The walls screamed poetry disease & ***
an inner whine like a mad machine -
dropped in a
cave of roaches
or rodents

The Computer
faces of the men

The wall collage
reading matter

The Traders (dealers)
~~~

I am a guide to the labyrinth
Come & see me
in the green hotel
Rm. 32
I will be there after 9:30 p.m.

I will show you the girl of the ghetto
I will show you the burning well
I will show you strange people
haunted, beast-like, on the
verge of evolution

-Fear The Lords who are
secret among us
~~~

Leaving the phone-booth, I was
Struck by a whiff of
the weird.
Insane old country woman
come to nag the haunts
of town
Hairy legs w/open sores.

From what swamp or under-rock
did you crawl to remind
us what we choose
to leave

notice the convulsed orange inch of moon
perching on this silver minute of evening.

We’ll choose the way to the forest—no offense
to you,white town whose spires softly dare.
Will take the houseless wisping rune
of road lazily carved on sharpening air.

Fields lying miraculous in violent silence

fill with microscopic whithering
…(that’s the Black People, chérie,
who live under stones.) Don’t be afraid

and we will pass the simple ugliness
of exact tombs,where a large road crosses
and all the people are minutely dead.

Then you will slowly kiss me

the ad on my kitchen table asks,
would you consider donating to
dolphin causes? orphan briefcases? factories for bread and water and those
miracle pills that cure a country in just 3 small,
prescribed,
doses?

would you change a child's life for only $35 a month?
begs the ad rolling in with the mail.
his name is roberto, five foot four, a good kid
who likes baseball and summer days.

a doller a day: a woman begs from channel 6,
donate to the children's hospital of saint something-or-other
have a heart, she says, and help the baby who has a defective one.

a doller a day, or if you're feeling generous,
round up to 5 cents an hour.
how else will you get rid of your rich world guilt?

your eyes are red like youve been crying but i know youve just been
trying to pour the ocean into your blown pupils.
you told me they were so dark because they were
burned from all the salt you rubbed into them.
you told me they were wide to find the
untouched valleys inside me,
virginal land, unsullied by
the eyes of man.
ha.
ha.
honestly,
i wish i could say theres so much more to me left undiscovered,
unknown by all those who  claimed to love me but, no, they
always discover the same
******* things
that arent even ******* there.
you discover that i'm broken,
a delicate flower of a poet,
whose feelings are gentle eggshells crushed by the hand of life.
discover depths of emotion safeguarded by an iron shell,
"discover" that i just want to be loved, 
is this some sort of sick ******* joke.
im not a ******* eggshell, im not ******* broken,
life hasnt shattered me. life will not shatter me. life has given me calluses hard as stone.
i will live to be old and crooked and sagging,
wearing a full suit of armor,
i will die old and withered.
when emotion catches in my throat,
i rip it out like multicolored scarves,
like a magic trick.
just because i dont choke you with the fabric
doesnt make it any less real.
i dont just want to be loved. i dont need
your love. youre not saving me when you look at me like
your favorite broken doll.
i don't just want to be loved.
i am already loved. i am overflowing with the love i have received,
i am full to the brim, my cup runneth over, i dont need you.
i don't just want to be loved. do you know what i want?
i want you to look at me and not see
the living embodiment of a metaphor,
a walking love poem, a verse in a poem you memorized and mimicked
instead of writing your own,
i could rip your lungs out through your mouth, i dont think you realize
what my body is capable of,
even if my mind is weak.
if i could stop thinking youd be dead on the floor
before i took a ******* breath.
i am not for you.
i am not writing for you,
i am writing to remember how to fall asleep without dreaming about soulmates-turned-strangers
and friends pulling out my teeth.
i am not dreaming for you.
i am not bleeding for you.
i am not for you.
i am not yours.

a fair question, deserving of thought,
goodly soft care and hard consideration,
strangely, instantly and undeniable,
one worldly, word achieves *******

whether first or foremost,
après ma raison d'être,
cannot list, nor rank or certain state,
yet my heart repeats, nation, nation,
my understanding, instant and complete

worthy journey to self-fulfillment,
contentedly unhappy to be permanently,
one poem short on the one continuum,
the-road-trip to salvation,
my end, my finality / our self-acualization

aking pagtatapos, ang aking katotohanan
my einde, my realiteit
fen m 'yo, reyalite mwen
akhir saya, realiti saya
ma fin, ma réalité
M
write of the ifs of a man's life,
and come aboutface to conclusions,
instant and long in the making,
there are willing ears on this globe,
welcoming me open armed, opened lipped,
knowing firstly this open-eyed greeting,
welcome poet, tell us

for we are one nation, everywhere invisible,
indivisible with liberty and justice inherent,
creation our common good, in fact it is our
lifelong wares and goods, letter by letter composing,
we sell for the price of free

This then single common currency,
our ouro, derivation of
languages multi and mellifluous here spoke,
this my/our nation where birthright and
citizenship ego-and-geo boundless,
my loves, continentally arrayed,
to whom I pledge until last breath
utter all, guttural devotion

when one of us creates,
good manifests, I care not
in what tongue,
for our tongues
intertwine and intertaste
this one flavor,
communitas,
meine gemeinschaft, meine gesellschaft
where spoken
goodness all the days of life,
it has goodly gotten me to you...

