I’ve longed to forget you
I’ve prayed for my mind to erase your name
I ask to hold lessons and memories untainted
As slowly you become a little less
I realize so many people don’t get to forget
Faces, hands, smells, pain
are burned
DEEP
DOWN
their neural pathways are trenches to abusers names
I’ve got it easy
Someday soon I will not think of you for a day
then a week
then a month
And I will ask “who?” when they suddenly bring you up
You’ll be a subject long dusty
crumbling away

The grandchild sits
still in the forest open
breathing out her poison
breathing in her world
In her earthy awareness
for a moment her mind steals her away
to ponder the hungry parents
who arrived on a wintry day

No society has ever been devoid of change
but this one learned to crave
inspiration
like fire

No society has ever been devoid of cruelty
but this one learned to cramp
the very mind that shimmered
shimmered in that Fire

I was born to steal the moon
and I’ve been waiting to do it for you
But now I’m tired of that
I’m not gonna hold my breath
cos you still haven’t asked
I’m gonna go get that moon for me

Is a dream, a real dream
A good dream
if it doesn’t make you shiver
if it doesn’t make you shake
if it doesn’t make
you sure you’ll make mistake after mistake?
Is it ever really worth it?
If it doesn’t make you quake
infuse your mind with plans and worry
and at night keep you awake?
What’s the point of living
What’s the point of having smarts?
If it doesn’t make you work
with all your strength and arts
using everything from all your parts
until your straining chest feels like
you’ve been on the wrong side
in a game of deadly darts?

If all your courage it doesn’t take
In the end will you feel a fake?
Maybe you won’t
But I refuse in life to undertake
what I know could just be handed to me
on a plate
If I just wait

A pile of my poems
lies in deepening dust
I look upon it sneering
at its lies in deep disgust
But I cannot say my words are poor
No, my words have richly wrought
the only beauty I could bring
from such an empty thought
To those moments I have gladly said goodbye
that inspired my pen and ink
But I’ll bring out the poems again
for no piece of my art into darkness must sink

Because I am so free,
I will sleep in cages,
To show they cannot harm me,
I will walk my golden feet in mud,
To show I won’t absorb it,
Just as Christ himself,
Who never had a chain,
Chose to live under human rules,
So I will submit,
To pointless stipulations,
Covering,
To truly reveal.
Assenting,
Because I am free.
Those who fly,
Can leave the sky,
And walk,
With light steps.
Shaking off the dust,
Of crowds,
While laughing with them.

A need emerges
a need to be among the wild
lay down and soak among the grasses
fall into an endless sky
crying with release
and the gamey taste of joy
Leave me to the wolves and antelope
Goodbye trees, my old friends
I need to be alone

There’s nothing like the Savior’s arms,
As he wraps his hands around my heart,
For even though he asks for me,
There is nothing selfish in his plea,
For its not taking, but its giving
Its not dying, but its living,
The pain is a stretching feeling,
From this love my head is reeling,

A killing day came,
and I led the ruby towards the gallows
but the knife pierced both I and the stone
no longer looking to better myself
I tried to survive
crying out at the blood spilling
from the word I had carved into the marks
from my fangs
Die
I had almost succeeded
in killing the poisoned chunk
of hollow mesmirism
but I had pulled out veins as well
and I died a little inside

Germans, love to be funny
German-English, love to be friends
Trinis, love to work hard
English, love to talk loud
Bajan, love to travel
Hmong-Americans, love to look classy
Korean-English, love to hangout
Koreans, look good in "gangsta"
Tobagonians, love to give gifts
Americans, love fresh vegetables
Chinese-Americans, love butter biscuits
Canadians, don't know that one guy
Kenyans, love Ethiopian food
Guineans, are the best Arabic teachers
Jordanians, love Kentucky Fried chicken
Brazilians, love Trinidad
Brazilian-Americans, have 5 kids
Puerto Ricans, love Ecuadorians
Ecuadorians, love Puerto Ricans
Peruvian-Americans, love concert piano

