part, the first; serve

           a good conversation is like a good game of tennis,
(with no winner) the ball drunkenly goes from side to side.

           coffee shop, asking to pass the sugar,
the serve is delicate and precise, making it is key.

           acceptance with the splenda is passed along with ‘sure’,
the receiver must lose their name, anticipate the arrival

           following up with such a statement, a vocational inquiry
title lost, the ball has been struck and thrown as response.

                                 part, the second; dance

the game has truly begun;
                      the beginning is not the serve,
           but the response to.

back and forth in endless banter,
                      meaningless question,
           to meaningless answer.

secretly, both don’t want the volley to end;
                      not often does the
           passing sugar trick work.

                                 part, the third; point

a fatal slip- achilles heel:
remembrance. no appointment is worth
           losing a point, even
one for a prostate check (despite common opinion)

good thing then; the score
does not go to a single point, it requires
           four or so completions,
though by four they will not count score

(and will drop the rackets).

perilous are those decisions
you haven't yet made
         afraid of the seed the tree
questions its own validity

inconsequential are those thirty minutes
before a decision
         the wind moves the branches without
the tree's choice

forgiving are those moments
in bed asleep beyond not here
         the tree can't spot failed saplings
without the daylight which lets them grow

what are you(or what you always once were)other than
the twirl in the string and the root under oak. the
math in the pattern and the mirror beyond the reflection.

i feel i know no other(beyond my sentiments
of you, dearest)and the blanket of your soft touch. your
warm breath melting the ice caps of my sorrows.

you are the legs shared by men and table; the
frame yet the paint; the brick and the roof(
protecting me from myself);and the cloud of the rains.

you are the flash before death, you(and only
you)are birth, you are the reflection, you are the pen
but most importantly you are you(and no one other).

i stopped watering
     the succulents,

because even if i
     watered those **** plants,

they would die.

just stop dying,
     and drink,

******.

sloppy joe, why do you keep
yelling when you cross the road? your
meat keeps falling from your
sides and i swear you are beginning

to scare the neighbors. the dogs keep
chasing you, yet you never seem to care
about those hounds and terriers. self-
preservation (though you are a sandwich,

and a quite enjoyable one at that) seems like it
should be an instinct which someone as
tasty as yourself should have. you never seem
to worry about those massive hands reaching

out to bite into you and taste your
guts and innards, and all the sauce in between
them; but for some reason, i'm beginning to think
we should all be as relaxed as you,

sloppy joe. even though maybe we should
be more cautious about how our grease
gets all over everywhere. however other than
the grease we should still be like sloppy joe.

and i can't think of a more beautiful
moment, than when we connected; as
all moments that we shared before that
second, were lost in the dust.

the dust that rose from the road, as the
car drove off. it sailed high and dissolved
in the weight-less autumn air. the afternoon
sun filling the spaces in between the low clouds.

the dust which lay on his dresser, idle,
except when the gusts came through the vents, and
the cat pushed its head between the door and
the wall. or maybe, whenever that car returns.

does the tree really fall if no one saw the
cliche intro into the poem where
          its self=awareness is not;
new(s) to anyone except those who

see the strange simbols and mispellyngs
       .
did it really ;exists or swifts in this air
that movement of my poem. ending the re!
sentence right before the line

ends.(viceversaaswell). does art just
            steal from the originality that life
lacks? or do our questions stem from
a        false sense of identity in need           ing to

b
e
o
h

so
deep.

in a moment of childish insurrection,
          i folded a coin in half.
using the godly, hulking, still-sitting vice,
          i placed the quarter into its cold palms

with each turn of the rod,
          the coin bent.
it rotated, the crushing iron force,
          the vice had no emotion, only strength

the coin warped, fighting, a steel bone structure
          pushing up against the silent jaws.
i kept turning, changing that reflection of george washington
          into an irregular, uneven, foul little thing.


it had lost its value, the quarter
          going from the 'almost half a dollar' state
into nothing.
          a strange, bent, dismembered corpse

a serial ******, with the body sent to the state
          this coin, bent. it had no value
a few cents in nickel or copper, (at most)
          but it didn't have any value before;

before it lost its sole purpose,
          its existence taken in (george washington's) its eye.
other than the fact that we gave it what it held important
          its 'purpose', its 'value'

so much for that

i would like to                                            (one
awake in a valley                                         day)

so vast, its considered
the Guinness World

Record: Largest
Armory™, with all its

unsheathed blades
of grass.

