You, my sweetest word,

make me human, you create --


a world inside me.

Why not dive deep into the self..
To bring out the hidden treasures within;
The kindness the world craves for,
The much needed integrity,
The love capable of transforming,
The wisdom that guides,
The longed for justice,
The responsible attitude that demands less and serves more,
& the compassion that sees humanity in everyone.

In the crazy busyness of the day
where electric sounds suffuse,
even a little chat is often a freeway
of words and noise.

And in the midst, he tells me
“Just be yourself.”
There I am
in the small space of silence
being undone
with nothing to say
while I wonder
what self.

A friend tells me they’re getting a divorce.
The doctor says the tests are positive.
I watch: the surge of floods taking homes and lives
or images of smoke and debris right after a bombing.
After a real serious play or movie.
In the waiting room after I hear she is going to die.

In those lonely tiny spaces
of darkness
I cannot speak.

In those aftermath moments
I am silenced.

How do I react
to being out of control
or make these things normal
or fit them into my routine ways of being me?

Silence asserts itself
like a wild animal
I cannot tame.

At these intervals
of being powerless
I hope I do not miss the chance
to humbly bow
in silence
and embrace my humanity
and smallness
in the cosmos
where it is utterly trivial
to just be my self.

Hello morning, I have anticipated you since
I awoke to the small barking dog's tailored speak for food.

I want that Eddie should start preparing her own meals. I know that while I smoke this morning's cigarette, that French Bulldog inside contemplates the fifty dollar bag of high-grade kibble she has pushed me to buy her or instead enjoying her own ****. And all of my wives friends call her a lady.

I want to ride alone in our FJ Cruiser through Yellowstone at dawn, before the predators have gone to bed and the tourists make their queues, I want to beat morning until I have found the wolves, and the sun rise mocks me as I sit four hours in traffic for a cup of coffee as I round the shivering peaks of our Rocky Mountain backyard landscape, and the Tetons swell with last nights snow-fall and the warm autumn air sends plumes of frigid mist above the valley floor and into the skies above Jackson.

And I wish I could stand once more on the balcony of the 777 building and smoke the finest sativas with my friend Turtle while our significant others drink coffees and watch reruns of American Gladiators on a $14,000 couch waiting for us to come back inside.

I wish I could wait on the benches outside baggage claim at San Francisco International Airport smoking inside the white lines, waiting for a girl in a red sports car to pick me up and my friend Guy's absurd faces there to greet me amidst the fog and the out of place palm trees Inevwr expected to see so far North.

And it would be great to hear my grandfather play the ukulele once more while I excitedly fished off of my grandparents dock somewhere in New Jersey where my mother's accent insists she grew up. And my grandfather sings horrifically demeaning songs written in 1924 that offer little respect to women, but much adventure to young men.

I want to play tag with the neighborhood children again in the Summer of 1995. Even though I had come to find all of those playing tag had absconded to a game entitled The 'A' Game, which its only rules were to exclude me from joining. I want to throw scalding hot water once more into Simon Berman's face. Though I do not wish for him to block the water with a basketball and turn my face into Jack Nicholson's Joker.

In Chicago as an eighteen year old, I could count the chalk outlines of bodies as I drove down Fullerton Avenue through the Logan Square neighborhood. I wish I could remember those sounds the boricua made. I wish I could forget the burning runs I received from Lazo's burritos at some time 'o clock in the morning.

I've never been one for finding edible late-night eats. I only want the memory of being able to do so. I do wish that my wife's ex-best friend's boyfriend realizes that he's less the great Emeril of his kitchen and more or less is just an unemployed sous chef with a laundry list of felonies, rather than a wish list of awful entrees. At least in that memory, he's neither a chef nor my wife's ex-friend's boyfriend and instead he's just another hideous orcish ****** ringing the doorbells in some suburb of Seattle, announcing to each and every one of his neighbors that he's obligated to notify the community of his ****** offenses.

I just wish I was there to witness his humiliation, and enjoy the total collapse of ego amidst the long list of those decent people he has surely offended.

Perhaps in some future life I can enjoy watching as jungle rot solves my hatred, disposing of his evilness in small skin ***** of flesh that dot the sidewalk while his disease evolves.

I want more vegan eating options across the food desert we call America. I want to arrive home one evening and find my wife ancy to share a new study that American Journal of Medixibe has found on the benefits of providing non-reciprocated ******* to your partners. And I want to be the first to enjoy the benefits of such a study, that I'm encouraged by her to publish my findings while I attend a prestigious university I once wasn't allowed to attend because of my religious background.

I want to live in a world where violence is no longer a viable solution to resolving the in differences we as humans confuse each other trying to make sense of between ourselves.

I want to visit our local grocery store and find that my favorite $8 a pint vegan ice cream has been marked down to a more reasonable number and that there is still an abundance of flavors left for me to choose from.