Loving you is like lifting a spoon to my lips
it's bowl full of ice cream
sugar and milk sweetly, softly melt upon my tongue
each mouthful reducing in wonder
the taste eventually forgotten until my porcelain vessel lays empty
in my hands
and I ache for more
but my imagined aches harden into reality
as my body reacts in horror at the offering I have brought its enemies

when you find a deeper love
it’s so much easier to give

I wasn't sure
to take it as a sign
or quiet gift in Spring
But the rose had fully bloomed
Open orange petals with a hint of blush
This Easter morning
alone upon its bush

I hold a ripped and scattered rose
but new ones bloom inside my palms

Love is a storm
but my sails are always full
my soul’s canvas fibers locked in place
to move me at the slightest breath of emotion
I’ve docked myself in harbor
to preserve my life
Though too all eyes
I am a worthy, ready vessel
asking for a breeze
waiting for the morning tide

A son of God
I feel so stretched
Like gossamer cords my spirit is pulled
out as far as a galaxy
Image shakes
the shivers of foundations rising
against the scaffoldings of pain
marble white like fused tectonic plates
glistening from a sea of tears
“What a breathtaking Mausoleum”
I groan in faint and whisper in exhaustion
my fingers bleed from working chisel and axe
but my wrists are strong as ever
As rumbling echoes of thunder
Your chuckle reaches me
And stronger fingers lift my heart
and eyes
“Do not think of finished work,
don’t quell your growth with lies
So you say you wish to die?
For someone craving greatness
that’s strange to sadly sigh
Your life is far from over
not even yet begun
Don’t claim you’ve accomplished enough and with earthly ***** living done

Gena is a fragile spiderweb
Glorious in the morning sun
but shining with her tears
Gena is a kaleidoscope
red, gold, blue
Changing her patterns
always sometime new,
Gena is a glass beaded puzzle,
The filamentous kind which gentle fingers could solve,
If only she would let them,

She shouts her strength and wisdom,
Covering her brittle heart with sheer curtains,
But she will choose the right path when she screams for stability,
And her painted lattice masks go up in final flames.

I’ve been waiting
waiting for words to appear
in front of my eyes
like that invisible milk ink
trope
secret messages appearing over fire
for our victorious protagonist to read
But no words come
to describe how I imagine myself kissing
You
I’ve never felt so empty of emotional vocabulary
I don’t know if I’m just lonely
Just if
I’ve always been lonely
I don’t know if I’m finally
too old for such affected flights
of fancies
with strangers
my mind has picked up ostrich feathers as if they were diamond chandeliers
Too quick to hang them in the Hall and worship silly feathers
I swore I shouldn’t fall in love again
To love again
would destroy my weakened mind and body
I breathe in shaky breaths and hear you speaking rationally
between friends
I’m just a lonely lover
Too tired to be anything more
than one bright star
in the short hours before you see your dawn

You saw my face but a couple times
before you grinned and spoke
You shook my hand
then stood real close

you didn't let each little task
break our conversation
you invited me to ask

you let me speak like revelation

there's no turning back
I shudder at the thought
of forgetting my new friend
when life is thick and black

Sand on the seashore,
Wand and a bezoar,
Rustle of lace,
Legolas’ face,
Dragon’s and ghouls,
Monkeys and fools,
Knights, and Queens and fights

I saw you
for the first time today
my heart rejoiced and said
“You are so full of love, please shower some on me.”

You are sunlight
glinting through raindrop prisms



*a weeping angel

if my eyes cannot look at the sun
one word that came from Your mouth
How could they gaze on Your face?
All the more Real

Like a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him

He doesn't understand . . .
He let go . . .
I let go.
He doesn't want to let go . . .
I let go.
Bye.
Goodnight.

My words for you have melted together
Like gold and scarlet
Broad, deep themes of joy and emotions
That I cannot spill them out in an ordered form
they drip down warm
Upon the page they make a boldened shape
dark curves and twisted lines
like my face pressed against your chest

Desire needs no concrete thing to cling to
it slips through cloudy memories
like garishly painted pink snakes
Dripping down like nectar from a forbidden flower

But Hope rises like a tower
Shiny and confident
It leaps to pierce a dark sky
Letting light into my mind
Lending strength to unused muscles
Adding bright and cheery music
to two words
Alone
and
Free

Winding down the alleyways,
Climbing up the walls,
Delivering their urgent schemes,
Yelling down the halls,
Hammering on all the drums,
And pounding on the gongs,
Calling out my burning thrums,
And writing all my songs,
Small things- all things,
These cause my ways.