"what are you holding on to?"

the question wasn't rhetorical but the earth stood still. the clocks stopped ticking and the distant hum of car engines was silenced. even the street lights with their comforting buzz, stopped abruptly to take a pause. the stars nearly fell out of the sky, and nothing twinkled and danced in your dilated pupils. the air was dead and the strands of hair the wind had taken hostage were offered respite as they fell like pins down my back. the world faded - not into black - into nothing, into complete and absolute emptiness. your cigarette smoke hung in the air and the filter never came nearer and nearer. my heart, by some miraculous count, stopped racing long enough to reduce the sound in my ears to complete and utter silence.

i tried to answer, but all that came out was "I think we should paint the apartment soon."

you stared, "we should paint the apartment?"

"yes, I think so, it's so awfully bland. it makes me feel cold."

"why does it make you feel cold?"

"because of the absence of colour."

"what do you make of the absence of warmth?" your eyes were saying less than your mouth, and my words kept getting stuck in my throat.

"I think it's somewhere, maybe beneath the floorboards. we should change the floor, put in carpet. carpet is comforting."

"is that what you think? we can repaint and re-floor and we will be warm."

"I should think so. maybe a new bedspread, what do you think? we could go shopping maybe. tomorrow? or the day after?" my voice trailed off when your gaze shifted from my face to the ground.

"you're not holding on to renovation prospects and you're not answering my question."

in this state of universal paralysis, i became the focal point of the entire universe, to everything but you. i took a breath, and held it in, i thought and thought and though carbon copied hallmark responses danced around my brain, i had no words. i had only this moment, of complete and utter stasis, of company among solitude, of enlightenment as my senses betrayed me and my emotions were given room to embrace this artificial reality.

"the colour of light"

i know this surprised you, and i know you don't know why, even to this day. so i continued.

"i'm holding on to the sound of silence, and the taste of reassurance despite. the cathartic feeling of abandoning the conscious mind and licking mercury from your eyelids. the putrefaction of tactile and the vicious assimilation of awareness. the relentless burning of the merriem-webster definition of what it means to feel, to be. i'm holding on to everything you've cultivated within my mind, every stream of consciousness you diverted and corrupted, every single thought you've planted and watered and allowed to spiral out of control. i'm holding on to the challenge. i'm holding on to knowing - and what i know, is nothing."

you blinked, one hundred and twenty three times exactly - before you spoke, "you're holding on to what you know."

it was less of a question than a statement but I answered nonetheless, my voice was meek, "yes"

"well then," you flicked your cigarette and exhaled a breath, "we should pick out paint colours tomorrow. what were you thinking? red?"

"red is alive."

"grey it is then."

"but grey is oh so dull," I said, devoid of emotion.

you looked up for the first time in a while, "yes, I know, i'm holding on to what I know."

i heard a car horn or two. the colours returned and the sky had in fact remained full of stardust. we walked, quite a distance, until our senses once again became the paragon of normalcy. we both knew the ambiguity of my answer, we both knew that it ran deeper than we wanted to face, and we both knew that despite the inundation of motion in the perceivable world, the earth had not yet, begun to spin again.

Cold and stagnant* - I was found by a creature with two legs and two arms.
I was in a safe, concealed space before it took me.

Buried - it stuck me down without my consent.
It would not listen to me, almost as if it couldn't hear me.
Probably because I was too tiny. 

Panicked - I was afraid I'd suffocate but somehow I found a way to breathe. 

Scared - It always came back to spy on me, but I was smart-
I stayed hidden below and remained unseen. 

Thirsty -  I soon discovered and made a friend called Water.
 It told me to let it in- that it'll help me feel better.
 It seemed friendly, so I did what I was told-
and let as much in, to my heart's content. 

Changing - I felt myself swelling.
I was nervous of this new bulging yet I kept in-taking-
before Water stopped visiting.

Stronger - I became comfortable with new found energy and decided to stretch below and tour my new home.
 When I did that I met another friend called Soil.
It gave me delicious treats and later in life taught me to search on my own for more.

Brave - One day I had the courage to peek outside.
I stretched upwards amazed that I can change myself in such a manner!
It was then I felt myself glow for the first time!
Instantly, a new friend I met!
Helpful and wise- her name was Sunlight!
She taught me how to make my own food and reassured me that I can utilize her glow whenever she came out to play. 
Seeing Sunlight was the best part of my day.

Bonding - Water said he and Sunlight are best friends.
He goes up to see her and he hitches a ride back down with his Cloud allies.
I wanted to have a close relationship too,
so I started to stretch even more,
reaching as high as I could,
trying to touch her. ( never been able to touch her but at least I felt her)

Growing, stretching and enhancing- below and above -
Green velvets graced my brown limbs and down below I sunk deeper.
I sprouted delicate pink studs on top and learnt to dance with the Wind.
That was the most blissful thing.

LIVING -
Soon after, I even grew fond of Human! That's the word, a Butterfly who drank my nectar, told me it was called.
In the day, out of kindness I gift Human with rich oxygen and in return it enriches my home with good intentions.
Just to let me be me-
pretty as could be-
It sends me positive energy, much to my glee.
Human had let me be free-
never plucked at me.
I was and still am thankful.
I blossomed to the best of my ability until the day I started to wither.

Serene - Soil told me to be optimistic, that it will let me be one with it.
How kind.
It even said "Together, we can help the newcomer and show it how to fend for itself. "
I was overjoyed to hear that - for that meant even in my death- I can still help one more, allowing my essence and presence to be absorbed by its fresh existence

Fading
Just wanted to tell my story
-Before the fall of my last petal.
My life as a flowering plant was exceptional.

- Feb 28th , 2014        2: 44 am.