You need to know this. Whatever this is supposed to be.

You know what I mean when I say this.
If I look at a star, a bud of a new flower to be blooming next week
The scars on the arms of the man waiting
Sitting right next to me
Of I grab a zippo that's been in the sun
The burns make my hands drop it
The world around leaves me spun
I stare at a fire I built
Amazed at what I have done
But still the world leaves me at zero to one

I stare at the sky, and the plant, and the man
Wondering how much longer on my legs I can stand
Because everything I look at my eyes stick to like glue
Everything, anything, brings me right back to you.
As if every single element, atom and nucleus groans
At the day I was forced to remember with such darkened tone
That I have always and remain standing alone.

Now, this time, I mean this moment, the present
Had allowed me to see what is quite not and quite relevant
If you little by little continue loosening grasp on the covenant
Than I shall rip off my skin for the evidence
Of ever having painfully been welded against it
My due penance.
Remnants.

If I am forgotten, do not lift a mind's memory's frame to remember
Do not look for me, for my picture will have been completely dismembered

For my own real-life self's internal tremor,
I will have to rip every photograph so as to never remember.
Someone said forever.
Forgotten means never.

If you take a moment to focus your mind
On the countless theme songs, and background noise of my life
Be it through the love and the pain and the might
And maybe one day I'll get word you decide
To leave me at the riverbank where I had taken root

Mark that day on a calendar closest to you.
On that day, that hour, that millisecond in time
I will spread my arms and rip my roots and the vines
Off in search of another place unconfined.

But if--every single **** day,
Every counted passing hour.
You feel you really are that future-blooming flower
With your vines crawl up towards that sunlight that is me
Use your lips to find mine and I'll cut you from your tree
And in my heart's vase you'll be free.
All that fire will be revived, relived, remembered.
Nothing is extinguished or forgotten.
Deep down I know I will not allow myself to grow putrid and rotten.

My love feeds on your love, my lovely beloved.
As long as you're alive, it will be in your hands.
Without leaving a vine wrapped around my legs.
This life is our land.
Calling it ours, one day hand in hand.

Moving my glass in a circle, listening to the ice and cup collision.
As I go on and on and on, the ice melts, as does my vision.
But I'm alone, my most frequently taken decision.
Followed by correcting my morning away in revisions.

I'm caught in my hammock, tangled like a fish in the netting.
Watching my hand pick up that bottle in this repetitive setting.
And wonder of your pulse, and if it's been forgetting
Those moments, that at this point, seem to be getting
To be all that I am.

Forgetting Sundays.
Or the stars with salt and butter, to feel better.

By forgetting the corner shelf, each handwritten letter,
Forgetting long drives, how making a bed with two people is best.
Being car sick. A beer to pitch up the tent.
Gazing up at the redwoods.
A single tear rolls, a fire burns as tall as we stood.
Tied together on that forest floor.
Tighter than the knots before.

It means,
Forgetting the inner dialogue of those people walking down the block.
It's never getting the hang of how that door unlocked.
Forgetting a **** good teammate for cracking word games.
Forgetting that medicine bag that was actually lame.
Or that plate under the bathroom sink with old dried up paint.

Visiting a farm, the salsa, debating on the shirts.
Deciding who really wanted to sneak into the abandoned house first.
Someone sitting at a bar, typing the night away.
Live music, completely failing at spoken word that one day.
Waking up as two kittens. For hours to play.

It means,
Forgetting the harmonica, and songs that lived inside it.
Reaching dead ends with GPS, so we had to guide it.
Laughing for hours on a porch, smoke winding around our fingers.
Mimosas, a most satisfying breakfast smell still lingers
Answering a phone as if faintly afraid.
Remembered the songs I heard; the exact time and the day.
Leaving notes around to be discovered and sweet.
Shaking hands with the world, all those random people we'd meet.
We never went to the BBQ at the corner car wash.
Always owed the store next door a dollar.
How I would sit on that chest as you walked back and forth, deciding what to wear.
Smoking out the window.
Finding socks everywhere.

It means,
Forgetting the run to the bart station after bar hopping quests
--Those in hopes you'll say yes to that one invitational request.
Always on missions to go see and eat things we hadn't before.
Driving to that one restaurant where kids worked the floor.
And there were no prices for the plates.
Staying up late.
Forgetting how the white people dance and we laughed.
This is how you dry two sweaty hands.
Promising all the adventures we planned.
The day you tried to get me to drink the green goo. Ew.
I still drank that whole glass for you.
Helping you even out the dirt in that backyard with a slab of wood and a string.
Those songs off Pandora I attempted to sing.
A Red Bull accompanied by other snacks in a bag.
Picking you up there, and later setting one of my pillows on fire.
I packed everything but that **** set of plates.
I laughed at your knee socks, BART running late.


