I used to be hidden in my room
choking at my mouth's roof
as if stuck within a stutter,
exhausted from existing, hinging
like a wind-chime battered by a hurricane.

Then a troubadour with honey hair
had me humming to his ear-worm
of a melody, depicting a choreography
that jolted my legs into frenetic mania
like an early talkie starlet's.

For years, I have memorized
this intricate chord structure,
immersed myself in its crescendos
until I could belt it backwards.
It's the only song I know by heart.

There is this one tune,  though,
if you can even call it that,
this atonal reverberation that alerts
the darkest corners of my mind,
a slowly muttered siren song
leading to lands I never want to visit.

I can never fully decipher
the lyrics to an entire verse.

It's the excerpts, scattered
like dust mites in a concert hall,
that try to nibble at me piecemeal,
romanticizing the revolving door
of self-destruction, bruises
veiled as smudged calligraphy.

So please excuse the minor notes
that hiccup from my vocal cords
every other half moon or so.

It's just the ebb and flow
of awkward drumming
that disorients the ear,
causes me to trip up
on the patchwork of refrains
we've spent so much time weaving
into heavenly cohesion.

Above all, please remember
that no static or din
will ever shoehorn its way
into our ironclad harmony.

We can sense it.

Something deplorable
is about to happen--
we can no longer stop the ranks
of housebroken infidels
from migrating into the wild
they have never encountered
beyond photo and film.

It's coming out! The stampede
of hairy-legged pheromones
we could once browbeat
into prepubescent shame
with the speed of a smack
upon the tender noggin!

It takes courage to enjoy
the canned campfire stories
we passed off as ageless doctrine.

How they once recoiled, squirming
like slugs thrown in a salt mine!

Now the writhing is self-inflicted,
the sweat off their brows no longer
cold, damp beads but now welcome
lubrication that slithers down
their lecherous masses of flesh!

Despite our most dogmatic toiling,
the iron shroud has revealed itself
as a featherweight curtain within a few tugs.

Anyone else feel the walls shake to and fro?
Why does the water in that glass ripple so?
Has it arrived already? The end of our reign
as dictators of the prevailing value system?

Fetch thee the community smelling salts!
Too late! The young and vulnerable
have already begun to trample!
Push the powder out of your wigs
to blind yourself from the carnage!

*The Age of Inhibition has screeched
and skidded into its evil twin's Renaissance.
Big time sensuality has straddled the saddle,
too busy racing avenues to declare victory.

"I'm not angry," barks
the man-child with fingers
clenched into mittens
made of tendons
and brow line hunched
like the backs of cavemen.

The veins
             that line his neck
      form boiling canals
                      when he's quicker
          to set ablaze
than a paper doll
             in a brush fire.

The annals of his ancestry
could fit into a matchbook--
a pocket-size anthology
of swinging *****
and temper tantrums.

The sweat his pores harvest
                both quench
                          and drown him.

Resistance is futile.

Her charm is a Northern star
that illuminates the trail
mapping out your potential.

She’ll take those excuses
that hung upon your frame like chain-mail
and toss them like a child’s knapsack,
light years from your reach.

I didn't need to say a thing
before she got to work
yanking me from the homemade muck
in which I was drowning my dignity.

Who knows which depths I’d have reached,
what abyss might have become
the blueprint of my worldview,
without her seasoned eye for navigation?

What tangible item can symbolize
even a fraction of my gratitude?
Anyway, back to all about her.

Mother, sister, grandma--
they’re not identities
so much as works of art
in her careful hands.

Prepare to feel loved.
You've got no say in the matter.

If you ever get close
to the fork in a path,
wander through the tectonics
that diverged the road
in the first place.

Every pixel of your being
is animated. Even the unlit
trap doors leaving pockmarks
on your mind's landscape
possess colors with no name.

Who knew electronic and acoustic
were just estranged family all along?
GENRE is a manmade affectation--
music appreciation for Jingoists.

If they feed you a raindrop,
swallow the entire ocean.

I shed pretension like a stunted snake skin
within the vicinity of your warmth.

Chicken soup simplicity, I love the recipe.
Took me ages to find the right stock.

Four-on-the-floor beats the dissonance
of time signatures fighting for dominance.

I've thrown away so much paper for you.
At least a few trees have died in your name.

How selfish. You're lucky I'm sticking around!
And that it takes almost no effort!

That a barely audible suggestion from you
can sink in further than anyone's barking!

Why am I still yelling!
You did this to me!
Coaxed me into cracking
the icy shell I was mistaking
for a safe haven!

How dare you make me realize
that the light at the end of the tunnel
was something other than a freight train?!

You beautiful *******.
You magnificent cur.
I'll never be the same.

With your roasted chestnut
of a personality, how could I not
expect to start thawing?

I left the plantains you sent me
on the counter. Wiped
around them on cleaning days.

Eyed them as they sat there,
expectant and unwanted,
for hours into weeks.

Let them blacken and soften
until they resembled
the dental records of a corpse.

Were they lifted from the soil
of your Dominican hometown?
Did you farm them yourself?

The bruises speckled on its skin,
were they hand-picked? You always
had great aim with that sort of branding.

I'm awake at the birth of morning,
early enough to see dawn's rosy sun
crack onto the horizon like egg yolk.

From my bedroom window, I can also see
a garbage truck craning its rusty claw
towards the pile I set out last night.

Talk about a metaphor.

Nails the length of javelins click on countertop
with the speed of a coked-up woodpecker
as this goddess of the night with bullets
of caked foundation sweating from her forehead
awaits her fifth free Long Island of the night.

Safe to say, she's a little high maintenance,
like all treasured centerpieces
of a local museum deserve to be.

