i can smell a poet a mile away
who only wishes
to read their poetry to you,

who prods and pulls
away at your brain for insight -
what about this word?
and
let me tell you of the girl
who broke my heart enough times
for me to procure this poem!

i smile and offer
the best of my critiques of course
empathy running too far into my core
and the naive understanding that all
poets hold the same truth.

and as i begin to take the baton
to set out on my journey of recitement,
i see my comrades eyes glaze over
to the toaster where her thoughts now linger
and remain.

and not as i had hoped on the syllables
and motifs i had painfully extracted
in the midnight hours of my
bedroom rumination.

and there your brain remains
as i run my last lap around the
sweet syllables of my favorite words.

i don't know
how many times
i need to reinvent myself
to eventually get to myself
with every milestone
that is a mountain
the hurdles i swerve over
taking a piece of me into it
at times a fair offer
a lesson for a limb
an eye for an eye
until it has swallowed me whole
and there is nothing left to learn
and nothing left of me
but the blank canvas to start anew

I awoke this morning and
wondered if I was even sentient.
The curtains failed to close
over my lids once more,
forcing my mind's actors to
repeat their tired monologues.

They wax on about regrets,
and the lovers who failed
to pass the test of time,  
friends too for that matter,
recipes that will be born
in the upcoming week,
and the subtle noises
emanating from the
dark corners of my room.

Try as I might to pull
the rope of my velvet curtain,
there remains my lead actor
once more trying to
prove her point that
the road to success is
in the wee hours
of the morning,
right here and now.
The entrance on my desk,
where the muses like to offer
me cement for my tired bricks,

even though I have been
harping on about how they
have been doing their
timeless work of threading
inspiration into my flesh
in the afternoons as of late,  
amidst the heatwave when
the citizens of the world
recoil inside their homes
to escape the sweat and
throngs of people who
leave me weary during
the early hours of
the morning.

Why does one have to be
dead to be considered?  

Fine! I am dead. Consider this.  

Consider the living and the
tolerated death between breaths,

Consider the repeated
stabs of recycled days,

the preparation we gather as
decaying boquets for a final blow,

See how death roams the streets,  
and in the gargling of human feet,

See how we shutter in unison when
she peeks her head into our mirrors,

gazing back at us as wrinkles and error,
how she makes us halt our breathe

although our hearts tells us
its not over yet, it is not over yet.

so let it be known,
clear as day,

that I shall always stop
for the painters paints,
            still wet

I shall always stop
for the writers words,
           still fresh,

for if death shall stop for me
than I shall stop for heartbeat.

i once heard a comedian
bemoan his career
i need to get up and do the thing
i need to get onstage and make the folks laugh,

for i am the gatekeeper to another world,
and when i open the great gilded doors,
for you to walk through
you will have entered a place
of make believe
and candy
sugarcoated walls,
and flowing rivers of chocolate

your pain will have subsided
your worries
if i have done my job right
will have melted onto the floor

remember those bills?
i dont either!
they have vanished into
my topcoat
your woes are all with me now

and i am prepared
to carry your weight
when i arise  
in the morning

i know a heavy transaction
will occur
this exchange
a laugh for your burden.

i am not just a comedian
i am a burden collector.

sometimes ill carry your book in my purse,
not because i have any intention of reading your words,
but because i want to have a kindred soul
to my disposal when needed.

Lets you and I
speak in languages
of ultimatums
and dare to
never discover
what the blind
would want to know.

i was distracted for a moment.

our love
naturally
was my
playing ground.

but there were things
that needed to be done.

a certain medium
ripped me away fervently,
plunging me back
into my symphonic isolation,
before love was my toy.

it whispered,
we need you here
we need your brain
working on this film
on this song
on your reel.

we need you to
take your pain
and turn it
into beauty,
we need you to
figure out the secrets
of the heal
to help those
get back
to the ways of
their own feel.

lean into it, my dear.

lean into your future,
even though your past
calls you with a
romanticized nostalgia.

lean into your new lover,
even though the warmth of
an old flame burns bright.

lean into the freshness of tomorrow,
even though the
chapters of yesterday
remain unwritten
and beckon for your words and return.

because my darling there is nothing
bolder than turning away from
the putrid pages of yesteryear in
search for a new self.

I imagine your foot
hovering over
the pedal.

Your toes
salivating
in their shoes,
ready for you
to just step
on it already.

And the green
light of our moment
sending you into
a forward frenzy.

You wink at me,
the apparent slowpoke
in our scenario,
as if you're winning
some imaginary race,

that only sends you
flying into the arms
of another red light,
and another one after that,
and a stop sign there,
sandwiched between
a cross guard and
a rolling ball that
sends you to a
rolling stop.

