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Pedro Tejada Oct 2015
I used to be hidden in my room
choking at my mouth's roof
as if stuck within a stutter,
exhausted from existing, hinging
like a wind-chime battered by a hurricane.

Then a troubadour with honey hair
had me humming to his ear-worm
of a melody, depicting a choreography
that jolted my legs into frenetic mania
like an early talkie starlet's.

For years, I have memorized
this intricate chord structure,
immersed myself in its crescendos
until I could belt it backwards.
It's the only song I know by heart.

There is this one tune,  though,
if you can even call it that,
this atonal reverberation that alerts
the darkest corners of my mind,
a slowly muttered siren song
leading to lands I never want to visit.

I can never fully decipher
the lyrics to an entire verse.

It's the excerpts, scattered
like dust mites in a concert hall,
that try to nibble at me piecemeal,
romanticizing the revolving door
of self-destruction, bruises
veiled as smudged calligraphy.

So please excuse the minor notes
that hiccup from my vocal cords
every other half moon or so.

It's just the ebb and flow
of awkward drumming
that disorients the ear,
causes me to trip up
on the patchwork of refrains
we've spent so much time weaving
into heavenly cohesion.

Above all, please remember
that no static or din
will ever shoehorn its way
into our ironclad harmony.
Pedro Tejada Jun 2015
We can sense it.

Something deplorable
is about to happen--
we can no longer stop the ranks
of housebroken infidels
from migrating into the wild
they have never encountered
beyond photo and film.

It's coming out! The stampede
of hairy-legged pheromones
we could once browbeat
into prepubescent shame
with the speed of a smack
upon the tender noggin!

It takes courage to enjoy
the canned campfire stories
we passed off as ageless doctrine.

How they once recoiled, squirming
like slugs thrown in a salt mine!

Now the writhing is self-inflicted,
the sweat off their brows no longer
cold, damp beads but now welcome
lubrication that slithers down
their lecherous masses of flesh!

Despite our most dogmatic toiling,
the iron shroud has revealed itself
as a featherweight curtain within a few tugs.

Anyone else feel the walls shake to and fro?
Why does the water in that glass ripple so?
Has it arrived already? The end of our reign
as dictators of the prevailing value system?

Fetch thee the community smelling salts!
Too late! The young and vulnerable
have already begun to trample!
Push the powder out of your wigs
to blind yourself from the carnage!

*The Age of Inhibition has screeched
and skidded into its evil twin's Renaissance.
Big time sensuality has straddled the saddle,
too busy racing avenues to declare victory.
The haughty, absurdly strict "antagonists" respond to Bjork's coming of age in "Big Time Sensuality"
Pedro Tejada Feb 2015
"I'm not angry," barks
the man-child with fingers
clenched into mittens
made of tendons
and brow line hunched
like the backs of cavemen.

The veins
             that line his neck
      form boiling canals
                      when he's quicker
          to set ablaze
than a paper doll
             in a brush fire.

The annals of his ancestry
could fit into a matchbook--
a pocket-size anthology
of swinging *****
and temper tantrums.

The sweat his pores harvest
                both quench
                          and drown him.
Pedro Tejada Jan 2015
Resistance is futile.

Her charm is a Northern star
that illuminates the trail
mapping out your potential.

She’ll take those excuses
that hung upon your frame like chain-mail
and toss them like a child’s knapsack,
light years from your reach.

I didn't need to say a thing
before she got to work
yanking me from the homemade muck
in which I was drowning my dignity.

Who knows which depths I’d have reached,
what abyss might have become
the blueprint of my worldview,
without her seasoned eye for navigation?

What tangible item can symbolize
even a fraction of my gratitude?
Anyway, back to all about her.

Mother, sister, grandma--
they’re not identities
so much as works of art
in her careful hands.

Prepare to feel loved.
You've got no say in the matter.
Pedro Tejada Nov 2014
If you ever get close
to the fork in a path,
wander through the tectonics
that diverged the road
in the first place.

Every pixel of your being
is animated. Even the unlit
trap doors leaving pockmarks
on your mind's landscape
possess colors with no name.

Who knew electronic and acoustic
were just estranged family all along?
GENRE is a manmade affectation--
music appreciation for Jingoists.

If they feed you a raindrop,
swallow the entire ocean.
For Bjork <3
Pedro Tejada Nov 2014
I shed pretension like a stunted snake skin
within the vicinity of your warmth.

Chicken soup simplicity, I love the recipe.
Took me ages to find the right stock.

Four-on-the-floor beats the dissonance
of time signatures fighting for dominance.

I've thrown away so much paper for you.
At least a few trees have died in your name.

How selfish. You're lucky I'm sticking around!
And that it takes almost no effort!

That a barely audible suggestion from you
can sink in further than anyone's barking!

Why am I still yelling!
You did this to me!
Coaxed me into cracking
the icy shell I was mistaking
for a safe haven!

How dare you make me realize
that the light at the end of the tunnel
was something other than a freight train?!

You beautiful *******.
You magnificent cur.
I'll never be the same.

With your roasted chestnut
of a personality, how could I not
expect to start thawing?
Pedro Tejada Nov 2014
I left the plantains you sent me
on the counter. Wiped
around them on cleaning days.

Eyed them as they sat there,
expectant and unwanted,
for hours into weeks.

Let them blacken and soften
until they resembled
the dental records of a corpse.

Were they lifted from the soil
of your Dominican hometown?
Did you farm them yourself?

The bruises speckled on its skin,
were they hand-picked? You always
had great aim with that sort of branding.

I'm awake at the birth of morning,
early enough to see dawn's rosy sun
crack onto the horizon like egg yolk.

From my bedroom window, I can also see
a garbage truck craning its rusty claw
towards the pile I set out last night.

Talk about a metaphor.
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