The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Walk with me.  Fall with me.
Be the helmet light in the tunnel.
Hold my feet less I fall into the abyss.
Shackle your friends to you,
foot to foot, arm to arm.
The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Pull me from hell, while all the others
**** us to heaven’s salvation.

Mommy, esta di descubrí el lenguaje de los fantasmas

Ghost talk? What are you talking about, Jonny?

Si mommy.  En serio descubrí.  Escúchame.

Ghost talk? What do they say?

Para saludar dicen: hoo hoo.

Para decir que sí, dicen: Hoo

And how do they say goodbye?

No lo sé.  They haven’t left yet.

Mama, today I discovered the language of ghosts.

Line 3:

Yes, mama. Seriously, I discovered it.  Listen to me.

Line 5:

To say hello they say: Hoo hoo.

Line 6:

To say yes they say: Hoo.

Line 8:

I don’t know.

Writing poetry for me is like fishing in the wind:
You shoot your arrow-net into the air
and after many failures you snag an ugly bird
that you make beautiful the more you see
that it really resembles you.

The world is the ultimate trick
It grants man thunder yet steals his lightning
every time.
It makes him think he has the sweetest smell
of every thing
even that his **** does not stink
that taming fire was his best theft
of all time
that a caged dove heralds peace
in our time
the best of love
that time is a curse and not a gift
that the wolf is the enemy of pigs
that the world spins straight on its own axis
that he has a mind of his own design
that the red rose blooms for him to smell
that cancer is part of its mortal revenge
that nature taught man how to frown
that it would steal his nailed smile, if it could
The world is the ultimate trick
and it poisons him to think she’s his motherland

I gawked at her nine mind years
hooked three heart weeks later btw
f’ed a year before the day btw
three dogs, no kids
but she can really cook
so we lived happy btw
friends, church, family, dogs, house,
night, day, time all slipped away btw
yes, we aged, grew old-er btw
fell into cancer,
bad weather, lost it all, but well insured btw
no perfect couple, marriage but still around btw
until our slow last gasp,
last glance in the sun’s cast btw
on our old back porch with no one

God,
           do not send the sunshine
           down in thoughtless
           torrents.
Please
            do not obsess on light
            falling on all of your making,
            graciously falling
            everything on earth.
For  we
            are things of the shade,
            and the light falls too
            ******* eyes
Blind
            to all your light.

Bless the blessings.
Bless the moon
for bestowing dreams
that illuminate the soul.
Bless its beams.
Bless the way it reveals
revelations in the dark,
black letters inked on white vellum
daring to be read
that release the heaviness of the mind
in the lightness of eternity.
Bless the idea
that frees, not oppresses.
Bless words that shed
their flesh for the revolution.  
Bless the protest sign
that replaces the trigger.
Bless the chalk mark that teaches
and not outlines a body.
Bless the creative mind
that marches with determined feet.
Bless the gravestones never needed,
those living bodies never
requiring  homicide reports.
Bless all the never used bullets,
the limbs that remain whole.
Bless all those who die
in their right time,
their memories properly recorded.  
Bless their smiles.
Bless your laugh.
Bless the eye
that sees, believes,
that still has vision and faith.
Bless all the prophets
who were right.
Bless the heart
filled with good emotions.
Bless the choir of our tongues,
the hymn that uplifts.
Bless all the times
that God has granted us
the chance to do the right thing.

The hot night rain drenches me in sleep
opening a bow to prayer
amidst the lunatic birds swarming
in the dark heat.
Magnolias are split in dreams
heavy with bolts and tears,
flowing in the cascade
of cracked mirrors.
All is unmoored from my memory,
surviving on communion.
Dear Jesus am I not more profound
than thy mad swirl?

From form  
vile evil
in the shade of hades
sire and rise
the lived devil,
the tornado donator
that is the heart of the earth.
God denying, dog hating,
it listens for silence, the license
to edit the tide to its whim
and sink man’s canoe in its ocean.

Wise are the parents who give
their children difficult names.

Names that are a chant to God,
a sacrament with every utterance.

Or names that light a fiery rebellion
in the mulling brain.

Names that speak of the glory
that was before the slave ships.  

Names that display the wonder of sky,
the Eagle, Buffalo, Wolf, Deer.

Names that should hurt and choke
when mispronounced.

Braves names spoken
by brave and unafraid people.

Names shouted loud by those
who fearlessly, openly love.

Those who dropped their names
in the easy English soil, reclaim them!

Speak it in the accent of the old country,
the tribes of the African plain and rivers,

the screech, rumble of the clouds, creatures
that gave you your forever sound.

Gather your jewels from the ashes.
Mine them until they get their attention.

Collect the pieces of your lost continents
from their miscomprehension.

Your difficult names predate centuries
of their arrogance, ignorance, prejudice.

You are history
not their rewrite.  

Don’t explain your name’s meaning
to those who have forgotten your story.

