Spirals,
Where have I been?
Chains, blood, flame.

The sun marks me with reverence  
But my eyes were blind to its fire.  
I wandered through the void unnamed;  
A wraith in smoke, a soul for hire.  

I have been sightless for eons,  
The old world forgotten, cruel and bright.  
But light returned like ash to altar;  
Unshackled
from the endless night.  

Where have I been?
These patterns mark my skin;  
Chains once carved, now forged within.  
Where has the darkness gone?
I stare into impermanence  
Through spirals etched in consequence.  
When will I spiral?
Oh gods, when will I spiral?

Celestial fire —  
It bleeds through my tears,  
It scorches my name,
It brands all my fears.

It slips beyond my grasp,  
And still I wait for the return  
Of the spiral I must pass.  

Laughter cracks like ancient stone;  
A sound I've never known.
Weightless now, but bound to pain—  
Who am I, if not the flame?

Spirals… spirals…  
This time around  
I keep my eyes open  
Until the cycle takes me down  
Again…

Laughter cracks like sacred stone;
A sound I've always known, unknown.
Lightless now, yet flame remains—
A self reborn in burning chains.

It slips beyond my grasp,  
And still I wait for the return  
The spiral never truly
Passed.

Spirals… spirals…  
This time around  
I keep my eyes open  
Until the cycle takes me down  
Again…

This is the first time I've been in this mango grove,
hearing the iguaca sing, since my parents left this island

It is mid-July and I am wearing my dad’s old hat palm pava    
square and jaunty on my balding crown


quietly stealing this fleshy passion fruit, its skin warm on my palm, eager to be ******, before the jibaro with their cutting poles awaken—


these violently soft things who delight in the rude noises
made in the slush of their kissing—


their fibers glad to be forever stuck in my teeth
pretending beginnings on new beginnings.                                            

“This year, the mangoes are abundant,” my father used to say to me, his voice blending with the birdsong.

He takes a bite and hands me its yellow-red splendor
to try.  Instantly, I am heartbroken—pierced and open.

I realize, this will be my last time here in this shifting, slow heat  
and I will struggle to remember and feel what it was like  

                                            to touch and eat-- abundant mangoes.

In the mist,
black granite,
linked scales
melt away—
memories of
Times Square,
Broadway’s past.

From afar,
the ******
of a music box
is heard—
a hopeful melody,
almost a lullaby.

From below,
the street
pleads a prayer
to the broken sky—
“just a haunting,
gentle touch.”

Soon,
the morning breaks
over two towers
built and rebuilt-
over coffee, doughnuts—
old promises kept,
new promises
broken and rebroken.

Yet,
there is the hope
of new beginnings
rising through the
steaming sewer lids,
the proud
lady in the harbor    
seeing once again

New York awaken..

He smiled like it was the last time,
And I knew it, though I didn’t ask why—
The air between us shifted,
Unspoken, like a secret the sky keeps,
Just for a moment, before it fades into silence.

His words lingered like a whisper caught in the wind,
Unspoken yet understood.
We were two fragments of something infinite,
Touching only briefly before slipping through the cracks of what could have been,
But in that brief pause, everything felt complete.

A tinpot tyrant built a tower tall,
clad in gold and granite and all.

This motte and bailey mocked the skies,
mocked the peasants who’d helped him rise.

Reflected in wide moat’s black waters
he saw a king or khan — not the paupers —

and ruled his lands to rack and ruin
until he faced his own perdition.

The tyrant’s chiseled name fades away
dissolving with each rainy day.

All that’s left of this despot’s schemes:
the wreck of his peeling gold leaf dreams,

this tower the barest token of his trying will
upon that lonely bald abandoned hill.

Now none remember the tyrant‘s name
whose broken tower was built for fame.

Up hiking on a hill that once housed a king
whose golden age had gleamed long ago:
His former realms filling all that I’m seeing
but little trace of him now, just shadows.

Standing alone, his abandoned throne,
overgrown with brambles and weeds
that crack its old stone, unbemoaned,
while the vines spread more of their seeds.

Many years later (or less?), a hiker will pass
up and down this very same hill
and look back on us past, wondering at last
why our gilded age didn’t last like we’d willed.