She is your generation's Mona Lisa, trust.
Her sneezes will be dissected for coding.
Like the rust on buried Babylonian armor,
she lives sandwiched between myth and reality.

A Frankenstein of queer iconography,
door-knocker earrings designed by Adrian.

Stilts for heels clack on blinking dancefloor,
balancing a hermaphroditic echo
that charges through hieroglyphic binaries
with a four-on-the-floor precision.

It's been a bit jarring, this stumble into symmetry,
my good senses
               gluing themselves intact
         like an eleventh-hour craft project.

No string sections swelling for this comeback kid--
the just desserts, in this case,
                             arrive in the form
                             of a steady hum
                             that breezes the past away
                     with the ease of a loose eyelash
           flying in a tropical storm.

It took years to embody this equilibrium,
to approach the mid-morning sun
and not recoil from overexposure,
no longer draped in the sweat-soaked robes
                 of secrecy. I have tripped upon a biome
                 of bravery, fallen into the measurements
                 that require no prickly tampering
                 from the rusty, dulled needle
                of a fraudulent tailor.

You make me not hate snoring.
You miracle worker, you.
Usually it feels like a lawnmower
massaging my skull, but you, buddy,
croak like an angel.

The acoustics of your voice,
the high fidelity and crumpled static,
the seesaw between treble and bass,
have my head singing
pitch-perfect harmonies.
Your hum slows down my tempo,
heightens my crescendo,
sends my heart pumping
at double-time *staccato.

I want to tell you something
but my lips are flicking sparks
like a lighter draining fluid
and I want to bombard you
with all my ragged knots
of truth but the words
are stuck in traffic
giving each other the finger
ramming bumper to bumper
so they can reach the nearest
exit and my nerves
are a rickety jalopy
almost flipping over
at the sight
of any speedbump
and I'm ripping
at the edges
like the pages
of a Lynch script
because
I want to tell you something

You make my body burn slow,
like a stricken match in a film noir;
our legs intertwine
like muscular vine,
chests pressed so close
we can synchronize
our heartbeats, every artery
and vein pumping
like speed-of-light projectors.

You bend my senses, make them
forfeit heir coherences, force
my limbs to misplace
their native tongue
within a simmering puddle
of submissive bliss.

Your tongue sliding up my back?
Fosse was never so graceful.

I want to play back your moans
on speakers the size
of monoliths.

I need to pleasure you
until the wave
becomes a tsunami,
one ready to swallow all doubt
and shame and apprehension
until all that septic negativity
is trapped within our jaws,
drowning in our slithering tongues
until it dissolves as quickly
as sugar in a boiling cauldron
and there is nothing left
but our sweat and our panting
and the excitement
that these dunes of ecstasy
will repeat themselves indefinitely.

My voice is nestled within a river
of transitions, positioned
in endless sets of pre- and post-
parentheses. Pre-revolutionary,
post-Missing Link. Post-postmodern,
pre-postmodern revival.

I sit in a somersaulting purgatory
sandwiched between evocation
and paralysis.

My hatred is exhausted, shoulders
hunched over a guillotine,
cursing with its tongue sprawled
dead and dry at an imaginary hunter,
a mass of bones clumped
under the rug I keep pulling
from my own two feet.

Will you hack through this cocoon?

Have you got the muscle
and the patience?

Nevermind that bedtime story.

There must be some wounds
of yours, those placed beyond
the verbal tanline, that need
immediate bandaging.

*Can I get you anything?

Knock, knock.*
Who's there?
Someone's at the door.
Hide the stash!
Get the snacks!
For Christ's sake,
make yourself presentable!

Is the door locked?
Are the hinges rusty?
Would a baby calf
be able to kick it down
in less than 15 seconds?

Don't just sit there!
Figure it all out!

It's the first thing people see
before they enter a room-
is it wood, fresh oak?
Beads from a thrift store?
Cast-iron shielding,
bolts and locks
spattered like starlight,
like smuggled jewelry
on the inner lining
of a trenchcoat?

Are you trying to
open it, or is your back
pressed against the other side,
keeping it from budging?

Are you the intruder
or the guard dog?

It took a hastily-made hangman puzzle
to **** you, a present-day friend
of mine to simply whisper
that three-letter word
as if she were restating the gospel.

Ironic, then, that as you were dying,
I felt an era-long noose loosening.

I remember finding skin pores
mistakenly labelled as sinkholes,
every confession warranting
a "believe me, we knew" after the other.

If you had spent any more time,
an indefinite amount of days
deciding to stay lurking
in the corners of the closet,
out there in the rafters
where no one could hear you
whispering poison into my gut reactions,
I might have sprouted
a kamikaze bloodline,
a raucous rhythm in the ranks
cackling louder with each year
of silence, each span of secrecy.

Although your plastic inflection
vanished with a collective
unlocking of the joints,
your cryptic sentiment still loiters
while my common sense is sleeping,
and I remember to repeat,
three times like Dorothy,
that moment I could only
be my true self on paper.

When you look at me without
speaking like some doe-eyed
Guatemalan selling watermelons
on the corner of Forest Hill
and Military Trail, your
disbelief triggering in the hinges
of your jaw like a hairpin turn,
reaction time looming
as endlessly as a broken synthesizer,
I begin to need you, darling,
like the axe needs the turkey.

Youth had it comin'.

Shoulda never worn that pretty dress.
Shoulda never walked through that door.

Shoulda never sat
on the most rickety chair
in the joint, fallin'
on my lap th' way she did.

Kinda knew it would happen,
too. Always could tell
a fresher face-ripe for
the pickin', I always used ta
say.

Well, now, did you step
on one of them pork-yoo-
pahns, lil missy?