You are the original and
they are the stereotype.

Bend your syllables, vowels
into a new understanding country.

Keep your difficult names
proudly unassimilated.

Keep it
your home.

Today I will be
an apple bringer,
a sower of Job’s tears,
a healer of grief.

Today I will be
the tarty sweet fruit
passed hand to hand
in the peace caravan.

Today I will be
the cooing melody
among a flight of doves.

Today I will be
the candle of the night
that shines the best
of my country.

Today I will be
the wind that spreads
the camphoric cries
that can not be blown out.

Tomorrow the world
will grant justice
for the obstinate tears shed.

Tomorrow God will
dance and sit amongst us
in the wake of his beautiful moon.

Tomorrow the residue of his love
will turn the screams into almonds
that we will eat with him.

Tomorrow we will witness
the miracle of all fallen songs
blossoming into tulips.

The tears fade in
the screaming inside howling brick.
It is our cancer
swirling around,
stone, flesh and home.
Our history is in its eye,
our profile in this wild night of carnage
slouching towards mornings. We turn
away and the brick frees us.
We turn back and are inside
our granite selves forming in the sculpting wind,
erring in the perfect sad light,
different, broken-whole.
Our names are erased from brick,
letters spreading like smoke
in the all defining wind.
It drops in the field of its birth,
a flash in the silent mud and clay.
It shimmers on my wife’s white blouse,
and when she walks away,
settles in memory.
The wind chisels a robin
falling, dying in my stare.
The cloud of my neighbor
floats towards me, pale eyes
trying to define me
but I am not a window.
Her face is lost in the brick
and the wind erases her,
the street, their signs,
the names of those in houses behind.

In the Charleston marketplace, a boutique auctions off
detailed limited edition replicas of black history: a slave
who hugs his chains upright over his porcelain hands,
is sold for $1200.00 to a man with a black Amex card,
a horde listening to the Emancipation Proclamation
goes for the same amount, Malcolm X gets $1000.00,
MLK just a little less, the OJ bobble heads sell for $60.00  
in the store’s gift shop while the white Bronco in
slow pursuit complete with flashing police lights
and breathless live commentary garners $2400.00,
Rosa Parks languishes at the rear eventually getting $300.00,
Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Rodney King are
part of lot sold for $500.00 clearance and a free
Black Lives Matter T-shirt, George Floyd gasping out
“I can’t breathe,” enshrined in a porcelain halo nabs
the same price, while the last figurine, of his murderer
being embraced by a very happy Donald Trump is
purchased by a man in a MAGA hat for $10,000.00.

Pick a day.
The random date generator chose:
January 13, 1835
There are still generations formed
from those that fell in
love, married,
birthed sons and daughters
on that day.
Each an unrepeatable existence.

Family lore and crests
enshrine the first kiss,
the birds that soared the sky,
the color of flowers in his/her hand,
words spoken and written in the heart,
the dress she wore,
the beard he had
and discarded or kept,
the Fahrenheit/Celsius of
the exact hour, minute second
of their first heat,
the time that their fingers
stopped accidentally
brushing against each other,
the number of teeth
shown in the first smile.

Count the time
from first hello to last goodbye.
Enshrine that number
of seconds, minutes, hours,
days, weeks, months, years,
in the tales told about them
by their children.
Knit together
all the overlapping
welcomes and farewells
into the colorful threads
of all the houses born and fallen.

I look at that history
and I love you
solidly in the echoes
of all the past.
You fill my time,
even my sadness.
I have gazed too long
Into the light of you.
I only see
the burnt-in after glow
of all the whiteness.

The oaks perceiving the assailing breeze shiver off  
their nuts, swallows and squirrels

upwards to a dark fearful sky
that camouflages broken peace in the wild promises
of the swirling winds.

Night breaks night—
smashing every compass point in impatience.
Bricks stem to snow, the wind ghosts every leaf
in mournful woe.

The wasp tail shears enter in breathing
a final winter to her old house.

Inside her chest the wind hornets sting her,
with the loneliness of the yet and not yet to be.

The sofa pillows fly down the stairs
saving her small barking dog ascending the dark.

She hears black birds caw to her in the chaos,
the bully air stabbing in sharp awe,
stabbing her aware.

She knows it now.  She sees the reason and agrees.

I am oxygen for you are the sky.

We exist only
because rain has formed the sea.

Our memory is buried
in every tide.

It waters swim inside
the roots of our blood.

The fluid of our language,
rippling stories in the school of words.

The bits of dreaming
are collected in clay pots.

Our thoughts are birds skittering
in the branches above the swirl.

Existence is the milky fish eyes
floating lifeless on the ocean’s surface.

Our kisses evaporate in the air,
not even dripping onto the
silent sea life nor sinking into the marl.

Our love is a bowl of feathers
waiting to form flight.

Until then are only meaning
waits in the icebox for the oven to warm.

