Why marvel at materialism
It only lasts a while,
Why marvel at the apparent,
Apparent comes and goes
Out of style.

Why be awed by what's seen
It's only something temporal,
Why be wooed by physical strings
What's unseen has more credentials.

Why eyeball the papers only in writing,
Why not see the things more clearly with an
Insight sometimes frightening. Why only acknowledge
The things that you perceive, perception is a myth
When the door knocks reality.

Caroline loves the ocean.  
Her soul sails on a Carolina breeze.
But her music's in the mountains,
and her heart's back home
where it needs to be.

I'm stuck here
in a Carolina wind,
wading in the ocean
with my heart in Tennessee,
and my mind on Caroline.

Carolina's got everything
a man could want.
Everything he needs.
It's got the mountains and the ocean.
It has a Carolina breeze.

He has everything but Caroline;
everything but Tennessee.

r ~ 6/22/14

I would like to share with you my enduring
        Memory with guns,
Never forgotten, a difficult story.

In my home Summer of 93 was born
From the dry sun and certain colors,
      Not the forsaken flowers,
But the rags of gangsters,
     The survival of the unfittest like
     Certain carnivores on a plain,
Tired of the slums from people whom
Live unmajestic lives.

     For a summer
Bullets had no names weekly,
A repugnant visiting crisis and I lost
My bed to fear,
One longs for a night with no bullets
Flying by,
And a dream without the oppressive
Gunshot just above my head board,
A consolation in the morning's sorrow.
Everyday a new hole discovered,
Everyday thinking
"I'm lucky to be alive"

    No.
All my heart aches
Because one night a bullet had a name,
And the bullet came for Mother
Never to return to the earth,
     In the blossoming summer
All I knew was death,
     Death with a barrage of gunfire
From the breast of destiny,
     Full in my heart was vengeance,
12 years old and lost in the womb
      Of the Barrio.

Like a madman,
For I was no longer a child,
The bullrush of thoughts come clean.
    Memories without veils,
Like an angry widow resting
In indifference, with an evening
That arrives with an eruption .

     A penetrating glare from my eyes,
Between youth and death,
I will tell you about my enduring sorrow,
     And a 12 year old carries a gun.

You must begin early
while it is cool and your head clear
discernment, a sharpened tine
probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive.

Be aware that the velvet sage
of the leaves belies their power
to take over every space, remember
roots burrow deep, anchoring in
fissures we don’t even know exist.

You must delve as close
to the origin as possible
or the **** you think eradicated
will bide its time, germinating
in the still secret ground

waiting for light
to penetrate the moist earth
waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out
a curled blemish

in your otherwise carefully tended garden.