

April 23^rd, 2015 – April 25^th, 2015

Dear New York,

I have heard about your chaotic beauty. How your lights never dim, your streets never end, and your energy never stops seeking the attention you know deserve…

–

For these past three days, I experienced you, New York City for the first time with my High School Music Program. As all of our music ensembles from Symphonic band, Jazz band to all the Choirs took on competition at a music festival at the Riverside Church at the end of this week, we got the chance to roam and experience the city from the night we arrived to the day of competition. Endlessly moving starting on the afternoon of our arrival, we began with Broadway show of our choice; followed by a full day of sightseeing, wandering, and adventuring through your Chelsea Market, Highline Park, Battery Park, Time’s Square, ending with a Subway Series Yankee versus Mets game which lead us into our competition day! Being a busy few days, it was certainly an unforgettable first trip to you, New York City.

Living in New York state, you would think that I would have at least gone to New York City at least once in my life time, but this was in fact my first time, and there were many events, and sights that made it absolutely unforgettable. Living in a small town, the aura New York City shared with me was one with energy of enthusiasm. You welcomed us with loud horns, and music, street acts, and dancers.

Packing List:

Things I Packed [In a Small Black Backpack]:

My Brown Leather Notebook – Always.
My Sketch Book
An Agenda: How could I go without my Kate!
Phone
Camera
Utensils
Magazines: Time, and Popular Science (My favorite!)
Reading Book: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [Let me know if any one of you would like me to do a review on this book.]
iPad Mini
Homework: [Unfortunately for the “Music Trip” we left on a school day, so I had a few essays to write for my AP classes, and projects to plan to make up for missing my classes. ]

Things I Packed [In a Small Duffle]:

Laptop
Pearl Necklace
Black Flats
Sneakers
Red Lipstick
Tee shirts
Jeans
My Favorite Trench Coat
My Favorite Pair of Pajamas
Black Performance Dress
My Flute
Crutches

Yes, the crutches, roaming through the city on crutches surely makes it unforgettable, from the view of a pair of metal pieces, I still felt so humbled to have been here with the company of my friends, and classmates.

Ice Packs

Activities and Excursions/Travel Itinerary:

Matilda on Broadway

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! I don’t have enough amazing words for this show! I was absolutely blown away! I can’t pick a number but I think the alphabet number was my favorite! Impeccable show! Would definitely recommend it, and I’ll be seeing it again!

Times Square

Despite crutching twelve blocks throughout Times Square, I had an amazing time with friends stuck by my side, smiles and laughter while people watching by the streets.

Chelsea Market

What a cute little market! There were so many little shops that offered many different foods, trinkets, and everything you can think of! There was this AMAZING Crepe Bar! I had the classic Strawberry and Nutella Crepe! SO GOOD. There is something for everyone here. You can come for a stroll, or you can come to shop – or pictures. There was so much creativity coming from each shop in this market.

High Line Park

High Line Park is the epitome of all railroad tracks – so absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful.

Battery Park

Spontaneous adventures are a must when in New York, and this was one of them. Seeing the Statue of Liberty from afar, taking pictures of the water… what could beat it?

New York Yankees versus New York Mets Subways Series Game

The Yankees won! Our seats were amazing, minus the fact that we were facing the wind, as our hats were blown away, and our faces were burnt by the heavy wind. Freezing but SO MUCH FUN!

Riverside Church

WE DID SO WELL IN COMPETITION! All our groups performed and got high markings even with the difficulty of our pieces!

–

I cannot find the right words nor enough words to describe these past few days, though it was a short time period spent. I feel as if New York has brought a new light to my eyes, and a wanderlust to come back to explore more.

As I’m currently on the way home from your known lights, New York, on this bus, I must say, your confidence speaks loudly through the people that roam your streets in the amounts of human bodies and endless noise. Millions of people have grazed the cement grounds all agreeing that: you are undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful, yet sophisticated places we have ever stepped foot on. You are confident in all those you allow to step foot on your stone. You shine your lights on them, and brightly, never dimmed. You surprise them. You entertain them. You take them in, and on to your streets, letting them strut and bring their world to yours. New York, without question, I have “New York State of Mind” humming through my head. You are ruthless, yet you are kind. You are strong, though you have tumbled. You are worldly, yet you are humble. Thank you for having us.

