The city is shut, sparing its prey until tomorrow. Night rules, dreams creep down the street, eyes dead
Her poised being is the center of universe, that girl
She is loath to beg yet for the twenty fourth time of the night she sings out, God?
It’s two in the morning and they are sitting at the balcony, God and her, both holding a cigarette
Mother and father are in screaming colors but she is, only, the darkest blue
Two of them are contradiction, a vexing rendezvous but they yearn for each other so once in a while they talk

People talk
A boy across the house is found dead
Parents roaring, raging, crashing the ground, he’s wearing a pair of new basketball shoes. Blue.
He is one of million, a delicate kind, very comely, a subtle presence. Neighbors murmur maybe God
fell in love, maybe God enraptured by the boy. But God is peeking behind the closed door with the girl
Between their fingers still a burning cigarette

Maybe it’s the taste of Marlboro Red, the girl
wishing an epiphany, a revelation, for its been too long, the girl and God
writing each other’s eulogy. The girl has been dead for God and God has been dead
for the girl, ruptured for a very long time, there’s no way back. No long talk
can fix the burn of cigarette,
the eternal crippling affliction taped up in every cavity inside the holy temple of their body

A lady in the house with doors and windows painted blue
is murdered. She was having a dalliance and neighbors talk
behind their open bible. God cringes, God recoils, her god is a beige-tied, cigarette
scented with hair slicked back. She was in his thrall, calls her name in a mesmerizingly fetching way making her girl
again, an ingénue with a pair of chatoyant eyes. Bodies clashing, her muse, they fuse, he choose to ruse, dead,
God is amused, time is lapsed, but perhaps she was not divine. A lady in someone’s car trunk, murdered, dear God!

Inhaling. Conflating. Cigarette
smoke all over the veins. A bright blue
car parked across the street. A week since the boy died. A week since the lady went missing. People talk
about somewhere this week another dead
body is going to be found. Maybe in the park under the slide or on a high school bleacher, like the girl found God
under her bed. The first encounter of God and the girl.

God
and the girl run out of cigarette
counting the days God and the girl
Next time won’t be cigarette and balcony. God and the girl next time at a bar with blue
sign where sinners and saints sipping absinthe because God won’t talk
to anyone but the girl. God and the girl sipping absinthe because the city is shut. Eyes dead.

No father could ask for A son so bright
I can't promise you a perfect example
Afraid of what I may inspire
But with me here at least there is hope
A glimmer of light for the next generation
Starts with you wanting to learn

The best defense for life is to learn
Never be afraid to let your gift shine bright
Don't expect to fit in with your generation
But do expect to lead them by example
Understand that you are part of what is left of hope
You were born to inspire

Seek out how you will inspire
In the allotted time knowledge is yours to learn
Time alloted is prolonged we hope
Because your future is bright
Turn those that doubt you into examples
Let positive thoughts come into generation

Pray for your generation
Appreciate those you inspire
Dont let the system make you an example
Ignorance does not uphold in the court of law so you must learn
Jail is not for the bright and dims hope

No matter the situation never be deserted by hope
Always keep in mind A new generation
Never let skin complexion twist your judgment to whats wrong isn't bright
Burry your eyes in archives Black Egyptians will inspire
Our proper history you will learn
It is then you dont expect but begin to lead by example

Like Malcolm X or Dr. King for example
Someone has to rekindle the hope
History teaches but we didnt learn
As for your generation
Hopefully something will inspire
Something with a soul, something real, something bright...

Can you tell me the best way to live
when I left it all up to chance?
Followed the yellow brick road, followed its lead
unaware of the looming shadow
that hung in the air as the sky turned dark,
I face the reality that the world is not safe.

No one here is safe;
but they play by the rules to live.
Within the midst of the dark-
ness, they find a chance;
an opportunity in the shadow,
where will it all lead?

There’s a taste of lead
in my mouth that makes me feel safe.
My actions shadow
over me, playing live
in my head, over and over for a chance
to pull me into the dark.

His eyes glow a dark
red, as the taste of lead
seeps between my lips as a chance
to feel a little more safe.
The video feed is live
but no one noticed the shadow.

In the background, there's a shadow
of hate that lingers in the dark.
Feeding of your life to live,
closer to the darkness it'll lead
us far from the safe
we hid in for a chance.

