Inside,
you sleep on the floor.
Empty beer bottles
stain the edges of a
wooden coffee table.
Parking tickets
sit on the ironing board
that blocks the door.

Outside,
you smoke a cig,
tie a flag into a bandana
and snapchat yourself
tripping on route 66
because L.A.
swallowed you at Sunset;
white text quotes
Hunter S. Thompson.
You're so ironic,
but you'll never be him.
So desert your phone
and take a real trip.

salt stings soldiered eyes streaming
i am not crying —
just releasing a weekend of wine and Netflix,
a relapse i can't admit
when people ask what I did last weekend.
Muscles burning in the agony,
their capability
long squandered,
by lazy nights and wine.
Monkey mind zombied to flashes of LED light.
Docile strides to somewhere I have to be.
oh TV, you are so tempting to a binger like me.
I think about the last episode
when I should think about the road,
leading to my forgotten sanctuary,
where limbs stretch, teachers chant krishna
and rub students with essential oils.
But as I listen to the
sitar in shavasana,
interrupted
by iPhone rings,
teacher grasps the money
from the donation box greedily.
I feel slightly annoyed,
but mostly pity —
three students
thirty five dollars
for an hour.
But I think
this is what happens when
yoga becomes a
commodity.
Like TV — a fix,
not a spiritual experience.
So we'll pay the minimum,
or stream it illegally.

She was a child wild
wearing a white dress,
galloping through fields of unrest,
inspiring anxious warheads,
for a hot second.

Off to the next.

She was
anxious like a feather
caught in a breeze,
far from that child
that minded none
the weeds.

Backhand compliments
more potent than
misogynic critiques.
She was Marilyn Monroe.

Where was Norma Jean?

Living in a man's dream,
pinned up in a
concrete bunker,
a porcelain poster
tearing each time
she wasn't taken seriously,
or spent nights
alone aside a dusty phone,
with no home but
Norma Jean,
Marilyn's martyr
long at peace.

You three believe in creating scarcity,
NOT union.
You build HOV lanes for your luxury cars,
caring less how efficient they are.
They roll royce cross your game board,
fuming trails of money.
Bell Atlantic bought Madison Avenue,
you bought all the properties.
Now tenants can't avoid
the traffic or the noise
of an internet rolled in palms
and diced
spiraling
to speed limits
...
...
...
...
and red highways
...
...
...
...
and orange traffic cones that
block hybrid cars,
already swerving
to avoid bankruptcy.
We
STOP
the
STOP
people
STOP
moving,
our preamble crumbles to a
STOP,
becoming a eulogy —
an ideal dumb to power trippery,
after Time Warner and Comcast merged,
allies on opposite sides of the game board.

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;
together you own pretty much
everyone but Fox and Disney,
(yet have invested in them heavily).

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;
your oligarchy is
NBC, Universal, CNN, Warner Brothers,
and now FullScreen,
family-friendly nepotism
that inbreeds bearing
deaf drones bored of flying,
over
Why Beyonce is a Feminist.
or
Why Ferguson was racist,
media's offspring
just keep clicking,
the headline genocide victims
basking in concentrated lamps
for a sliver of attention.

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;
Now you want the backend buffering,
bulging eyes and emptying pockets
of those Spocked into believing,
hyperspeed was ever necessary.
No choice when the exits are slow
and there are no backroads.

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;,
offspring of the
Bell Atlantic Company,
we will not let your
****** populate the internet.
Call it Capitalism,
but your playing Monopoly,
yanking the carpet underneath
to the wood of Tyranny.
You shamed
Bell's invention
by stringing together
telephone
internet,
and
entertainment companies
until you could be lazy.
Monkeys who spent millions
to shriek at government parties
about the communication machine,
a system downloaded so slowly,
we
did
not
act
on
cons
piracy
theories,
when Amazon made online shopping so easy.

Dear Internet Service Providers,
so called ISP's,
WE ARE DONE playing Monopoly.
Our collective voice
will shout blasphemy
on your streets,
hashtagged
net neutrality,
till you're counting pennies.
So empty your Washington banks
cause it's 3 a.m. and
no ONE is winning.

