I thought                                         you'd left us, long ago
desolate on a swing
                       rocking stale, dry grass and still air
                      
                      crossing
never quite                  the hurdle

                                                               ­                                                    lost

unaware
sweating youth in this humidity

I thought we'd never make it past the
rusty red and brown of weathered fences

                            like
              felt                        moun
   They                                  
                                                     tains

                                                               ­   Made of dirt
                                                                ­                       (guilt)
and an endless turmoiling scent, still fresh



I thought you'd forlorned us                  
h     e     a     v    y       r  a  i  n   and warm bodies
standing next to oxidized hoops
                                                          one adjacent to the other
The haze of the heat hard, but not impossible
to withstand                swaying like the gust of wind, swaying  
                                            the blazing sun and my open palms swaying




Why was it here                                         that it felt like you left us
                                                              ­                                              stumped,  
unaware,­
consuming  with no  
                                              idea of the Greater



2.


                                                W­ H A T was it about inner cities
And skin that would tan
Or resist the sun
   that made you  mutter murky words  


judgement
                   that made me hike a

                                  K
                       A
            E
P
that for so long made feel like a (lost) traveler
unable to come find my way   D O W N.

Still on a mountain top
Never quite crossing the hurdle.
That’s how you wanted me
A
     B
          A
                N
                     D  O N E D.

3.

But my tongue made sounds
copper pots and plastic measuring cups
became the pious  accompaniment
of a song sung inwardly
until it manifested
Words on lips
                            Lips willing to kiss the purple clouds made out of strange fruit and a high border walls over my hand and back

4. A Swimsuit and a pool that could cool
me
small children see the cicatrixes
      But I walk towards the water; I have long abandoned shame.

I.
And my hair became too much

It overtook the walls
made its way into the office on the sixth floor
and then hung
like a dripping willow’s branches
over the desks

By the time they thought to find me
I’d already been wrapped up in a cocoon of brown hair  
indistinguishable from the walls
that was now
also covered in the thick strands of undulated hair

II.
everything and everyone became consumed.


III.
In hairy chrysalis, the scissors uselessly
hung on some poor frantic pair of hands
forced into pupa

IV.
It was on the third day that the streets surrounding the corporate buildings were once again
populated with people, that a young woman in heels swore she heard a
faint choral singing coming from the 5th or 6th floor of a dreary grey building.


V.
everything cocooned
everyone consumed
all in pupa

VI.
During metamorphosis, a caterpillar digests itself leaving only behind imaginal discs
that shape it’s adult body.  

everything becomes consumed.

Me sente sobre la mesa
todo el lugar es lindo
la mente esta en calma
y todo el lugar es lindo
las vias silencias
los ninos llorrando callados
el ruido de la registradora
y el cambio cambiando de manos
es tranquilamente mudo
al igual que la quietud
que ejerce paz sobre mi mente

Question 1.
can you escape the words that so easily want to roll off your tongue
can you put them away
see them off on a ship

have them cross into the horizon and dissipate
under the burning red sun
of the east
Question 2.
Can you replace all letters of an alphabet
that easily taught, rolled off your tongue
can you put them in a shoe box,
seclude them in a corner of your new life,
where 80% of the time you are fine
Do you think they will cross too
cross the horizon, like the things you wish would
and then dissipate
Question 3.

Does the pollution amplify the heat, if so can the heat burn or melt old Polaroids

Every time the subway lights go off
I close my eyes and listen to my cart speeding over the rails
What was it that you said, about the velocity of life ?
The one that carries the immigrant, the bible belt strapped and the intermittent traveler through the woven passage of a history they can see in the molding of the land.

2. I can’t quite remember
why I live life so fast,
but I feel (it)
the hill and the turning of the tracks

3. The trains are quite quiet here,
and few people talk.
It’s as though the lights were still off .

I do not want the sainthood you assign to those
who have never let you down
I want the ***** gritty scabs that come from falling
off of pedestals and landing in the mud

I am in no need of your righteous tongue
I am in need of your caring shoulder  

of your love
of your grace moving through me as you kiss my thigh

she cried on a day that should have been celebratory
and I did not have words

she danced an ode written to cumbia
she danced it out with grace
with verbs so fine  
you knew she held the present
at every sway
she did not have words

we walked to food joint next to the bar
rolled out the English language
in exchange for sustenance
“what are words?”

I picked up our food
drunkenly shook out some lingo
and the grey-haired man on the other side of the counter
took a deep breath and stayed silent
“Are words needed ?”

the Kamikaze shots and the tequila made our tongues soft
and our upper palates dry
pouring only thirst, into our youth  

and there,
eyes soaked in meaning
in a circus of incertitude,
the cold wind turned divine flurried our hair

*“we do not have words.”

the woods are moist with the fever of fear
suckling the after thoughts of speech
spit out without regard
for the crickets venturing to sing
or the widening of the streams
strong with neglect of the rusting branches touching tip to tip

(but) this is what we are, a forest

There has to be more, the more that takes you around the corner to the park
to the grocery store and to the bohemian hangout
the more that takes you around the world, to the highest cliffs

to the foreign currency exchange booth, to the flowers growing on the side of the road
the more that brings you to your hometown
to the tea cooling on your mother’s table
to wearing old house slippers
The more is for “the you”
who knows the "it" is built on that, which came before it
because the "more"
lives in the comfort of knowing
somewhere it has a home
(where it takes root)

and they escaped the weight of darkness peering over their shoulders
where do these people go,
what belongings do they pack
is there a limit on the heaviness of ones’ soul
Can they bring love
as parting gift?
Hide it in their handkerchiefs, and then go