I don't wish for much: to not have people ask me to speak louder, full-frontal ****** in made for television movies, and a decent blonde IPA for under $10 in glass bottles. Where in this world can a poet go and still receive the respect that was once given by the royal monarchy of The British Empire.

Now it seems those with the fine knowledge of words are cast into a class with less regard than street-drifters and the homeless.

When did our world lose major respect for the artisans of fine art, or the ability to render an opus?

28-integer news memos and 15-second clips of our cute dog eating its own **** attract more attention than a fine explanation of the human condition or the sultry and sophisticated sounds of my Argentinian friend Anna recite Garcia Lorca in her native Spanish tongue.

I just want to be gone before there is a consequence for finding joy in the human condition, and honesty and integrity are known as the recividism that takes down our nation.

We were once the leaders of a great country. We were compelled by our history to create and indoctrinate one another to achieve, conceive, and amend ourselves to thrive amidst the uncertainty of a mischievous and disgraceful society. Now I just wish to be in bed with my wife when this storm of stupidity comes. I wish I never had to be on the receiving end of a sermon set forth by business leaders instead of political achievers.

I want Eddie to make herself some breakfast so I can lay here in bed a few more moments. I want pancakes and fresh fruit juice for breakfast, a quiet room and a hard-covered notebook. I want to believe a great pen and a good friend could lead me through the exciting and anxiety-writhing times in this life, but I to know too sadly that we live in a world where we don't view it as a weakness as those around us may not be able to read or may not be able to write.

****.

The poison's me the choice is up to you. Good lord, if they take away all the fashion houses, the rain men won't have anything to wear.

Naked armies, fighting the stories that just someone's grandfather wrote. Is it even real if it goes to sleep at night? Does it wake up to address the evening sky? I don't know....three heroic words the human race can barely say. Isn't the want for pizza an international religion, can we agree on that?

What mind of man gets it in his head that it's his hand that receives death to choose? In what nowhereness did these lonely princes lose everything they knew? Did they hear that killing isn't cool like it was in the 11th Empire- to make light of a situation or just a few lumens too, is pretty rad for any human to do. I may be a vampire but I need a bit of daytime if I want to continue to worship the dark.

It's been 4000 years, and I'm still looking for her, the way she talked to us after the sea we crossed through. The poison is me but the choice to take it is up to you. The rain men may come, but the water dance's for a seldom few. We could starve just for the thrill of wrapping ourselves in pieces of the moon.

Ne me quitte pas. Ne pas passer la lumière. Je vous attends ici, tout comme je le fais toujours. Il est dommage, je suis passé par là avec vous attends.

Backwards, like a sign that's hard to read. Like a leather jacket that's too stiff in the arms but 2 years off the rack. And then the heart explodes in the esophagus. Pieces of young trust comes out all over what the eyes can see, and each body part wants to go back to their respective bed nestling areas. Sometimes, even this little me gets nervous about being vulnerable. You can only burn the velveteen rabbit once.

These are the monkeys of my throat and the dinosaurs that tend to my fingertips. My skin gets leathery before it feels like silk. I don't smell like a motorcycle or sound like the fast lane but I'm not sure if I want to yet. I'm happier not waiting to randomly be reminded of the pain, it's much better to chase down those hydrogen bombs while the cattle **** is still hot and fire-red. Two served and five Peanuts left for playtime. I rather enjoy being a vampire.

Can I show you how beautiful you are? Can I take out the old photo albums and push my index finger into the faces, the places, and seas? I want to peel back the plastic and remove the square photographs from their sticky setting. I'm alluding to ideas that exist more formidably on the internet- there are no paper photographs, no sticky settings, there aren't even faces in the numbers; it's only ever been you or me.

Some of my things are crooked. The strings don't work, the wires are twisted and make the sounds all come out funny. There's a strange buzzing everywhere, it's like Mickey's gray cloud, a cloud Koopa throwing spiked shells from Park Avenue beach to Montrose street. Everything is quiet, consuming, unassuming and still recalcitrant. I'm showing nothing to nobody. Coaxing storm systems and netting foul play and ***** tricks, with my pants around my ankles or my fly unzipped.

I'm stinking of this stuff. These sudorific crevices on the insides of my thighs. I'm more or less always pacing. Rocking. Rolling. Small room I'm living room, cadavers I stuff my skinny fingers inside of- cold, wet hollow places I'm seeking skin covered gods in. I'm craving tastes and flavors. I'm looking at these pictures of me, of my face and the clothes I wore, the people that knew me. Where have I disappeared to? Every place that I went, every condition of my humanness has gone. Five minutes past my certainty, squirting hot molten magma from my ****, my lips, and my fingertips. Hysterical thoughts and homily. I want just a hello. I want just a hello.