Today, people remind me
that I'm only 23,
which means,
young,

but getting old.

Still living in my
parents' home.
Doing what I want,
not what I'm told.

Wishing a salary
and cocktails at five
didn't sublime
the rest of my kind:

WORKERS
OF THE WORLD
who UNITE drunk
and dissatisfied.

Happy Birthday to me

Tell my boss
that his work
is no longer
for me.

Because I am not
a salesman to artists' dreams.
I am not
a collector of rappers,
displaying them
as one of many.
I am not
a puppeteer
tangling human beings
into commercial machines.

I am a poet.
I untangle strings,
and out of the mess,
create beautiful things.

Happy Birthday to me

Spoon honey
into coffee,
sweeten the daze
of a disturbed sleep.
I write the day
shamelessly,
after my cousin
texts me to ask
what I'm doing,
ASSUMING...

I'm planning a party maybe
starving myself into
a tight dress to
peacock my
mom's
delivery.
How can I explain
that writing poems and
eating cake are better presents for me?

Happy Birthday to me

Thank my parents
for supporting me.
Tell them I am happy
to veer from what
I was expected to be.
Ask them to defend
my insane belief that
people would ever pay
to read poetry.
Promise them,
I will make my passion
a career opportunity.

Or I will try,
until I don't breathe.

Because
half-*** attempts
at 23,
sow regrets
at 40.
And 23 years ago,
they bore me —
an infant
meant to be free.

Today,
I am still breathing.

Today,
I have friends
who support me. 

 Today,
I have a day
and a night
to live my dream.

And that's all I need.

Happy Birthday to me

I am 23.

And after nearly,
a quarter of a century,
I have finally found
my therapy;
My reason:
To be.
To breathe
the world,
I see not,
Death
Fear
or
Responsibilities

but

Life,
Love,
a­nd
  **Poetry.

You say I'm "reckless."
I take the subway alone at night
And walk past alleyways
I bike without a helmet
and accept rides from strangers.
I travel alone
to faraway places
with governments
America has flagged
and stay with strangers
I met on airplanes.
I have had casual ***
with lots of men,
I get my heart broken
from those who don't give a ****.

You say I'm "reckless."
My apartment is in a rent controlled complex with sneakers
stuck on the wrought iron fence.
I have water and electricity,
but not internet.
My neighbor was
in a hollywood gang
back in the day
The rest speak Spanish.
I find myself justifying
to you it's temporary,
but secretly am upset that
it will be torn down
just as I finish decorating.

You say I'm naive
when I say there is no evil —
just broken people.
It is people like you
who break them.
You say I'm idealistic
when I don't feed the system.
Why not eat the same rotation cause
it's efficient. *******, daughter!
Follow the recipe!
You say I'm "reckless,"
but I am just living,
and you are a scorpion
poised to attack
anyone who turns over
the rocks you live under.

When you say I'm "reckless,"
I flashback to moments
I'd never sting you with.
Like the time I opened
the window screen
and wondered how far
the fall would be,
crouched upon
a second story balcony.

No, I am not "reckless!"
I just can't understand
The point of fearing death
Or pain
Or suffering
The best art
is created by the ill-content,
the gonzo
the sociopath.
So why not let them live?
Please...just let me live!
Cause I can't take
your eyebrows raised
and the turned-down corners
of your pursed lips,
fearing I am "reckless."
Worried sleepless.
Your puffy purple eyes,
assuming I am floundering,
repulsed by marriage or a salary.
You should just accept
I will never have social security.
As a child...
you taught me I could be anything,
but frowned when I said I liked poetry.
To you, anything meant
a corporate ingenuity
To you, warriors
work hard and succeed.
They needn't take risks,
just business classes.
You wanted to pay for them
and then dine at
an overpriced restaurant afterward.
But I prefer the Bolivian markets.
I want to take you,
but you say it's dangerous
and you'd be rude
to the waitresses.