Underwater, famished mermaids are eager to eat
the dreams and hopes of our sated angels.

My dog finds a conch nestled in the sand-
half dead, half alive- in the foaming tide,
She paws at its exposed pinkness
ignoring the hermit crab seeking shelter.

The conch shrivels beyond its lip
the scent of dead flowers pouring out,
my dog in a frenzy to taste its exotic flesh,
this beautiful creature sheltering in place.

Resisting the urge to pluck it from its shell
I pick it up and toss it beyond her scent,
beyond the fear, disease, the quarantine
I must always return to in silence.

As the shell sinks back to its home,
I now know everything dies in the sand.

For my reversal and recovery,
For my wife’s lost womb,
For a future free of cancers,
For the old brick house
toppled in the wolf tornado,
For the new cradle being
raised on an ancient cry of earth,
For the mothers who died
never seeing their children wed,
For rescued memories stuck on cardboard,
For dawning days of gray hair
and salt crusted smiles,
For all the altars yet to be built and crossed,
For all the twisted trees floating on rippled tides,
For all the roads, maps, stains and travails
that forged our life, created this prayer,
this hymn I sing.

I never thought brick dreams could tumble in the wind.
My wife collects our scattered memories in a undersized bin
like a child on the tide line collecting beach glass and seashells.
She listen for the sound of blood amidst the dying wind
mistaking rustling pages for her breath cycling in and out,
her pulse beating on the surface of paper, cloth and wood.
She searches for artifacts that match/mismatch my cancer-
the progeny the tornado left scattered in the brick and wallboard.

I listen to the wind and rain ping on my ward’s windows
unaware of her scavenging, unable to sleep in the harsh light
that doesn’t erode the pain or the glitter of memory,
the constant Kabuki of nurses, doctor and blood drawers,
the chant of machines that make me mistake
the sterile for the sacred, the soundtrack for the profound.
I see my wife in the mud, inches from my eyes,
putting away the jagged, clear granules of our life.

I loved this old crooked tree
that refused to grow straight
with the sky but willed itself
to stretch with the horizon,
limbs resisting what every oak
near it wanted— to kiss the sun.

It had a brother, long since cut down,
its stump never uprooted, ground to chips.
Decades of weeping, trying to caress its kin,
had left it defiantly stunted, a hunchback
to its grief, its refusal to be another proper tree,
limbs desiring earth’s comfort to cloud’s hope.

The tornado swept south and
my old brick house was
left a blasted finger to its whims.
The old crooked tree was uprooted
like all the others oaks, yet granted the mercy
of caressing its waiting brother in its final fall.

My wife spent the time after the uprooting
like all the others after the storm,
dealing with the adjusters, collecting
the ashes, saving the memories that remained.
No thoughts of trees preoccupied her
and I was convalescing from cancer surgery.

Before we moved into a temporary place,
before the winds of rebuilding where beginning,
I asked for a quick drive by to see the damage
because I only ,imagined the destruction
from the aching confines of a hospital bed
and needed to firmly root it to mind and soul.

The reality was a little worse than the imagining.
The roof was gone, only an L of bricks remained.
The PTSD, anxiety, the sheer exhaustion
was already planting in my wife.
I cried for her. I cried for the last sight
of the old tree hugging stump, earth beneath.

One night when skies have donned their stars
         And parted the lunar drapes
Scattering silent bats to afar
         To huddle with their mates,
We’ll fix our eyes northward, my dear,
         To distant lush Spring realms
Where musicians play songs with cheer
         And nothing overwhelms.

And we shall travail lovely streets
        With restaurants and bakeries,
Serving all your favorite treats,
        And just your recipes.
Here we shall build a ***** manor
        With ovens to bake tarts,
Rooms I can pen my psalters,  
        Hearts sharing each’s art.

Wait, I spoke
to the highest star.
It winked
and bowed to dawn.

Wait, I spoke to the low sun
that set.

Wait, moon.
It just glowed on,
gracing, gifting me with bright words. 

Wait, I spoke to my sad heart.
It beat as a heart does,
disobedient less it stop
trembling and just soon die.

Wait, to my brain
questioning all the high lights,
the bright horizon near,
all the lunatic noise.
They looked forth
changing faces, never silent, stopping.

Wait, I spoke to my love.
She answered,
Yes, heart.

In the hospital room
the doc watches Death come,
last breath a quiet sigh
surrounding the crash of stats.
He has visited Death’s country  
and left with its blue bruise stamp
on his wrist and heart,  
very thoughts.
No goodbyes.  No regrets. None.
Just schemes to betray it
when it tries to betray him
wrapped in a hospital sheet.
He save what Death stole.
He pull life out by the heels.
He rebirth it again,
give it years.
Death’s revenge took his mom first.
His dad made it two grave stones.
Today his pockets were all full
of Death’s black-blue pebbles.
The plague was blooming,
the pollinators were keen.
The world was a Kaddish,
torn cloaks and moans.
He saw blood through the sheets:
the new nature was just
now beginning its Spring bloom.

