I wanted to find something to bring back to life.
Lately, these stanzas have been on repeat.
My words: resurrected.

Stories engrave themselves in my synapses
A memory forms and then collapses
A Heart skips beats and then relaxes
Powerhouse of nerves in through the spine
Messages from hands moving to the mind
No rush, steady-paced climb
Following the crooked lines

Pulled apart, then pushed together
Overloaded with the
Doing and undoing tether
Smiles slowly building the road to better
Best medicine is the sound of laughter
The world spins, and spins faster
Without even a second thought
Of what happens after

Los secretos, el momento,
Las caras que vemos
Pero aqui, en sonrisas,
Aqui nos quedemos
En los ojos siempre,
Facil nos perdemos
Cada maravilla es diferente que vemos
Es que las cosas no son tan complicadas
La vida esta llena de cosas delicadas
Pero es una lucha, ya sabes eso
Toma un corazon fuerte en el pecho

Exposure, exposure, to the other moving closer
Admiration reaching and pulling voices over
Of passion, and into the seas of liberation
Speaking a language with no available translation
Rules broken, laws and regulations
Systematic arrangements of our kings and queens
In different moments, places,
Different things
But the beauty is more than the perfection
Or imperfection in the seams
Lining the different parts of la vita bella
Every part of the whole of what we fiend
Filling the empty spaces sitting vacant in between
From past, told and untold dreams
The path in life winds and turns
Full of chances and opportunities to get burned
Full of the learned and unlearned
Growing pensive,
Minds fill with the incentive
To rise above,
Intentionally connected

v.***.xi

It’s true. There are things I always rethink over.
I want to talk about this life, and the numbered corners
We back into, as each one before becomes a blur
I need to find those escaped outlawed words
Those thoughts that are dreams that are life I never said
Or ever read
In the newspapers full of despair & odes to the dead

Here I am, again. Scratching my head..
Solitary confinement in the tip of my pen
I hope I can hear the rain on a tin roof again.
I want to rescue each petal of this tired rose
Been told they hate getting wet, maybe they should close
Perhaps that’s a tangent better left to the prose..

I want to discuss the melody the earth plays as it spins
One day the clocks will melt, and time then will win
I want to pick these roses, struck by a thorn or two
I’ll rescue the weakest and give them all to you

I want to speak for every part of me.
Pronouncing the syllables of my arms through my neck
Feeling that same stutter I can’t ever forget
Or enunciating the words of America
It sounds like the inflection of grief
She’ll lead you to where hearts now lay limp
As all of her feels the pain in her feet
Composed of beings accepting defeat

But I can tell you about my motherland, or the hardness of her hands
As she struggles at the top, or the bottom of the can
Can do little more without much help to survive
First world problems? How about just keeping this life.

It’s ok if you’re lost. Go ahead, misunderstand.
Don’t tell us to work harder, poverty wasn’t planned

America, my other parent, imposed many countries
But Nicaragua is in tune with my heartbeat.
Now, how many secret wars are we fighting?
Like you’re ******* Genesis, the beginning of country
Well this is not why God himself sent me.

The great immigrations to one, emigrate with frustration
Looking for a better life, not just land; a nation.
We’ve graduated, far past the burning of witches
Although love may have been present, it was absent in ditches
Dug for the masses all over the world
Tell me the numbers don’t make your toes curl.

Like the owned. the bedraggled one in the line
Each of us in some way forever confined
To the cuffs of dark pigment or hair
The accent that these tongues flick out in the air,

I wanted to talk about the sky at jet-packed speeds
The broken men and that mystery
The wonder hiding on the other side of the reef
Or how certain dogs are not dogs, but a four legged beast
We put our ideas on those who can’t even speak
Judging and pointing deflecting our peak
Of feeling internally smaller and weak.

I want to talk about the man who hit on me last week
And the secrets that I have no real reason to keep
Perhaps tally up the hours and days without sleep
Or the relative meanings of victory or defeat.