And as I catch
up to you,
as I always do,
I wonder if
that's how you
approach the
everyday lanes
of your life,
racings towards
      conclusions,
never stopping  
to smell the sweet
      surprise of your
slow surroundings.

You search and search and
look for some shining sun,

as you are rock in your boat
drenched from the rains,

your paddles ready to depart
into the tides that want to

claim you as their own,
for your current is strong,

and you realize as you look down at your feet
you are made of stone, rock, gravel and cement

you are the glue, you are the lighthouse
the circulating beacon to guide

those who are lost, to those who have
tried to burn you down to watch

the bonfire of your sturdy wood
for their evening supper warmth,

and so you carry yourself from
out the storm and into your keep,

remembering remembering you
are there and always will be.

I lifted up the sky to
find a thermostat,
a small child fiddling
with all the dials.
And the clouds,
they were just the
soft heels of giants,
delicately managing
our inevitable collapse,
weaving the perfect story
to let us down gently.

Turns out we are just
a bunch of marbles
on the shelves of
champions who
simply enjoy our
sunset colors.

and with your introduction
so begins my inability
to make to do lists
because all i want to do
my dear
is you.

Why does the cabbage
provoke such hatred,
unlike the sugar cookie
in an airtight package?

Why does the lover know
the way of the garden so well,
yet stampede off into
the path of daisies?

It is the same as why
I must contend with the
aftermath of my family,
and become the spy
amongst the shrubs.

It's the same as why
I must speak to my
uncle like a cherub angel
who knows nothing of
his place in the cosmos.

It's the same as why
I bite into a
strawberry to
taste nature's
emerald,
glowing with
answer and resolve.

It will always
be just a strawberry
      to them.

Do you hear that in the distance?
It is your silence asking you
to throw her to the tides,
she sees you are overdue
for a lesson in sound,
she sees the people who
putter about yearning for
that unsung chorus tune.

Leave her with her compatriots,
doubt and worry, just for a moment,  
you can return to their measures of
circular comforts tomorrow.

Leave her with the ash from last nights smoke,
you built in your minds midnight eye,
the fraught furnace of your future fantasy.

Your silence will arise again,
as she does with every passing moon,
she is tied to you like an anchor to a ship,
or maybe she is your ball and chain,
one cannot presume a relation
that shifts in tune with the northern wind.

She will always be greater than you, accept it.
And she wants nothing more than
to survive in this loud world,
she claws towards it from her thirsty well
where the people drink from her,
where they drink her up and
never retain her hydration,
she's learned to put holes in
her infrastructure to
vacate the premise,
her well dripping dry
of all her subtle wisdoms,
so that when you hoist your
bucket down and pull it
back up, you hear nothing
but the echo of air and dryness,
for there is nothing
like sound that
fine tunes and
greases up her
stillness.

i wake up in the morning,
and with the peaking
of the sun and her luminous rays,
a word trickles in through my window
reminding me of
cat hair and soft trips to the beach
allowing some electricity
to enliven me up,
or maybe it was
brisque feline making her way next to my pillow
that awoke me,
and just so
the day begins
with a
perfect
blend
of dreams and reality.

Sometimes poems are so full of themselves,
loaded up on words and story,

with their "likes" and their "as"
to connect the most dissimilar things
     to denote clever

with their superior pinkys
erecting into the air

before prose ever made its
way into the catalogs of dialogue,

their indistinguishable punctuation
and schizophrenic indentation,

and the greatest of them all
never knowing when to stop,

sometimes deciding to merge into
the next book as you decide to
put them down.

I've never been to The Grand Canyon.

In fact, as far as canyons go,
I've only been to two or three.

And each time I slide into that mineral womb,
I am wrangled into a new identity.

I've become a waffling man
stumbling headfirst into his first love,

A child staring into the
smoky barrels of adulthood,

A castaway stranded at sea,
the center of a tornado,

A speck of dust on a speck of sand,
a decorative ring on a gentle hand,

And a dog lost in the woods
who has lost his urge to howl.

At this point, I have resigned
myself to fervently avoid you.

Seeing that smaller forms
can ****** me into a tailspin of identity,

I don't care to know what your grandness will reveal.
I think I might dare to give you my life,

before you decide to shoot me into the
dizzying preamble of my next form.

So for now, I'll make do with carrying your spirit,
as long as we are in agreement that you carry mine.

I've become very fond of my no's,
and the ways in which the
wind does not go.

Lend me your question
and I'll lend you my no,
after my season upon
season of insatiable yes.