Until then New York,

Emilyn Nguyen

– Emilyn Nguyen, Dear New York

To Have Met

Posted on April 19, 2015April 19, 2015 by Emilyn in Poetry

Circles within circles clenched in a fist,
finger prints of mothers, fathers, of fathers oncle, ma grand-mère et grand-père,
Vietnamese blurred French – English dialect – adopted.
Held captive by four corners – owned by simplicities of mind, lesson well learned.
Combination of two sides, cinching an aged tradition,
Recycling words, welcoming of solitude in circumference chasms.

Plated orange-yellow poles upon, crimson grading pens upon, pink erasers upon,
yellow painted light wooden pencil between the webs of my fingers,
foreign and forced upon my uncoordinated hand,
ached and cramped knotted upon them, strung upon my tangled fingers – alien.
Blind to possibility, possible to the blind,
your warm hand guiding mine, gliding streaks of graphite-lead onto smooth bamboo paper.

Inked loose leaf paper upon sheets of bent thoughts meant to be traced upon.
Handwriting of the foreign, different from the raced,
language to be taught, words to be learned,
syllables chopped, from tongue to lips, to be refused by air,
my lips followed yours, by a semblance in matter,
your dashes guide me, synchronizing to your hand before smooth, a poem you wrote.

Sawed cut chopsticks to count upon mixed upon erasers, grips upon,
wrinkled skin between clenched newborn fists,
opened wide, exposing the wings they possessed between each finger,
creases created to count with father’s hitchhiker’s thumb,
until one realized that there was more to count,
with the spaces between mother’s joints on her wide hands, and long fingers.

Canisters of undeveloped films, reminders that one has not rendered,
Fluent spheres develop in your mind, death-sentence tolled,
A color and composition – segments of hued breaths you took between shutters unraveling that you belong—intertwining my foreign fingers in your hair.
Words you’ve forgotten, shriveled hands cracked,
I wrote the words you could no longer teach me: to have met.

– Emilyn Nguyen, To Have Met

Counting Countenances

Posted on April 15, 2015October 7, 2015 by Emilyn in Poetry

Among a white room, come blank semblances of shadows,

whisper are tangled between specks of madness.

Thoughts – possibly of weakness are apologetic through an unsighted telescope,

quiet contentions,

restless legislations,

tedious clicking…

Fractions, fragments, and frictions of fictions in formal semantics: Nascent.

For other remote time swarming, zoning , warping,

to have reduced to one – rarely.

As a paper of processes for phylum,

through an algorithm of Ambien:

Repetitive tides of people here, in blurs. Click.

Faint flights of fright in foreign tongue, frail to forbidden fore seers.

Reflected upon the intimidation in immigrant irises,

their apologetic extermination returning to one,

As a share of the atmosphere roaring,

through exterminating cries, fighting tension,

Fog hazes faces and subsides as one. Click. Click.

Skilled hands twist to intertwined grimaces beclouding another,

hazed from one profile to presentation.

Slight slithers to another shoulders, words slurred as

deep sighs, long pauses — speak so silently, quietly.

Wait so mysteriously by civilization,

familiar frowns, similar scowls. Click. Click. Click.

A beacon just drifting midair colliding with others amongst the atmosphere.

Floating, with the breeze , to be forgotten when death is inevitable,

lie in the in between a course of immortality and early death.

afraid of admitting that they are lost,

lost as a pinnacle,

in complete abyss… Click Click. Click. Click.

If we never met, then I wouldn’t have to lose you.

Mistake Conscience with Fate – destiny with luck when bitterness overcomes you,

that there is a pattern in the narratives, you don’t want to admit.

There is fork in the road, where your soul gets indecisive.

There is a crossroad where, there is a light, where you yearn to explore,

for everyone’s own world to collide.

There is a collision

with their own thoughts expression – those you don’t know about…

Click. Click Click. Click. Click.

– Emilyn Nguyen, Counting Countenances

In Between the Lines

Posted on March 1, 2015February 18, 2015 by Emilyn in Poetry

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”

– Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters

Reading Virginia,
as if I understand her morals.
“Do not,” She has written.

Analyzing Woolf,
“One cannot think well,” she says.
my tongue is dry of new air, to “…love well…”

“…sleep well…” – Nightmares mostly,
leftover sleep and a dew of overdue promises
evaporating off my lips, purging with blood.

