I’m going to Republican heaven,
Going to meet Republican Jesus
After I pay off my school loans
Whenever my banker pleases
To let me out of the contract
With its usurious interest fees
And I am sure I will get there
When I am down on my knees.

I’ll have my Republican Bible
With its verses edited wisely
To exempt all the white folk
From behaving quite nicely
And making sure welfare
Is only for rich white neighbors
The rest are not allowed in
Our society except as laborers.

I am sure that Republican Jesus
Will welcome me quite warmly
For supporting the death toll
Of our Christian Soldier army.
He will be so delighted that
We vilified ungodly abortions
And how we treated those awful
Poor mothers and their orphans.

He will have to be delighted
That we held back the riches
We gained from our warfare
Ignoring our soldiers in ditches
Or maimed in those battles
We know you wanted us to wage
In the name of Republican Jesus
Out of our holy sense of rage.

Republican Jesus surely will
See how cleverly we diverted
The money to the richest people
Not the soldiers we deserted.
And, how only the people who
Did not need help financially
Got all the extra wealth we had
And we made sure of it annually.

I’m going to Republican heaven,
Going to meet Republican Jesus
And I’m sure greed and bigotry
Will just tickle him to pieces
Because it says in the Bible
The only people who will get in
Are the people that look like me
And vote for all the same men.

We built a beautiful relationship together
sturdy and effective but also appealing and bright

You watched the relationship
you had modeled ours after
crumble to the ground
and all the flaws revealed

We had both seen this before
but it was different this time
Maybe because our relationship
looked like theirs once had

But what we could have never seen
was all the cracks in their foundation
All the problems
they hid in the basement

relationships don't crumble in a day
they slowly erode away
each crack left unfilled
takes away the stability a little more

the rusted out center
of your parents relationship
left only an outside shell
a gust away from complete destruction

The outside doesn't matter
we aren't doomed for the same fate
just because we used the same bricks
its the upkeep that matters

To have a good relationship you have to fill those cracks
You have to work to make things stable
they don't always come naturally
but the results of working together are incredible

With my head held high,
Feeling light.
I jaunt down the avenue.

The heels of my feet unsteady,
“This sailor still has his sea legs!”
I gargle as my body stumbles,
Tumbles,
Face bloodied on asphalt and rubble.

Even though my mug is mangled,
My bottle is intact.
And that is what truly matters.

The glass cannot break;
Shred my being to tatters!
Before I part from my everlasting bond
Of neck in hand.

One last swig!
Before I head out to sea.
I may drown…
But there’s no drink in the deep.

Tonight, as I flip through the world in the fog of the sky,
My brother's coughing beside me, rolling onto his right side,
We're pulling the bald landscape over our bodies of dust, 
We won't be dreaming of fairytales, just of a home to trust.

We drank too many tides, the sea is spilling over our bodies,
One day when our hearts explode, our names'll rhyme with casualties,
Along the tribes we race, at a young age hard we learnt,
That the longer we wait, the more of our memories will be burnt.

It's in black and white, the digital world they're fussing about,
We're in one cell of this universe that seeps no sound,
The clatter from the battleground rivals our ringing ears,
My dead mama said, boys were born to laugh at fear.

Through mirrors of smoke, I think I see distant planets shine,
I write to God everyday, can you patch the holes of mine?
At a tie in this war of peace, they bow down to the lion in the cage,
It'll only ever be a means to end, even our corpses will be estranged.

They only ever see eye to eye and claws to fangs,
Under clouds of fire, me and my brother will dance.

Eroding brick wall
all that remains
refracted, fading
fishermen shadow
red dawn’s early light

brackish still water
shocked violent green
seeps from the desert
to be subsumed
by an unrelenting sea

restless dreamers rise
muscle sturdy pangas
into the churning tide
seeking quicksilver
at the continental edges

returning boats ride low
the shrinking horizon
race to safe harbor
cold beer on ice
under palm palapas

in the restaurant
a young man
shows off tuna
half as tall as he is
to admiring tourists

like me, seeking
the deep, slow burn
salt, jalapeno, lime
a fitting end to this
unraveling dream

Pueblo Mágico
of “no bad days”
walls of contention
in a fractured land
will never separate us

one margarita, two
another raised in defiance
of those who would try
to confine and define
free-range spirits

the Pacific touches
this contiguous shore
from equator to pole
we could catch
a clockwise current

follow Polaris up North
arrive transformed
magnetically charged
disparate souls fused
together bound

I had to call the cops on my ex-boyfriend last Thursday:

Stop looking at me like I did something to you.
I have campus police on speed dial, if you do not leave, I will call them.
You need to stop pretending like I did something wrong to you.
I am dialing the number right now.
Look at me. Look at me! Stop looking at me like you're a victim! I didn't do anything wrong to you. I don't deserve this.
Look, it's ringing. You need to leave.
First, you need to stop looking at me like I did something wrong to you.
No. Leave.
Look at me!
Leave.

You feel a special kind of guilty when you have a stalker. You don't want to believe that someone you ever loved would to this. You really don't want to believe that someone you were ever intimate with, or someone who has pictures that you painted for them in their room would do this to you. You don't want to feel vulnerable. And you really don't want to feel that every few seconds, you need to be looking over your shoulder for them. You just want them to leave you alone.

These last few months left a bad taste in my mouth;
The bad taste of dagger flavoured alcohol,
Of too much ****, cough syrup and coke.

This month left me empty and broke,
I want to choke out the truth to you but some things are too painful to speak--

I never imagined something so painful wouldn't bleed.