You are the reason I look out the window at night and smile.
You give light to the darkness, it is your nature.
You bring thrill to an elsewise soulless sea.
Though I saw you not that night, you were there
(part of me) at my birth and,
come time to die, I will look on you and smile, again.

No one wants to hear the truth.
That's why we tell stories,
invent personas,
make secrets of ourselves.
Lies are the currency of love.
A peacock is just a turkey with pretty feathers.

I remember as a child
how desperately I would fight away the needles,
no matter that they were to make me better.
To this day, nothing has changed.

Your body moved like ocean waves
                beneath me,
    the wet taste of salt shared between our lips,
        moonlight reflecting off metallic jewelry
like little lighthouse beacons gleaming in the darkness.
And in that fleeting moment
      of equal parts fear and fulfillment,
  when there is no moon or movement
             and all is quiet and still,
                 I felt myself sink into you
             and I have yet to hit bottom.

Eclipse me.
Keep me from view.
The whole world wants to see you.

God created man.
I create poems.
Just like poems,
some men are good,
     some bad.
The poems that are good,
I save those.
The bad ones? I save those, too -
that I may rework them
until they are good.
     I do not burn my creations,
for they are only ever bad
because I lacked a vision or patience.

San Francisco, 1977
I sat by my window and listened
to the crying of Carlos Santana and the wind
His guitar told stories
of home in México and how he yearned for it
and the wind kept howling along
as if it tried to bring him back
and I wished for Carlos to be home
and I wished for the wind to carry him there
and I wished for myself to be somewhere else
where the city isn't as big
and the people aren't as greedy
and the love comes naturally, not for fifty bucks a night

So I sat by my window
and listened to the sound of Santana's guitar
and the wind crying
and I understood
as I wept along.