She ended, “…if one has not dined well.”
I began: “Do Not Speak to me about Hunger;
Speak to me about War.”

Here I stay: barefooted in between
airport tile floors – they tell me,
Gritting my teeth to the dreams,
forbidden desire and will to shining silver linings.

The cruelty, unrivaled, taking parts of a dream,
leaving most to die, but she’s hungry,
they told her the war’s over, but she won’t heel,
filling a God-sized hole.

– Emilyn Nguyen, In Between the Lines

3:45

Posted on February 18, 2015February 18, 2015 by Emilyn in Prose

From midnight on, I couldn’t help staring at the light ignited from the phone; waiting anxiously for a message I, for some reason, knew I wouldn’t receive. The night is longer than day, so cruel of overthinking possibility being held in the air. To add, the moon couldn’t keep away, its light kept shining; temping me to call, like the loose thread on my sheets I couldn’t resist to pull – I didn’t. I couldn’t wait till day, so the moon could meet the sun, and the stars could lie in the clouds. The coldness of the night’s snow shown sheets embraced the moon, cradled me into the clean white blankets, but I wanted the embrace of the burning sun as it would rage. Rage for me, rage at the moon. By 1 o’clock, the sheets became my comfort embedding itself into the heat I radiate, waiting impatiently. Imagining the warmth of my blankets as the radiating heat of your body against mine. By 2 o’clock, I went unnoticed, the sky lightening, my crippling exhaustion leaving me numb. My eyelids heavy at the hallucinations I was witnessing. You became a vision, and like the moon you were fading, fading – gone. My fascination towards phone lights dimmed towards to growing moon – bigger and smaller like the strength of my heart. At 2:45, I became taunted to close my eyes completely. Through withdrawal, I only crash, slipping slowly under my sheets completely. I only fear that I will suffocate myself; deprive myself of air before 3. From the moon to the stars, counted the stars and the constellations like I counted the minutes I waited. The 45 after 2, taunted me, the titanic sinking deeper in my heart. Second per second, minute per minute waiting until 3. By 3:45, I only saw how your eyes lit up when you saw me in the night’s moonlight, trying to count the stars between our giggles in our dreams…

– Emilyn Nguyen, 3:45 A.M

Roses

Posted on February 13, 2015February 5, 2015 by Emilyn in Prose

Her grandmother told her that her delicate, intricate, beveling beauty closely resembled one of a rose. On lovely, tender spring mornings, she had soft, rosy pink cheeks complimenting her pink lips, and below lengthy, stem – like legs. Her soft skin radiated with a wonderful floral scent and even when it rained, her freckles seemed to dance across her face like raindrops mirroring the dainty dew droplets that lie upon her white – pink petals. Her whole lively being was recognized to draw in others – to love and to be loved – but without knowing: to capture the victims in her hidden, disastrous thorns. Her heart lived outside her chest, hours away at your window garden, roses were her grandmother favorite. When vines reach up through my head again, and the roots sew themselves to my toes, to be consumed by their splendor again and then realizing she is gone, and there is nothing growing inside you. If winters weren’t so cold, I’ll water from the roots to the vines to become the rose beside the garden inside of her that her grandmother once spoke of.

– Emilyn Nguyen, Roses

Meghana

Posted on January 27, 2015February 1, 2015 by Emilyn in Prose

In the reflection of the sunrise,
a cloud disrupts the clear sky with one single tear,
and I can see the joy in the eyes of those who held you first:

White, and pure into their hands, before it evaporates. Notice how she smiles, molding into the palms of your hands, but she may stay or leave you, no matter what she’ll leave you a mark of goodness, reminding you that it exists. It might be an unparticular date, January 27^th, but the clouds still form. There might be rain, maybe snow today, perhaps hail, but this cloud stands alone, brushing dust off the back of her hand to start waving, whispering her wishes in a bashful hush. “Something ought to come out of those clouds, something out to come of me.” Twisting through the white-blue sky, a background of blue snow, her words are a reason to become winded. She becomes all of the elements of the sky that one holds between their fingers while their head is tilted back and up blinded by the brightness of the sky. You don’t even know. Within you, you’ve shared stories, and painted in breezes. Illusions unfold, and rewind together within you sometimes you escape once again though… you always return to watch over me once again. Sometimes, you will not say a word, but in visuals you write in strength, smiles and hope – aspiring to inspire. You grow in shapes and sizes, aside the bright sun, and you’re a cloud. You can become everything and anything here or even beyond the white-blue skies.

