Pedro, Brenda, Alejandro
Voces Inmigrantes
Vertas, Yolanda and Richard
Brave radio show guests

Risking all to follow liberty’s call
Tremendous risks taken
For the sake of familia
Far away and years unseen

Get here, work here
Bring them all here
Seeking asylum
In the land of opportunity

My great grandfather did
I bet your grands did too
We did not then nor should we now
Build barriers, gates or walls

Native, immigrant or freed slave
Were here, came here, or forced here
Our wants for family are the same
America is great, let’s be better

We hear her call
Emigrants all

Statue beckons across the sea
"Your unfortunates are safe with me"

Warm welcome turns to ICE
A promise broken thrice

To me, to them, to you
Please, let our people through

in a malaise
a general haze
not quite right
these days

the buzz is wrong
a sour note song
but, onward!
shuffle along

show a wan smile
while all the while
walking the maze
feigning strong

I’m down in the dumps.
Why? I don’t have the mumps.
Sure, life has its bumps,
Even some humps.
I’ve known many chumps,
As well as some grumps;
(One called me a frump!)
Yet—my mind does its jumps;
Something deep, deep in my ****?
A rumble, stumble, grumble;
Oumph! Ugh!
Quick, pass the stomach pump:
It’s, it’s—
I’m passing a…

The past
Finds its audience
In the future

With rabbit hole logic
Place the eight
straight on its side

Tesser-react to
Come sliding
Back

You have the right to
And/or remain silent but

Speak your truth
softly or LOUDLY but

No, really:
SHOUT YOUR TRUTH!

Breath from your diaphragm
Knowing your is is am

“It’s on,” she said,
as she slid her hands
into her stirrups.

I countered with a hearty “Harf!”
and jumped aboard my steeley steed.
The klaxon clanged
and we were off.

I rounded the first turn inside,
scraping the turnstile.
She laughed heartily as
she glided swiftly by.
Suddenly, smoke and
screeching terrors!

Aluaurms sounded
Medicaloes swooped
swarming with pinging lights strobing
.
My steed whinnzied and shuddered
I swooped around and sloped down.
As I puttered to a stop,
she emerged from the twisted,

Ok’d.

That day, no one shivel lost,
but she had won!

Mind the gap
Tween want and need

Go somewhere else
Where you are alien

Taste the world
Outside your zone

Practice the language
The necessary one

Kindness to strangers
Cross the boundaries

Find the map
That turns from greed

I need some grief relief
I need some glibness forgiveness
A second chance glance
Another shot at redemption

It’s the what we do wrong song
A second stanza reprise
Self reflection detection
And deflection surmise

Beneath the fabric
Covering her eyes
Tears puddle and flow

Arms tired, spirit disgraced
The scales list dangerously
Sword lies discarded

Her constitution weak
Battered by righteous fools
This is how justice dies

Molière died in his boots
Backstage after the show
Imaginary validated

Carrie Fisher died on a plane
Coming home from a UK shoot
Schizophrenia chicken salad

Her last scenes, her last words
Her final funny "*******"
A brilliant exit ballad

Some songs transport me
Sometimes going deep
So deeply I weep

“Sounds of Silence”
"Puff the Magic Dragon”
“Cat’s Cradle”

Yusuf wrote
Father to son:
“It’s not time…”

I made that change
Pilgrim’s progress
Wending Westward

In my ‘67 Mustang fastback
Weaving 7 Cleveland lanes
“I know, I have to go away…”

Rat-a-tat-tat
Human blood splat
Worshipers now whispers

Christchurch
Pittsburgh
Minneapolis

Students, educators
Learning hate kills
What have we learned?

Parkland, Florida
Sandy Hook, Connecticut
Columbine, Colorado

And many many more
The NRA is complicit
Guns, (GUNS!) **** people

Marginalized and minimalized  
****** wife with knife
Boss with memory loss
With whom I spend my life.

*** vowed
Then disavowed
I fell in hot hot  love
With stone-cold *****

Unicorn grow a horn
Your **** smells of blueberries
She walks away with ice cream
Didn't hear a word I said

M-bree oh! I didn't know!
Eggshell walk; afraid to talk
Husbandry is hard
I am on my own

Home alone

Life in the dark
Is no walk in the park
The best path forward
Is simply felt

Hold hands as you
Cross the avenue
From what’s sure to
What you thought you knew

Grab a flashlight
Shine towards what’s right
Trip on the cobblestones
As you hobble home

In the dark, the stars shine bright
Take a left at Cassiopeia
Turn right at Orion’s belt
Skip home on a lark, in the dark

I have a hundred words
to decide what to do.

If I ask and she accepts,
well then, that’s a complicated novel
and game over.

I don’t know.
If I don’t ask,
it will always just be a poem
of longing and regret;
and who wants that?

I could equivocate, stall,
pad out the proposal
with flowery propositions
and run-on sentences
with irrelevant red herrings
and perhaps a false dilemma or two
but in the end
how could that eventuate
a more acceptable outcome?

