#lineage
They walked us down through cottonwoods
the leaves rattled like small bones.
Mud ****** at our boots.
The river smelled of salmon blood and wet iron.
“This is your turn,” they said.
“Your turn to weave.”
They sat us along the bank
knees in the cold silt
while the elders pulled story from their mouths
hand over hand
silver filament
bright as fish scales in lantern light.
I understood.
Grandmother lived in those branches.
You could feel her listening.
The threads changed color as they spoke.
Storm-dark pewter
like the river before rain.
Then thin as spider silk
when someone whispered a name
too sacred to hold long in daylight.
“Now you.”
I shut my eyes hard
mosquitoes whining near my ears
and prayed to whatever lived in water
the quiet old saints who ride the backs of salmon.
Then suddenly
a net of words
shivered into my hands.
Wet rope smell.
Knots tight as knuckles.
Moonlight caught in every strand.
“This one is yours,” they told me.
“Now cast it.”
So I stood there
a skinny girl in borrowed boots
and threw that net
into the black breathing river.
Again.
Again.
Months went by like that.
Fingers raw from knotting stories.
Rope burns in my palms.
The net coming back empty
silver dulling toward gray
like old jewelry buried in river sand.
Years passed.
The river widened.
I forgot the girl on the bank.
Then one night
my line ****** hard in the dark.
rope heavy with distance
and saw it threading
through my own mesh
gold.
Not a glimmer
not a trick of light.
Your net had crossed mine
somewhere far out
where the current runs thick with shadow.
Gold through silver.
Silver through gold.
The ropes crossing so often
it became impossible
to see where one ended.
Some nights the river carried a sweetness
ferment rising from the reeds
thick enough to make the lantern flames dance.
Some nights the current snapped and lunged
dragging the mesh sideways
until the rope burned my palms raw again
Still the nets tangled deeper
dragging strange glitter from the dark water
stories bright as coins
others sharp as broken glass.
From the shore
if grandmother had been watching
she would only nod
and keep weaving.
Mar 8
Mar 8, 2026 at 5:08 PM UTC
Smoke and clouds
Fire and rain
You were here for a while
And a good one at that
Loss in time with great resolve
The story written in silence
For mother twice over divulge
A world safe in warm kindness
Distance negated in your heart
In your hands a home always was
For loves return from worlds apart
And watered its flowering buds
The flower has wilted, and off the breeze blows
But she has gone on to live forever
In memory and grandkids, her face shows
Not glancing nor abandoned endeavor
Loss in time with great resolve
Smoke and clouds for fire and rain
A story written from your given all
Its sweetness gives purpose to the pain
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025 at 7:48 AM UTC
If these walls could talk,
many stories will unfold,
From the past, present and future,
Is history being told!!
Just look around and just see,
The Vintage, and the quality,
of how long things have lasted,
To this day, is well kept beautifully!!
A House that's of the old,
a lineage, from way back when,
for many generations have come and gone,
that has so much history within!!
If these walls could talk,
they would tell you,
about your ancestral, historical past,
It is now passed down to your era,
So, that your Ancestry will Last!!
B.R.
Date: 5/10/2025
May 10, 2025
May 10, 2025 at 1:35 PM UTC
What lines,
Scope and everbirth,
dwell within
corkscrewed graves
Of my ancestors'
passion projects?
Nov 6, 2022
Nov 6, 2022 at 8:22 PM UTC
III.
It took time for me to see
That it was neither them nor me, but simply that
She
never stood a chance.
For Her trunk in all Her unbridled glory,
was bound in chains,
choked out by debris
Long before Them, or Us,
or Me.
At Her inception, before
She could grow old,
the last sip of Her sap stolen,
drained, and sold.
Yet
Pieces of Her stand here to behold,
pieces of Me,
young joined with old.
Though broken as We are,
We’re a beacon of hope;
We hold secrets and memories,
stories and names,
and one day I, too,
will dance in Our shade.
Be it in vain, I will try
till the wind comes for me;
I’ll try to name Them,
praise Them,
to set Them free.
I vow to nourish, to prune, and ****
restore what I’m able,
and take only what I need.
To tie Our trunk to Our branches—
and Our branches to Our leaves.
To honor Our roots,
ever trembling,
in the deepest parts of
Me.
Feb 22, 2021
Feb 22, 2021 at 7:54 PM UTC
familial sea
asteroid debris
plagued black sun
the chain undone
derivation drought
acetylene light burnt out
sands of a surname
run through veins as aspartame
in departed sons & daughters
blood is thicker than water
but drains ever so faster
May 16, 2020
May 16, 2020 at 8:53 AM UTC
Raised
in this floating
world, forever
deep.
You can’t drain the ocean
Decidedly from down
south of here
You can’t un-trace the roots.