It means, all these things that might ring a bell;
If you can forget them, you forget me as well.

vii..xii

Those eyes.

**** winter, cold from the inside.
Shared beaches together.
The sand had a picture of a house in a future life.
Wonder how long it took to be washed by high tide.
Remember standing there looking at the house's uneven sides.
With two smiles stretching at least ten miles wide.

It's still cold from inside.

Nothing is indestructible.
We all know most things can be broken.
At home, in your friend’s toy chest
Breaking things in a place you’re considered a guest
I guess,
Breaking a bone hurts. I know through some testimonies
I wouldn’t know, but maybe eventually
That ninety or so broken degree
Painful message sent through the spinal cord holding me--
Together.
Underneath the thin material having been tethered.
The spine surviving endless stages of weather
Holding on to claim being a backbone helplessly held together
Hoping through each trimumph the chronic pain might feel better
Only holding onto the self as a go-getter
As life’s building blocks as the brick setter
The rain picks up
And life’s damp becomes wetter.
Just let her.

Things, as if they were pushed right over the edge
Smashed, or broken, as the smasher’s true pledge
It’s not me. These ten fingers deny
To be responsible for all the pain felt as the time passed me by

Maybe it was everything. The endless rotation of our planet.
Maybe it was this or that. ****, I have had it.
It wasn’t everything, or anything, or anyone or body
It wasn’t the unerasable ink splatter and splotting
It wasn’t the wind that knocked me over
It wasn’t the colors you’d paint me
It wasn’t the night,
It wasn’t the morning,
It wasn’t the past or present cold mourning.

It was not my limbs or the joints, or the ligaments that compose me
The fragments and pieces ] glued together intravenously

Each psalm taken in the hurricane seasons’ wrath
One, after another, too broken to cast

The two unequal hands ring based on the hour
Whose sounds was the ring of a shared life now gone sour
Because being ignored, as if I never existed is power
Unconsider yourself, at least today, that forever blooming flower.
I might be a million things. But of those not a coward.
Today you took the title with a medal to show off to the people you know
Welcome to the black and the white swan’s big show
At this point I’m the raven, she’ll never know
I was too drunk to function at the end of the show.

The curtains begin to rise, and I watch in surprise
How exposed and naked are the both of our lives
As your patience has taken time to disguise
Replacements as substitutions for the nature of the styles
We have to live life in the ways that we fight
Hoping for what we want in the end without struggle
How about perfection? I said on the double.

And those two uneven hands of the clock are due to change places
Ticking away at our concept of time
And aging our faces
The weeks pass us by
The days and the hours
Ask me who if not both of us are the coward

The giant dump truck grinds up countless materials
Making fragments of the things that existed for real
And what lasted in the bins of the emotions free wheels
Making internal rationalizations for what I tried to feel.
It’s over and over on what I wanted to seal
Were too many things to remember?
Dreams turning it all too, too real.
Turn my mind inside out I begin to expose now and peel.
How long will it take to forget
Or to heal?
I don’t know what to call this.
And idea or what’s real.
I’ll tell you what the heart asked for his final meal
Peace to believe what we did have was real.

Life keeps grinding up what treasures I’ve collected.
Forget what memories I ever recollected
All I’m asking is that I remain intact and protected.

But no one can guarantee me that.
No one can ask me to offer up my hands frostbitten with your cold
No one can ask me to bluff followed by my own fold
No one can ask me the number of me having been sold.
There was one dream and I bought it.
Except the belief in the memory is what I’ve left to have fought it.

I don’t ask or expect to ever be repaired.
But you didn’t break me, so why were you ever so scared?
Maybe for the immeasurable amount that you actually cared.
But today’s findings have left me quite frankly impaired.
I didn’t exist to you at all. I was the invisible man.
I use all my abilities to understand as I can.
But nothing makes sense to the invisible man.