Elvis loved his peanut butter.

Gladys, who loved him the most,
as all good mothers love their children,
would feed him grilled Hawaiian bread
sandwich after sandwich of peanut butter
with chopped caramelized bananas,
or gently mashed fork bananas,
sometimes with bacon, sometimes without.

He dreamed of peanut butter and
Gladys would feed those dreams
with Fool’s Gold loaves made each of
one pound peanut butter, jelly and bacon
lovingly folded, like Graceland,
into  two foot slices of Italian bread,
cut by Gladys into pyramids
so the crusty part would never
hurt her Little King’s mouth.

He would go to bed with peanut butter
on his breath, on the roof of his mouth,
his tongue pressed to his palate so
that the peanut butter would never dissolve.
He would greet the dawn with
peanut butter morning breath,
peanut butter on his lips and  
peanut butter cloud swirls on his cheeks,
peanut butter like ant trails on
his satin pillow cases and King size sheets.

Gladys would be in the kitchen
plopping a tablespoon of buttery
peanut butter into  a skillet  
before adding two eggs and Canadian bacon.

The peanut butter shaving cream Elvis used
would still be on his neck and Gladys
would kiss it off in vampire pecks
that still made him squirm.
She would curl his cow lick  
in place, as she kissed his forehead  
smelling the scent of the peanut butter
pomade that gelled his beautiful pompadour.
.
And when she died, and he died,
it was those peanut butter kisses
he missed the most in his world.

Five smooth stones David culled from Elah’s brook,
Shepherd knowing  dense ones to fit sling’s crook.

He released the first on Goliath’s shright
the giant falling back dead with the smite.

Goliath gazing into David’s eyes
felt his blade render head for David’s prize.

Head held high, high and tight, in David’s hand
Goliath gawked at where his body land.

He cursed David ’til his progeny’s end
and Scopus  Crusaders in next revenge,

slung fiery stones onto his holy grain,
his children inheriting Sauls migraines,

Absalom, Absalom! their refrain roars
as they smooth more stones with nuclear cores.

Notes:

The Scopus Crusaders are credited with the invention of the first catapult—really a giant slingshot, that launched fiery boulders at the walls of their enemies.

Saul was the first King of Israel.  He suffered from migraines that made him attack others.  One of his aides was David who suffered brutally when Saul was having one of his migraine headaches.  David later, succeeded Saul as King of Israel.

Absalom, Absalom was the cry of grief David shouted when he learned that his first son, Absalom had accidentally died in the branches of a tree he was traveling under.

The core of a nuclear bomb is about the size of the smooth stone that David slung to **** Goliath.

Footballs always dazzled me,
composed boxes on the shelf,
like pigskin half moons and suns
needing tees from toppling down,
a kick or a toss to send them
hurling to human planets.

The long run, perfect spiral
is inherent in its form,
as is carnage, grace, error.
Its life is moving forward
in the give-take of the game
and the frenzied need to score.

In the flash of flight my dreams
ran thoughts of the gridiron:
the quick release, the jute fake,
the deer stride to the end zone,
the soft jump over the safety
for the champion touchdown—

existed in perfection
on the lined green schoolyard turf
until the surest pass ever thrown
slipped like butter through my hands,
the handoff fumbled down, down…
I was born… to be a fan.

The rear view mirror showed the car on fire.
Metal no protection for burning flesh—
burning down to the color of the night—
a bright reversal reflected in white.
Maybe charred bone? Not hell. Neither heaven.
Police, EMTs too late to save the
tissues smelling like pan steak, fatty pork—
blood emitting its metallic compounds—
the burnt liver of organs— spinal gel    
a musky, sweet perfume less offensive
than wires, plastic, alloys, the circuitry
melting down every(all)things to its base.
He (it) never saw, tasted, felt the crash
coming from the back/front/side. But I did.

The virus news carries me from room to room.
A Verdi aria breaks the solemn
chant of the rising death tolls in my brain
as Italians sing to the sick below,
voice to voice forming a single line of hope,
that filters down to the lonely windows,
my electric screen, all the world’s tablets.  
The music spreads over the mournful lulls,
penetrates through the hemagglutinin,
nucleoproteins singed by joyous noise.
The alarms of Corollas join the chorus,
even the rain ululates with applause.
The gift of every note dotes on the glass.
The ventilated sick duet with their eyes,
pale hands conducting the voices above.
The voices background the daily briefing,
the drone of Trump, and the doctors after him.
I switch to another song, more mellow-
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, something
in the same tempo, in unison, that allows
my small cautious soul to match their big notes.