                            Nice to meet you, Girl.
                            His name is Inevitability.
                            You might've missed him,
                             looking from the corner
                            of the wall opposite the back
                            of your head, whistling Dixie
                            on your bristled follicles
                            mid-daydream, via inhale.

Gathered herself, laughed.
Jackpot. Told me,
after a couple drinks, that she
wasn't
any sorta damsel in de-stressss,
that she knew all. Mind you, all!
The tricks in the fairy tale
handbook. Front to back,
to boot!

Fed her Cinderella fr'm top
to bottom, ate it up like
a backwoods ******.

Speakin' of storytellin',
you wanna know what
my favorite Shake-spee-uh sayin'
is, hm? 's the one where
the lady wants ta be a man,
them loony Europeans.

Anyway, one of the guys there,
puffs up his chest n' shouts,
"Some are born great. Some
achieve greatness. N' some
have greatness just ******
right up on 'em"

Get up outta that chair,
pretty lady, and get ready
for a time you ain't ever
gon' forget

                          *It was then that nightfall
                          spilled over like a broken ink bottle,
                          salivated over the horizon with
                          the hunger of a bleeding river's mouth
                          as all our girdles loosened,
                          and with the last protracted sigh
                          of metallic wisdom, hushed our
                          brigade of inner children's choirs,
                          massaged the cramp settled
                         on the back of our left legs,
                         turned out the lights,
                         and went to sleep.

Oh my word, I remember
every little part of that weekend,
right down to the three-piece outfit
I had purchased at Bloomingdale's
the evening previous.

You know, ya hear stories
left and right about people
winning tickets to this n' that,
but ya never imagine actually
being the nineteenth caller!

When I revealed the occasion
this baby blue ensemble would
be worn in, the cute little saleslady
paused, looked up, and said,
"Why bother seeing him anymore?"

And I tell ya, there's plenty
other, less Christian yearly
Graceland attendants who woulda
flipped their lids had they heard
such malarkey!

Still, I just couldn't deny it.
She had a bit of a point.
This was mid-70s Elvis,
mid-50s Elvis' drunk uncle.
He had gone from Rolling Stone
to National Enquirer in nothing
flat, it seemed.

So all I could muster was
an understanding smile, because
she couldn't help but join the
bandwagon, especially when his
gut got larger and the rumors
became more outrageous.

Still, their loss!
I say that to this day,
because what Little Miss Shopgirl
and the legions of non-believers
did not think to consider
was the charm in "has been" Elvis.

A week before this legendary
concert experience, I had been
forced by circumstance to purchase
my very first pair of bifocals!
It was also around the time,
I'm sure, Harry left me.

So, the main event, I'm there,
third row from the main stage,
seeing Elvis for the first time
since our crazed youthful years-
a bedazzled jumpsuit walks on stage,
and I'm on my feet before I know it!

There was a little less swivel in his
hips. He looked a little tired, too,
all those years of singing do that.
How did it feel, then, to see the King
make his way across a cheap fog
machine, mutton chops and
love handles galore?

It felt like two lifelong friends
growing old, losing all those
frivolous people together-
"Are You Lonesome Tonight"
was still asked with the same
dreamy passion in 1973.

I've still got the handkerchief
he threw to me that night,
**** near lost it when I
caught the thing.

It's blue with polka dots,
ya wanna take a gander?

I wish I lived
in a fantasy land,
or, rather, fantasy
public bus, utopian
elevator, or blissful
city sidewalk where
all the people you
can trust wear
the same color
shirt on the same
day, where the man
waiting to dissect
your lifetime's timeline
signals his existence
with a glance as
suggestive as O'Keefe
roses.

Where it would
not only be normal
to bust out of
the seams housing
your sanity laughing
at a joke you heard last week-
where it would,
in fact, be highly
recommended
in moderation.

This one time, my mom
and I said goodbye
to Juan's mom and we
walked from her apartment
to wait for the elevator.

Mom didn't like it
when I wouldn't stand still-
sometimes she'd smack me
upside my head just to
make sure I was there
(accompanied by her
motherly calls of malcriado)-
so I'd look in any direction
for a distraction or two.

Through the window a few feet
from my left, I could see two
older ladies in curler hairdresses
bochinchando like caffeinated hens
about the awfully friendly suelta
living next door to gallina #1
(they hung their hand-me-down
nightgowns and their husband's
boxers with such professional care;
if any article escaped the grasp
of family clotheslines, it was
roadkill forever).

I turned to the right
of the elevator doors,
counted the tar-black patches
of decade-old gum on the floor,
finished the half-written
sentences sprayed in *****
rainbows on the sweaty walls
by the zig-zag flight of stairs.

A boom and a click,
and the door creaked open
with the sideways grace
of a crab.
My toddler's impatience
boiled past the brim, I
exclaimed "FINALLY"
and began to walk forward.

Not a second later, I heard a
"NO" behind me, my mother
grabbing the back of my
cartoon mouse t-shirt,
letting out an ay cono, pendejo
that echoed eight stories down,
past the empty space substituting
for an absent elevator shaft,
soaring down that rusty freefall
at ten thousand times the
speed of a human boy's body.

Letting out a long exhale,
my mother did not allow
her emotions to brim over
the barrier-she recomposed
herself, all the while silently
chanting hymns of gratitude
in dedication to fate
and her reflexes.

We decided to take the stairs.
In my youthful oblivion,
I noticed a toy store
right outside the building
from the corner of my eye-
I plan to start begging when
we're at the bottom,
if we ever get there.