So he hopes and he hopes for just one part of him to be seen.
One of his hands through the smoke in your overly-woven screen
To knowingly be holding one of yours, when your reality’s clean.
I’m the invisible man.
Pretending not to see me was a game played unclean.
I hope one day in your life he exists.
Parting through the smog and the fog and the mist
As I feel forgotten in both my clenched fists
What's left is to let go of  those fogged moments like this.

vi.xxiii.xii

The chair she sat in, was no chair at all.
Her own face glowing on the carpet’s contours, where her hands
Held up by standards wrought with my own hands
Doubled the light reaching from the fixture
to my twisted, internally suspended transistor
Being my inner projections
Of this minds sickly infection
That began to eat me alive
But perhaps to each his own reflection
Reflecting light upon life’s table
Bouncing off the walls
The glitter of her eyes rose to meet it,
To the ground my pride might fall
Pouring all that was left,
Watching it trickle down fast.
Into the vials, beakers of broken glass
There is nothing, no one left accused,
Somehow it hits harder,
Sitting there so confused.
I held down my sense of sorrow
Drowned by it, I feel the seams tear.
The logic of all this left me eluded.
I was doing my best to have honestly concluded
The game is only half finished! Press your timed moment
Feeling the moment slipping.
Fighting to clasp it and hold it
  
Inching up closer, I smelled your hair.
As I fought every instinct, to reject my inner care
Lunging at this injustice of forfeit wasn’t fair
But that’s what was to happen there
I’m looking at this game through a window
Feeling my face grow flush
This move was not spoken of
Or thought of very much.
Here I was, feeling things I’d lost
But this game was such a challenge
I never calculated costs
Your whispers of the next play were playing in my ears
On repeat, as if to render  and digest all my own fears
Of the loss of this game I actually learned to love
But then push came to shove
We lost track of our places.
A voice raises.
Where is your ROOK?
WHERE IS MY QUEEN?
I almost wish to miss the signs,
The gaps left in between.
And then we stare at the board.
Consumed by our words.
I start to whistle and sit terribly still.


I’m a wreck. I can’t even see where my last pawn went.
--Stay with me. Speak to me.
I'm not the best with words.

--Why wont you talk to me?
Haven't we gone over this?


--What are you thinking? I don't know what you're thinking.
You linder in my nose again.

--Did you hear that?
My cardiovascular system pulsating on the floor?

--Do you know? Do you see? Do you remember?
I remember. Those are pearls that were my eyes.

--This is just not the time.
Perhaps.

You like the way I write about you?
It’s so elegant,
So intelligent.

What the will I do? What the about tomorrow?

I have a show to play at ten.
If the sky decides to rain, I know your car door will be locked at 5.
But its perfect to play a game of chess in the rain. Or rather, when it’s raining.

My eyes are forced open. There is no other than the raven at my chamber door.
A fool in love never more.
A sonnet for tomorrow
For my only known Lenore.

The water is too cold to consider moving forward.
Gazing across the water for so long, the sky prepares for dusk.
And from the river bank or the water, it seems to be enough
That it is the same sunset. The warm colors make calls.
But those were the words bouncing in my inner skull walls.

And still, because this view always beats the other horizon.
Keeping both eyes faced forward.
The west busies my eyes then.
The spaces between me and the water is where the pain lies in.

And sometimes from deep in my core.
I think I might hear a call from the opposite shore.
I just glance over, my body's too weak to explore.
But that was just a bird call, from the top of a tree.
Nothing less, nothing more.
Wondering when the sounds will be calling for me.

I watch her swim, on a side farthest from where I can see.
There's no current, but the water looks as if it's moving her this and that way.
The wind hasn't picked up, and she's floating away.
I want to stand up and yell, but what would I say?
I can only know this is as close as I can be today.

I recall the times you swam so close I could touch you.
You lost a feather this morning.
Who knew what I'd get myself into.
Holding on tight to the grassy land
Reaching out to grab your lost feather with a careful hand.

Your feathers haven't changed. The same white, edges so smooth.
Following the middle's solid groove.
From the other side you look at me.
But neither of us move.

I want nothing more than to touch you, when you swim past me I stay thinking.
Knowing my boat might have a hole, and I can't have you see me sinking.
So there I am, left to contemplate linking--
My hope with your chances, to the stars that are twinkling.

My spot on the river bank is clearly love stained.
I don't think it will ever be gone.
No matter how much it may rain.
I stay looking west, imagining a rip in the horizon's thinner part.
Then the earth and the sky would be peeling apart.

Maybe leaving nothing but the two of us left.
Oh, man, but it seems like such a mess.