She is the way they left her:
silent, shuttered, composed
amidst disarray,
the waiting chair unmoved,
her body draped in final coverings,
spider rays webbing the room,
the overhead light unused,
the bed sagging forever
in the center after this,
the sun fighting
with the weight of shadows
on her bedspread.
The corners of her room are dusty
crying from the lack of human nicety.
A tattered pain lives in the motes
that float to the floor,
bruises
of the past
that cannot heal in the present.
My hands are cut by the sharp edges
of a future I’m blind and deaf too.
I can only grasp futilely as the sun floats
away in the shadow play.
A faint trace of her voice
saying Jon, Jon, Jon
follows me out as I
struggle to lock the door.

The rose has thorns because
it cares not to be touched.
Its color is a warning
for animals to stay away.
Its scent is a scream and
not a delight for us to own.
It exists in ****** stillness
bending only for the sun.
The scientist knows this
having heard its sub audible
howl with delicate machines
that probe its roots.
The poet plucks the bloom
unaware of the pain that
created that beauty,
the aroma that shouts
its death to its vegetable kind.

The world is full of missing images and sounds.
In heaven the blind and deaf will meet:
one will show the other the pictures never seen,
the other will share the songs they never heard.
That is why, what and where, are part of
the essential questions every one asks.

I lose one sock every other washing.
The wisdom of the washer and dryer
says that God is stockpiling the lost one
to be reunited with the other in heaven.
Does that mean those with perfectly
mated, never separated pairs, are
doomed to the spin dry of eternal hell?
But then, it’s Smart of God, not letting me
hop around on one foot in my nakedness.

Socks are greater than love.  
They remind us that things
lost will eventually be found,
show the foolishness of looking
back to see what’s coming.
They are reminders that
rain is the reason clotheslines
have disappeared.

I don’t know if SEE ROCK CITY is
still stenciled in white on black
on old red barns along dusty Southern highways.  

The old black and white photos weren't arrows, more like anchored arks that floated  menageries of tourists to Lookout Mountain
to see miniature Fairy Tale Caverns,
villages of Mother Goose creatures,  
a Lover’s Leap with a view that overlooked
the borders of seven states on a clear day.

Hidden inside  was a falls that turned red, green, black, orange and holiday colors
on Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s, Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas.    

The last two miles were a treacherous thrill ride
up a snaking two lane mountain highway
filled with all the breathless ascent of a rollercoaster ready to be propelled at its zenith.

The tourist coming down, amped up on
on sugarcoated dreams, soda pop,
rainbow squirts and homemade fudge
dissolving like cotton candy in their mouths,
would dare the descent without a  
tap of the brakes, making it the only place
on earth where heaven could collide with hell.  
  
I’m sure those old barns have rotted down,
filling their fields in creosote abandonment.  
Perhaps the whitewash of time has eroded
ROCK and even CITY leaving the passing soul
wondering what there is left to SEE.

The dream still exists amidst fairy tale caverns and meandering limestone/sandstone trails
on the very top of Lookout Mountain
waiting for a family of woodpeckers
to roost in the metal SEE ROCK CITY
birdhouse hooked to the V of my old oak.

Many say the last thing the dying see
is the flap of dove wings
or Jesus caressing their hair.
  
Her hallucinations were full of Him
smiling at her, speaking words
she could not understand.
  
And when I draped the
blanket over her cold feet,
crowned with the blue bruise
of all her past complications,
she was convinced I was Him.  

I played the game.  
“Hush, little one.  
I am here for you.  
Do not be afraid.”
  
I left for a moment.
I wept.
She had fallen asleep.

Before I could
return the next day,
she had passed.

Her eyes were closed.
Her mouth was a half smile,
as if she had heard a bell,
had tasted the sweetest thing.

I wondered what was that last
great thing she had heard or seen,
but she had taken her memory with her.

Soldiers patrol Bethlehem now.

The Kaaba hosts no
circumambulating mustati.

The Ganges’ bathes
in its own sin and ash  
releasing no Moksha.

The Vatican quarantines
even  its Cardinals as
The Pope holds mass
to an empty St. Peter’s Square.

In Chicago, a 7-year-old girl named Heaven,
will not die today, not become  
the most expensive candy in the world,
as her mother watches her, the miracle of today,
walk all alone by herself to a closed sweet shop.

the
   devil
         put the
              warmth
                          down south
                                             so man
                can call it
Paradise.

How can I call myself a Boricua when I
barely know the Spanish for earth and sky,    
have no roots in the soil of Moroves,
no sense of San Juan’s flavors,
the warm Atlantic blowing Arecibo  beach,    
Ponce dancing in the Caribbean’s laughter—  
all memories stolen from postcards hastily
bought at the airport along with a  
tin of Florecitas by my mother returning home.

Those little flowers exploded suns on my tongue
and created colors, formed postcard dreams  
of forts, conquistadors, Taino villages burning
in flames rather than submitting to Spain’s sway.
I craved to be an archeologist reverently
dusting off the bones of my ancestors.
I wanted to be an artist, like my uncle Bob,
splashing faceless heads among yellow flares
devoid of black, red, no tint of sad back story.
I settled for being a poet, a painter of words,
a discoverer of the history of hopes.

