i want to live in a city
          where street lights are a constant
     sound echos when people sleep
                   but for all the unfortunate souls
the insomniacs
            they're up and moving
     brains ticking over
                                           but it's not so bad
         there's the echo of the city
                 and the constant light
                                           maybe there are others
                    i'm not alone in
     insomniac city

                                            i am in the country
                       the crickets sleep
                                  clouds cover the moon
                                             it's too dark and quiet
                           my mind ticks over more
              i wish
              i lived in
              insomniac city

Nothing ruins a piece of literature
worse than a full explanation from its author
If you so desperately need me to know why
you wrote the poem, you can work the answer
to that question into the poem
I find it lazy to give up on the piece
before it fully satisfies your need to convey
every point you're looking to express
I don't need a background
story to understand a feeling
I have my own life to apply
& to me that's the point
But what do I know

she said i only love the
enticing parts of people,
the same way i highlight
my favorite lines in books
so i’ll have something to
focus on when i decide
to blow the dust off their
spines.
you’re missing everything
and you know it and
you don’t care,
she said.
you’re missing the real
parts. you’re cheating people
out of themselves.

even then, i wanted to
quote her.

i’m that isolato-type. alright,
i get jagged sometimes
but, i don’t much.

instead, i’d rather be,
sinews sub sinews
bold and parlous:
oh what a multifaceted physique
you bought for me!

        i used to be
        fire and forget
        victual and fleshy
        as you crafted me

^tears^. i’m not that thewy,
draft, and unconscious,
blind in your mask! but,
in your plasma i am warm—
security fails me. ^yeah!^
cop-out post cop-out
i’m passive like that.

        but here’s the catch:
        like a sensitive plant—i’ll curl up
                        by just one touch.

        and here’s the fix:
        my self-consciousness is lost in lull
                        and that’s my fall.

                                     !i can’t take it anymore!
                                                        !!!

From the moment I first saw you
I knew you were the one
you took my breath away
you shine as bright as the sun

Wanting to know the real you
all it took was one glance
and I was falling deep into the ocean of love
all I needed was one last dance

His eyes seemed to smile at me from across the room
could it be true
these feelings I have for you

The boy from my dreams
I've been looking for you
as strange as it seems
lets run away just us two

Now I know why they invented music
For dead uncles
And bombed biology tests
To work out your abs in lessons while constantly being pushed
Till the sound you hear is something unimaginable
Something great
That is was music is

Greatness entirely packaged in sound waves
Listening in the music building to hymn
The sopranos dance with flourish
The bass fills the room with their echoing roar
The tenors create those chords that yank at your soul

On those days when all you can do is cry there is music waiting for you
Your iPod will keep you together as you wander the sidewalks
Your instrument will allow you to funnel the emotions right out for all of the world to see
Here I am world, times may get so tough but you cannot get rid of me yet

Talks of cancer and death lead to those of rebirth
Of hearing “get your affairs in order”
And having it mean, “ Get out there! Live your life!”
To forgetting regrets and finally just being free

Music is there when all is wonderful
Celebrating a new love, a good day, a little less wind outside
To blast it in your room and to dance
But that is a different kind of dancing all together,
No one can really hear you or see you
So just move
The chords carry your legs about the room and you spin and you jump and you sing
Most important is to sing
Let nobody and everybody hear your voice tangle into the lyrics
Sing till you are hoarse
Sing till you have sung it all out

**

Now I know why they invented music
To lead you through that maze that is life
To help you understand it and to understand yourself
Music is that life vest
This is your first jump off that diving board
Hang on so tight and bend your knees
Let go and rocket into the real world
Don’t worry; you most likely will not drown.

i met a man in a church
outside of manila
who asked how i could stand
living in a country so cold.
amerika, he said,
felt wrong to me.
he asked if it was
cold still.
if it still felt like the land
wanted to stick *******
down its throat and throw me up
and up and away. and gone.

not the land. i wanted to say
not the land but this dress, ginoo,
this body and this name
and what you’ve gotta understand
is that there is no flight to someplace
warmer when the cold is etched
into your chromosomes.

but the only words i could
speak in his tongue
were yes, it’s cold,
yes.

Preface:
Even old poets can forget new tricks,
So when toe stubbed and ah ha benedicted,
Causes you to remember what you once knew,
It feels even better, like being crazy
Once in awhile,
Or wearing an untrimmed chest Jason smile.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Eons ago converted to a new religion,
The Church of Free Verse.

If life be variable,
Usually unrhymed
A pencil sketch of crisscrossed lines,
No fixed metrical pattern assigned,
Than even more so, my poetry.

Once I regretted that the children,
Crack addicted to rhyming,^
Used nickel bags and ******* lines
At the starting gate where all
Our associative poetry journey begins.

Perhaps, a tad arrogant, that diktat,
Nonetheless, unashamedly, nothing to recant.
Words have utility creative, souls innovative,
Free them guised as global explorers,
Make them up, then unleash them
Upon us, yourself, as detectives investigative.

Unchained myself like Houdini,
From water chambers and locks constraini.
What care I for poetic rules and regulations,^^
Got so many points, they tried to suspend
My government-issued poetic license.

Had myself forgot,
That a poem needs a
Frame of jungle gym sounds,
An aural aura resonance unbound.
Purposed to make the heart lift
Your ears say:

Say what!

It needs a tune,
An internal music,
It needs a lilt!
A cadence, that both
Marches and swings,
Even when'd urgent dirge
grief pours forth.

Yes my darling young ones,
Your writ of screams, like Bob Dylan's occasional schemes,
Celebrations of agonized lives of the criminally-pained,
Songs and cants of victims, love-cancer stained,
Require a whining, singsong beat.

{Poems so rad-sad that it makes this Jew
Genuflect and crisscross himself,
That he was blessed with a few good happy years,
In his reincarnated life of
A few centuries long.}

Learn 'em to sing their cries,
Harmonize the internality of love,
Or, even the infernal loss and lack thereof,
For it is the lilt
That makes, transforms a cry into a
Poem.

Even I on death's last stairway step,
When was called by the name of
Nate Hale,
My dying poem lilted, lifted and metered
"I only regret,
that I have
but one life,
to lose,
for my country."

Now you're thinking he is lost it all,
But you would be incorrect for sure.

He found it.

The lilt of life that makes him rise
And greet each morn,
Even some sorry starless nights
With a First Poem of the Day.

I lilt you, one and all.
If you think this mis-wrote,
My auto correct mentally broke,
Meant to type I love you,
You'd be
Right but wrong,
I just lilt you.