Your mistakes
and imperfections

the lines around
your eyes - small

miracles, little
biographical proofs

of your timely
existence.

Everyone always talks about it, marches blindly toward it
with its hopeful and bright days but what does the future,
the expected child of history, mean? Is it hidden in the next
sentence? In the shadow of tomorrow? A year, two, three

from now? And yeah, everyone always thinks about it,
makes plans and to-do lists for it, waits for the ease to come,
for the hardship to pass, for the bullets, like hummingbirds,
to stop flying but when I get there, will I be safe? Will the sun

rise for me? Will the crickets sing and stop as I pass them
on the street? When I get there, will my wife be safe?
Will the sun rise for her? Will the crickets sing and stop
as she passes them on the street? When I get there, will our

children be safe? With their fair skin and brown eyes? Or
will the bullets, like hummingbirds, continue to fly? I can
picture it now: driving home on the stretch of interstate
between work and home on a Friday evening, content with

the will of the week, eager to share what joys and concerns
revealed themselves within the seconds of my day, the lake a
floor of blue covered in diamonds bobbing in my peripheral,
when over the radio a journalist reports another unarmed

Black body was murdered by those trained to serve
and protect the future.

After the 24th revolution of the longhand
on the clock, the radio plays bossa nova jazz
all night and me, I sit awake in an empty
studio replaying the day in my head as I

row alone across the lake of my notebook
as some now-deceased artist sings about
a 17-year old girl living on Montenegro St.
as beads of moonlight drip from the blade

of the paddle back into the lake as my arms
push and pull and push and pause mid-row
to catch the rhythm and blues of solitude.

You were fourteen in Dr. A.’s class
when on that day you proclaimed
to have learned nothing and on that
day Dr. A. held no doctorate degree.

You were fourteen in Dr. A.’s class
when bodies: sick, overweight, in-shape
fell from buildings and into to TV screens
into history books, only to be stuck forever

in a New York newsreel in their Tuesday
outfits with Monday night’s love and touch
brewing, aged and earthy, from their falling
lives. If you listen closely on the eve of this day

the wind still whispers their scent of perfume
trails, still whispers what really happened
that busy day in the clouds, in the sky.
I was ten and can’t recall where I was

or in whose company but like the waters
stretched between Europe, Africa, and the
America’s, I was (am) far removed, was (am)
still putting together the blue-black lineage

of my triangular history that drowned
in the salty waters stretched, flowing
between three continents. But fifteen
years later, we (you and I) have overcome

the billowing black clouds of Tuesdays
the Monday night upsets, and the routed
maritime of our ancestors. 15 years later
you are still alive with your blue eyes

and clear face, are still four years my senior
are still my guiding light and sight of sun.

Before you know it, the week is over.
Some bills paid. Meetings attended.

Congratulatory cake sliced into two
dozen squares for an engaged couple.
When suddenly, suddenly you discover

that a certain reticence has breached
the comfort and security of your partner.
Followed him to the coffee shop. Wedged

itself between his breakfast sandwich
and speech. Followed him to the city’s
public square where a large group of

suburban mothers dressed in loud colors
practiced yoga underneath spotty skies
in itchy grass. Where sunlight appeared

and disappeared from his brown skin
and wind upturned the corners of the pages
of a novel he read from as the reticence said

more to you than he had all morning
and the bees’ only agenda was to land
on the wavering yellow petals of sunflowers

and then take off into a day that would become
tomorrow's news and next year's history.

As the water birds lifted from the morning tide,
I found myself being lifted from an unconscious
state to the dictionary by four unfamiliar syllables

like the many poets before me, searching for
the meaning of nomenclature. Interestingly enough,
it could have been me on the other side of a poem

that I would come back to after sundown: an old,
scientific word who first appeared in 1610,
whose roots grew, naturally, like the hidden

interests of a loved one, from the Latin
nomenclatura (the assigning of names).

But instead, I ended up on this side of the poem,
sitting before an empty screen and a dictionary
in a Yankees ball cap and denim t-shirt, slowly

piecing together a poem about a 17th century novel
while trying to include the sudden interest of my
loved one: French parenting literature on healthy

eating, all while slowly tying the loose ends
of a poem without meaning together.

And even on my most
forgetful days
days when I can’t remember
what happened in an Austen novel
nor the last time I thought
of others before myself
you are still a poem
on those forgetful days
that I memorized several years ago
perched on the sill of my tongue
waiting
like birds
to take off into a
disinterred sky
waiting to be recited before a
disinterested crowd.