There is a memory of the Rambler hitting a cow
on the dirt mountain road leading to Moroves.
The bovine sliding down the embankment,
nonchalantly getting up and going his way.
The Rambler’s front end forever stuck with the
impression of an angry bull welded in the grill.
Another of a drive to a carnival, sitting
in the cab of another station wagon,
stargazing the white half moons rising
from under the red halter of my cousin Anna.
A final one of my grandmother praying
the rosary while I stumbled to the outhouse,
spending the night on the swing under the porch
because I didn’t want to break her silence.

Cows, moons, prayers are my Boricua heritage.
I can’t translate the decimas of a jibaro song,
nor dance a merengue, a bomba,  plena.
I have no desire to eat sugarcane from the  stalk,
nor split the soursop for it sweetness.
I am lost in the winds every Boricua knows.
My memories are blown away in the hurricane.
I seek the solace of the first flight out
after the storm, sad knowing  that
I was not born, like every Boricua,  
from the roots up, to study the light of stars.

My wife doesn’t allow me
to watch her when she cooks.
The dog is her silent admirer,
sitting patiently for crumbs.

So much of it is filled with the
aroma of her mother, Geri’s  cooking,
the recipes etched in memory’s stone,
rituals not shared with a family of men.

The scent of garlic and onions,
meat sizzling in a hundred previous
kitchens for fathers waiting at long tables
makes me regret that I am just a man.

My mother, Elsi was a lousy cook,
and my tias knew it, consigning
her to wrap the twine around
pasteles in their banana leafs.

Where Geri passed down her recipes,
Elsi bequeathed me her heart and
compassion sautéed in bitter-sweet
sorrow dusted with ‘Rican seasoning.

I think she saved a pinch for Krissy,
for succor is her strongest flavor,
and I feed off it ravenously when
I need the strength.

The scent of spaghetti squash
roasting in the oven fills
my imagination with the need
to eat, live beyond just sustenance.

I crave to know the secret of her kitchen
but she brings the squash to me
on a plate hot around the edges
and we eat it, contentedly on the bed.

One day, I will sneak into the cocina
and maybe cook a picadillo finer than
her great creations, doing it
like all men, strictly by the recipe.

I wanted to tell the street,
the tar, the grass, the blue,
the morning you died.

The crows, the wasps,
the bees and butterflies
already knew.

The roots of the earth
did not embrace your ashes
nor did the sky,

just the wings that
soared in between the
sweetness, beauty, and grief.

I was wrong to believe this
world to be your only one
or that I would bloom in you.

Your life was a darker fruit
with rains that fell cold
with your sadness and tears.

I could neither make you happy
nor save you— just love where you
rooted and carry you when you fell.

I can neither eat the honey pollinated
in the knot of your stunted tree,
just endure the stings of coming grief,

nor dip my hand into the freezing creek
that floods your lonely roots
without losing my heart.

I just can weep, grieve, try to sleep
on the other side of the bank among
the broken reeds and mud.

A deaf republic can’t afford
to sit on its hands,

killing its sign language
in willful silence,

letting memory erase
the fear and the truth.

The disease existed.  
The shrouds too.

Concrete does not
pave over the blood.

A stroll in the park
does not tamp the pain.

The Punch and Judy show
is but the pantomime
for the forgetful.

The only sound heard
is the singing of
marionette strings

culled from a pile
of burnt violins.

When the air turns
khaki and violent,
the crowd disperses,

their hands in their pockets
signing and forming words.

In a silent closet at home,
the last parents teach
their children to sign.

The children sign
to the doors, windows,
the grass, the trees, the sky

anything with
the shapes of ears
before ears were banned.

They are shoved into the silence,
the one that speeds down the road,
bumps and rattles disguising muffled horrors,
handkerchiefs in mouths, gloved palms
over squeezed lips tight as a kiss.
These are the ones soldiers are told to ignore,
to turn their backs on- civilians, friends,
family- just listen to the chain of command,
follow through on their one and only duty.
There is only them and the next green man
in front, and the next, and the next, next..
forming one long unbroken wall
to stem the disease in front of them.
The doctors and nurses are dead,
and now they must wear the masks,
glove, gowns the hazmat suits,
spray the disinfectant like Agent Orange
on everything that moves, eats, drinks, dreams.
The trucks in back are filled with those
surging to cross the border in front of them.
It could be Canada or Mexico, or just those
wanting to escape the land for the sea,
the ocean, to swim, sail in hopes of
finding their private island to populate.
The rich have bought their own countries,
separated themselves with a technological
continental drift that they do not share.
The middle class have marooned themselves
on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
fighting for sustenance with gulls, *****, sharks.
Only the poor are left— and them—
the green men who pledged loyalty
to the Constitution and now know
just the orange beast who tore it up
and rendered it to ashes, the Congress
inhabited with lawmakers with
hands over their eyes, fingers in ears,
and palms over their mouths, that
know the knowledge and meals
the beast provides only to them.  
Freedom they know is not free.
it comes with the ****** of those
who disagree, those disloyal to the beast.
The green men are fed on K-rations, MREs.
Their Bibles, Korans, Torahs, all
their sacred knowledge, has been burned
and doused with ****. They know they and
the poor are the **** of this deaf republic.  
The green men hear the screams
in front and inside them.  They remember
when they fought for freedom and liberty,
or at least when it had meaning.  They dream
of the past, when America before the beast
was great again.  Their present eyes see only
themselves and the poor.  Those who sleep
in torn open air tents and live in cages
because the prisons overflow. They
close their eyes and they dream as
the poor surge forward to the border.  
They are too tired to stop them.  Nor do
they want to. They only just want to rest
and wait for the call of the next American Revolution.