Sigh.

Buck up, man.
It’s only words.
Do it; do it now:
“Paula, will you…?”

Love, love, love
It’s that simple

There is only one ingredient
Do I have to say it?

Love, love, love:
Lil’ Draculina to baby

Ms. Black back from
Outside to in

Fred into
Well, Fred

Buddy boy served it up;
We got “Love, love, love!”

I try to live it:
Goodness not godless

It bears repeating:
Love, love, love.

semester ends frenzied
with freshmen disheveled
I worry for their worries

I feel their predicaments
but not mine to solve
my words, I hope, are salve

retirement ripe,
I do my best
they must do the rest

Three digits
With tiny circle
Right, and a bit above.

Three digits
Never here before
Not cool, not cool: HOT!

Watch widget
Says it’s only eighty-seven;
How hot in 2097?

The sun kissed mountains
Greet me to the north
A beckoning mystery

The double domes
Of Templo Santa Domingo
Christened in golden light

Shine below the
Guelaguetza dome a
Spaceship mushroom

I walk the streets in early morn
Beguiled, bedazzled, in love
With our temporary home

Thank you,
Black Lives Matter

Thank you
#MeToo

Thank you
Justice for Josiah

Sister Fatima

Sojourner Truth

Tina Fey

MLK

LBJ

Pete Seeger

Malcolm X

Thank you all, you
Supersheros and heroes
Of social justice

My white privileged
Pimply *** is better
Due to you

I’ll do what I can
In words and deeds
To thank you

I sleep next to
The time traveller’s wife
I’m there with her
In the then when where again

She sleeps next to
The time traveller’s life
She’s there with him
Bending being here and then

We sleep until
The moment is right
We wake being
Me, you, us and them

Fresh faces
New futures
Writ large

Opened door
Adulthood beckons
Careers unknown

Friends made
Choices to make
Future shaped

Welcome all to
College smorgasbord!
Choose wisely

The fate of the world
Rests with you
And you and you.

Nostalgia is nice
By its very name
A pleasure filter

A smell

A comment

A picture floating by

Your personal time machine
Kicks in, transporting to
Warm and fuzzy

People

Moments

Joy

You might want to stay
But no, not real
Enjoy it though

Line three thrummed;
bisectional translateral
segments echoed sympathetically.

Eyes one through nine
snapped open
as all legs were put on high alert.

I proceeded down lines
two through five cautiously
to see what was disrupting.

What was I fractually perceiving??
Food, yes; but what—
The fly (but what? half a fly?)

twisted and twirled in my web a
s the homunculus shouted,
and the hairs on my legs tingled in horror,

as I heard, “heeelp meeee!”

I reach down
And what is gone is
An identity fluidity to
Engender remember

Inney or outy
Is our infinity?
No. Flexibility
Today, he
Tomorrow…

rye fphitter waht two…
What?

myie whust cheich punum
What?!

tessha bidda fikum…
I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

Ok I’ll kreshit bid it dit
What?! I’m

Honey, I can’t hear you…
Could you please speak up?

Yes!
mmimble schumble com

Lil’ angel black
Perches nightly
Guarding him
All night long.

He sleeps a lot,
Slow old boy
Downstairs resigned
Downsized.

He saved her
She loves him
He tolerates her
Appreciates, grudgingly

Every cat, every dog
Has their day.
Better yet,
They have each other.

My big brother just
Called out of the blue as

Sun shown through a
Week-long grey mist and

I love the feel of blue skies but
brotherly love—far more important

I might be seen as godless but
We both believe in goodness

Days, months of hot brown
Walking around here, there

I wake with a poem of home
Far from the familiar fog

Missing the mist and rain
Missing the wet and green

Full moon tonight in Oaxaca
It’s full too, in Freshwater

Don’t forget us, gatos
We will be home and wet soon

02/08/2020
Oaxaca, Mexico

Freshmen,
(Her, him and they,
And all other
In-between iterations!)

Welcome to
CSU Northmost!
Furthest on the
Northcoast!

It used to be
Hills, Stairs, Umbrellas
Before corporatization

We had a radio station

No more:
Sacramento weather
CSU Chico news
Welcome to Jefferson!

Local news? No.
Community calendar? Whoa!
"Here’s what’s happening in
Yreka California…”

We hope you enjoy
Your time here
In the Northern Quadrant
Our quad-county area

We used to be HSU
With a KHSU and
A funky community vibrancy.

Welcome to CSU Northmost!

I’ll never play checkers
  with my dad again
Can’t go back to that
  place or when

I remember being
  sick at six
But mom knew soup
  and other tricks

[here’s where you think
  of who/what you lost
both the gain and/or
  the precious cost]

We’re on a time slide
  What a ride!
    Only towards
       So look forward

Buenos días
Hoy es sábado aquí
Hoy es domingo allí en Australia
Hoy es በማንኛውም ቀን
En el Planeta Próxima

El sol salió hace 15 minutos
No veo ¿Que?
Esta detras de las nubes
Pero sabe estas allí
¿Porque?
Se lo que se.