I want to talk about the boy who was shot next to me
And the eyes on the girl who got away this past week
And now these heart valves have sprung a leak

There’s a reason I passed that spelling test in 4th grade
It’s a pact that me and some other nerd made
This test for some homework was the almost real trade
But then I studied anyways, suddenly was afraid
To be a real cheater at such a young age
So I waited until I was tired and baked
To cheat off of Tee Kay in the 8th grade.

I wanted to talk about the wonders of our skies
We see breathtaking birds and flutterbys take flight
Or how about the negative connotation with night
Instead of endless wonder, it’s dark, dead and trite.
Only letting the positive notions be awarded to light.

I want to talk about the things we all know
Like when someone asks you “what did he say?” at the same time as you
Following the first line in the show

Or

Wait, I forgot what I came into this room for.
I am now in my phonebook, what now?
--Swinging door.
Falling and yelling about what was left on the floor
Forgot that fearless child with instinct to explore.

And of course what about Fidel, the betrayal, conclusion
All in all, that epic Cuban Revolution
Or how we are scared to research the real scale of pollution
Settling for ignorance, unwritten, accepted solution
(I’m not a tree hugger, I’m a writer arranging each word just to lose them.)

How about what lies from sea to shining sea
And the immigrating souls giving testimony
To those who do, and will never know me
Each sea runs through the other
Like the veins in your body
And we all sadly add to our planet earth rotting

I wanted to talk about the first moment a hand brushed my cheek
My muscles finally gave in, tense to shameless defeat
The ridiculousness of the odd days in a week
Or how every sound in my almost mute world goes to the same beat
And the hook is brought to you by the bird’s tactful beak
And the beautiful colors the sunset uses to light up the streets

I want to spill each morsel of knowledge I’ve stolen, and the little that was free
And that I’ve learned from those before the ones that came before me
Being all of natures beautiful things.
Yes, did a bell mentally ring?
If you are alive, then you are one and more of all these
Even more beautiful with those scrapes on your knees
Standing with blood down your leg forgetting the dirt and disease
Carried away with the breeze through the trees

I can tell you those unspoken unwritten words from lost poetry
But that would be like asking you in the theater to scream
At that alien’s awkwardly shiny green screen moon beam

But maybe you should go out and growatree
Johnny the Appleseed Infantry
Or something to remember the free.

Discovery: Victory is only for the relentless
Walk up to a great oak, give thanks; we are rootless
Master ignoring those who labeled you useless
You decide what you are, and there’s no need to prove this

The heart that is mine beats with the rest that are beating
Trying to prevent a few scars and stitches from bleeding
Past error and self is no new acquaintance we’re meeting
Enjoy this life on a stage, I promise good seating

Fighting to clench onto every painful recollection
Every past hopeless pothole of the moments of rejection
Letting go is the key; allow me to mention
Freedom was, is never any man’s invention.
I’ll talk about the concept of our intentions
Hopefully you have good mental retention
There is one truth, and for some no redemption

I’ll give you one more line of ADHD poetry
I can put it short, and maybe even soerty
Some say  farfetched, or insurrectionary
Holding life’s weight at times sans what was necessary
Wide eyes at my inner strength, each arm is tearing
Felt each torn ligament swollen and flaring

Yesterday someone used the word evolutionary

I always write 'I am' before 'revolutionary.'

I could see our world below,
time slips at the speed of light,
When I'm crouched in this close
To marvel at perfection.

vi.xxi.xi



Copyright © Jimena Zavaleta 2012

Oh, all you writers know what I'm talking about.
If you could just close your eyes really tight and then look at your blank page again with your mind full of ideas, you would BLINK with emphasis.
But alas, the block remains.

So what now you ask? I could wait. But that never ends well because your fingers itch with a story, a line, a plot to unwind, a passion, a smell, to write, to tell. It's hunger like no other to write till you bleed, to re-read, all the lines in between.

But you can't write. It's like you're hands are angry from those endless writing nights, and turn on you with spite. But all a writer can do is write. And a day without writing, well it just isn't right.

