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Best Poems Written by Tin Nguyen

Below are the all-time best Tin Nguyen poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Three Seasons, One Word

Yellowing leaves, red hue
The bough empty pointing true
One bud in autumn

Flakes falling, ice crackling
Cold bed alone without you
Frost bite turning blue

Cherry bud blossoms
Rain dripping, hand holding hand
My fat cheeks blushing.
		
		Love?

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The Litany of Our Reform

I go to work.
I go home.
Living life’s litany,
My dream sits alone.

The man you see,
Though I live it
Is not the man I want to be.

Funny thing is: I often ask why.
Not funny – admitting you lived a lie.

So I quit my job today . . . and . . . and . . .

And the litany continues:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Isn’t it obvious?
He had nowhere else to go.

So I sent a note to President Obama,
“Welcome to America – where dreams defer.”

Socialism is a raisin set to explode
And it doesn’t “crust and sugar over.”
It sadly just explodes.

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My First Day

My mother kissed me as I clung to my father’s knee.
I wanted to go home, I screamed, beg and plead.
But the school gates are open, after the teacher rung the bell.
I could only see my mother’s eyes, as the last grain of sand fell.
The classroom was empty, the air starched and dry.
One steel desk stood in the middle; I went to sit and cried.

The teacher bended down to greet me, her callus hands were icy cold.
I candidly shook them, my trembling heart cannot behold
that the axes and flames were no-where near
nor that creaking chariot I often hear
in the dead of dreams on countless nights
envisioning existing without feeling light.

She was not what I imagined; she was withered, wise and gray.
She was sharply dress in white, to meet me on my first day.
Our lesson began promptly, when the clock tick to nine.
As the hands stuttered past eight, I could not bear to look behind.
She went to shut the classroom door and the darkness slowly swarmed round.
My life unraveled before me, I’m buried beneath the mound.

The textbook on my desk never open, she never spoke at all.
She flaccidly pointed to the chalkboard, for the writing was on the wall.
It was chiseled in stone, the chalked frayed on both ends.
The words are meaningless, yet for me to comprehend.
As I read it out loud with one last gasping breath,
I said my morbid goodbyes on my first day with Death.

Details | Tin Nguyen Poem

Caged Bird

In that moment, it was all too clear.
The caged bird never sang nor did it fear
that the rhyme and melody would disappear
into the vastness and silence of the soul’s reverie.

The dream became tainted as the breaths fainted.
The heart bleeds in tears.

In that moment, it was all too gray.
The caged bird never sang nor wanted to stay,
for the words and line often fray
into pieces at the end of every sentence.

The dream became tainted as the breaths fainted.
She turned and walked away.

In that moment, I wanted only to hear
the caged bird sing so I can say
that even when I fail to persevere,
I love you through my heart’s dismay.

The dream fainted as the breaths became tainted.
The rhyme and melody frayed
the moment the caged bird flew away.

Details | Tin Nguyen Poem

Sorry Violet, Not the Love Poem You Wanted To Hear

Roses have to be RED.
Your VIOLETS are actually purple.
If I take out a splash of BLUE,
I just might, fall in LOVE with you.

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Eden, Not That I Am Better

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
                    - Robert Frost

“Nothing gold can stay”
To my and Frost’s dismay.
When leaf subsides,
I see green with inward eyes.
Eden will sink to grief
Like she has done before.
Love is her tragedy;
She favored beauty more.

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My Life's Proclamation

On any day I would bow my head to cry,
But today is not that day
Because today, I choose to stand.
Today, I choose to fight
And in my deliverance, I shall rise.
In my liberation, I shall live.
Life in all its light
Does not question your end,
But only your means
In search for what you presume is truth.
Life in all its darkness
Does not care for your glory,
But only your acts
And the vanity in which it exist.
So whether in darkness or in light
Before this day is through,
Mark that I am here standing
For the liberty my heart deems true.

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My Soul Departed

He fades with the night, the shadow makes us three,
He dangles from my rope 
with shattered sanity.
When I exude with light and rejoice in the sun,
he grips to the silent echoes from a withered thundering gun.
He is the image in the mirror, a burning reflection of me,
like ivy blistering,
he scorched the faithful tree.
He is the desert drifting to despair,
clinging to life solely by the fibers of his hair.
I often ponder how he found peace within pain.
From the cross he softly muster,
that “life was bitterly vain.”
We were friends, we are foes, yet we can only be one.
Now he lies dead on the cross and
I held the thundering gun.

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Perhaps

Perhaps I knew, but was benign
to the simple beauty of her design.
The raven hair, the candid frame,
she wore her elegance just the same.

Perhaps I knew, but closed my eyes
when she left heart-broken to cry.
The silky tears, the swollen heart,
the pieces lay in tiny parts.

Perhaps I knew, but chose to lie.
I was in-trenched in her demise.
The bitter truths, the devious games,
my cold bed draped with only shame.

Perhaps she knew, but would not say.
She wanted to leave anyway.

She wanted him, he wanted her.
On the isle their love concur,
that she found her true destiny
and it was not to be with me.

Somehow I knew, but still pretend.
I finally woke up,
The dream had to end.

Details | Tin Nguyen Poem

I Miss You

I take to bed my will at ease,
a spirit softly floating with the breeze.
Calmness in my heart, wars raging in my mind
setting the world ablaze, the flames so divine
that my spirit caught hold and drifted to its light.
Memorize, I surrender,
my tears tremble without a fight.
So strong am I when you were here,
when hope clings to every fiber of me,
when you were mine.
But now I take to bed alone
a scab remorse of what was us,
a shattered dream
and in the coldest of nights,
I whisper in bitter screams.
If only you heard…
If only you knew…
If only you care…
If only I said I love you,
I would not drown in such despair.