My mother took her sweet time
walking down those many steps,
reveled in the scratchy bristle
of the concrete against her sandals,
cultivated a newfound admiration
for my atonal imitation of a
Washington Heights car alarm-
it was a sign I was still there.

he spends his time
rowing through the
rugged, blockaded channels
of my catharsis,
the bitter staccato
of ****** habit.

his love
can be as jagged
as gashes in an
Elvis Costello record
thrown against the wall--
the frayed words of the last love song
Billie Holiday ever uttered.

he is two
exclamation points lit on
fire, kerosene pumping through
tautly wound muscles and
caressing our funny bones with
sandpaper.

he is
dulcit woodwind melodies
and jilted viola strings,
epic poetry and grindhouse theaters,
McQueen gowns and thrift store bargains,
the kiss on the forehead
and the nudge for a *******.

he is a double helix.

he is the beginning
and end of every sentence.

First days of autumn.
Cascading tranquility
pulsates through my skin.

Love stands at its peak,
its feet en pointe, fingertips
reaching for the clouds.

You're the whistling wind.
My heart flies along smoothly,
Like a chipped red leaf.

The outside air steps
that much closer to the age
of hibernation.

Winter approaches,
daggers in its icy hand
to quell Love's harvest.

Thankfully, for us,
we see no signs of frostbite.
Ignorance is bliss.

"Boy toy
or girl
toy! Don't
make me tell
you again, Pedro!"

I have committed a felony
within the land of the Golden Arches.

I have gone through
another patient's order
and forgotten which gender
to assign to the child
standing right next to them,
as if in need of another
fresh new coat in
traditional roleplay,
as if these little ones
were the cattle of tradition.

How foolish of me to assume
that the tiny calf in pigtails
would enjoy the strong-willed,
goal-setting, leadership-evoking
action figure instead of the sanitized,
goal-admonishing, vapidity-provoking
fashion doll.

I wouldn't want to lose
another valuable customer.

From the ripple in a glass of water
to the sonic boom of this internal
Pompeii, the erosion
of her etymology is the only
sense of movement in her
dilated, cave-pupil eyes, those
two ghost towns spanning
and encircling all the way back,
stretched like an elastic blindfold
past the moment the first brick was laid,
perhaps her first vivid memory,
or anecdote, or first word uttered
in a Cuban slum.

There are mountains of tumbleweed
over the once thriving metropolis
that expanded towards America;
who threw herself into
the architecture of seven pillars,
borne from her land and
minerals. Gone are the
huts that housed her
knowledge of basic motor skills.

The women who once imagined
Mami and Mima as her birth
name now scrub off
the graffiti of her excrement;
they saw a swarm of pink moons
the day she told the same story
to every visitor that came
their way, each day then becoming
a missing surveillance tape, a sinkhole
dismantling the awareness
in her bones and stubborn will,
until she became
these dust-engulfed plains with
a daughter and granddaughter
archeological in their efforts
to chase down the remains
of a girl still breathing in
those eyes from time to time.

Every other ten-millionth blink of
the eye rides the silhouette of a post-infant girl
on the high tides of her quick visit,
looking in horror
as the nation of her life's nightmares,
heartaches, broken promises, romances,
spiritual breakthroughs, life-changing seconds
drowns with morbid unity en cien fuegos,
desperately attempting to assemble
the remnants of her psyche
past her cognitive bloodclots
with the awareness of one
who speaks no languages.

Gone is the moment
she first learned
to feed her several children
before the slip of sunset.

One of seven pillars remain intact,
the others long dismantled of their
stick and straw infrastructures.

One pillar remained,
housed her own colony
for nine months,
and now both descendants
travel the mind of their
greatest influence
with perplexed dedication,
caustic humor the decoy
for swarms of exhaustion
and asphyxiation
from the truthful atmosphere,
reveling in the seconds
of humanity lurking
in an abandoned etymology.

You don't love
me;
you love the
tip of the iceberg
that is your idea of me;
the sugar-coated mute
leading herds
of unfinished sentences
down the copious hills
of his insecurity;
the nice little writer
whose constant attempts
at legendary one-liners
are as hit-or-miss
as a sitcom still airing
far past its prime.

I possess three biomes,
or, rather, three networks
of personalities and identities.
I am much more than
the Jack Macfarland archetype
lip-syncing to Cher in the one
gay bar in town, tyrannically
governing your wardrobe,
possessing a razor-sharp wit
cast toward the backs of his community
in the form of an outdated punchline-
my work on that show
lost its Willful relevance
and Graceful naivete
years ago.

I am of the generation
fed media saturation
three four-hour meals a day,
who ingested cardboard cadavers
as if they were mother's milk
and internally mutated their
thoughts and desires
to fit the compact time frame
of 30 minutes
to settle the series' worth
of traumas and neuroses
while making it home for dinner
to stay tuned for what's
next in the lineup.

Speaking as a casualty of this
inevitable chain of events,
I regretfully declare that even
those who have seen
every episode of myself
for the past six seasons
are still light years away
from the room full of faces
unencumbered by euphemism.

There
Is
A
Fly in my drink
And I'm starting to think
That my luck's on the brink
Ever since you told me
That one half of the bed
Seemed a bit more cozy

I soon realize
That I'm not drinking anything
And the poor old fly
Is drowning
In my
Pity party

My gloom made it nauseous
I've become so obnoxious
Since you ****** the life right out of me

I
Hope
You
Choke on the words you said
And the shallow waters that you tread
Are infested with piranhas
That's how it goes if you're not gonna
Live in the presence
Of someone
As holy as me...

I
Tell
The
Leeches hovering around me
That I badmouth you
Just to give Revenge a smile on her face
But here's the simple fact:
Your departure wasn't that bad

It's just that you hurt me
For Christ's sake, you hurt me
I can't believe you hurt me
Can someone stop this hurting?

There
Was
A
Fly in my drink
When I started to wonder
If this entire thing was starting to go under...