I know it is simple. The water is too cold for me to be.
I wish to leave.
But can't unless I can take you with me.
I imagine us finding our way through the stars.
Forgetting all about the planes and the cars.
But I can't start thinking about all this.
I look across the water; you're still much too far.

Both changing, as we gazed, each of us half of one desire,

"Maybe tomorrow," I hope, as I find where to lay.
Just out of arm's reach you settle in,
and whisper--

"I missed you today."

Brushing my hand against perfect skin.
Like water through my fingers, air on my cheek
The smell, the taste, all of her
Make me weak
I can’t speak

Outline every curve, muscle, and line
Tasting her from the sides;
then from behind
Glowing after the light isn’t shown
Wishing these ears could really hear the moan
With the drip
Down those lovely thighs
Melting into each perfect breast
And both curious eyes
Unleash, relieve her
Feel and conceive her
This soul open in front of me
An everlasting rose, quenching my thirst
It is me who wants to go first

The shoulders. Designed and perfected
Pulsing; another rose resurrected
Feeling a rhythm then feeling another
Shallow breathing, in and out of the other
Ear, nose, hand, rose
Long neck below the lips I crave
Sweet, sweet smile, a tongue misbehaved
Powerful, slick, when breathing my name
The mist from her fountain
Last night when she came

Her hands, each finger, each knuckle
Unlike a ligament, or tendons, or a bundle of veins
Touching, being touched, give, take, point, aim
So many watches, numbers on clocks
Demanding to be acknowledged, but
A trembling ****, does not cause a disorder
Or have small hands making life grow shorter
Her insides make room, my hand in her time
So slender, so delicate, constantly to remind
There’s nothing  else of this kind

Wet lips, kiss, taste, devour
Painting her picture minute after hour
Her fountain is my ***** body’s shower
Hearing her voice’s forgotten power
Her calves can hold the weight of her world
The perfect size, length, a curve when she’s curled
I feel her shiver
Imagine her skin on my skin
I deliver
My self, entirely to her pink, red rose
Deaf to her hunger for the next dripping pose
I hold her close
Feel the life in her body
Wanting to give her mine
As my eyes become cloudy

Her hair, softer than my skin can feel
Pull remembering I’m awake, it’s real
Her lips on mine, a leak then a flood on her tongue
My love and her body will keep us both young
Drenched
Lost in her waves, for this there will be no cure
I stared at her hands, wanted mine inside her
Having hers inside me
My world changes, eyes opened to see
She is free
Her body is the sun, the leaves falling from a tree
Touching me
To spread the feeling
Of the skin that is free
How sweet

Is that curve against curve,
Smoothed out by a craftman’s eyes
Each hair placed gently, each smile, each line
Like a toy, I wind and and I wind
Breaking the dam, and then some of mine
Hearing her come as my life’s wind chime

Her body. Is a connection of twists and turns
Like a map I must remember to learn
Every muscle flexes with mine
Even our sweat beads are frozen in time

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

I want poetry to break out of it's underground cave
Break out of the solitary lonely, locked cage.


I want my poetry to be capable of inspiring change
I want to illustrate beauty in a verse beautifully maimed
I want to communicate the tender sudden pulse of a surface wound
I want my poetry to be blueprints for change, in the world, or a room
I want to connect the universal nerve of tremors and feelings
I want to connect wires and vessels, shifting cells and ceilings
I want to broadcast this current human condition,
Rewiring like a revolutionary electrician
I want to transcend my, and next time,
With my poems added to anthologies
And each of their lines
Being recited by literary scholars and dedicated readers


But I have accepted some poets are popular during their lifetimes
Like Alice Cary, and Maya Angelou
With acknowledged, renowned, printed
Published Stanzas, and lines.
I want to at the very least, be one of those who guard a hidden, folded..
[Rather than outdated, infamous, tattered and broken]
..genuis.
Or maybe an answer to some past hanging question
Found in the very letters in my words to
The trademarked inflection
Breathing a bashful verse that grew in this universe
Or the next
To strengthen roots of the beauty of language
The older, the wiser, the more interpreted complex
Not the unknown but claimed roots of American poetry
And some
May close the **** kindle. Or rip out the last page.
After I die, I might return with bones live with rage.


Because if nothing has happened, I will continue to say:
I want my poetry to be capable of inspiring change.


