there would be blank canvasses
empty words
silently echoing the pages of poems not written
of narrative never revealed
from muses overwhelming
spirits overflowing
onto sugar coated melodies
woven into lyrics that
pester and harass and permeate the sacred space of minds

there would be blank canvasses
empty words
of delicate curves or hips, wide like sandy beaches
immortalized  by brush strokes or camera shutters
empty panels of superhero legends forgotten

there would be blank canvasses, empty words
of no church praises hollered over holy rollin piano riffs

but most definitely, most importantly,
there would be blank canvasses, empty words
and
hands that never itched
to craft golden scrolls onto the haggard loose leaves
residing in sharpie stained notebooks
and great wisdoms never told which ****** great minds
moves great minds
with melodious lyricism
which haunts souls
taunts souls
with the burning questions of shoes and ships and ceiling wax

there would be pens never emptied dry
cultivating piles of paper ***** with half *** rhymes, rhythms, and washed up metaphors
muses would never possess individuals
sleeplessly seeking to fill up forests worth of leaves
after suffering from the doldrums of writers block

blank canvasses, empty words
in a world without art

this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons

for the Hopeless Stargazer who immortalized his Subject with one hundred and eight sets of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter

for ***** tight clad teenage boys who envied frisky fleas, struggling to make holy ungodly passions with cheap arguments and metaphysical pick up lines

for Disillusioned City Dwellers, who, wandering lonely as clouds, stopped to quietly reflect upon wind-beaten moss-covered crags, and heard God’s whisper thunder from petals and blades of grass

this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons

for Bespectacled Slave Drivers who submersed idle minds in anthologies,  forcing them to **** neon yellow on dreams deferred and rivers;  slicing and dicing Grecian urns with red ball point pens; bruising and battering, in blue ball point, roads not taken; scalding supermarkets in California with pyroclastic flows of graphite  

for those pushing to tear apart lines and letters, reconstructing ,deconstructing, agonizing, imaginizing, bullshitting, and brooding on to crisp white sheets in times new roman twelve point font

for the Monsters and Lollipops that exist in the millimeters between a skull and a brain

this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons slumbering beneath Restless Leaves Under the Moon

Dearest Little Snot
While you are a dinosaur princess reigning supreme over the sandbox with your iron fist perfectly chipped glittery pink fingernails
I want to tell you a few things before you saunter off into adulthood…
the day you were born there was the most beautiful messy thunderstorm
the world cried tears of joy upon your arrival
that’s how I know
God does exist
dangling in the innocent sparkles of a child’s glance
speaking
to you
with each beat of your pumping heart
FYI
when life’s pain makes you want to retreat into the arm of the sofa with a lifetime movie and processed frozen sugar
throw that ***** arrows instead of tantrums
and never forget that you can indeed stop celestial bodies from obscuring your view of the sun
never forget that his world ultimately revolves around your shapely hips
don’t forget to taste the world with your heart open
and chew with your mouth shut
and taste everything and I mean everything
and if it tastes bad
try it again later
keep your dreams close to your heart in an ammunition belt strapped across your chest and be a warrior for your sunshine
but don’t worry about it when the sun don’t shine
because your sunshine will illuminate your dreams
and its okay
if
high school sweethearts don’t stay together forever
or
get back together after forever
to rekindle romances conceived in cafeterias or gym school dances when even a chaperone or Daddy can’t tear them apart
and sometimes the spiral notebook dreams of forever lovers and eternal BFFs never quite unfold from the tight origami wide ruled universes they were conceived at
Believe that
and fancy this you little snot
I’m always going to be bigger than you and smarter than you and win at punchbuggynopunchback
But you are greater than the power that created you
so don’t forget that.

I quite like the virginity of a fresh notebook
the way my wrists and palms drag across its leaves
breathing life between lines in pink magic marker or the severity of red ballpoint
I like the prickly practical meticulousness of a shopping list:
a dozen eggs
one pineapple
one bag of fresh spinach
one bag of English muffins
one bottle of dish soap
I like the tender impressions of curlie cues and firty cursive
communicating endearments placed on counters such as:
TAKE OUT THE RECYCLING YOU LAZY OAF ******* <3 XOXOXO <3
I enjoy the audacity of a wandering doodle
meandering
cartwheeling
hopskotching
between
and under and over
indices

