The girl who was glass
with her heart torn in two
was afraid she would shatter
if she just dared to choose.

She cried till she slept--
it was all that she did,
until the day came along--
until she ran and she hid.

Her choice never made,
her mind still in thought.
As the townspeople worried,
she was found and then caught.

'Your fight has been fought,
your battle is done,'
the townspeople called
as the banged on their drums.

She wept and she moaned
as they yelled in her ears.
They told her to choose
but it would bring out her fears.

She said one single name
just one single word.
The townspeople gasped
and then came the birds.

They pecked at her eyes
and cracked her glass skin.
Then she knew that her fears
would finally win.

The girl who was glass
with her heart torn in two
was afraid she would shatter
if she just dared to choose.

Who Am I?
A self-hating narcissist. A phony, a fake.
A lover who fights,
A an economist who reads and writes.

Who Am I?
I am the absolute value of all the positives and negatives adding together to an exact , specific, rounded to three decimal spaces point.
(Make sure you reduce all fractions.)
I am a racist revolutionary pacifist,
A sexist race-class-gender rights activist.
I am a bleached out blend of all the colors
that splatter onto pages, spreading around other people’s thoughts,
theories and theorems.
I am an organized mess, a planned out catastrophe waiting to unexpectedly happen one day or night at exactly 10:30pm, though in reality it’ll probably be more like 11:15.
I am the dates and times on a calendar from the wrong year, cut short but too long and exact,
too detailed for my or anyone else’s own good.
Too analytical, inquisitive, and apathetic.
Too bored, busy, moving and stagnant to be concerned with things like letters or stamps.
I am too many miles away for tears, the head will never make it to the heart.
And vise versa.

Who Am I?
I am the good girl I was meant to be, the female with the hair and the eye-lashes and the dresses and the make-up.
I am made-up.
I am a sheltered socialized conditioned natured-nurtured heterosexually-scaled heterosexist,
continually sexed and sexualizing and sexually exploiting my own ****** empowerment
at the price of our emotional liberation, properly appropriated of course.
I am a starved adult, a hungry child.
A learner who sometimes teaches.
A health-crazed American disaster straight from the fast-food factory line, extra large drink for an extra large waist-band and an extra-large expense account and an extra-large house and an extra-large scoop of emptiness.
I am a master of a few words and phrases I read in a book once.
Of a few ideas I read out of the yellow boxes on pages 510 and 526.

Who Am I?
What words thoughts actions books songs smells images define me?
Who defines me?
What boundaries confine me?

Or, more precisely, what am I?
I am the perfect collision of atoms and molecules into one blessed soul.
I am the singer/song-writer reading the books written in a language I wish I could speak.
I am the perfect puzzle piece to my own puzzle,
My own incompatible, annoying, over-analyzing jealous puzzle piece,
all jagged and torn.
I am my own best friend.
I am so sure of myself I may or may not have intentionally completely forgot what I was just talking about.
Did I just summarize the life-story the life work the life plans of myself or someone else?
What hypocritical overly critical actions did I commit today?

Who Am I?
I am you.

Home is where the heart is
This, we all have heard
But, as a die hard baseball fan
Home is ninety feet from third

You're told you're always safe there
But know this much is true
You may not always be that safe
If the ball's there before you

You're parents say you are welcome
To come home any time
But, to diminish complications
Reach home before the end of inning nine

Home is where the heart is
It's the best place that you can be
But, it only counts if you get there
Before the outs reach three

Home is fixed it never wavers
It's where you start and will end too
But, how you make it back home safely
That last ninety feet is up to you

old pigeon bones
aside the maple tree
not touching
a winter wind blows through
our kindred spirits




(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

Weekdays - we wear cattle trails into the green-space because
They taught us the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
They told us to stay in school.
We made ourselves fit into the small boxes with bunk beds
Like the kind we always wanted as kids.
Now we nod to the cement snaking around the dorms - residence halls -
and erode the grass underfoot, single-minded.

Weekends - we stumble-snake on sidewalks because
They give us a straight line to follow back to our boxes.
They told us to get involved in the community.
We let ourselves spill outside our borders and backpacks
Like our cattle trails will fill out overnight.
Now we laugh at the cement moving in waves - or staying still -
and breathe on the stars, multi-minded.