I cozy up next to my no
like the cold to a stove,
we are a perfect match,
her and I and we dance
the tango at midnight.

My no is starting to have
a mind of her own,
enlarged ego and a
questionable claim
to a no man's throne,
her master plan
to repurpose my
night away from the
masses and throngs
who never seem to
know which way to go.

I "no" my way into secluded gardens,
water sheds and cemeteries,  
preferably alone, where my no's
like to stampede over the paths,
forging her own.

I've made friends with my "no's",
so much so I dont know
which way to go without her.
The road to yes is paved
with a thousand good no's
is what she subtly whipers to me
as I gaze over to you,
and your question starting to
drip into our current affair.

What better sound shall
pour from my lips than
the steady cadence of
my self-assured no?

Like the yeast,
that has yet to rise.
The words on a page,
and their delayed revise.

I too was written out
plain as day
with mad intent
-- mom and pop --  
a beginning, middle, and haphazard end.
Clusters of uninformed DNA
seared its way into my kaleidoscope veins.

Two writers unequipped to write,
with nary a forethought to revise.
Like the great poets before me,
who allowed their words to
go unfinished and unchecked,
The forgotten dotted i's
misspelled letters,
unwashed sweaters &
yesterdays newspapers

And although that exists,
and always will,
I have been struck with
the unmistakable urge
to turn my pen inwards,
drawing ink from
the star stained ether,
to revise, rehash and reword
the words of my creators --
clumsy writers at best.
-- mom and pop --

As I march into my
maddening edit,
no longer the work of writers who
have forgotten to revise me,
I reach to become the most unforgotten novel
on your most forgotten bookshelf.

How bold to live your life
fixating on flowers just because,
to turn over petals and
find fully loaded barrels.

To travel slowly
on zephyr winds,
without a single idea
as to where you're going.

To see the forest for the trees,
and pick apart every detail
as to stitch them together into
a warm quilt of knowing.

How shall we break our bread?
In the company of our neighbors
and foes who we know are
nary good for our grow?

Shall we walk backward into the sunset  
as to warm up our backs for
what our enemies shall see
as we turn the other way?

Signaling to our bodies how
we are free to be unarmored
and bare amongst our families
without the expected sting,

and that we are free to fly
towards that delicate red,
buzzing for the nectar
of thought that every
flower possesses.

and realize that
we are the same
we are the same
we are the same.

our wings in their trance
humming with what makes
everything and nothing special.

It is the army of children
who wake me from sleep
          each morning,
as they march towards
the neighborhood park
with their declarations
of freedom, their words
turned to song like
a carefree lark.

I thought I was them
as I awoke from my rest,
but my pasture of purpose
has changed from
      slide to desk.

I thought I was them
as I longed for
thrushes of green,
and the dirt lying in between.

I thought I was them
as I slipped into my vest
instead of my rugged
hand me down dress.

I thought I was them
as they laid out their quest
to plunder the deep seas
atop their sturdy jungle gym.

I thought I was them.
I could be one of them.
After all, I had a compass
and a map, longer limbs
to steer a mast.

I thought I was them
until I heard a cry like no other
from a select sailor
after an unfortunate
fall from the starboard side,

and my thoughts recoiled,
and I swam back ashore
to the serene silence of
my morning rituals.

Your mouth is a piano,
and I want to play her
is what I thought when
the candlelight flickered
across your words.

I hadn't heard such a
symphony of statements
arrange themselves so
well since my first love
introduced me to
awareness.

I know you were just
searching for ways
to not be a beginner,
stumbling left and right
into the cushioned walls
of your straightjacket mind.

Oh, don't tell me I have confused
a stone for a diamond once again,
for it is close that a mad genius
and clever man sit to each other.

And tonight I can't tell the difference,
or if I should merely jot down your song
like the birdwatcher to his bird
to recall it again at some later date,
or join you in your fanciful flight.

my poems are just
well written reminders
of all the things
you've thought of
but forgot to write down.

there is a little clause within
their contract,
a small fee
some people don't see.
and that is
with every minute spent
on this device
we will take five minutes
of your creativity,
of your ability to self love
of your ability to tap into nature
of your once keen sense of awareness to your surroundings
of your eyesight
please sign here.

I smelled something
curious as I entered
my home today,
a musty yet
familiar fragrant
I hadn't whiffed
in years trailing
from my dining
room table.

There nestled between
the flowers and the mail  
thoughtfully brought in
was your love letter,
that reeked of the future.

This whole ******
house reeks of it now,
and I have to shoot these
clothes into the wash,
or set them ablaze.

