My grandmother was my oracle,
speaking stained insights in a Spanish
I hardly understood at the time.  

My offerings were small but true:
kisses, hugs, “I love you” on paper scraps
translated by my mother for her knowing.

It was as if I had written them in blood and
it became a forever tattoo of her heart,  
a pumping cross, always giving and forgiving.

The yield was quarters, dimes, pennies
doled out from a repurposed wide-mouth
banderilla jar for the corner candy store tour.

She lived in a temple of rust seeping down walls, paint cracks, peeling checkerboard linoleum,
chipped ceramics, relics broken and glued back-

an unsanctified housing of brittle bones and
striations of hands and feet, sweet blood,
passed from thirteenth child to second son.

As my Spanish improved I was able to praise
the oracle with all the many spoken and
scribbled ways of Latin gratitude and adoration

under the watchful eye of my mother and
the care of twelve others who still lived
within the realm of her unwritten wisdom.  

When her vision stopped and her blood
no longer flowed she was relocated with
all solemnity to rest under a Boricua tree.

My mother doled out her oracular inheritance
whenever I stumbled, wandered, questioned,
encouraging me to write it all down.

Now, she is mere dust in the echoing wind
and I am a childless prophet who appreciates
all the oracles that came before my time.

The trick is to love life,
even when you have
no stomach for it-

even when your life
crumbles to burnt paper
in your hands-

your throat choking in its ashes,
embers turned tearing diamonds,
weighing you down in grief’s obesity.

“How can a body withstand this?”
you will ask, cradling your face
in your palms- your ordinary face

now, no dark smile, no deep black eyes,
just your ”yes, yes, ” uttering in
the rebirthing dawn “I will love you, again.”

After his deep illness
was over he laid
his body on hers—
the length of his body on hers—
all the sleepings, awakenings,
fights, teacup and coffee mornings,
their talks about everything and nothing,
the plummets, the joyous-awkward silences—

and with a tear, she beared his weight—
until it was gone.

This old house painted in faded  pride
knows me well.  I did not learn to walk here,
but I did learn to leap- and do it mightily.

The old dishes have been broken or thrown away,
replaced by new ones with new owners. The taps
stiff with old age and rust, surely have been replaced.

The comfortable chairs, the linoleum, the tile,
the **** rugs, the step up altar where my
mother was married, are probably leveled flat.

I can only see your outside and imagine your
many renovations in the sawdust of time,  
atticless, cribless,  old beds churning  to new beds.

While I lived there, you were a good soul
who kindly accepted all bidding, and I can see, donated your good bones to other’s  futures.

Other places I have lived have been less generous, tumbling into disarray, illness,  nature’s destruction before I could even build a future in them.  

I can feel the ill winds blow and know that this new abode will be more of the same, filled with unfated things never settling down into their rightful places.

I thank you, dear old thing, for your graceful love.

The pain is gone and
I am ready to write about
everything beyond the fear,

ready to bite into the
muscle and bone
of the world,

to put away the dagger phrase,
all the losses of my life,
ready to live in hope’s recesses.

I am poet enough to
make you taste
this hidden fruit,

see beyond all
the sutured sunsets
of existence.

It will not be all
kisses and music, but  
it will be terribly beautiful!

The birds sing of hunger
through the pillars of lights  
that render the sky into being

the great crease of  You stumbling
through onto my bedclothes
kindling the room once more

with the face of peace found-out
satiating my starvation with
the lamb’s diminutive thorn

a whole world
waiting for Your
                     Yes

My wife hears the **** man outside spraying  the lawn.
The next day it’s the pest control guy doing the foundation.

He doesn’t come into the house to spray each room anymore.  Just doing the outside is enough to keep the bugs away,
says the pamphlet he leaves at the top of the steps.

My wife comes from the grocery store
and  immediately complains about the smell.

She gives me the long receipt for the thirteen bags
of freshly ground and harvested death
that will feeds us for the next few weeks.

I look it over, go into my office, shut the door.
I file it away. Next, I pay the quarterly bills for
                  those who do my killing.