"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
in the dark.
It's after dinner playtime.
We're outside,
hidden by trees and shrubbery.
He calls it hide-and-seek,
but only my little sister seeks us
as we hide
and she can't find us,
as grandfather picks me up
and rubs his hands between my legs.
I only feel a vague stirring
at the edge of my consciousness.
I don't know what it is,
but I like it.
It gives me pleasure
that I can't identify.
It's not like eating candy,
but it's just as bad,
because I had to lie to grandmother
when she asked,
"What do you do out there?"
"Where?" I answered.
Then I said, "Oh, play hide-and-seek."
She looked hard at me,
then she said, "That was the last time.
I'm stopping that game."
So it ended and I forgot.
Ten years passed, thirtyfive,
when I began to reconstruct the past.
When I asked myself
why I was attracted to men who disgusted me
I traveled back through time
to the dark and heavy breathing part of my life
I thought was gone,
but it had only sunk from view
into the quicksand of my mind.
It was pulling me down
and there I found grandfather waiting,
his hand outstretched to lift me up,
naked and wet
where he rubbed me.
"I'll do anything for you," he whispered,
"but let you go."
And I cried, "Yes," then "No."
"I don't understand how you can do this to me.
I'm only ten years old,"
and he said, "That's old enough to know."

Black - the color of death
Defined by the absence of color...and life
Black is the colour of a dying soul
and the lives tossed in among the coal
Black is the colour of a crimson sky
From the battles and wars that took place in time
Black is the colour of a child's tears
Curled up in a corner and drenched in fear
Black is the sound of a fired gun
And black is a mother's tears cried out for her son
Black is the lives lost out at sea
and the bound and the tortured waiting to be free
Black is the colour of the mutilated and broken
Black is darkness
To some extent it's inside us all
affecting our feelings and mind
slowly creeping up behind
take this absence and fill it with life
invert our black into white
and create inside us an everlasting light,
the truth

*****
****
*****
*****
Nerd
Punk
******
First words out of your mouth
On the last day of my life
So moments before I pass away
I'll take the time to write them all
On the skin you feared would give you ***
******
Transvestite
Dweeb
*******
Seriously?
You don't remember it
The moments we bumped into each other
In almost every bathroom
Stuffing my face into the fresh ****
You just so happenly dropped
And had all your friends **** on me
As you flushed the toilet over and over again
I'm suprised
You were just joking about it in 5th hour
So allow me to introduce myself again
Hi my name is...
Not going to finish the statement
You usually do with
Queer
***
Short ****
My name has become whatever you decide to call me
And never once do you ever use the same one twice
But today I've kept track
Every name
Every moment in my high school history
Hell even in elementary and middle
You've been there every step of the way
Bullying me even more
Pounding me in the playground
Well I guess I'll show you what you called me
With the bruised body you left me
But I'll finish this off with my actual name *******
My name is Robert Guerrero
I was a poet, the voice to all the people
You thought were your stepping stones to success
Now I'm the corpse you left nameless

My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.

Your eyes
So deep, mysterious, left me mesmerized
I could get lost within their dark depths
I try to breathe, but they leave me without breath
I was so young, still had yet to know of the expedition
That my heart, so youthful, would soon partake in

I wish I'd never looked at you
Or, into you
For whatever reason, your whole being captivated me
Such grace, such splendor, such beauty
So oblivious to reality whenever my eyes wandered idlelessly to your own
So robotic, the feelings always left me blown

I was so scared of the love I felt
Scared to show it
Afraid to be close to you, no matter how much my heart yearned for the comfort of your aura
Afraid that with one innocent touch of our elbows from the rocking of our school desks
Love would be unleashed, it's selfish wrath suffocating, latched on like a pest

To do this day, I'm still afraid
I hope, to God, that she'll never change
All though, I know, my love will never change
And to this day
She leaves me in awe, with her perfection, yet my thoughts leave me in dismay
I'll never admit to her, that she's the reason I cry everyday
She's the reason I breathe, yet she's the one who seems to ****** it out of my lungs
She's the reason I want to live, and she's the reason I want to die
I hate her.
But I love everything about her.

She hides behind the blond dye in her hair
and the often-smearing black rings around her eyes
the greatest struggle in her life as of late
is in the groggy mornings, having to rise
out of bed to face the day and the people
she would really rather avoid

She is black and white
a pendulum
stuck swinging from one side
of the spectrum to the other
There is no gray
in her life, and so,
to compensate,
her mind short circuited
and sent fireworks to the sky
She tends to writing songs with names
that explain their purpose just outright
as if she knows she needs to help the world to understand
what’s going on inside her head, and to write
the names of bands she thinks are rather nice
along the edges of her wrists and hands

She drinks quite a lot of tea
for a girl of her size
and obsesses over bands and boys
she knows may never know her name
she spends most of her time
learning and writing songs on her guitar
and jotting down lovely ideas
for fantasies and wild adventures

She isn’t the type of girl
you think you would expect
but the things she does
surprise you,
and that’s all you really need
As unique a girl that she is
adds great moments to any day,
so search for them,
and cherish them,
because a girl like this
does not come as often as you’d like

I feel like I'm running in circles.
Never getting to my destination.
I pack my bags,
Pay for the ticket.
But end up at the same train station.

It's an ongoing battle.
That I see so many win.
So I gather my weapons,
Put on my armor.
But your end is where I begin.

I want to say it's easy.
But I don't know know that yet.
I try so very hard.
Just to start all over,
Well who woulden't be upset?

But I have to keep going.
I have to make it through.
So I'll keep running,
I'll keep fighting.
At least I'm trying, unlike you.