i(as many other space rocks are)am jealous of the moon
for not many space rocks travelling at
     twothousandtwohundredeightyeight
mph

can say they have apes who speak
dinky(boats on the waves of his essence)
     chops of verse    dedicated
to them

why an ape would compare(with
metalrodandink)one of my fellow
     space rocks to his(notreallybutkindof)
girlfriend

i don’t know but i am jealous(as
a space rock who doesn’t have apes)
     when that littlecutegreyspacesmudge has them
(and i don’t)

this verse arrived when in my mind did you
i know the voice sings clear but the heart speaks true,
a crippled old man, that heart tells tales
of the self and the journey, that gripping your sails:

losing to winds which chill our bones
the crack in my hull, boat sinking as stones
like ones in the river, which we threw when in love,
our lips have been sewn, but that's push come to shove,

upon the river banks comes that song we had sung,
washing up with the stones, and the remains of my lung.

why do you chew me up,
America?
why do you ask me to stand under
your flag and its stars, when in a clock’s
turning, i move as sheep to pens, going
from stall to stall, all to learn about you,
America?

why do you hold me on your tongue,
America?
why do you let your baby sheep be
slaughtered in their pens, while your
bleating is too loud for anyone to
end the massacre of the babies;
why is there no discussion,
America?

why do you show me off,
America?
why am i on your tongue, like a snow-
flake on a child's, or the straw
on a sheep's; or the dryness on a man’s
when he is done chewing his meat,
America?

why don't you spit me out,
America?

why don't you let me sit in the mud,
by the **** and the bones of the butchered
animals,
America?

why can’t you stop the bleating--

it all feels lifeless
soulless

the white tile floors
against the white brick walls,
and the stones with sprinkles of
grey- spread out
like seasoning tossed on meat

this beast is faceless

it doesn’t need to snarl
or show it’s ragged claws
to scare me,
and it doesn’t need to open
it’s jaws, or ensnare me in its
paws to shred my body
to pieces

it can stay still. it can just
remain how it is,
with silent, grey doors
and identical rooms

why does
it curtain the light from each face-
stopping them from being
suns in the sky of interaction
or full moons when the earth
has turned itself from the light
of the sun, when life brings
it to where it will go

singed by acute crossroads
        we are marooned through indecision-
pulling our weight
        trying to lighten the load

we bare it as does the earth
        and the sun lying on its cot
ready to fall beneath the resting place
        the coal of the hearth, warm in rage

our reflections are true in its image
        everything is a mirror
if you are willing to accept what you see.
        our weight falls from pinning

beneath that hibernating skyline
        as the sun turns it's red steel cheek.
the chains binding us to our burdens
        fall with that sleeping illuminator

pulling us to the ground, the dirt
         turned to mud with our spit,
the slime of creation in the eyes
         of the god we have failed.

only once our tounges rest with the rocks
        as the sun does with its cot,
may we (in our eyes) look up to the creator,
        and ask him to break our chain.

from his hand, the cotton folded,
and from hers, she spun rough string.
then from his, the letters bolded,
but from her tongue no songs to sing.

from his heart, he felt no pumping
her cuts and scrapes had not left marks,
from the wheel, he heard the thumping,
from her eyes, she looked as stark.

their posture spoke obedience,
with feet and arms that hurt as such,
in their thoughts, all fists were clenched,
though their souls felt cold to touch.

from his hand, the paper stolen,
and from hers, the same, again,
and in his mouth, the gums were swollen,
her eyes, a place always like fen.

“respect” their cold leader once said,
“is what you ought to have.”
their labor left them feeling dead,
and for this, he had no salve.

from the thread they harvested,
they sewed him his expensive clothes,
and once the laborers felt bested,
he raised his hand, more came in droves.

if time knew no name
                                   i might be happy
for every time we call
                                   i always must say
(through the power lines)
                                   goodbye in twenty
with our sour looks,
                                   we accept goodbye

not that we want to
                                   but we must leave- with
inherent certain-
                                   ty, we know we’ll talk
again- one day soon,
                                   maybe far
but my words will
                                   reach your tired ears;

their echoes will bounce
                                   cave wall to cave wall
singing their song
                                   each time they connect-
word- syllable- tone;
                                   “goodbye in twenty”
a bee with its *****
                                   a wasp and its bite.

lo siento mi
                                   vida, quienes
ojos son el cielo,
                                    son la mar.

a little loving verse, for
the sweetest love i know.

you are petite, just like a
grape, or a pinky toe.