I was once God's Picasso painting
(the Guernica era).
Chuck Jones' illustration
of the tortured artist,
laid out like Wile E. Coyote
on a bed of scalding rocks
and a white flag screaming "SURRENDER"
clenched with both palms.

If it were feasible,
I'd have dove head first
into the smoky center of the sun
if it meant my audience understood
the shrieking woes I had to bellow through
to reach their overwhelmed palates.

But Tragedy is the sitcom foil
that has long outstayed its menopausal welcome,
and I would much prefer a haunting.

To Hell with those
who repulse the flies with
the vinegar of exploitation,
gawking as their spit seeps
through seven layers of collected scars,
who ventilate the wrists
to keep the audience comfortable.

Real aesthetic power
comes from a shower
of light hail on the spine,
the moments a ghostly hand
****** you on the finger
with quietly hidden truths
always whispered from a field away.

It's far more bracing,
the lump in the throat,
not the electrical gasp of shock.

It's a far greater sign
of a forthcoming apocalypse,
the angel weeping in pain,
not the footsteps
of the wailing banshee.

The wisp
over the wallop.

sweeps across the floor
like the hem of a rag
on a doll-faced *****
as the lights are dimmed
in this picket-fenced Attica.

To him, the raindrops taste like whiskey
so who's to blame him
for being a drunkard?

He will not take such condescension,
and so he shall pass it onto you
like a hot potato;
just say the third-degree burns
came from hugging the stove.

For you, life is not a Lifetime movie
looking at your bruises in the mirror
to a Celine Dion power ballad;
the days are a beach of intenstines
set alongside waves of toxic waste,
the moon now a mood ring
sitting atop the knuckles
of your vengeful king.

This decade of brutal purging,
atonement for sins not yet committed,
has felt as consuming
as his figure those Thursday nights
when he's stalking for his property,
and you're close-mouthed
under the bed,
looking through barely a slab
of this virtual reality,
at the iron-****** giant
who would nurse your neuroses
if he'd stop bashing your face in.

Your expectations for the outcome
laced with Disney Princess satin
arrange themselves in a cross-legged noose
(the "O" stands for optimism),
for all this atonement
must be the beaten path
to the Garden of Eden.

You should just remember.
The men still pulled the lever,
licking the flames
as Joan of Arc sang her finale.

If I listened to every advertisement
hollering through the static
of my cable-hooked television,
I'd have a mammoth bottle
of Hidden Valley Ranch
sitting with the ego-quenching sheen
of recommendation in my fridge,
a Weight Watchers membership
(it told me to join as soon as possible
with the speed of a steroid-devouring treadmill),
Children's Tylenol
(despite being situationally barren),
and a Bowflex-shaped elephant,
ivory tusks slumping uselessly in the corner.

My living room would be the fraternal twin
of the American Smithsonian,
a faux-genuine quilt
of our Founding Fathers'
present day descendants
draping over my popcorn ceiling.

I return to the latest
sacred cow in the flea store
cartel of Lifetime Movie heroines;
it's "Vengeful Vixens Sunday"
and Elizabeth Berkley shooting men
and stabbing women in the back
all while eating buckets of Ben and Jerry
and getting addicted to crystal ****.

The dialogue is as freshly
packaged and slovenly edible
as the Minute Ready Late Night Dinner
with a cartoon grandma plastered on the logo,
all to remind you of down home,
or in the case of this Lifetime screenplay,
a time when the brain wasn't fully developed.
Same difference.

We all hide our guilty pleasures
as if our tolerance for the
secondhand existence of these favorites
were deemed malignant
by a cardboard kingdom
of young adult sophistication,
but I ask you:
who hasn't slipped into the comfort
of a mind turned to mush?

When a situation has exceeded
its date of expiration
in the weak-***** refrigerator
of your memory,
the noxious smell that looms
from thick barrier to thick barrier
is enough to make your arm hairs
drop like counterfeit pine needles.

It must be, then,
this awkward moment,
or maybe this childhood trauma,
the smell of it,
that has caused this grimace
sealed by the cement of self-castigation
on your incongruously human face each day.

The past is our psychotic ex-boyfriend,
the kinds that breaks the windows
when your eyes have collapsed shut,
when our pretty little souls
were at their most exposed
and our frail little doors
were rocking on their hinges.

Save me from him-
rinse me clean-
help me ripen
and never rot.

Give my senses refuge
from the siege leering
in the Expressionist slabs
of my pitch black Memory.

The Internet, for a good helping
of the American demographic,
is the highest-rated of sanctuaries.

I use "sanctuary"
in a filthy and blatantly pornographic manner,

for every time
we post on our nicotine-scented Facebooks
that we're "so ******* bored" we "could die,"
there's at least one other
hand snaking you along
those fetishes you stash beneath your sleeve
like black silk underwear;

and no matter what you do,
nothing will explain away
those two consecutive Youtube videos:
"Black muscle man in blue thong"
followed spontaneously by
"12 year old boy sings Judy Garland!",
each, to the innocent bystander,
juxtaposed like two opposing ******
in one ****** up candy shop.

The grotesque meat show,
always the same introduction,
always right on time with the
churn churn churning of his
loneliness his rage his silence
onto those sheets
with no regard for the family
and friends of fibers.

It used to be hilarious,
perfect lunch table standup,
but once you learn
that with ***, there might be
signs of love in the decipherable thrusting,
that a plot is swimming helplessly
in the oceanic camouflage of loveless living,
sticky hands can really start to sting.

I am such
a *******
******.

Been fanning the flames
of my flamboyant faggotry
since April 1990
when I strutted from the caverns
of my mother's....
nevermind,
I'm never touching one of those.

My childhood is exemplified
by late-night espionage treks,
sneaking through my sister's side
of our bedroom
maximized by youthful perspective,
each step of mine garnering more
taut gravity than the next,
finally reaching the Holy Grail:
her Barbie collection.

