Better to die on my feet...

         than on my knees.

Up and at 'em
whispered half-awake to a
sun that yawns above the window sill
from somewhere deep beneath soft pile blankets and
crisp laundered sheets to
present their fresh aroma as a
billowing of color in rich warm golden
vision and see what a thousand cameras could only
hope to find hovering in a periphery, hidden among
storm-clouds

She loves me,

she loves me not...

she loves me!

I wish you'd take

off
     your
              mask

and be mine.

Maria
kisses
like she wants
to take your head off.

The top lip
is an umbrella
all the way to the bridge of the nose.

The bottom
slobbers
the
cleft-chin.

When I kiss her,
I want to push her away
and
tell her
"quit that ****."

but she's green.

she's never been with a dude
the way that I want
to be with her.

And so,
the kissing
I tolerate.

The way she takes her tongue
to every black surface
that the shadow of her mouth
creates.

I shake it off.

Or
how sugary my mouth gets
with all the extra saliva
she wets my teeth
with.

I'm cool with it.

But one night,
she gets down
on all fours on her
sofa-bed.

Her skin:

patchy black
and white
from the moon coming in
and scattering
against the leaves
of an oak
outside the window.

Her jaw
working
in square motions
as she swallows
down
all that extra
saliva,
from all that
extra kissing.

And she said to me,
her eyes
placid,
glassy
and black
as leather,
"**** me like those **** girls."

Ever have one of those moments,
where nothing is beautiful
about anything you're looking at?

A taste in your mouth,
gets sour
like you've been chewing copper
and
nothing is beautiful.

Maria's mom
had an ***.

A nice
peach.

The kind that made
Maria
uncomfortable,
because her mother wore
green bikinis
to the grocery store
and bought
every green thing,
even the hard bananas
that wouldn't be soft
for months.

in the lime bikini,
the creases
of her upper thighs
were places
where men wanted to put
their tongues.


Maria's mother
was a
thirty-seven year old
milk-skinned
body.

And other than
the green bikini
she wore
the black skirt.

When her mother
wore the black skirt
it made men
want to slide fingers
up the black hemisphere
and feel for the rabbit
in between her thighs,

to feel the magic

of soft
stomach flesh
and a still-tight
almost hermetic
***.

Maria's mother,
called Ms. Herrera
by Maria's boyfriend,
resumed the old name
Judy
in the mirror.

She spent long, distended moments
in front of that
mirror
in the black dress,
watching the folds of fabric
slide.

Although her stomach
was starting to sag
and she could hold
the flesh
in between
an index
and
a thumb,
She could still take solace
in the still-tight
gift;

the one part of her body
that she could turn her back to
while it gave her
gracious returns;

It was a capsule of the past:
intact,
still vital
and still
hers.

Maria's mother
wore those tight black dresses,
g-strings
and bikinis to the grocery store,
because they were
relics.

Maria was a relic,
but not the kind
that made her mother
still
feel pretty
or young
or at least
valuable.

The girl
with two long braids
hanging from her temples
like droopy
antennae,
looked up at the sky.

A foggy halo
circled the moon
in a snowy paste
and
a tiny sister
pushed itself
redly
outward.

Out of the halo.

Out of the white shadow
of
the pearl.

The haze was so thick
that the girl
had to squint
to make sure
the tiny red dot
was there.

But it was there.

There
licking at the halo.

Eating it.

Eating its way out.

The black telescope
shined.

She laid her eye
on the viewfinder.

She felt suction
and the momentum of her eye
zooming
out to the vaccum.

She will tell the tale
of
the stars
and
the war-gods
full of blood.

Whenever I'm around my family,
I get this low kind of feeling.

My family is full
with the kind of people
that become vps,
investment bankers,
nurses,
lawyers.

me:
little ****-head
that smokes ****,
calls himself
"a writer",
and doesn't like to have
long conversations
about his future.


I am not one of them,
I am not a black sheep, or a black pharmacist,
or a black lawyer.

I am something
that wants to become
something,
when I am unsure
of what that something
is.

A continual
rebirth of somethings
likening myself
to God
with so much
internal creation.

This is malignant
to my family's ideals
of self-assuredness
and placement,
brutal placement
in America.

"Have you talked to dad,
since you've been at school?"

"Nope."

"Are you coming home
for thanksgiving?"

"I don't know."

Josephina
breathes in a crackle
over the phone.

New York,
a cacophony
in the background.

A background of cold,
and
people talking
while walking
while hailing a yellowcab with a left
and slow-rolling heads locked
onto the phones in their right.

These people enter taxis,
not knowing if they're ever
going to reach home,
or the airport,
or union square,
just going
on the promise
that they won't become
road-****.

I can't feel it in my yellow apartment.

If anything,
my yellowcab
idles.

Through the receiver

A squad car
rings nervously,
then
after a lungful
of garbage-smelling air,
it becomes a full blare.

A pause
of
noise
always ensues,
just for a second,
the entire corner
becomes a silent silo
of human beings.

"How's new york?"

"you know,
dad called me
and asked about
how to get on a diet,
can you believe that?"

Yes,
I can
dad is a fat ****,
a pink, white belly
of a man. And a few
sandbags for chins.

"That's good."

"So I'm not going to see you?"

"Probably not."

"Well, you should call dad,
talk to him,
he loves
you."

Some conversations,
acheive nothing.

The same
tired, dead things
get run over.

Road-****.

Josephina believes she is the spatula
that will bring back
pancake squirrels
and
pancake relationships.

As much as you don't know
about me and dad's relationship,
I can give you a kodak moment.

A snapshot,

of a hovering man,
pointing at his son's neck,
searching for the misplaced vertebrae,
the lack
of fear for the world
--"the right kind of fear,
the fear a man
should have
of himself"--
and a son,
hunched,
small hands in fists,
a heavy haul of muscles
pulled into a dark brow
right over black eyes.

This picture
will suffice.

I'd rather walk
through the stairs
than through the ladder.

Therefore, methinks that...

...unlike charges repel,
         somehow, like charges attract.