Sé que cada día es un milagro.
Sé que para ser amado,
Necesitas amar
Sé que soy amado porque
Te amos

Bullox, Castor
Is he? Ask her…

Leda leading fight
No swooning swan song.

Puissant grabbing
Power grubbing STAR:

Demagoguery of
Dinky demigods—

Twisted tweets
Nasty not-news

Truth will out
Truth will out

I can live with 84%
That’s a B+, right?
Or at least a B?

.

I'm missing something essential
With intentions unimpeachable
I strove to get it right.


.

Right?





.

Man, it’s hard to be a man.

———

1. MYSEXUAL

**** on cold ****
Kitchen confidential
Learning what feels good.

Unease of urges;
This body discrepancy!
Learning to work it out!

Frozen. Lying next to her.
Panicked. Breathing. Needing.
Yearning to work it out…

2. BESEXUAL

College class. Really.
Human sexuality.
Friendly entry.

Not many after; but all good:
Love fades to friendship.
Then: wife of my life!

"On” would be the term
For her electric touch;
FFFWOOMF! Ready for love!

3. BYESEXUAL

No post-****** depression
Resignation completion
Better just to sleep

Things peter out.
From flames, embers.
From embers, coal.

Did I want to start sooner? Yes!
Did I want to last longer? Yes!
Do I accept what’s now? Yes.

Who?
What?
Where was I?

Uncertain lullaby?

A taste,
A smell,
A sound—

Alarm nearby but:

Frozen asleep
Stasis stuck
Hush-a-bye solid goodbye:

Frozen!

“I CAN’T MAKE MY LEGS MOVE!”
Caught tween here and there
A living/sleeping nightmare

Dreamer tries to wake,
Remembers Borges’ circle;
Who dreams the dreamer?

Nightmare ends as
Barrier weakens
Fluttering eyes awake.

Shift, move; pillow fluff—
Chasm crossed;
Glad I’m not in my coffin.

The maw of grief opens
Slowly, reeking
Of onions

Wet eyes blink
From the lost cost
Bereaved, we weep

Still, not yet asleep,
We sojourn here
Bereft

Yesterday, I was not a nice person
An entire episode of that

Apologies being crafted
Strategies hopefully drafted

A. Bourdain?
It was a trigger

Why I love travel
My best times with you

Showed us everywhere
Bonds we all share

Crass, adorable, unlikeable
(Self reflection there)

I didn’t suffer loss well
A man behaving badly

I was awful to my travel companion
No excuses; apology?

I wish life had subtitles
Or at least a Babel fish
Deep in my ear
To hear…everyone

Or a translator universal
As Seen in all series Trek:
Denobulan, Klingon, Ferengi:
I’d buy that for a dollar!

Walls fall
Borders borrando
I think I’d like a
Lingua Franca

There once was a boy from Eureka
Not Kansas nor even Topeka
He took stock of life
Went off with his wife
To kayak in Lake Tanganyika

There’s a rumble in my tumble
Upswitch Ipswich overload
Chorus of toads or crickets?

Circuits snapping not yet breaking
Electrical trickle cascading
Wassup? Turn it up!

Tune in, drop mic, turn on!

first, relief
I don’t have to do
anything

dishes *****
bed unmade but
everything else

6am to 6pm brigade
promises made
love delivered

chicks in
cats fed
dog abed

then, lover lonely
misses wife—
not the strife

A correlation of crows
Coruscate above
Rippling and shimmering
High in the sky

Potent portents present
As options multiply
Diverge, converge, divide
With diminishing reply

Phosphorescent swirls
In an opalescent sea
Wondrous whirligigs
Of knowing and being

I have been to the top of the hill
Thinking as a hero

I’ve crashed into the ditch
My power never lower

Mostly, in-between
Taking all as it seems

Bored Sisyphus
Doing daily things

But some moments
Define time for action

Et–hem; that time is now

Grief is a bowling ball
Ripping down the lane
Leaving few pins standing

The map of grief
Has blue states
And blue states

Grief is a state
Of emotional tsunamis
Crashing ashore

Waters recede
Pins are realigned
We proceed apace

But with longing
And remembering
And the long tail of love

The dew rises
Sublimation
Water to vapor
Metal to rust

There is a time to acquire
A time to retire
A time to release
I hope I’ll know to

Let it go;
Exhale
Sigh
Slow

I’m a solid bronze snowflake, baby
Shiny, showy, pointy
I don’t melt

I’m here for the love, the dove
I’m here for the queer and the trans
And the newspaper delivery man

My heart is on my sleeve
Always beating never bleeding
For what‘s right, the good fight

This liberal for liberty
Leans so far to the left
It’s hard sometimes to walk

Disregard me at your peril
Think me mushy meek then
Meet me feral

Witless white man
in a sea of brown
without you, the
world still goes round

White bread privilege
tasty sandwich
boloney with oblivious
what wasted bandwidth

I yearn for post-racial
i own unconscious bias
“Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”
better world built by us