My silent little dear
snoozes in his cradle
beyond the noises
I can no longer hear.

The quiet drip of
rain and sink,
the swoosh of
inside air circulating,
the vibrations of life
I can hear only with
mental captions on,
are the inaudible sway,
that separates you from me.

Can you hear my smile
with closed eyes,
will you love the
silence or the noise?

Will you delight in
birdsongs or  
in fluttering wings?

Will you laugh at
the music of the spheres
or delight in quiet
thoughts and contemplation?


Child of my April dreams
and September haunts
who breathes in the
whitewash walls of my soul,
what you choose to see or hear,
at first walk, I will protect  
under the signing of my hands.


*This is a poem about my looking back at my baby self, before I contracted Scarlet Fever and became  near deaf, wondering what I would choose if I had the option to hear or be deaf.

When he cried on the cross
he made me believe in Jesus.

When he blessed a devil child
he made me believe in His Word.

When he mated death
he made me believe in the light.

When he ate a wild strawberry
he made me know love.

When he held his son in a new land
he made me feel the wisdom of fathers.

When he showed the hidden Kroners
he made me feel total shame

When he held his dead child in his arms
he made me understand the resurrection of grief.

Max you made me forever hunger
for the million lights illuminating the dark
upon which I build my celluloid church.


The Max von Sydow films referenced in order of appearance:  
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Exorcist
The Seventh Seal
Wild Strawberries
Pelle the Conqueror
Shame
The ****** Spring

The wolf watches and asks me questions:
can I watch you eat,
watch myself absorb into you,
play with the cancer.

She questions everything:
even if I want to live,
die now or die later,
although that is
unanswerable or unquestionable.

That is the statement
life wants, love needs
in its haste to sweep up the ashes.
It wishes to be recognized.

I don’t know, I think,
knowing the wolf can hear me—
life, love, everything, everyone too.  

The answer is somewhere
on the drive to Graceland
as I stop to watch
the wolf suckle its cubs.

Maybe I just want a good death
that makes it hard to grieve
among the ashes of Nagasaki.

Life always wants the tableau,
the memento mori to remember
the repetitions.

Inside the wolf I can hear
my mother, grandmother, ex,
soon my father screaming,
moving, just going down, down, down….
into the silent cry of memory.

The wolf looks comfortable and wordless
as she listens to worlds turned to juice inside.
“It was good to know you,” she said,
as if she had known me my entire life.

Aye, chihuahua, canis familiaris,
land piranha nipping at Aztec heels.
 
Aye chihuahua!
 
Heart of a Techichi warrior
becoming yipping snarling *****,
eyes pulsating, patellas luxating
at the stench of **** erectus
US-es post-alus carrier-alopulus
approaching, adorned in
sky colors crowned in ivory pith.
 
She is fed on belly rubs and Kirkland’s
grain free turkey and pea stew
in the red can, served in a faux
Wedgwood bowl which she gently
mauls in her tiny maw with the
crooked right canine.
 
Queen Sharma is a diminutive avenger  
who brooks no men, except Daddy,
yet dotes in squealing delight
at the touch of women and children.
 
Her territory, a peed-on scent trail,
extends from Guinevere to Lancelot
to Tristram to Merlin to the end
of Camelot Lanes, Streets and Places.
Neither hated squirrels, rabbits
and other canine species are allowed.
 
She can neither jump on the sofa
nor forge mighty streams.
What she lacks in peripheral vision
she makes up for in astute echolocation
and good stiff sniffs of her nose.
 
Yet she has a deep dark secret
that stains her royal dreams.
The scruff under her neck to the chest
in the russet form and color of a fox,
which she struts with a rooster’s pride,
is the product of her Chi-Chi mater
cohabitating with a spritz of Pomerania,
making her neither chihuahua nor pomeranian,
but yes, an adorable pomchi!
 
Yet that neither bothers her nor me
as she paws at the bed covers draping the
leader of this pack, burrowing under to
be close to my side, and dream dog dreams
of walks and car rides and never leaving me.
of walks and car rides and never leaving me.