You've spilled our past
into this cursed letter too,  
compliments stuffed
in the margins like
a Thanksgiving ham,
absolutes written in sand.

You've tried to hide
space with your ink,
your cover ups,
smoke and mirrors
are heavy here,
the same patterns,
bright as day,
expected as the
migrating duck,
I must navigate
out of.

It sings of how
time can strangle
your dreams,
and weigh on
your shoulders
with hybrid
sentiment.

And right there in
the middle of this,
stuck in the heavy
gossamer of your word,
is me.

My future shouldn't
reek of this flavor,
I prefer the stale
moment of my
presence to
engulf me,
and to sit in grey,
I enjoy my grey.

To be both
guest and host
in my world,  
and to continously
arrive back to myself.

I am the prodigal one,
always leaving
always returning,
back and forth
back and forth
i am the wave
and you are just
the traveler,
i am afraid.

how many of you
do I have to ****,
to gracefully unravel
a written rose from
the depths
of my soul?

It is striking to believe how
little applause the morning
bird gets after her daily song,
as she sits perched on
her branch marking
her territory like
the dog and
his lifted leg.

But then again,
I dont believe birds
undersand the
nature of applause,
inasmuch as the
worm wiggling
his way out
of the dirt or
the cat's eyes
darting into
their direction.

These are thoughts
that overtook my
mind as I wrestled
with my coffee to
turn the key to my
mind’s engine already,
feeling as if I was
once again but
a fingernail
floating
inside my
mothers
womb.

i have failed over
and over
and over
and over again
looking to others
to understand the
strength and power
of my critical thinking.

i know there is a good poem in me
i can feel her
she's underneath a stack of  
recipes and US weekly articles
underneath the lined shelves of
unopened emails and spam,
buried deep deep
under the information
stored on my various tabs,
and daily stress and responsibility
she is there
dancing with the pelicans over a crystalline bay
singing the song of a siren
her hands gliding over the wind
i know she's there
that saucy minx
come out and play with me already.

You are there
and I am there,
or maybe I am there
and you are here,
or you are there
and I am here.
We are just toggling
back and forth
through the lanes
of time and space,
missing each other
always by just a
few seconds.

My skin felt invasive as
it was covering my soul,

I was shining so bright that day
as the rain kissed the ground,

and you felt like the clouds stampeding
over my sky, all billowy and inflamed

weighing me down and stuffing me in,
and yet at the same time a necessity.

I knew I couldn't survive the elements
without you, but oh how I wanted to.

darkness met the boy
and the boy in turn chose darkness
with older age

darkness met the girl
and the girl in turn chose lightness
with older age

and even though the two were both met with darkness,
their choices paved their paths
towards negative or positive
towards light and heavy,
easy and hard

the problem was when those paths
crossed back into each other
battling to find common ground,
finding a language within
the turmoil of their choices,
when love was created in the
rubble of their crossed paths.

"I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived of the pleasure of hoeing."
-John Updike

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be consumed
by the pleasure of scrolling,
there is no knowing,
how many souls have been split by this simple exercise.

The dry thumb like a weakened scab,
in perpetual rowing,
revealing the traveler's roam,
without ever leaving home.

How neatly they pile on the streets,
eyes due south into screens.
Wise is the ignorant boy who
has never performed this simple, stupid and useless wonder.

"Out of the ash,
I rise with my red hair,
And I eat men like air."
-Sylvia Plath

My father's office
housed indentured
servants of paper stacks,
all crawling towards
the ceiling to escape,
mildew man in a
metal bin can.

Old German phrases
lingered in the air
escaping my grip,
all your ich bins
and ein kleines,
the Nachtmusik tune
and the cuckoo song,
turns of the *****,
in replace of an
I love you.

I dreamt you were insufficient
so it'd be easier to forget you,
my want is my want,
but you're always there,
with your Luftwaffe stare.

Where were you when
the night turned blue?
you do not do what
the other folks do,  
with your jagged soft
and history besmeared,
secrets spewed out
car windows you  
dont have words to.

You've swallowed
your children whole,
with your gobbledygoo
and witches brew,
as we crouch down
behind ancestors
begging for answers
they won't reveal.

Don't matter to me!
I can spell out
complex words
with vague candles,  
blow them out and
start all over again
and again, it's true,
join the rat race,
blending in well
like your split pea soup.

I can move myself to
sit in my presence after all,  
I can make myself known
when you enter the room,
holler over revved engines
and your quivering pens,
erratic hair and swivel chairs.

Daddy oh daddy oh,
you didn't raise no fool,
for me and her and
the ones yet to be her,
we are not through, daddy oh
After it all, she rose up with her red hair
and gulped you down like easy air.