In the fourth grade, I drew
my interpretations of those
beautiful, diamond-infested drag queens
that rained feathers and sequins
upon one drought of an existence,
the adults framing my tolerance
as a ****-stained abomination.

Now people ponder
why I'm so overt
with my gaydom.

Why argue with your
nostalgia-hemmed family friend
over the cultural significance
of the Barbra Streisand Album,
or gladly sit through marathons
of 1980s ****** camp classics?

It's the kid in me.
Something lost for an era
in a washing tub
of middle school torture tactics,
heavy breathing
over hiding something
so natural.

And a few years of that
are **** stifling enough
for this gigantic ******.

Do you find it
boring
to spell out the word
"subconscious"?

Not the way I spell it.

Many step onto the first "S"
as if it were
a ***** rain puddle,
but I'm sufficiently alert
and can see that one must dive
into the word's application,
nimbly rummage through the
annals of its history
before conducting one word
in or against its favor.

Glide downward
through the
rhythmically breathing curves
of the voluptuous prefix,
"sub-",
as you begin
dreaming
further
down
towards the comatose
of the rickety construction
that is your superego,
to the "you"
no one knows about
in clear daylight
(even the mirror).

Minor turbulence
may occur
within the rest,
"-conscious",
just a few jagged rocks
stirred into Cloud Nine
to alter your perceptions
like a face hit by a bus.

This is the meat of your matter,
the acidic ruptures
that only the most cunning
infiltrators
can identify and nudge
with their index fingers
using a painful precision,
the ***** band of undergarments
that always seem to loiter behind
in the town laundromat.

But a jagged rock
is a jagged rock,
never eternally bordering
the outline of the planet,
just lodged within the corners
of your comfort zone,
their presence
a necessary evil
for the times you must steer
through the swarms of cataracts
and endure the exrcuciating agony
of becoming a better human being.

You launch yourself
from your adolescent crutches
like the roots of teeth
erupting from the base of the jaw
and prevent single definition,
hack away the tentacles
of emotional paralysis,
by remembering to mend
the tear between
two polar halves,
"sub
conscious."

Under your false promises,
your Freudian timeline,
your ever-quivering Id...
every single one of you.

The falling stars in this ironic night
make majesties
out of those cubicle-ridden New Yorkers'
routine Tuesday night daydreams,
where they make macabre escape routes
out of every perfectly-placed window
piercing the concrete sentences
that escalate from Ground Zero.

Your law offices,
corporate ******* headquarters,
are all bursting at the seams
with these drones,
the falling stars of the human race,
all composed of 14 different shades
of grayscale;

could've been
should've been
could've been shootin' stars
that year they were promised
lives of upper middle class incomes
and Lexus dealerships
bought to dent their status
on the neighborhood,
but that sparkle's been emaciated
by the truth,
the underwhelming spectacle of realization
accentuated by the clicking
and the clacking of company keyboards,
each little click
gnawing more at their patience
than the next;
the faceless brush strokes
gawk through that window,
their plans less hypothetical
over the calendar years.

"I can hear it calling me
from miles away,"
says Copy #90045280,
"see, they
SPEAK
to me, man,
tell me to transcend
the hurdle of the windowsill
and make my rendezvous
with an asphalt avenue,
to join the other casualties
of this rut-infested nation
in a life with the real stars,
falling and shooting
and jettisoning alike,
throbbing lights through dark sky silk
and into the hearts of even the most
robotic of this catalog culture,
and I frightfully,
excitedly,
must listen."

Melting pots are for racists.
The USA is a salad bowl.

The student lounge features
the veggies at their ripest,
collecting oxygen amongst themselves,
for the corn cannot exist
with the broccoli,
and so on
and so forth.

Don't even mention
fruits
to the potatoes.

And the tomatoes,
they're just weird, man,
don't even know
what they are.

We are all at our most
savory and nutritious,
our youthful wisdom
emanating through our
concrete set of hues.

The chili peppers emanate a color
as red as the blood
of their ancestral martyrdom,
no other color,
just red.

Same for the cucumbers
with hearts so coolly refrigerated,
taking forest green,
taking pastel green
with just a few drops
of ivory-scented beige
tucked neatly behind
walls of bamboo-level peels.

The voices of the onions
thud onto the floor
as if being catapulted
from cumulonimbus peaks,
causing the Iceberg lettuce
to almost drown in its own
dressing.

Lady Liberty,
a series of
produce section fragments
sitting much too sternly
with no regard for sprawling.

In the same bowl, though!

It's yet another virginal autumn
sliding through the
core of my esophagus,
the most bitter medication,
and the healthiest
to some "He" I've never met.

Let us all take a gander
at the undersexed ice queen,
turning his moans
into a frostbitten cackle
heard far past his grave
crafted with the polarizing
limestone of unintentional cynicism.

He sits at the bumper
of your public transportation system,
perfectly positioned in the middle,
so he can play God,
he jokes!

But it's because he loves people watching.
People watching
is not
people knowing;
people watching
is not
people loving.

Judgmental
is a barrier
same as those
elementary PSAs
about saying no to
strangers, also known as
creepy men with toupees
in decades-old station wagons;
these filthy humans,
all know that man,
all are his children,
all his faithful followers,
his filthy, faithful followers,
no sensual thoughts
will creep into my untouched oats
this grimy morning!

I will never
have dreams
in warm Equator-creeping nights
of making friction with their flesh,
even the boy,
the beautiful boy
standing savagely
on this public bus,
making the waves
pumping through this contraption
that makes up my frame
no longer stagnant,
rabid with the saliva
begging to drop
to commemorate
my loss for words
and my panting
need
for action.

