How could you know?
How did you take
All the right parts
Kind, gentle, and sweet

What did you learn?
What made you able
The first time you tried
To make our lives complete

When did you know?
When did the stars
So neatly align
To bring wonder into our world

Why is it us?
Why did the heavens
Choose people like we
To parent our precious girl

Its eighteen months since her delivery
Now she is penning odes ostensibly
Crayons in both hands: she is standing tall
What Dada says? "No writing on the wall."

With great care baby writes her graffiti
Not much untouched by her audacity
He tries to compromise with a new book
but baby says, "Daa Daa"; with a stern look

He has to admit the walls are hers now
Filled with scribbles and a chromatic cow
Its her version of Van Gogh's Starry Night
without the stars; a novice oversight

She's more surreal than Salvador Dali
The writing's on my wall: Pure Graffiti

Everytime I pass the street, my eyes linger on the pedestrian bridge.

It's fairly new.

And wouldn't be there if it wasn't for what happened at the corner.

A woman and her baby, or maybe she was looking after this baby, they were standing, waiting to cross, when a car took a turn too sharp, too fast, too whatever, and the baby was gone.

For months, maybe years after, the street lamp was covered in stuffed animals.

But now there's nothing but my memory of a baby I never met and a bridge I'm glad exists.

I wonder what her name was.

I wonder if anyone thinks about her when they cross the bridge.

The pens I went
to bed with left
streaks of ink
on my sheets and
pillowcases. We
soiled these
sheets with
unleashed intimacy,
with authenticity,
with validation,
with imagination
and creativity.

And when we
finished, when we
had jotted thoughts
as clear as we
could, we drifted
off to sleep. When
I woke from my
dreams, I would look
at the product of
this conception,
full of pride.

Then I’d look down
and see the blots
across my body,
my bed, my sheets,
and chuckle at the
mess it takes to
create these darlings.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow
(Alek the Poet)

my name is life and i
love you

i'm the creation of
creation

please be faithful baby
please be faithful

let me take you to the
place of my soul:

deep night
palm trees
silver ocean

my name is life and i love you
baby