I know, when you say
that I'm "reckless,"
you are protecting —
a supportive parent.
But saying I am "reckless"
is starting to become overbearing.
You can stop now.
Cause you wont.
Stop it.
You will not **** my instincts,
only augment my rebellion.
You will not make me
in your image 'cause
I don't want to be like you —
Complacent in a bubbled,
grass-fed existence —
cows may live in comfort
but all they do is
pollute the environment.
The day I fear
is not your judgement,
but the day I stop living
and just say people are "reckless."
Even though I never
talk with anyone different.

No, I am not "reckless."
I ride the bus
and forget my headphones
I meet strangers
who become fast friends.
I learn about a world
filled with joy and happiness,
and pain and suffering,
and I love it ALL.
And I will continue to love
all the "reckless" things too,
just as much as you love me
when you tell me:
"Now, don't be reckless."

Most of us are poor
when it comes
to the currency
of retweets.

We are unworthy,
at the bottom
of the Twitter feed,
Swimming in a stream
littered with what is trending.
Rafting whitewater
every time BuzzFeed tweets:

Follow
the bouncing lamb
Vine account
immediately.

Bots multiply:
I want a #lamb
and we're
drowning.

CHOO CHOO!
It’s moving.
QUICK. JUMP ON,
the steamboat
of salacious content
is
LEAVING.

I say:
Let's fight the current;
Stop being
slaves to click-bait;
Start a revolution with
140 characters.

@KarlMarx
Topple the Verified Twitter users.

"Expressing your feelings
couldn't be called art."

So birthed
Shakespearean Walts —
whose puns crammed nature
into mens' hands
and shadowed doubts
that we are all human.

The need to rhyme
and snort out some lines
demoned great minds
who refused to color
outside the lines.  

Metaphor ran over happiness,
watercoloring lines
in INK.

"A petal is
a woman who fails
when she wilts."

So girls learn to answer,
coyly in high school english,
that everything but petals
are ******* symbols.
No reflection needed,
when nature is a *****.

They throw down cash,
throw back shots, and
throw me business cards
at lunch break —
Sardines wearing
headphones who ride the
same express train
everyday,
in between sardines
wearing headphones
who ride the same express train
everyday,
in between sardines
wearing headphones
who ride the same express train
that stops at Lincoln
and Broadway,
everyday.
Wasting Brooklyn nights
for noisey lights till trash time.
Stinky sticky street
walk home past
empty bars
to Hugo meowing
down the door
for new litter.
*But I am so tired.

The girl said she wanted to be a writer.

...

"Yes, but what do you want to do?"
the accountant asked,
eyes glazed over.

Every night,
L.A. lights
watercolor
the starry night
a lavender haze,
that peeps through
drawn blinds of
mingy minds,
cushioned in cream.

Like
sirens soothe
deaf ears
liquor tickles
numb tongues,
and
pizza sates
greased guts,
pollution’s hue
clears consciousness,

letting a city sleep.

Soldier,
I won't be your red dot,
my body the coordinates
you hit or miss.
What if you say no?
What if you say yes?
What if I could care less?
I won't hide me behind uncertainty to
compliments camouflaged
as criteria
I must fail or pass
this ****** up social game,
no one seems to change the rules.
So I'll hide in my bunker cynically.
You might say I have PTSD
because too many bullets skimmed me.
But you are just another ******,
most comfortable with late nights
and green lights,
killing souls of girls
who just want to run home
and sleep alone,
not held in your hands,
nor held in your eyes,
and certainly
not scaled from 1 to 10.

You're violent.

Hairs raised in
San Francisco
wind open windows;
purple clouds
promise a damp
cityscape before
daybreak.

1991

I realized
We were both born
in rotting soil,
plastic toys fed
by Arabia's oil.
Eyes closed,
ears behest
to broadcasts, we,
could NOT protest.

That was the beginning
of our mass destruction,
but cribs offsides,
we slept soundly,
thanking our stars,
proud to be Americans.

10 years dormant,
the lyrics laid,
enough to stick,
but their irony to fade.
Until grade school,
recess goaded,
as burning buildings
on our side exploded.
The imminent threat preloaded,
in airports we shed shoes,
forever coded.