His body is eternally dripping
with the juice of a hard man's labor
luminous vibrance through the skin,
the power of the Latin sun
in the drops of salt running
all the way
down his body

and I feel myself
recording his existence,
no name needed,
just his face
and body
in this rhythmic Orlando morning.

Give me a man
who will wrap his fingers
around my waist,
treating his life like
a flexible toothpick
to prevent my caving in
towards the stained harmony
of celibacy

and I'll provide the cure for cancer.

Provide me with a man
who will take these
drapes of solitude
hanging upon each shoulder
(all corners weighed down
by the lead of self-ambivalence)
and toss them as if they were
patches of cloudy fabric
waiting to be shooed away
like a mosquito with thoughts

and I will hide you all from
the surgical hands of Fate.

I've already wasted to null
the charm of an Annie Hall.

***** the carnal camaraderie
of the girl next dorm,
and now the last resort is
quid pro quo, world.
Quid pro quo.

What is the versatile autobiography
of this bountiful of rice
boiling in my American kitchen?

This crop of microscopic slabs of grain
that was the one edible source
of preventing my ancestors' emaciation

One of such few things
connecting me
to my roots,
those things I can't help but bleach
in whitewashed and rebellious peroxide.

I will valiantly hang my head down low in shame
at the examples of my flesh and earth,
"those National Geographic cavemen,"
all the time being the zoo animal,
being blindfolded and caged by
these "secular, American liberals."

I love this food
that I consume like a vacuum,
this merengue and bachata
that I so happily shake my *** to;
but nowhere did I sign up
for these commandments
that I was appointed
based on the location
that I popped out onto.

I hear the thunder meddling
its way among the raindrops
that permeate through sunlight
and realize
that the weather is a motif
for God's emotional prognosis.

God is but a ******;
he and I stammer upon the same boat.

Our existence makes a pair
of helplessly hanging doppelgangers,
orbs of confusion that contract
whiplash with every turn they make.

Two repressed housewives
that put all their hopes and dreams
in a ****-stained smile.

This collision of light and malevolance
is but His way of symbolizing
my shame-patronized indecision
in a way that makes people tear up
at the joy of beauty.

Please pull your pants towards the floor, my dear.
Let me handle that meat lying on the full-size bed.
Don't be timid-we're all premature adulteresses in this room.
Johnny, come quickly towards my sighing need.
Making me want to scream your entire name by these seas of flame,
especially when your sweat seeps through the ridges of my bliss!

Your lips make my throat two walls of dried sin.
I live to take hold of your
Chocolate
Porcelain
Caramel skin.

I can spend hours looking at your full lips.
It's the feature that separates boys from men.
Force me down, prove me wrong with those promising threats.
Hold onto that ****** until it borders on violation.

While I could maintain an appalled expression at my reflection,
you prevent this with your numbing *******.
Wading in a murky puddle of lust is fresh air moving with you
and the tongues slithering all the way up to my shivering legs!
Keep on whispering while you make me speechless!
Keep on getting stronger while you make me melt!

You strip me of my innocence with a devilish grin.
That must be why I love your
Chocolate Porcelain Caramel skin...

The last drop of fuel
has vanquished within the fog
of vacuous steam,
and the words are asphyxiated
by the author's incompetence
before his toes even tap
upon the starting line.

It's even a hassle
scribing these simple words
without grinding my teeth,
headbutting defeat,
and fixing the channel
with which I once could
transform the bulging of veins
into the unraveling of stanzas.

With a pitter-patter here
and a tick and tock there,
the hourglass spins itself towards nausea
and still no denouement
from a muse that replaced burning passion
with a scalding charcoal mind.

How could I let them get to me?
How could I let them make mockery
and triviality of the art
held with the greatest sincerity,
leaving me a pigpen
of unanswered questions
tinged with urgent frustration?

Did I really just end this with a question?

It was that widescreen sort of moment,
where the night sky stretched like navy blue silk
and the stars bedazzled through the atmosphere,
the perfect scene to begin the end.

With leather hands upon wooden handles,
the tense preparation rocked to and fro,
and each sibling knew they needed to state their vows
before there were no hands, big or small, to follow.

Like she had all the decades of her life,
the sister sprinted head-first through the pack
and began the ceremonial encounter,
tears already ******* the outlines the eyes.

"My warrior growl would have simply dwindled,
my loving strength would have never surfaced,
were it not for the development
of my watchful eye towards you.

I give you a thanks that spans across galaxies
for making me realize that the woman running in this heart
could delve much deeper than her surroundings,
and form a bond that gives much too pride for one lifetime."

With a breathless exhale tinged in red excitement,
the brother nearly jumped from his rocker,
more than ready to begin his greatest wordplay
and make them both depart with a bang.

"I don't know how my life span would have thrived
if you had not looked me straight in the eyes
and made me realize that layers are nothing
but barriers for the tangled lands of your ****-eyed innocence.

You were not just a pillar of strength;
you were a carrier who made the human spirit contagious.
If they could not quiet you as a mortal,
Lord knows how they'll try in Heaven."

So each said their piece,
and with the peaceful fog
clouding both of their minds,
they realized it was time.

It was a quiet disintegration,
with each participant smiling, eyes slowly closing,
freeing themselves from their bodies like stardust
towards their own constellation in the sky.

I wish I could drive a fossilized Cadillac
right through an arid desert
in the middle of Arizona
so my desolation can have its own landscape.

I’ll ask the grains of sand
rocketing in swirls around the wind
if they've seen my talent running by;
I’ve been calling it for months now.

The citizens of Earth are not cold.
It was just my eyes that gave them frostbite,
my mind that morphed their faces
to resemble the hideous change within.