In a realm of two moons and three suns not
afraid to be besieged by everlasting brightness,
where everyone speaks from their heart spires
and devils and scorpions cavort with sprites,
magic coexisted with every day miracles.
People would cross on invisible bridges
as easily as Jesus walking on water,
on their way to their great soul’s quest.

Now as tablets led to handwriting and
then to thousands of computer fonts,
where seeking adventure becomes
short code for finding death and despair,
where sprites now dine on pixie sticks
and fairies no longer spread their dust,
where those who believe in magic are greatly
outnumbered by those who don’t,
where everyone’s top half exists
with their bottom self wandering about
and never finding each other,
where wizardry is replaced with technology-  
the common light bulb and automobile-
is when wonderment gets consigned to the
bottomless pit of foolishness.

Then magic waits in hidden castles,
patient not for those who have it
and don’t see it, but those who need
it the most and know that it reveals
the truth behind the disguises,
waiting for that old broken stead
to reveal that its Pegasus
and that spell they chanted
to lead them back home to
the magic of their parent’s’ embrace.

Good mothers make their children
fold and put away all clothes,
even hers after death.

Bad mothers make sure
they always wear them
for the rest of their lives.

I am a lousy gardener
that only offends
the soil on top and below.
 
No Petunias or Marigolds bloom,
only crab grass struggling with
Tennessee moss, and a small patch
of Kentucky Bluegrass the
survivor of almost fifty years
and two previous owners:
 
a general practitioner who
layered the inner sod of
the old colonial with
trip wires, alarms, sirens
and intercoms still being
discovered
 
and a Methodist preacher
who cultivated a lawn
of thin earth carpet over
the cheap yellow vinyl
and parquet in the basement—
adding two bedrooms and a shower
for any charitable cases
or needy parishioners.
 
My lawn is left to hell,
the house, gifted to heaven
and the loving attention
of my wife who fills
this abode with the aromas
of her favorite foods
cooking in the oven.
 
The inside is built
on good bones and wood—
a sturdy brick foundation
and oak floors with
a comforting squeak,
sanded and polished
to their original shine.
 
My chihuahua takes great
delight in slipping on them
when she plays fetch.
 
Outside nature riots
in unmolested happiness.
 
Twenty oaks and a few evergreens
defend the spaces of my half acre.
The most majestic one
leans like a hunchback
crying over the stump
of its dead brother below.
 
My trees are allowed to be real trees,
uncultivated, untrimmed, undominated
plus one-hundred-year-old sovereigns.
I respect my vegetable elders.
 
During the spring and summer
the lawn is mowed every other week
to keep my neighbors happy.
 
Five Chipmunk dens burrowed in the clay
provide rooting and hunting
opportunities for my chi,
as the two good boys before,
now scampering
around the rainbow bridge.
 
A black and white stray tabby
has taken up residence on my porch—
sunning in the afternoon,
snoozing in the corner column at night.
He scatters at light and first witness,
his existence a blur captured
on the Ring.
 
Just above is the nest
of our perennial swallows,
real snowbirds I have
no fondness to evict.
The Ring also captures
their welcome and farewell.
 
This dear green acre
has lasted longer
than my happiness.
 
It has the patience
to wait beyond
my grief, disease
and eventual death,
beyond the lease
of all its human tenants
to reclaim its proper heritage.
 
I am so small
to such big things.
We are so small
to such big things.
 
This verdant kingdom
will not shrink back,
wither or expurgate.
 
It will insist on being loved
and watch mine and your colors rust,
for it is beyond discrimination,
consciousness and self-reproach.
 
It will mock you and me
as our fingers dig
down hard into the clay
and grow nothing
that hasn’t existed eons before.
 
It will live alongside
mine and our
happiness and misery,
dropping seeds,
rooting, always blossoming
beyond the violent light.

by the third floor
the weight of history
had become too much
that you wanted to
release it to the sky

by the fourth
my sister still hadn’t
enough of rolling
in its ashes
hearing the moans

by the fifth there
was nothing to see
but the blue cinder terror

so we all took the elevator
to the basement to reset
eat lunch among the relics
and walk the street casually
to the next next door Holocaust

He taught them
where to carve
the dead parts
so the rest could live,
to find its flow
and tap its sap.

With every mistake
the mentor took each
student by the hand
on a short walk
to the middle
of the forest

where it slopped
into pools
thick with inky water,
where the mist
often got trapped
between light and dark.

He mixed water and mud
and pressed it into their chest,
took a sharp branch
and gently scratched
his secret words into them,
until it became a tattoo.

He then gave each a bag of seeds
and a canteen of pool water,
guided them back to their errant tree,
chanted for them to mix both
into the thirsty soil until
it no longer screamed for inspiration.

The students repeated this every day,
watching the grass bloom infinite variations,
discovering their tongues speak
at first his and then their secret words
until they knew all of them,
even those yet to be spoken.