what will you have left
when there is nothing
but darkness shrouded
in conceit of faded light?

when there is no money,
no power, no science, no art
no alcohol or drugs to take
your mind away from thought

when there is nothing but
nothing itself in shameless
night where death, being the
only option for life, derives

madness out of your vexation,
your surety of what is and is not,
and that hope was all you needed,
you find it harder to believe than deny

sin.

I tend to go through life
totally confused
friends want to hang out with me
but I always find an excuse

I started blocking out the world
when society banished me
because what I am is not
what they expect of me

I never know what's going on
because at least then I'm not missing out
on everything I could have in the world
as long as I go without

I refuse to change the way I feel
for a standard set by society
you'll never understand my struggle
so please just let me be

He sat in his room every night
Waiting for his parents to stop
Yelling
Crying
Fighting

He waited
Until the day his father left
Before coming downstairs
And everything was gone
Except for his mother
Sitting on the kitchen tiles
Makeup running
Red marks on her arms
On her face
On her legs

He ran
As far as he could
He thought
About everything he had
Everything he had lost

He stepped up to the ledge
He looked down
He smiled
Finally happy
He would be free
He took a step forward
Nothing left

Never forget
there is poetry in dirt
in greens, in beets,
especially in rutabagas.
Three-dollar-a-bag spinach,
you are a symphony of compost
with which an old man’s teeth are smitten;
Rosemary sprig, beneath all your flavor
you are the staff-lines of a madrigal written
in loving anticipation of the mason jars, weighed down with water
where you will grow and swell and bud and spread out strong purple flowers which say
that you are part of a song which sings
every year
a little louder.

This coming September, I will miss you dearly.
I will be days of travel away from your roots, your mist,
your six-in-the-morning-before-classes tonic of rain
which saturates my skin so good I’m surprised when I shake the dirt from the leeks
all over my bare feet & you don’t crop up green & white from between my toes,
that my arms don’t grow heavy with peppers
after they cake with jalapeno & bell seeds from all the half-rotten
to whom I have given baptism to in shallow plastic tubs of water
floating like elations of fire
in the grayness of the morning.

Know how to tell if a pepper’s rotten? Wash it & shake it
& if you can hear the water swishing inside,
if you can make a maraca of its innards,
then give it back to the dirt.

This is the wisdom of peppers:
when you grow soft
when you have been chosen
& plucked,
& washed
& thoroughly loved
& shaken,

when you have called out like fire
beside your brothers in a basin,

lay down in the compost
the kindly compost,
& listen, just listen,
(there will be nothing left to do
but listen)

to the poetry of dirt.

I am getting tired of the sea
every morning, whispering, “duermete”
like we are lovers
who kept each other awake all night.

To wish her goodbye…
say, I am leaving Miami, him, not you.

Reminded it is not just love that can sweep
someone off their feet –
also thinking I left some of my food
in his refrigerator, two gallons of milk gift.

I believe I will return,
not for liquid, not for anything tangible
just a redo of our last embrace
without an ocean of salt lulling every

goddamn thing,
and I believe I exist in there somewhere –
sea-wide, seaside, we rest just us.

Please justify your actions.
Give me some reason, and make it a good one, for what you did.
Did you just feign happiness?
Did you feed me lies that you knew would go straight from my ears to my heart,
Skipping over my head entirely?
Why?
What purpose did you have?
And why, now that it's all over, do you insist upon making me feel like the villain?
You refuse to look at me, like I'm Medusa ready to turn you to stone.
But the only look you'll see on my face is a hurt confusion.
The anger went away quickly, and now there's this utterly perplexing hole left behind,
Because I still don't know why.
I know you were happy.
I know you genuinely cared about me, and us.
So what happened?
What broke in your mind, making you run away without so much as a backwards glance ?
Nothing changed until you decided it should.
So give me just one reason, and make it a good one.

I only miss you at night.
That's where the absence of your arm around me is painful.
Even the warmth of your body next to mine is gone.
That gentle glow of heat that pulsated off your body onto mine has left,
Leaving me cold with only blankets to wrap around me.
The simple pressure of your fingers locked with mine is gone as well,
Leaving behind empty spaces.

Empty.

You left holes in my life.
You ripped down the wall I had worked on for 20 years.

The comfort of that boundary around my heart crumbled when I met you,
And though it felt right when you were around,
Now that you're gone my heart is raw from exposure.
The hurt you've caused creates holes,
And I can't build up my wall fast enough to prevent them.

I miss you more than almost anything.
It's such a different sort of longing than what happens when you actually lose a loved one.
I didn't lose you, you pushed me away.
Even though you're alive, you've killed your presence in my life.
This yearning to have you back is pointless,
And yet night after night I find myself hungering to hold you.
But it's only at night.
That's when I miss you most.