Because we are destroying a world we should be killing fighting to save.
(Hopefully this shan't be said again from a grave.)
Each person who has read solely to write one more page
Take your weapons, inspire, engage
None can lay bricks until a clear path is paved.

iii.viii.xii

Responsible for a few things.
Warm nights.
Stopped time.
Catharsis.
Existence.
It's all your fault that I am two people at once.

Walking, but just carried
One, five, another
Ignoring the background whispers
And the words of my mother

Passing another, without recognition
I will climb every mountain
I'll never ask for permission
Results accurately display the current conditions
Intentions can be questioned
Scan this place for a moment
Non-action is non-action
No claim to submission
Game time, now own it
Integrity is not my invention
Present, direct attention

To the clouds, over the other direction
Blood boils like classic convention
I'll say that reality is wrong, dreams are for real.
Keep bending corners on life-warranted wheels
Great minds, start thinking, change can be real

Come to inside various naked walls, situations
Schedule those ineffective, biased evaluations
Go to a poor country, try to survive some starvation.
How does a heavy nose remain at high elevation?
Passion, giddy with six-digit dedication?
Scan this for a moment
Respect is earned,
Those hands are too small to hold it
Infinite efforts to label and mold it
Unfit to claim it or fold it
This world is the world's world
Karma visited them.
Who thought they sold it.
History repeats itself
Who wrote it?
Who told it?
Apparently Texas thinks they can own it.

But my world has an afterglow
This is not the crest smile
Or the beat of this flow
It's the pursuit of happiness
Growth, searching high
And searching low
Learning to be learning
And learning how to know
Finding love
Lessons, how to show
To keep the richer, better things
Life's breeze, endurance as my life's seams
To live, yes, but forever to dream.

I'll enjoy this reality scene.

vi.xxi.xi

Eyes switching gazes from right to left pupil. Stories held in thin air for a moment in the space between retinas. Words acting as weapons of mass destruction, hanging in the air becoming stale with every inch as each syllable rises into the atmosphere. Forever echoing in the ears of the listener, penetrating thoughts, clouding the brain, like toxic waste. Encouraging words must be found, they must be said. Dreams, inspiration. Into the minds of the growing, the moving, the future. holding the destiny of this world in small, and innocent hands, and wide eyes. Those eyes are the windows to the next generation and the key to the next miracle the universe begs for. Opening windows, and locking front doors, let’s pretend for a second that time is stoppable, moments aren’t lost, and people live forever.

Results aren’t final unless you ask them to be. Things happen we aren’t sure of, flashbacks your days dream. Having doubts that fill our minds wading through the nerves through the brain stem to the core of the cores of the armor. I can talk to my 13 year old self, and tell him that I understand, and that we’re still the same person, I’m just the shell. I can tell him everything I want. But he’s already lived.

In the mirror, switching gazes from iris to pupil. Lungs collapse as the phrases land on the younger heart of mine. Phrases consisting of the negatives, the outcomes, the results, the roots, the stories, the endings, the beginnings, the alterations, the alternations, the provocations, the imagination. Phrases meant to tear down, not rebuild. The destiny of the world held in small hands, clutched by small fingers, as the quotations waft through rooms. The rooms where they escaped *****, angry, and ignorant mouths. The miracle stares at the reflection, not knowing the necessity of the universe. Closing windows, opening doors, wishing the hands on the clocks of life can stop.

Encouraging words must be found, they must be said.
Let’s write history with the minds of the growing, the moving,
the future.
Nurture.

vi.xxi.xi

Foster, what family? Lower class, dream of  vacation
******* what trickles down, affecting a life situation
White to Blue Collar; a rebuild or invasion?

Millions inside the boxes of convention
Justified superficial, backhanded salutations
Refute Love, proposed as mankind’s invention
Pulled by a string of instant gratification
Finding freedom’s temporary
If ever, long term locations
Constricted, system of classifications
The socially admissible connections,
Not to mention gangs of corrections
Flowing through the previous, my own generation

For the infinite hours
One after the other
Trade integrity for the illusion of power
Not all those with a gun should be considered a coward
Face the souls sold on Wall Street,
Remember those from Twin Towers

Ground zero, abandoned. Now bare, desolate
The idea of terrorism denied, while some wrestle it
Rationales dislocate, post hairline fracture
Frontal lobe imposter, posing in rapture
As if talent, love, or hate could ever be captured
Held at gun point, then forgotten years after
My children will one day look to me for the answer

What’s society, this twisted maze we live in?
I will gaze in their eyes with the same exact question
And don’t ever allow me again not to mention
Real criminals can’t learn from minute or life-long detentions
Some incapable of that level of retention
As our battered soldiers forever sleep at attention

Politically correct, tongues in consistent hesitation
Kiss police ***, only to go to the station
Before the thought of who signed the citation
Treated as if it were a felony violation
Our basic rights according to our nation
Arizona & Co for minority elimination

Die fighting the statute of poverty’s limitations

vi.i.xi

It was more marvelous.