The broadcast — our center
was the theorem
that planes, oil, and Arabs
risked everyone's freedom.
But when we raised hands,
to ask why, teachers said
hail red, blue,
and especially white.
We forgot our roots,
because the Ellis Island trip
was obviously cancelled.

So we read headlines,
instead of Orwell,
the day 911
called for a police state.
Trusted the government
and ****** Muslims,
the day turbans
meant hijacking planes.
Pledged allegiance
disguised as freedom,
the day war
was declared
on Saddam Insane.

Our flag revealed
a sham feeding flames,
angst-ridden
teenagers
we became.
With raised middle fingers,
instead of hands,
to Green Day lyrics,
**** Amuricans.

Because only idiots
press a red button twice,
when mass destruction is the price.
And only villains
make children orphans,
while victims drown
in New Orleans.
And only gluttons
eat caviar with silver spoons,
tainting forever
a nation's youth.

Entrenched in dunes,
we boarded blind,
to debt,
death, and
jaded minds.
Blamed by perpetrators
in dollars and change,
for a guerrilla war
fought in vain!
Voted Obama,
with Osama slain,
and soldiers withdrawn,
we hoped for change.
PLEASE, we cried,
JUST STOP!
We are CHAINED —
to a bulldozer
that has NO BRAKES!

…

So the broadcast said recently:
We are losing control
of the Middle East. And
Al-Qaeda is far from weak —
ISIS: THE PHOENIX OF HUMAN GREED,
We just turned off our TV's
and looked up,
the kids who gave up,
thanked Musk — our atlas,
not yet shrugged,
whose vessels of stars
will rocket toward Mars,
from this godforsaken
civilization
built on hate.

And when you tell me, ***,
"We were both born in 1991,"
I can only sigh,
and breath sympathy,
for our dark history.

She wrote love on a screen,
copied and pasted Death Cab
lyrics most sincerely.
But sincerity in high school
leaves few friends.
It is ostracized
like curly hair
and blemished faces.

So she followed her
forgotten heart into the dark.
Obit quotes of friends and family
vacant of responsibility.
Everyone blind-sighted,
to the scholar they wanted to see,
leaving her final breath
warrantless,
as if advanced Chemistry
excused her from Depression.
No one payed attention.
Her suicide was a crime of pain.
Her favorite song was the beauty of Death
And with her friends gone,
family busy,
and identity lost,
her soul embarked
on finding light in the dark.

Allyson,
you found it,
suffocating your isolation
to cardiac arrest,
so I didn't have to
a year later,
crumbling next to a stuck window screen,
next to a world that
didn't love me,
rationalizing two stories
wouldn't **** me,
crying in the flashlight
of remains below
I feared being.

Sleep peacefully,
Allyson Rose Green,
because your soul
is forever breathing in that song,
at least, for me.
And eight years from your death,
hearing it again,
I wish we could have been friends.
Maybe then, high school,
you could have survived.
And I could have lived it
with at least one lonely friend.
I barely scraped by.

I want you like the Colorado clouds
want to pour rain over the Californian desert.
Please, I am thirsty. Quench me.

Let me drink your nectar — it tastes like sunshine.
Loyally I will suckle your pistil,
even after the reason you ignored me did.

Relax — I want you...at ease.
It's OK  — I want you...happy.
Don't worry — I want you...dreaming.

Come to bed with me
Grab my cheeks and squeeze them.
I am a child.
Tell me my eyes are galaxies
you want to swim in.

Your breath tastes like stale beer
but I steal kisses selfishly.
They tickle my ******,
short-circuiting me to a cloud.

I am in your cloud.
I am rain.
Cross the ridge and
let me pour.

Until the rain melts
and clouds bump
into the sun,
you can try
and elude me.

Until rabbit ******
is outlawed and
Alice grows up,
you can try and
outwit me.

Until horses
stop galloping
and cheetahs are fat,
you can try and
outrun me.

Until beggers
choose and choosers
beg,
you can try and
turn on me.

Until down is up
and up is down,
you can try and
outreach me.

