The Chef

Written by Michael Wu.

After a bar in Kyoto I made for undress 

and hither wept, each finger over a socket 

Of the soullessly depressed, I drink not 

A city in a nighttime of joy, a bottle starved

Maybe not tonight, I will not love you ever, better

Than myself, a piece of smoked salmon, a half pound 

Of chicken breast, a slice of the fine bachelorette.

Dipped sauce, swallowed soup, eaten food

I’ve enjoyed this, seeing you enjoying me, a vernacular

unremarkable, it does not serve anything,

Like onions’ language, durian perfume

I simply hate myself, but only artistically for now

I and she have a past 

Something we thought never last 

But we’re here to dine and have that chat 

I and her have a past, 

Alone I thought it would be us

Who stood the timely test 

Then there’s him to begin with

Him and her are quite a cast

A three-leg band, another pass

Love ‘s a boy in another coat 

And him and he knows not me, 

I sit in the corner, the lovesick fiend, 

A flu, a fly, a tear a lettermen wrote

“No.” I regret even asking, for a dinner of a passing note

“There are four stanzas in that last poem.”

My insidious friend makes an observation.

My little candle is sunken

He continues, 

“This isn’t about someone you like, is it? 

Who you love isn’t a dessert for you to eat. 

A menu good is long, you take a look and want to say: ‘Wonderful, wonderful.’

A terrible child out of bed and you don’t send it right to bed. You invite it into the kitchen. You hand it the cake.

It walks in a way you cannot.”

It is fed that way.

I am guided by a secret lover to a cabin of their farm. 

It houses a powerful human character tormented by love and lust,

by their affection to that insidious individual. 

And B, let us name their adoration B.

A, a far more important name of the sex of personhood.

It is a struggle, but I am that pitiful character who watches.

A and B are engaged in a deadly combat. They hated each other ever since they met. They don’t have anything in common. Is that true? A and B can’t agree. Are they even human? B and A can only disagree. Face to face, eight limbs and two bodies. Suddenly, one strikes, a kick to the stomach, B returns it with a punch to the face. B pins A on the ground. Throttling A has to regain his footing. He aims his feet for B’s groin. Now both of them are in the dirt. Climbing back from ground, A looks at B. B sneers back. A punches him right between his teeth. Now B is pinned. A can’t feel his face but that kick in the tummy sends him into a panic. Both of them are panting now, in the middle of a terrible pain. Somebody’s thoughts: This fight has been a horrible mistake, but hate isn’t hard to love when you stand between A and B. 

The Woman:                For they are their pear, barely pared

 In joy, their spear is feared as it is, as it was; and    

                                      Nonetheless paried, 

The Man                        By none other than their heart, far from true; yet none 

                                      Disclosing, 

                                      For yourselves, (past, future, and present) those fortunes so    

                                      As virtuous as wicked-

The Child (interrupts)    -as theirs come along the shorelines of a visage of a cynic:

   the likes of you.

   You say for my talentless name. 

   You got to remember and let go. 

                                       I still think about you. 

   You know. But you are buried. 

   Then so am I. Till the soup of my blood churns and its 

   taster reminds me of you.