My bifocals reject me.
Reality is not made for focusing.
It is made for massive blurriness.
There is no true form of clarity,
just varying degrees of disparity.

One man cries out to me
about how he is so hungry.
He has a bloated beer belly
that bulges out of his jeans.
He is crying about the purity
of his country, so angry
about the brown Muslim,
and so close to a stereotype.

Another man is merely weary.
Thin and drawn lines run down
wrinkling his withering form.
Each one that is found
is like the rings on a tree
reminding us all how he is aging.
His shirt is torn and holy as the mother Mary.
His calloused hands are as harsh as
the sandpaper he has been wielding.
While other yielding tools
play in digital pleasure palaces
of instant gratification
go on week long vacations,
he is working, fifty-something
going on seventy-two.
What is a Brown Muslim
supposed to do to prove
he is a good man?

Sister says it’s all gods will.
She loves all strangers.
She has faith and says that I should feel
the divine energy flowing through me,
but life is way more confusing
because more of the faithful
pledge their support
to the greedy and hateful

I can’t see through to the truth
The bifocals might have worked for you,
splitting life into two points of view,
but for me they are pointed askew.
Perhaps I need to find trifocals,
so I can focus on more varying perspectives.

Islands of trash are forming.
Plastics are swarming.
The forgotten fish,
With Fishing nets adrift.
Plastic.

It never goes away.
The killer that cannot be killed.
Our fish are dying,
Our baby dolphins are crying.
Plastic.

Bottles thrown to float,
Choking throats of the dying.
They’re eating the rotten,
Our forgotten friends.
Plastic.

Trash is thrown to float,
Caps get stuck in sea turtles throats,
Our oceans are too lovely,
To make them all turn ugly,
With all this plastic pollution.

Once a beauty,
Our oceans are filthy
But maybe someday,
The oceans will once again live in peace.

as we
loom
our hands

tethered
like a
cat's
cradle to
the sky,

a slight shift
of foot and
the landscape
scatters
drunk
as the blue
seas of the
cloud,

the tide
strides to
the open shore,
wind in her
arms,
salt on her
breath,

every step
decadent and
rebellious,

every sip of the
wind an icy
storm,

and the sky
hangs like
a pendulum
in an old
grandfather
clock,

calling out
crazy minutes,
breathful
seconds,

i stand next to you,
knock on the door
of the airy sea
stare out,

curve like
an echo in a
cave,

a handwritten
poem, carved
out of air

while you,
boy of dream,
kiss me like
a wild sea,
restring the
broken violin
of my heart.

Make it quick.
You are already
killing me slowly
dragging me
through the snowy
thorn covered field,
making my flesh bruise
changing it from pink
to blackish blues
as you spread the abuse.

Just make it fast.
slip the blade past
my ribs and up into
the heart you broke
as you choked
the land I loved
as you grabbed
children by the throat,
while you demonized them
with shaded lies.

Your corruption is poison
and I am tired
of writing the same poem,
so just **** me now.

It is a poet’s job to feel what we never felt,
to be where we never were,
and see what we never saw