You never had  a chance
because standing under the shadow
made you feel safe.
Disguised as the antidote, dark
chocolate filled with the bitter taste of lead;
this is the way to live.

It’s lurking in the dark
just watching in your shadow.
"Brought to you live."

When the trees grow old
And the wind begins to blow
The branches sway back and forth
And the leaves begin to fall.
The bark starts to peel,
And the roots grow weaker and weaker.

But if we climb that tree,
If we reach the very top,
We notice the clouds in a clear sky
And how they sway to the left,
Sway to the right,
Listening to what the wind tells them to do.

So if we jump to the clouds
We can look down and see
Everything going on
From a different perspective.
Our point of view sways one way
Or another because of what we want to see.

We can see it all for miles,
We can see the world from here.
We can see young ladies swaying their hips,
We can see the ocean’s waves crash.
We can see each spec of waste
We can see whatever we please to find.

But this is unnerving
And this is not how we want to discover
So we hop back to the swaying branches.
We sit and ponder our visions,
We can imagine all of the possibilities
That we have just encountered.

We can see that our tree
Is just as strong,
Is just as gorgeous
As that young woman swaying her hips,
As the ocean’s waves.
The peeling bark uncovers fresh sap
And the tree’s roots regenerate strong.

When the trees grow old and the wind begins to blow,
We sit on the branches, and sway our feet
Hundreds of feet above, and write poetry to our imagination.

Two linked sugars make up a disaccharide. And that's
what we are. Simple, plain
table sugar, dully passed back
and forth to sweeten our taste.
Sometimes I'll accidentally switch
the shakers for breakfast, hand

you the salt, and you hand
me a spice so harsh that
my tongue curls at the unexpected switch.
I do not prefer the boring, plain
predictable exchange of taste
I followed for so many years back.

So I turn my back
to you, hold up my hand
as a shield of what you would say next. "Have you lost your taste,"
you say, anger overshadowing your faded love, "that
I've grown plain
to you?" I knew then to make the switch

into freedom from the same scene replayed. I get up and turn the light switch
off and leave you in the dark. "When you get back
from work," I say to the plain
dining room, "you will find this ring off my hand."
I can barely see your eyes glowing in the only source of morning light. "That's
absurd," you exclaim. "All because of how I want my cereal to taste?"

I shake my head. "It's not the physical taste. It's the taste
of you that makes me want to switch
out of this marriage. You aren't giving me what I want, and that
is my reason to back
out of this. You offered your hand
to hold mine, to support me, but it's all so plain."

I continue, "And isn't it plain
to see that my taste
in relationships lack passion? I give out my hand
to anything that flicks the switch
of love. You give me the nudge to turn it back
off." With that

I exit the house and try to restore my taste the way I had it back
to my actual preferences. I switch from the plain
safety and run with the risk that I never had at hand.

One day, maybe in two years, I’ll eventually
finally experience the rush
I’ve dreamt of the future
that I so terribly ached
for, that I would undoubtedly  risk
the factors of throwing away used

items that I no longer cherished, used
people only needed to be a stand-in, and eventually
the risk
will not catch up to me, since the rush
of real happiness overshadows the ache
like a penumbra clearing away in the future.

But it’s terrifying knowing that the future
will become a washed up, used
daydream to quiet the ache
I thought would never eventually
stop the overflowing rush
knowing that my biggest dream is entirely a risk.

I am willing to take the risk
so that my deserved  future
will swell over the echoed rush
coffee beans stained  used
cups will eventually
wash away ache.

Dawn breaks like an egg on the highway,
Light spilling through the trees to rest on the blue
bruised half-moons beneath her eyes. She keeps
her foot against the pedal, one hand in the fold
of her jacket pocket. Her cell phone buzzes, her gut
twists, and his voice echoes: “a house, a yard, maybe a dog”

The phone cracks against the side door, falling by dog-
-eared roadmaps. Drowning the call with the roar of the highway,
she wants for inner concrete: decisively gutting
the crust of the earth in a permanent band. But as the sky swallows more blue,
sun exposes the worry-soaked fold
lines where her fingers met her knuckles, empty of the ring he kept

hidden for three months in a bran cereal box. He knew she kept
to a breakfast of day-old Chinese food instead, doggedly
digging in matte white boxes. His laughter lines peeked over the centerfold
of the Sunday newspaper, as she surfaced from digital superhighways
with the next crossword line: scrawled in bleeding ink by her blue
tinged fingers. She supposed that morning he finally found the guts.

