Art-Poetry-Art. "Another Rainy Day in February"

A Rainy Day in February
by Megan Chang

I went for a walk in my memory, I thought of the many places I could see
I stood at the gates of someplace I could only slightly remember
like a fading memory of someone I only thought I could ever know
I went for a walk but there was no one to talk to- not even
the winter's misery upon the grass that will not grow.

I looked out from the dirty windows of my bedroom, I shed tears
since I should be going home someday soon. I wanted to call my
mother but there is no phone that can reach her now- across the vast
distance like a shadow receding along the paint peeled walls of a house
that no longer stands even in the memories of this my shattered past.

The days are bleak and the sun often refuses to shine, I want to write
even when I have no reason to rhyme. I want to run out into
the day's bleary light, but I cannot find my shoes, I know I had them
sometime last night. It is inconsequential and a little sad
that I come by all this honestly since we were all a little mad.

I went for a walk in the month of February, it rained like
it does this time of year. I sometimes feel I can feel my mother's
unfamiliar touch, her voice as it echoes her own misgivings about
life inside my ears. I often think that she gave into her fears,
that her losing her friends and family was far worse then
when those memories had faded, nothing left in the end to save.
I should go out tomorrow and plant flowers in her grave.

Now it is time for the final act, I am but a poor player on this
darkened stage- empty but for the echoes of those years
What if I could reach out and touch the candle's flame?
Would I know what line from Shakespeare to utter with rage
then sputtering flee from that one hour I had to walk
there in my sorrow and shame?

There are no good answers to the questions I have to ask.
There are no ways to thank my parents since they have passed
There is only this metaphor like a prayer, a funeral masque
In the graveyard where the ashes of those who loved me still remain,
Here is the plot, there is the stone, upon which is engraved:
Here lies one fool, forever apart, forever alone.


About the Artist.
Megan Chang can best speak for herself:

"I am an art major who found the love for art at the beginning of high school. My freshmen year I took Art1 and from there I decided to try every other class the school had to offer. So far I have had 11 art classes total and plan on having more.

My artwork is about youth- a statement about our culture, our philosophies, and our passions. I have work that captures our sense of immortality, our activism, and our way of life in the context of our worldviews. In terms of what medium I like to use, I like to focus on mixed media. This piece is mixed media and that is the only similarity between it and the rest of my work.

When working on this piece/reading the poem that inspired it, I imagined the past. Not my past but someone from an older generation."

It's kind of Funny, it's kind of Sad.

Now I find it kind of funny, kind of silly, maybe a little sad
its more than just a feeling when the world is this bad
it's like when everyone uses the word- yet no one knows
what it means but the misuses just continue to grow
I don't think you think you understand what it all means
how it should have been what it should have seemed
like having no tomorrow -I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry
the way things are I want to know if there is reason to try.
but the echoes of my voices, the resounding silence run
nothing new- just the repeating the violence under the sun.

Now I find that it was just mostly pathetic- a little tragic
than the promise that my life should have been magic.
It's just that I'm a bit crazy, a particularly odd kind of mad,
 was it the best I could have done or we ever had?
People talk and talk, about the small things nothing matters-
while the world around them is on fire, everything in tatters
I stare around me at those people who have familiar faces
did I live here in all those remembered yet vague places?
Reaching out into the past as the darkness gathers around me
as my what happened runs through the empty halls of memory

Now I find it wasn't the way they said it was supposed to be
that there is more to the definitions that defy conformity
everybody keeps saying that things will get better
finding love, family outside of the fact I haven't even met her
I suppose that was to give me comfort, momentary gladness
instead of this hole in my heart, a solitary kind of madness.
Did I have purpose, did the world ever have some reason
or is it the contemplative doom that is more like betrayal or treason
Did we not trust in the goodness that we call upon from our humanity?
Did we not give fate enough of a chance to escape our collective insanity?

Now I can stand here out on the edge, on  the brink
I know who I thought I am, what I was supposed to think
it's like finding the well in the desert, too poisoned to drink
only I partake anyway, there is a message, there is a link
I am madness in a mad, mad, mad kind of world
I am the dog of this war, I am the standard unfurled
I am the fool who sits backwards on reason's horse
I am a truth, I can- at least say I understand, of course.
You can laugh at me in all the words that I am making mine
but let's see you take irony as defined in this simple rhyme
it's actual definitions in one or more repeatitious lines
it's not by accident that my poem is thus as designed.