It feels like a cotton breeze,
as I watch the sun rise, and you appear.
“Meghana,” they call you.

– Emilyn Nguyen, Meghana

The Present & Future

Posted on December 26, 2014June 13, 2016 by Emilyn in Poetry

There is no future without the present day.

There is no present without an idea of the future.

Perhaps this is where our problems begin.

I wish I could be able to live more in the present,
but my head is always dreaming about a future.
I forget that I have to get there first.

I don’t have a future yet –
it has yet to only exist in my dreams.
So I lay my head down walking on clouds, as a dreamer.

I do not know what will happen –
Nothing is for certain, but for the sake of shame,
I admit it is the only thing that I have control over.

Now – Day by Day for and to a Future Anew.

I’ll admit that I carry a fear of the future,
its aura of mysterious vines and suspenseful drapes.
In my dreams , I am able to a push them aside,

Now – Dreaming of the Present,
What I must do for a New Future.

Finally, something we can agree on.

– Emilyn Nguyen, The Present & Future

La Laconde (The Mona Lisa)

Posted on November 27, 2014February 11, 2015 by Emilyn in Poetry

La Joconde1

Now that you’ve seen her face,
the skin between his fingers tingled of the emptiness of a brush:
That smile illuminated the world around her –
her patented smirk, softly carved out;
her delicate features,
her piercing stare spreading,
contemplating.

There are many counting countenances of those who try to replicate her – I.
the skin between my eyebrows, in wonder, in utter introspection,
Those eyes confused the audience around her:
For there is a woman with confidence in beauty.

Exceeding all manifested bounds.

From 1503,
From a canvas taut with lack of a woman’s color,
scraped the muter shades with a blade’s edge,
Layering her textures – alive.

Seeing and
Painting myself over the top.

Her paths are painted inset – layered beneath the certainty and knowledge of her years.
All of this useless chaos swirling in about these empty distractions, and feeble
pretense –
as you stare back at her, the roads seems clear.

Her scintillations glow a bit more gold than white,
in front of a locale of open fields, feared of windblown hair.
She is the center of the color blocked mountains.

Her perspective is in my self-possession.

Her lightly dust on her powdered skin
shading in soft contours in vibrant hues of blues
and, reds and, yellows and, greens as forests grow.
Blending dusky shades and blurring shadows
to highlight regal undertones.

The names became opulent
a match for your alias,
She was Bernadette, Carol, David, Leo, Meryl – Myself.

Finished in 1517 to –
She is seen through the glass of geometric pyramids,
I am standing behind a crowd until I am the only one left standing,
And I have become her eyes, and her contagious smile.

I know what she in the canvas is saying:
“I know what the wind tastes like,
and I am scared no longer.”
To be a woman,

to be a confident woman – with ambition , dedication and pride…
To have the eyes and a smile illuminating the world around her,

To be La Laconde.

– Emilyn Nguyen, La Laconde

1: La Joconde: The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci (French)

Draw My Breath

Posted on October 27, 2014October 27, 2014 by Emilyn in Prose

I have been trying for days after days, hours after hours, minutes after minutes, seconds after millisecond to figure out a way to describe that echoing in my chest as my heart cries out for you. It beats fast, then slow, only to be fast again because my mind relapses with images you, and the connecting breath from my lungs begin to lack air as you leave me breathless. With every full thump that drags in every breath that catches in my throat when I realize how intensely you lack a need for me. I only hoped your bones were captivated by fresh air they never get to feel; is that why they peek through your skin stretched taut as if they’re trying to putt through your nerve endings or is the air chilling your epidermis making goose bumps arise? Why do your hips and ribs jut out like they crave the atmosphere’s breath? The very act of breathing reminds you that you’re not whole – not without me, cried the heart; cried the skin’s drying touch; cried the eyes; cried the muscles aching. Save her, save me, for my heart won’t live without her breath. Yet the tattoo on her chest, her heart’s fighting beat contradicts the hope the lungs held: Do not resuscitate.

– Emilyn Nguyen, Draw My Breath