His words fell smooth, easy on the first swallow but her gut
anguished at their weight, her insides better kept
to the easy promises, the favor-making, secret-keeping, dog-
walking kind she could shrug to. The something old, new, borrowed, blue
demanded will, boxed and taped and wrapped in the folds
of white tissue paper. She hit the highway

6 hours ago, the ring in her jacket pocket, jumping with NY State Highway
55 as it bent toward a familiar exit. Memories: her mother gutting
duck with chicken bone scissors. The clean press of folded
bed linens, aired out in the oak-thick yards of Poughkeep-
-sie. Her car idled outside the colonial, the shutters still blue.
A black lab lay sleeping on the steps: “a house, a yard, maybe a dog”

Her phone shuddered on the floor and the dog
barked. She set her bald tires rolling again to the highway,
her thoughts still of the egg-yolk kitchen against her father’s dirt-caked boots, his blue
collar sensibilities, and the contented swell of his gut.
He was of similar flex and shrug as she, but never went a day without keeping
a family photo tucked into his front pocket fold.

Her folded fingers unfurled in her own pocket, slow, like growing Kentucky bluegrass.
Playing with the ring, she felt in her gut a warm peace—a house, a yard, a dog—
She worked the band round the knuckle-crease as tires spun, down the highway and out Poughkeepsie.

Adrift in dark and foreign tides of time
I sought to live among the winsome stars.
Between the shadows of the elder moon—
In mountains lost from any source of light—
I wandered lost below the purple sky
Unmoved by that well-expected night.

Oh fate that leads to live the dawn of night!
Oh life, that filthy pool to squander time—
But what a joy to see the starlit sky!
The sun consuming dust from foreign stars,
To see the ocean's mirror cast out light—
Project an image of our lovely moon.

Indeed I feel I hide behind the moon,
In shadows cast by dreadful ghosts of night:
And curse my eyes if I walk into light.
Forgotten shores of childhood lost in time,
Embracing seas of solitude in stars—
A well-known fate in death of burning sky.

Will death thus raise me to the highest sky
Or drive me to the loudest raging moon?
I’d rather find diversion in the stars,
Forsake my wisdom of that sacred night
Than face the painful claws of passing time—
I find demise when I stare into light.

I was revealed the mysteries of light,
Yet hide below the comfort of the sky
As I transcended boundaries of time,
Forever hidden in the woeful moon
And blind upon that everlasting night,
Hunting pleasure in the short-lived stars.

Illusionary joy, deceitful stars:
You guided me to death away from light!
And whence was born this novelty called night?
I thought that safety reigned below the sky,
That I could hide from truth behind the moon—
I curse the painful wings of passing time.

When sunless time arrived upon the sky,
And Moon became a frozen lake of light,
Woe to me, whose night devoured the stars.

Pen ink gliding across paper
Yellowed by the sun for ages
From my fingertips bubble words
I do not yet understand
But they come from the innermost depths
Of my soul, never to be voiced

My words never wished to be voiced
Created to live on the paper
Found only in the hidden depths
Of my notebooks on shelves for ages
No one could understand
All my thoughts strung into words

My head is so full of words
That know not how to be adequately voiced
Themselves they do not understand
As flimsy and fragile as paper
Building up for what seems like ages
Into the sea of confusion they sink to the depths

How deep are my soul's depths
It's distance cannot be put into words
The extent of my thoughts goes on for ages
For ages they'll decline to be voiced
And one day I'll crumple them up like paper
Until they're too wrinkled to understand

I do not want others to understand
My thoughts, that I hide in the depths
Of my pen kept away from paper
I refuse to make words
That fear being voiced
To people of all genders and ages

I wish not to be remembered for ages
Most will not understand
My opinions seek not to be voiced
Before my soul implodes into its own depths
Devoid of all thoughts, feelings, & words
As blank as a white sheet of paper

For ages I'll stay in the depths
Of what I don't understand, the words
never voiced, smeared in ink on yellow paper.