I don't dance. Unless you speak to me in Spanish

It was late, late into the moment when the music in the bar was no longer loud
enough to drown out the laughter and my fears that someone would ask to
dance with them.
I don't dance.
Unless you speak to me in Spanish.
It was crowded, so close the shoulders would rub and murmured excuse me
would be mouthed as the drinks were poured and consumed as I avoided
contact with him
I don't flirt.
Unless you speak to me in Spanish.
The dance floor emptied and I felt all the eyes turn around scanning through the
cover I was using to avoid the moment that had arrived as the drums hit down
the tempo and I begin to shiver from my knees down to my feet.
I don't mambo.
Unless you speak to me in Spanish.
It was cold, no it was so hot that the sweat dripped off the tips of my hair onto
my neck and the chills I was feeling was more like the thrills that the music
was sending through my soul.
I don't Pasodoble.
Unless you speak to me in Spanish.
Then I see you out on the wood tiles, the double step, the sway of your hips and
the thunder of my heart beats drown out even the Mariachi beat, I am all strings
to be plucked one by one until by your cautious fingers
I don't sing.
Unless you speak to me in Spanish
Then there is sudden silence.
Except the hammering of my heart and the tapping of my heels on the floor.
"Escuchar el ritmo- no te asustes, ven a bailar conmigo"
The world is a blur as my feet move of their own accord, gliding out to where
she waits for me awash in light and red- then she whispers into my ear.
"A life lived in fear- es una vida vivida medio. Si te caes te sujetare."
I don't dance.
Unless you speak to me in Spanish.

a small tribute to one of my favorite films of all time.

Strictly Ballroom.

There were six reasons I didn't want to say goodbye

It was somewhere between the cup of coffee and before I saw you drinking the tea.
It was then I knew that I would not be able to tell you the truth as I saw it, if I did not
do it immediately.
When I sat down, your hands trembled ever so slightly as you glanced up at me.
You are the best friend I had always wanted someone else to be.
I tell you this now, in some vainglorious effort to make a gesture of comfort
since what I am about to say is going to be unkind, hell, it's going to hurt.

1. I never intended to fall in love with the way you sit there in that chair-
or the way you wear that shirt, or the direction that you brush your hair.
I never thought that every time I close my eyes I can smell your scent as if your
ghostly presence is still so close to me standing there.

2. I can't get you out of my thoughts, it's like one of the radio pop songs-
you know the one that we laughed at and they had to play it again and again
all night long.
I can't forget the way you laughed with me nor the way you stop and stare,
as if you have just seen me for the first time, I know for one we are common-
not at all something rare.

3. I hear you in between the silences and the wall that wraps around my sleep,
like you are in the dreams that stem from the memories I have hidden away to keep.
I scream myself awake at night and look to find your impression in our bed
I realize that I am only crying because like everything else, all this is just inside my head.

4. I feel you hands on my neck, the warm reassurance, that you would always stay near;
that, somehow, I could go on living without the dread, without the substance of my
own depressive fear.
I often just come by your place in my life, just to find myself in your cool embrace
I want to feel the tickles of your breath come slipping like whispers across my face

5. Your kiss, hot sweet sudden rush of madness, burning my soul from within
the closeness that this act requires, makes my head with visions spin.
We can be as one, hand in hand, your nose pressing against my cheek,
leaves me shaken, needy, desperate for entanglements, and weak.

6. The way we feel when we are making love, minutes lasting forever.
The snatches of conversations between the moments we share together.
The idea that there is this thing, this feeling, this state of being that we called us.
A time we could no longer be like strangers staring across the aisle, at each
other on that bus.

There were six reasons I didn't want to say goodbye, but when I do,
I cannot even look you in the eyes, I want to say I am so sorry
I want to say that I really want to start again, that I still want to try
But there is no taking back all that has come and all that is now the past
I want to recall the way you looked as I walked away out into the night
that final moment as if it wasn't the end, that somehow we could still
make it last.

There was one more reason; there was something left to be said-
but like the tears coupled with all my fears, my words are now dead
I should have looked back- I should have returned
I should have told you that your love was enough
that the fires that are in my heart still burned
that my passions were not just from this wintered season
but that would require me to find one more believable reason.

This poem is fictional

She said that the rest of the story should have remained unknown, untold.
I looked out over the dash, across the hood of the car, out into the darkness and wondered, yet again,
why the story never seemed to get old.
She said that the girl had to be lying, because the father had always been a nice guy.
I clutched at the steering wheel as the memories of what he had done returned in a rush, I thought
I will not cry. I will not cry!
She said that the mother really was the one to blame, how could she have stood by and allowed it
to happen again and again.
I gasped for air and choked down the almost sob, didn't everyone one have to take some share
in the shame.

The world passes by us as we drive into the night
time passes through us as we slip away
silently out of sight.

He had said, Don't tell anyone, no one, not even a soul.
I shiver in the wake of his ghost, the echoes of his laughter even as I remember him singing
"this is the way we roll."
He had said that it was better that no one need see any of the reasons
like I was going to come out of my room, as if the sun would mark the end
of this my dry white season.

The world passes me by as I step out into the light-
the years have not been kind to us as the memory
has slid out of whack into something used, something trite.

She said I should try to forget all that happened to me so very long ago
I shake my head in desperation, if I cannot remember the hatred in my heart
will continue to grow.
She said that the pain and the memory would fade away like the scars on my skin
I look at her with the betrayal that I have suffer in her lack of penance
as we both stare at her sins.

The world stopped as I stood along the roadside
I look into the abyss that is all i can remember
I step out into the air, like words
like snow, which will come down
again and again.
The truth is out there
Can I- dare I confide?
I step out into the wide open space
I hope that I will never have to return
to that dark and lonely place.