Thank God!
Loving family is not like eating
my house can never be too full of my favorite people

Sometimes,
I try to please the eels,
Blood isn’t fun,
For either of us,
Swimming in my abdomen,
They bite me hard,
Or sleep,
Later to awake,
And gnaw,
As if they could get out,
One day,
Knives will not be found,
In me,
And the name I’ll choose,
Is happy tubes,

in size
the earth is but a thought
passing through your mind
but you spoke a spark
and magnified in kind
the importance of this little park
to the words upon your tongue
none can fall or go to waste
the universe expansion just begun

slowly carving, you do not haste
the adolescence of a race
whose lives are flashes in a glass
Your countenance of tears
a God of suffering
a God of rain
the God who takes our pain
and forms it into golden coloring

Time, Love in action
is a forever forward dance
it never ends
and stretches on
like the twinkling light that bends
down to us from the stars

I breathe out to release . . .
what?
I breathe out to release . . .
what?
I breathe out to release . . .
what?
I will tell you when I return from meditation

You take my heart with you
on your journey south of 2,000 miles
It throbs a little less
knowing
you left yours inside my chest

It is agony to die, to live in death
to wait as He says wait
to breathe as He says breathe
to rise as He says rise
It is Joy to be lifted up!
But achingly
so slowly
as He shakes away the dust
and grave clothes

I stood threatened
by annihilation
faced with darkness
fire
thorns
my family would endure
no
we
would forever fight for breath
in the oppressive fumes
while wishing our throats would close
no longer to endure
for endurance speaks for better days
here there are no
morning glories
or purple clouds of night
nothing to assure the soul
that it will be alright
only never-ending death

the thought of this was impossible
you wouldn't take it to that end
though by our choice
we doomed ourselves

alone without us?
you needed us not
for to yourself were sweet communion
but how could you not create
for to be God is to make
to take
what you are
and sweep it across the sky
with intoxicating color

a paradox of clairvoyance
Oh Brilliant of the Brilliant
Mind like a thousand bolts of lighting
and you said
"Have your choice.
I will not become less,
though you gorge yourselves on sin
and take the shards
from your own breaking hearts
to shatter the sweet and innocent "

And the strangest thing about this new journey
is that what helps me feel less need for your attention
Highlights how much I wanted it
I didn’t know
****
I didn’t know
How deeply I’ve wanted your attention

some woman
Most
are born hellfighters
The heat grows and ebbs along with the ******
a good mother hands her daughter a strong hose
tells her not to fight alone
keep your body strong and you’ll survive
to put out many, many fires

He’s equal with the Gods, that man
Who sits across from you,
Face to face, close enough, to sip
Your voice’s sweetness,

And what excites my mind,
Your laughter, glittering. So,
When I see you, for a moment,
My voice goes,

My tongue freezes. Fire,
Delicate fire, in the flesh.
Blind, stunned, the sound
Of thunder, in my ears.

Shivering with sweat, cold
Tremors over the skin,
I turn the colour of dead grass,
And I’m an inch from dying.

Would anyone like to collaborate with me? I've never done it before.

When life is red and raw
and your saliva turns to honey
there's a hole in your stomach
******* in all the stars around you
the brightness of a simple rundown house
shoots through your eyes
the pain of awareness
the price of life

Like liquid gold and diamonds,
Raining pearls and sterling,
Was the holy blood, You let
Fall,
A Perfect Prince, destroyed,
Laid upon cold stone,
To not just save, but masterly contour,
us,
We must be worth something,
Now, each shining nugget is placed,
Upon the one before,
And rising, with our Keystone
We are finished, and just begun.

Oh human
so glorious and grand
I sigh in awe
as I stare into this nebulous navel
So full!
and yet so ready to hold more
That is the loveliness of You
every one of you
every one of you glorious and grand

I am a grain of sand
set in the Maker's palm
Such is the length of his hand