Two Poems | Jimmy Lo

Projection

My films are old. Old, 

worn out light. All night 

I put them in 

in the dark dusty center. 

Instinctively I hit play. 

I don't know where it is,

my eyes which are just folds

move towards the beam like snails. 

My cat is young again. 

He dashes at me 

as at the very best in life. 

I play with him in bed. 

I laugh. I wrestle. 

I jiggle that fatty layer on his sides 

and he tries to bite me. 

He's soft under my nose, writhing. 

I don't remember this part until

I see it. A few seconds of stillness, 

and he jumps up 

on the other side of the bed 

like the little monster that he is,

that I​​ know​​ he is.

We wrestle.

I make biting sounds back.

My heart is racing from the joy. See?

I can still feel joy, I thought.

I can still fall in love, I ventured.

I want this to be true

Today I am happy to have this tiny bit of air to walk on.

Many people experience a high from physical exertion

so that the body too, when collapsed, is like a child’s playground

inside the smock of the city’s factories and dark-

stained sidewalks. But here only can the mind nestle

after it has followed the trail of ants back to their ancestral home

and peered in. A world of glass awaits

any tiny motion from your breath

to break it or to carry it along. Isn’t it a relief then, 

with the roads thus clogged, that a dream still exists 

and that it had you so good? That you

in your disarmament could give way to your own

selfishness in the extreme, where it was just you

and the mess you made?