You sang like I'd never heard music
Clenching to the minutes of guitar licks
Coming from the strings of your far hips
Twelve inches away
What's your name again?
Is it Saturday?


This glistening path, where arrows are illegally painted
Eyes past sky, for this liberty belated
These souls
Some have seen the change I live in today
Others cross streets, looking straight ahead
While I'm one of the both ways
Freedom is not a place, or a person, or a thing
It's a state of mind
It's the world on a string
I held in my hand on the yellow brick road


To my right was my dove, and I'll be the toad
Are those my fans?
Did you read the signs they can hold?
In a world spinning so fast
So cold, but so bold?


I'm sold, freedom is priceless you know
Welcome to my life
I'm in the show


But I'm trying. Trying to make sense of the time
As I feel myself unintentionally unwind
But the magic stops,
But only on the outside
Of my body, my skin
Sugar held to my chest
Gluttony is my new favorite sin
Deadly, but some things are good
Like speaking no words
And then understood


Who knew
I knew the world would
At least one note in my life
Make some sense like it should


So look here, glitter, the fairies
I remember I swore I would never get married
Or I would be too fat to carry
Or I would burn, never buried
But life is now this moment
No need to be hurried
Or worried
Or full of hate
Or fury


I've seen too much sadness, but the bottom is alluring
Although I hold my own, this world is not mine
So I took it off my shoulders in El Dorado
And left an old mirror behind.
Please be kind, join me.
Saturday to unwind.

vi.xxvi.xi

Don't listen to what I say.
Empty words left hanging in thin air.
You swat at them
Oh--There's one in your hair.

When it's that time
Do not decide I'm misplaced.
I'll be the glasses you might have lost
That were already on your face.

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

We are free to use our blinkers
Or maybe not, to switch lanes
We're free to lose, of course to gain
Most give less than they share
But we all have freedom to wish, and that of despair

I need some ******* space here, people
I don't care about the extremists in that Texan steeple
I need to think, I need to know
Because apparently we're all given a chance to succeed
Chances to grow
But that's some ****, I'll tell you, and the nation
Where there are chains, no one finds your liberation
You must fight for yourself
Unlike those ignorant to an outside situation

I live life as well as I can conceive
I come, and I'll go as I please
I have struggled, ****, and some things done with ease
But it's hard to accept things
Stop from beginning to plead

With life, dreaming of a non-failure tattoo on my chest
Freedom of denial and maybe of access
But dreams can be illusions, rather than reality
But it's on the individual to make dreams an actuality

I've seen so many live, and I've seen too many die
But I've found the freedom to laugh loud
And I've let myself cry
But sometimes it's easy to hear,
And harder to listen
For me especially
To act after having made decision

If I hold a gun in the war of revolution
There will be freedom in war, and freedom in peace
I guess we all have things to learn
Like when to start
When to cease
I wish we could all be free some disease
Chronically in perfect health
But that's a fantasy, unlike poverty
And manipulated, mishandled wealth.
An honest politician is an idea I can't conceive
If I'm ever that powerful
Well, it'll have to start with me, I believe
Americans will find freedom from greed
And maybe jealousy, we can keep some pride
But me, just me, I don't have anything to hide.
I'll never be free from space, but maybe from time
But there's things that will happen around me:
Hunger, and crime

If I can find freedom from my body and mind
Then I'll have found what I've been trying to find
To see true colors, looking ahead, forget what's behind
Maybe there's rebirth, being of the spiritual kind

Universal freedom might be nothing left to lose,
But fighting for my freedom is the path I look to choose
The rich old white guys keep driving their Benz's
While I look at my world, my freedom
Through my $20 lenses

v.xi.xi

I can't seem to see straight
Or maybe it's this bright light
Blurring my vision, my eyes tend to fight
Look here, left, then right.

There's not too much thought put into action
Waking up from no sleep
Such little satisfaction
I hope my brain can keep spinning
While keeping the traction
Maybe it will break in two
A brain **** fraction

iv.x.xi