The world of poetry
never stood a chance
next to the world of music.

I'd take Miles Davis
burping into his trumpet
over Allen Ginsberg
singing his gay praises
into a microphone,
any day.

Or watch Elvis Presley
ricochet his pregnant
hips from east to west
and croak his
hand me down tunes,
over Shakespeare
In The Park
any day,
adieu.

It's that ****** tune
that gets me every time,
that jolts me from my seat
like a reversed lightning bolt,
and into my red dress
and perpendicular thinking.

and then its poetry that
ushers me back down
the aisles towards
the exit sign after
the whole show is over,
and to the silent
dormitory of my brain,
left with my thoughts
and words to crochet together
when I am all too tired to
pluck the strings
of my dusty guitar.

i had a poem once tell me:
shut up and get to work.
take the string of electricity
just sent to you from the heavens
and weave me onto your paper
this line will only be available
for a short period of time
until we get annoyed with your
unwillingness to devote yourself,
and like the last girl who was also idly
staring into the blank abyss of her walls
we will reclaim our line and
shoot it on over to the grandmother next door
who sits ever so patiently with her tea
and a first edition copy of that new stephen king novel
she has been meaning to dive into.
her pen situated between her index and *******
and i reckon in that moment
i will finally be birthed
in the margins,
in between the paragraphs
speaking of white robes and blood.

Sometimes you read a poem
and your glass becomes full,

more often you read a poem
and your glass stays the same,

Sometimes you read a poem
and see their glass is filled with wine,

and yours is filled halfway with 2% milk
or maybe it's an old milkshake,

which begins the endless journey
to fill your cup to the brim,

to become a caretaker of creation
an alchemist of thoughtful transition,

to turn your glass of cow mucus
into a glass of fine French wine.

The great thing about being married
to my alone is how she is everywhere,

she is in the bathroom stall and
the never dialed midnight calls,

she sits under layers of conversation
when relation has left the dialogue,

nestled in my car rides where I
can truly soak into her aroma,

and sing her songs that sound
better only when she's around.

She's the same as she ever was,
and she hasn't aged a day,

open and expansive,
molecular and cool.

She knows herself so well,
and takes up space as if

she created it herself.
I envy her sometimes

when I am all places at once and
empty vessels are nowhere to be found.

But she finds herself back to me
so often I believe she never really left.

I dare to say we might be soulmates,
is what hits me as I take my walk to the kitchen

and leave you comfortable in my bed,
in your unhappy marriage to your alone.

Maybe the real work of our
lives start on a nothing Tuesday,

when you get stuck between
a question and its answer

resting on the tip of your tongue.
For that is where they really live —
all your answers.

They are never fully capable
of flying from out of your mouth,

they are words without wings and they
enjoy sitting atop their enamel throne,

so you spend the rest of your life
searching and grasping for them

in movie theatres, lit-up streets,
cold museums, lovers and silence,

to try and fully taste what it would
be like to live with their existence.

How shall I understand the nature of small?
crumble my body, folding my flesh in on
itself until I am round like
the rolling armadillo?

Praise the grains of sand that
make up our coast while
ignoring the sea?

Maybe I will just
write a haiku instead and
turn into a word.

I think of all the times I have wanted to use you,
but chose your stronger brothers:
damp, muggy, soggy, dank

Or heard you pass through the slips of human lips,
and shuddered at your mere presence.
Damnation was never your goal in life I am sure,
you had greater ambition, despite your condition.

You never deserved the dank basement
of vocabulary, or the back of the bus.

I hope that when the sun rises,
some lunatic with a pen takes you up from the ditches
and writes a soliloquy about his lover's moist lips,
how they so gently move within his grip.

I hope that when the travelers sludge through mud,
they hear moist moist moist echo from their shoes
and are reminded of your being
as you stay lingering in their traveling heads,

across the mountains of Timbuktu and into Machu Pichu,
most likely streaming on a thread atop a skyscraper
dangling in the wind for no one to see.

I take off my enthusiasm nightly
like a cloak of bad behavior,
or a well-worn brassiere,
oh great sigh of relief.

I let my feelings melt onto the
***** floors where they feast
upon debris for their supper,
them wild things.

I let fall my voice and laughter too,
my propensity to smile thereafter,
dangle them on rusty hooks,
them ****** things.

Rid me of thee until the sun rises.
I enjoy my night straight up
without the decor of my day
holding me down like an
anchor to the parade.

The night always brought
with her a certain sensibility,
of ownership and reclaim.
I shall take back that
which the day has taken.
She fills in the cracks
the night has put upon me,
let me break in peace,
for that is all I wish to do.