I’m not sure if that’s a truth
that fate has put on layaway since birth,
or perhaps a rumor that’s been force fed
like wart-ridden frogs to the purest of tongues.

All I want at this point
is to be a center of a desert’s mushroom cloud,
leaving with a new look at the sky
and a bit of dry skin.

I am utterly convinced
that my spirit is a ten-cent *****,
letting any passing nemesis
**** it in the mind
with almost no tension.

It must enjoy the sensation
as its host clearly shows
in the streams of tears
that flow through the eyes,
the spirit's *******.

It must moisten its knickers
at the viewing of torture,
as its host sits in an icy stupor,
with the times of grotesque
spectacle-sobs on tile flooring,
nicks on the wrist, what have you-
the only times of breathing.

My spirit must have stolen all the
charm it takes to captivate
the enemy into arousal,
as the host stumbles awkwardly in
public, pushing all potentials away
with vehemence and convincing itself
of its inferior quality to
even the vermin of the sewer.

My spirit has made me the loathing host
to the parasite of my own being,
my mind the main casualty,
ridden with **** from villainy both
outer and inner, decay from traumas
more persuasive than the tongue
of Casanova.

I hope it's happy.

As the exhaust spewed its mourning glum
onto the whimpering porcelain snow,
the chauffeur looked up and desperately prayed
for an Academy Award winner.

"Novelty tears shall spout at all times!"
And the thespian will charge through those double doors,
beginning his craft from the moment he hears the ***** *****
singing the deceased's pleas towards the golden gate of Heaven
and crunching through an audience of bawling admirers
of a man he barely knew.

He was chosen to give the eulogy.
Designated to speak on the behalf
of man he never thought to glance at twice,
besides the intervals of days spent
despising the realization of his existence,
resenting the scars created in surplus quantities,
stomping down the darkest layers still oozing from the coffin.

For a handful of hours, it must all become a waning spark for the
method actor giving the most crowd-pleasing breakdown of his life,
delivering a perfectly tailored recital
cloaked to all the front-pew viewers
as a heartfelt elegy.

"Just a few hours," he thought as the double doors creaked,
and the scene will end with him sliding into his car,
a dead weight off his shoulders,
driving victoriously into the sunset.

A new set of tears rolled with the end credits,
along the face of the son,
liquidating the thespian with their bleak sincerity.
They were drops of remorse
for a bond that was never born,
with an abortion in a wood encasing
for all those people out there in the dark.

The elegant madwoman with a golden valor.
Louder than the falling trees
stumbling everywhere around her feet!
The spiritual mother, everyone's empress,
a concrete rose blooming over every obstacle
as if she were a one-woman, 21st century dynasty
with no malfunctions in its empire.

But, there's something writhing its way out
from the cellar reserved for her scathing history.
Past the cobwebs and futile pretensions of valiance
lies this warrior queen's greatest desire:
shrouded in shame, the need for love still haunts.
But it won't some accessory amid the ninth cloud!

Hard work and minimum wage flow much more smoothly.
She's known this since she discovered the world,
since she entered a home full of broken furniture
and reeking of alcoholic breath and stagnant, bitter tensions
that were released when father's fist met daughter's face,
and her bruise-soaked body became the symbol of her innocence.

That must be why she spends so much time
in the darkest Brooklyn alleys, selling her self-respect
to any man feeling particularly kind that night,
and letting any detrimental cycle resurface
for just one rush of vulnerability.

This contemporary queen dons a crown bejeweled with more grit
than the streets of three New York boroughs,
yet all she requires of the world that she holds in her hand
like a ruler deciding the fate of her people
is someone to transform adoration from myth to reality.
Will she ever find light from the alley?

I
It's quite the tragic statistic,
when the last thing on earth
that approaches your face
is a patch of brown grass,
pale and dry from age,
dead from poor nourishment,
just like your need for acceptance.

And it’s even more destructive
when the scarlet sentences
shrieking down your face
were pulled from your bone marrow,
all the way through your thick, coarse skin,
by the dense and moldy weapon
swung in the hands of the town’s valiant savior.

Yes, there are rapists and fascists
living in each corner of the street,
looting their families of their dignity,
******* on the very words they glorify,
but the crooked joints in your limp wrist
might as well be a bull’s eye on your forehead.

The tides of holy water did not burn off an inch,
did not smother your facet of human nature.
You did not blindly agree with our fright-ridden hatred,
so the only and easy way out
is to induct you into our slaughterhouse,
all because you loved.

Can love be executed so poorly
that it awaits a death penalty?
In a Utopian tyranny, anything can die.

And they wonder,
with our dying breath,
and the dirt being shoved
against our battered faces,
why we declare a riot call.

II
I have sent a request
to all the white cone clad
twiddling their thumbs with menace
and hunting for their latest scapegoat
to mask their feelings of inadequacy...

As the **** on my garage door
slithers your hatred along
in the form of the word "******"
and the last three men who shook me to the core
have been reduced to front page casualties,
I beg to finally join
this league of humankind.

Please, ladies and cavemen, do as I ask
or I might just lead myself
to break
your double standard necks into thousands
of desperate times that surpass desperate measures.

I will no longer be reduced
to another strange fruit hanging
on the ******* tree, for I've seen
the shards of glass showering
like hurricane rainfall
over your Stone Age architecture.

Preaching your "manhood", your "sanctity"
on your altars as the color
of your wife's eyes
seems to slip your busy mind,
as your first born
reiterates your perspective
with a tape recorder ribbon
composed of tangled heartstrings.

It must stop.
Those sounds of you slinging
your fists and your speech
towards all, including
your own flesh and blood.

Our palms can't stay nailed to the wooden floor,
our lips can't stay sewn shut anymore,
angels writhing in their graves,
your time has run out.

Here, my friend, is your riot call.