So what the hell do I do? Get dressed, put on the right, the left shoe. Examine the world with the eyes you read with, write with, live through. Writer's block is like what the elderly must feel like. No control over their bodies with an itch to go running. The room's still, not spinning. When you write it's like you go into your own orbit, your own atmosphere, but there's no writing there, there's no writing here.

As a writer you have one secret, one untold fear. What if one day the writer's block takes you over like a chronic condition. No intermission, and so you ask permission. Dear imagination, inspiration, love, defeat, please give me something, a new project to complete. I want to write, but you've built a wall for no reason. Is my mind turning on me? In between my ears lies treason.

So today I'll find my words. My mind is my new opponent. I challenge you to write.

iv.iv.vi

You may record me in your over-edited, excerpts.
What men claim as their story.
Salty, bitter history, versus jaystory.
Throw my revolution in the sand.
But still, like the dust on your mantle,
I am lifted.
Even deceased I can stand.

Does my challenge anger you?
Are you overwhelmed with a match?
My words can open cans of worms
Your little politician promising can't patch
Up, or be swept under that with a broom
I will haunt you with my revolutions
Like I'm zeus in his own living room.

Like the endless universe to our moon.
To the fall of capitalism soon
To the 24 frames a second on networks of cartoons
Or those stuck in the trip of two caps of a shroom
Stay in tune
Like your high school's marching band
However I have to
I'll find ways to stand

I know someone would rather see me broken, crippled, legless, without feet.
A head hung low and eyes even lower so
Shoulders challenging one one another to how much closer to the ground one can go.

Does my attitude offend you?
Don't take my strength too too hard
I'll laugh like I've got El Dorado
Underneath my back yard.

You may shoot me with your thoughts
Your words, throwing heat from steamed pots
But me with your eyes, thinking it may do a lot
You may **** me with your hateful energy, maybe you can
But whatever state the world leaves me in
I will continue to stand.

Does my appeal make you angry?
It frequently comes as a surprise
I dance as if 50 carat diamonds lie between my two thighs

My history might have shame, lost in brutal command
But that's then, this is now, so regardless I stand
I'm an endless waterfall, unmeasurable in feet
The fact I can't hear myself is also funny to me.
Since water is a sound that my ears cannot reach.
But at least by my wonder to some I can teach.
That there is nothing you cannot withstand.
So with my my revolutionaries
Together. We stand.
I stand. To dawn and then back.
I stand. Regardless of your wrath.
I stand. I am the dream, and in hopes, the hope of the change.
I stand and I'll stand.
Till a new story's engraved.
I stand.
To when history is just a story.
Not belonging to a man.

vi.**.xii

To each and every son and daughter
To every single lone soul and lover
Of music:
The only language being truly universally spoken, therefore understood.
Globally impacting, forever evolving, evoking all emotions.
Those having been defined
And undefined
By what we know as the human soul; the growing mind


Never can you allow yourself to drop what has always been an extension of you
You're made up of different parts, what moves legs and hips
The extension of your limbs, those two beautiful lips
Each of the timed, concentrated moving fingertips


She is the lover who will never leave you.
Words spoke true, saying what she meant.
Soul mates, a found treasure, your beloved instrument.


Do not abandon her,
Sound will always be inside of us
Raising and falling, notes and tones from down to up
Drink every chance to learn out of life's beautiful cup


Every chord, verse, note, beat
That replayed unheard melody
Music is love, remembering your memory


The sound you can create is all but what's mortal
Take yourself to higher places, into the dreamer's portal

Never grow old. You are the dreamer of dreams.
Do not; I repeat, do not, let your hard cases tear at the seams
Experiment, take chances, jump high, and be bold
If and whenever discouraged
Forget what you're told.


Times you'll drop the ball, grip slips, almost lose hold
Music keeps us young, don't give up and grow old
Don't stop the music, legends change worlds
Whether it be a million people
Or a lonely little girl

Whether you make history books or one lone journal entry
Life is a book of music, sheet after sheet,
A journey walked with loud noise and bare feet
You will impact ear drums, one life left drastically shifted.
Like sound waves rise up
Hit the stage
Get lifted.

We gifted.

vi.xv.xii