my little love, my little
sweet, what shall i do?

i think i found the
sweetest love, i found
it just from you.

i checked the shoe box in
the closet, i have 54$ in cash
a small part of me wishes
i had millions,

but another part of me
is glad i don't.
the wanting takes root in that i
wish i could fly down to see you;

(new york is far away,
though you remain in my heart)
(realistically it
would be a taxi then train-ride) but truthfully

the burden of money
is greater than that of a broken heart.
my father didn't have
to teach me that;

for
the world did instead.

don't be loud in libraries.


i sympathize with one
of them, their leg hurts, so i guess
it is important the world knows.

one of them, i'm not sure, and the other-
the same. i am still sure one of them is in pain,
and, not to be a herald of demise, but
i don't need to know your leg hurts. the doctor
does.

it also doesn't help you are singing in a place
where poets sit, doing nothing as we always
do. so please, let me do nothing as usual
without the disturbance of your pain or your
early christmas singing.

between each breath, these
words hang
          floating
like balloons in front of their eternal
background. rising up and up
until the pressure is too great. until

the break in your words is too great
and no phrase can pull them together. that
place by the tip of the troposphere, or
whenever you pause and lose track.

sometimes i regret talking too much, and
other times i wish i let go of the string.

why does love always
feel like a battlefield. a
battlefield. a battlefield.
a friend of a brother once said,
biting his tongue and
chewing his cheek.

          hand glued to his mandible
          head tilted like a sinking ship
          taking in its final breath, huuuuaaaaa
          and before it sinks in
          a miraculous cacophony;; it
          exhales, aaaaaaaahh.

why do we stop, when we can
start, i asked Sartre, who
may have responded in a
tongue i can’t taste.

i’m amazed. love
and swords, such imagery!
and repetition like cupids’
arrows fired from each side
of such silly, important warfare.

i’m glad-
in this battlefield. battlefield
battlefield, i’m not fighting a
battle, or settling a skirmish;
i’ve sat down with the blonde haired
soldiers (though my comrades
shake brown locks), and we’ve
begun to play soccer and drink
in the name of conflict.

serve your bullet on the platters
along with the silver spoons and
doomed matters. we don't deserve other
than the dust of our creation.

that's what we are, we beget
ourselves and are not patient
we are our creation,
we are not the scrolls in our town
halls but the clay molded by our hands
and the soccer *****. out in the street,
not stopping other than by abrupt
stamping of your cleat.

the cost of cost may be a
long lost generation, when you spew nukes in a foreign invasion-
we bare our friends corpses and
drag them through the nation,
it’s true the wrong place for
skeletons is the basement.

the mice haven’t done much,
but the eagle still soars with a strong beak,
i fear for the rodents,
they better live discreet.

god forbid their heads end up
above the leaves,
or sharp talons might tear
shreds from their sheets.


scared-
stay seated in your chairs
my friends.
the eagle holds a picture’s scraps
where heaven holds no end.

that map was shredded along with
your brother’s skin.
oh God forbid, that’s it, rabid, next!
i would say a
goodbye to the rabbits,
but they already left.

pause me at my cellar door,
            thwart my plans to descend;
the dog doesn’t recognize the moon in the sky,
            but only sees its simplicity reflecting across the water.

fire that arrow into the dark,
            we fear only what we cannot see.
speak until your lungs are gravel,
            no one can move your tongue but you.

in the land of healthcare and
a flag oddly similar to puerto rico
there have been attacks, sly
maneuvers near the embassy.

sonic sounds blasting the ears
of diplomats; eardrums shattering
like walls under the force of cranes;
such drama! an attack so subtle
one could not accuse an island of
it, as it can't even be seen.

but, it might just be crickets,
such drama, such disappointment.

my love told me the sonnet i wrote
for her was lovely.

but it only could be that way because
of her(love).

there is no art without a muse, and i
suppose there is no love
ly poetry without a love.

why would someone write
          with such intense specificity

to the point which
          no one can understand

because of the need for
          greater intelligence than

"the average ******, ignorant homosapien
          who follow vocal orthodoxy

with their imbecilic word choice"
          when the pinpoint is so fine

no one sees the hole
          it has made.

it was like i saw her face
for the first time.

she sat across from me
back straight as a board
even though there were
no nuns around to
pull her ear and tell her
to sit straighter.

im glad she's her.

a disconnect from reality is deadly
when thoughts of death don't change
your emotions
when you can't be offended
nothing is that serious...

what is reality
when you don't have the words
to paint its portrait