You can’t lie and say,
“This isn’t where I grew up”
You can’t deny the fruits
of what was planted two generations ago
when your grandpatents arrived from the Philippines, seeds in tow
soil for the taking
You can’t confiscate what they claimed
when they planted their flags
into the moon-white sand of a beach in Florida
on a far side of the planet
their forefarthers have never seen
You can’t say those flags weren’t there
when wind came
You can't ***** out that pride
of country,
cut off its native tongue and its acquired taste, or pass up the plate of fried lumpia and rice passed down from the kitchen of your Daddylol
feeding seven kids day in and out with tomatoes he planted,
chickens he raised, Malonggay leaves he grew
with thumbs so green they wrote in the papers about it
He was a farmer
Your grandmother, a nurse
And i was writer
And this is our story
You can’t erase the letters of your name,
your lineage written all over it
like a map
of everywhere we been
You can’t take back the words in Tagalog and Chavacano
your Lola Shirley must have sang your mother to sleep with
You can’t take their dreams
You can't just wake up one day and undo
the ripple effects their moves
created across waters 10,000 miles east of here,
the rolling waves they curled into
or the faraway shores they washed up upon
Bottled messages in hand
Our legends held within
You can’t say centuries from now that they won’t feel it
when their feet hit the sand of their own frontier
beside the waves we stayed making
a history written in deep water
for those who come after you
to sail above and beyond.
Nov 24, 2018
Nov 24, 2018 at 6:51 PM UTC
Listen to the verbiage
The quietness of a different nature
The winds, the woods, the wildness
I am not my father
Though I am his son
I am me
And the past, the pretense
That's who he is
Nov 18, 2018
Nov 18, 2018 at 11:01 AM UTC
My name is not one that is so easily forgotten. I’ve met faces
who shake my hand and admit that my name has a familiar ring. It
will wrap itself around your tongue,
take shelter in the grooves of your brain,
etch itself into your flesh,
and make a drumbeat of your pounding heart.
I am the red flowers that bloom in the Western Cape.
I am the violet quartz, the precious gemstone,
and I may be worn around your finger or wrapped around your
neck if the month of lovers breathed life into your lungs.
I am rooted in the grounds of Israel.
I was promised by God in the Hebrew tongue.
My blood is spread over the Middle East,
my complexion is of light-bathed soil,
and I am a unity of scattered heritage.
You cannot forget me, no matter how you may try.
I am cradled in the back of your mind.
I live in shades of red, from flowers to blood.
I live in shades of purple, from gemstones to sunsets.
I am the embodiment of love,
and I linger in every inch of this Earth.
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 12:12 PM UTC
The son's eyes set low as green felt feigns grass stains.
The son does not cry at the father's funeral. The son
holds them in.
He, the son, is now a rung higher
and lower. Simultaneous promotions and
disappearances. He is the last line.
The son does all the planning. For the day of,
the week next.
The month's end, and the bills due.
The son does all the fathering that the father
has now left behind.
He is now a caretaker. A husband to two wives,
his,
and his.
The son and the father
were not strong in their love.
Not a single day.
The son will find humility where once was cruelty.
Where once was impulse he finds patience.
Where once a sinner comes anew virtue.
The son is now a house where once was a home.
The son is now alone.
Aug 4, 2018
Aug 4, 2018 at 2:42 AM UTC
An original creation, that's what you are
in vibrant colors nature carefully assembled,
as you sashayed through your time,till here
now all across the front page one can see you
arousing pleasure that moves me deeply,
done in bold sweeps of a brush immersed in joy
making onlookers stand agape, thrilled
mumbling inanities as none has the grasp
of the quicksilver aesthetics that rules you.
And I, obscure , at the best like a crop circle
done in the secret hours after midnight,
or a cryptic mural on a dull wall, long past it's prime
doodled by an interplanetary traveler gone astray,
a drawing in grey fading slowly in to oblivion,
yet to be deciphered is the benediction,
it carries from light years far away,
it will be gone soon as the light from galaxies far
want to make it their own, little by little each night
Am I not transient and to be forgotten soon?
But you are steadfast and adamant
very rooted in your reasoning
sprung from a center devine, we both
claim together.
"Am I not a woman and lover first?"
Your eyes, gleam, exuding a timelessness that speaks to me.
"I would only dream of lying naked under your
sweet heaving heaviness, to receive the nectar,
the transient ecstasy that gifts me the precious seed
that'd grow to heights immortal,on the bank of the milky way"
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 11:37 AM UTC
We draw them in sand,
On sidewalks and crime scenes;
We adore them on Granny,
Abhor them on maps.
On chalkboards, I will not...
In Clubs, Don't I know you...
In poems we can hear them
Playing songs of I love you...
A line is infinite,
Yet begins with a dot;
Those lines run right through us,
Like it or not.
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
Being born of kings
Doesn't mean you've got to be a king as well.
You can be much better or much worse.
Whatever seems good to you.
Its your life.
Live by your own wishes
And live it king sized...
Even if not as THE king.
Because
Not everyone wants to be the 'king' as the world defines it.
Sometimes they just want to be a king who can rule their own life.
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 2:49 AM UTC
*I know who I am,
But not who or what I was.
Why can't I recall?*
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 6:35 PM UTC