and spaces
between shopping lists and death threats
i enjoy the lingering ghost of prose shaped caverns
carved onto seemingly empty sheets that carry on for pages
until they fade like whispers into an evanescence
I crave the obnoxiousness absurdity of a to do list
daring me to take a day off from procrastination
until tomorrow
call Gramma
rent due on the first of the muuuuuuuunth
take the GRE
update resume
be awesome. like a boss.
most of all
I love the pain and joy of a poem
the way it slowly leaks from heart to mind to hand to paper
staining
spaces
urgently
faster than muses whispers
barely escaping onto lines
prolific terrific poetry
sporadic spacious atrocious poetry
I croon over the denial of the last page of a beat up notebook
the way the paper hangs onto spirals haggard
littered with stringy remnants of lists and reminders and death threats and poems and goodbyes

Mr Montoya
I want to know
Did you discover the great design of your art in the puffs of clouds
hanging
lazily in the sky
In the eyes of stars
did you push back the deafening city lights to hear the chords in your latest song?
How is it that you find trinkets of brilliance like clovers in a field?
I need to know where you felt the lines of your latest poem?
Did you harvest them like peaches from the purple orange sunset?
Can you lead me to where hearts have unfolded
minds are open
spirits are free
like oceans after a storm
I want to meet the muses that live between the pages of your notebooks
wrap my mind in your leaves
like fresh towels from the dryer
did you chase them towards horizons unfounded
did you hear your music in bellowing rainstorms
The chords in the wind and thunder shaking your spinal chord
What divine being hand delivered your brilliance from cloud nine?
Sincerely,
Madame Nanacakes

Tell me, Gentlemen:
while you soared higher than your fears and dreams could ever reach, into the blue crystal infinity,
did you hear the voices of angels echoing off the wings of geese migrating south for the winter?
how did it feel,
fighting for a nation that measured your worth in disheveled water fountains, mop buckets, dust rags, and potato peelings,
defending stars and stripes stained with the same molten white abhorrence smeared on ******* bombers?
did it hit you like a G force?
when you climbed into that cockpit, audaciously red, the blood rushing to your head, was it bitter hand fulls of cherries sweet?
when you returned home through back doors and alleyways to face an Uncle Sam with burning crosses in his eyes,
when you stood curbside at your own homecoming parade feeling confetti and streamers tickle the bridges of your noses,
tell me how it felt, Gentlemen.
will my brothers and sisters who fight only for tennis shoe wealth, understand the worth of those medals on your scarlet blazers?
if I listen hard enough to those jets breaking the sound barrier will I hear your story?
tell me, Gentlemen,
what was it like to fly?
infinite respects,
Curlie Fries Mcgee

relaxing? relaxing would be a sin against myself. see God spun and wove golden bits of wisdom in these curls that are mine. see these curls spring loud with
songs of my Nubian
mothers and war cries of my Rasta fathers. see these curls bounce proud to the rhythm of tribal drums and the foot prints of my sisters from Manila reside
there as they roll
lumpia between the coils and springs. see these curls have moved sandstone bricks cross deserts, building divine architecture so perfectly aligned
with cosmos and
planets until Moses told Pharaoh to Let My People Go. these curls have traveled cross oceans and triangles packed like sardines squalid below the decks
of ships. see these
curls have been ***** by the nasty ***** in the big house and suffered sun strokes in cotton fields. see these curls sing loud and strong. See these curls
were branded and forced
at gunpoint behind ******* barbed wire fences gassed to death in the name of so called purification. see these curls bleed the pain of fire hoses and dog
bites and whites
only signs. see these curls wont back down gainst no burnin crosses gainst no swastikas gainst no elephant ******* talkin all that jazz on fox and cnn. see
these curls dance
wildly off beat to straight rhythms that drone on in 4/4 time c major sixty bpm. see these curls are Mas and my Grammas.  see my curls are too proud to sit
back and chill and won’t take no **** or heat or hot air. see these curls cannot be contained in braids or scarves or jars of creamy crack. see
these curls dare you
to force them to
coerce them to
straighten up
their act. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls will not
******* relax.

won't you please...
tango to waltz
with me. jay walk jay dance jay skip down the street
with me. eat dessert before dinner
with me. color outside the lines
with me. eat with your elbows on the table
with me. speed through the yellow light
with me. divide infinity by zero 
with me. end your sentence with a preposition
with me. abandon convention
with me. just free yourself
with me.