But I will continue chasing you,
around landmines,
hopping rabbit holes,
and fighting currents,
until you are mine.

You say
I am turning
into the lady
with the large book
and CD collection,
with isolated friends
and few dates,
whose only love
will be a cat man
one day.
But I'm enjoying
my Saturday
with Kerouac
and kin,
dreaming of
yellow lines and
the open road
instead of
yellow lights
and bars.
Plus,
I'd rather write
these lines alone,
than spend my night
talking in code.

If apples could speak,
they'd learn as buds
that all fruit are doomed.

A crisp history
would tell of countless
apples fallen,
their seeds sowed
in doubt and ****.

The sob story
of falling down
would rain existence
fruitless
for branch hangers
waiting to be picked.

If apples could speak,
one might finally
look up and ask,

"Why doesn't the moon fall?"

sowing the need for
fruit to orbit trees,
like fleshy moons,
tiny but immune.

If Rihanna and Bob Marley had a baby,
it would be her. She was as fierce as peace can be.
Born in the suburbs, I had never seen
coffee-colored rastas with caramel tips,
pulled back from a shaven head
into a ponytail.
She skated in an oversized hoodie
across San Marcos square — a watering hole for
porteños playing hippie.
Mad man strummed ukuleles wildly;
couples dancing interpretively; jugglers rode on unicycles,
as if they were all training for a jester convention.
Still, I couldn’t tear my eyes from her
broken strands tied in knots swinging freely.

Her sea-foam stare met my blue gaze.
I looked like a dork; my hair plastered
and sweaty. I wore a black tank top,
waiting for another bus to another city.

She dismissed her band of perros
and grasped my hand, asking me
if I wanted to sleep by the river with her.
It was late so I said yes.
We walked from the yellow lights
of the town square.
She grimaced.

No more bones for starving dogs.

I wasn’t starving, just lost,
a traveler,
dried from a bucketful of adventures,
I dreaded repeating as empty stories
over
and
over
and
over.


O Celia,
you were a coyote wearing a hoodie;
no one could tame you, refracted by the white
light of the moon that embraced each
of your steps by the shrubbery-ridden riverside.
I stumbled as we approached
an embankment sheltered by magic trees,
the glistening water chilled waves to perked ears;
reflections of villagers, we pitched tents together,
tipi-ed by the ritual
of finding niche in transition.
You built the fire; I prepared the mate;
your weary locks whispered callejero wisdom.
Your stories were everything I wanted to say,
but too timid to be.

You were dancing in my basement,
bathing in moonlight *******,
unashamed to say how good the water felt.
You probably lost your virginity in your tent;
shadows of leaves shaking a disturbed night,
unlike I, crying, semi-drunk, wishing I hadn’t.

You actually played the guitar;
you bought it yourself;
it was tied to the skateboard
you drug behind on open roads.
I got a guitar for my birthday after
watching Lindsay Lohan be a rockstar in a movie once.
I was inspired to play for a while.
Then it just sat in my room.

So you taught me your favorite song, Legalizenla
We didn’t even have a porro — you wished we did.
But all I wanted was to memorize those chords
So you listened to me play them out of tune for hours,
pressing my fingers on the fretboard like butter.
Strums shuddered my soul.
You wrote the lyrics in my journal
with the note, con mucho amor.

Now, each time I dust off my guitar,
I warm up with that song  
to remember your vibrations.

I’m sorry
my job
does not
seem
important.

But we are
different
species
of insect
that bite:
a honey
bee and
a gadfly.

one defends
the hive —
its
reason
to survive.
the other feeds
directly
from the
blood of life.

Nice to
meet you.
Sorry for
*******
away
your time.

Close the tab —
I want to be a writer.
Not because I'm mightier
than you,
but because it's all
I know how to do.

A reflection
of melted mascara,
glazed eyes,
and motorcycle hair
in the bathroom mirror
realized,
Cupid doesn't work here.
He doesn't shoot arrows
to women on barstools.
Guys might shoot darts,
but only to nail a red dot.

So she ubered home.