the great verses would prefer it if you didn't
attempt to commit their curves to memory,

they croak at the idea of becoming stuck
in the empty vessel that is your head,
only to wither away into a few words
short than what was originally said.

they would prefer it if your eyes
didn't insist on gazing over them,
as you untangle the knots of their secrets
like some drunken buffoon
who has
****** their fortune
at the nearby saloon,

clumsily,
you attempt
to unzip
their threads
into a plausible meaning.

or even worse,
determine value
based on
the fluidity
of rhyming words
or the
vertical lines
which slice
their way
down the
blank white
of paper,
forming
jagged mountains of
letters one must painstakingly traverse.

it goes without saying,  
they cringe at your touch
as you awkwardly
stumble your fingers down the
skin of their spine,
like some
graceless ******
who has mastered
the art of spilling
onto the unkept floor,

they prefer instead
the presence of a curious girl,
making her way
towards a window,
where she can
add meaning to thought.

or to remain
housed on the shelf
next to their
brothers and sisters,
to entice strangers
who don't
easily roll into
the company of
suppressed yawns,
to hear their stories.

for these words
cant pick their company
like you or me,
you have already begun
to make a mess
of this one
you see,
unless you are
of course
some curious girl
next to
a window.

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 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.

"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.

My Fathers Office
sat with with
indentured servants
of paper stacks, crawling
towards the ceiling,
mildew man
in a metal bin can

old German phrases
lingered in the air,  
and my shallow
net unable to catch
a meaning,

of your ich bins
and your ein kleines,
your Nachtmusik of
revved engines,
cigar suitcases and
old turn of the *****,
in replace of an
I love you.

Don't matter to me,
I can spell out any
words with candles afew,
blow them out too
and eat the cake soon.

Some of them
do not do, you do not
do not to,


Where were you
when the night
turned blue?

but of intentions

you carry secrets you
dont know the words to,

a revved engine, cigar
suitcase and boots

You are the whooshing woman
       spewing out idea after idea,
            in a boardroom meeting full of men,
              who pay big bucks for your easy genius.

Your constant shhhhh,
    remains the greatest reminder  
       to stand silent,
          it is the wind of your water,
            that carries fish to a new life
              or the waiting beak of a gull.

And as your water topples to the side,
     you become nature's velvet curtains
       forever drawn to hide secrets
         never meant for human consumption,
           it is there, where you declare victory
               over the paradox that is earth.

Has anyone ever told you  
    your movement is your stillness?
      Your calculated charm of "go"
         provides anchor to the
            nebulous change of man.  
    
Sometimes I can hear
      you in airplane cabins
              and in evening traffic,
                 when I am really trying hard
                     to return to nature.

But most of all I hear you in relation,
      between two hearts beating with purpose,
          within a rapturous conversation
              about human chemistry.

I'll admit, I have tried to carry you,
    but you are too slippery when wet,
       and you are always bursting with
         significant moisture.

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?

i travel into the past
and i pick apart the memories
unbuilt to last,
quicksand thoughts
turning
in on me,
laughter on the beach
belittling lover
intoxication stare
one by one collapsing onto me
enticing me to revisit,
as if asking to refill
when my night is all but empty,

I don't dare.
i will stay put in my moment
the present tense is nothing
but a gift from my past you see,
I will only glance in your direction,
sweet memory
I dare not linger
within the depth of
your engulfing nostalgia,
for if I do
i will surely
turn into
a tear.

the straightest path
to understanding if
its real love is to
offer up power

and while you
sit there
tiger in lambs clothing,

watch, watch, watch

for although you
can weather all storms
and battles, hunters
and terrain on your solo

your choice of comrade
is that of wisdom
not love, for quickly
can a beast change
its tune when
offered freedom with
your heart.

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 felt the arrows of feeling
pointed towards me
anger's blade was sharpened by the sun
as it soared over to greet my skin
and my state of contentment
had been washed over
with a dormant state of resentment
because attached to that arrow,
buried deep in the vein of its *****,
was a biting memory of your skin
moving against mine
and then the
bitter pang of its quick and permanent
exit from the chapters of my life.

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.

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 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.

You will never
know how I held
back sharp words
behind a caged mouth,
when you asked
me of my day.

I wanted to cut off
your golden hair
and wear it as
a mustache,
because you
forgot to take
out the **** trash.

I had my lighter
right around
my neck,
and knew
how to
spark it,

but knew
that one
spark
of anger
would
destroy
our million
pieces of
shared joy.

And so I
refrained,
and thought maybe
I had completed
an important
life lesson.

Maybe somehwere up
in the heavens
God and Jesus
were cajoling
over wine
of my decision,

The little cherub
angels were
sounding their
trumpets
preparing for
my arrival
one day,

and sharpeining
their wings
to inevitably
carry me back
to my improved
return as
some great
historical
figure or
rare bird,
to reward
my refrain,
to reward
my refrain.

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.

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.

you were brilliant
but it came with a cost

for every 5
lines
i was given
1 insult

you were really good
at the art of
sandwiching
two compliments
in between one insult,

you lathered the treatment
so earnestly
as you whimsically would touch my hair
and bow down to my
choice of shoes
only to, on the way up
snidely remark
about the one hair i had
forgotten to shave on my leg

it is a price you pay
he said as he looked into my eyes
i will give you the highs
but also carry to you the lows

for i am the rollercoaster
you have willingly paid admission for.

i looked in the mirror
and i saw a desert
there was a blank desolate
canvas of space
waiting to be filled
waiting to be acknowledged
or called out
i have no choice but to examine
every grain of sand
that makes me
who i am

"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.

I wasn't crying for you,
regardless of what your eyes told you.
I was crying for me
on that mildew night
when you decreed
we could no longer be.
salty drops of relief,
instead of disbelief.
hands in head to honor
the future I can now possess
as you let go of me
and I can fall further
into the beauty that is myself,
& honor the rose which you never
knew how to stop and smell.

So often you vanish in the dark,
          my fair weathered friend.

Although it is there where I require you the most,
          my reminder of a silhouette existence.

I will become my own shadow,
          no difference between me and lightlessness.

I expand like a riddle in your thoughtless mind.

november you did me well
new love
or whatever people like to call it
new lust
spain or bust
i said
                                                                                                             i like to think that it wasn't just a fling
maybe it meant something
but just for that moment
i felt special
necessary for an existence
air to your lungs
tattoes on a ****
dog hair on a rug
but as your eyes glaze away
i know the end is near
i give you all i have
expecting the worst

another one lost
another one found

you're just a product of your environment
a feeble boy unsure of the publics reaction
provoking a girl to write a **** poem

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.

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 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.

is what i wear.
it is a loreal campaign offering the art of concealment
wrinkles are for unironed clothes and old folk homes
all creation and destruction spun from tomb
the glow emanating from a woman's womb

this spf
isn't always available for the wear
its not some cap we can slip on our hair
or the glasses we use to hide the despair
for our pimples have awoken from
their nightly slumber
allowing the light to
illuminate their number

best we take it all in
the midnight pukes
and
the morning glow
lets carry on with our dancing dynamo
all starry eyed and audacious
all messy and pugnacious
with our lips soaked in red
shouting words of poetic gibberish
to statuesque lovers
who spin in and out of the revolving door
as we sing our tune under helmets
under bleeding stars
and wind up with tattooed legs and arms

for there is a radiant rose in your brain
permanently blooming
against the ticking of time
as you stand in alliance
with lust and love alike
when they conveniently misplaced their pain
at the local bookstore
i can't imagine they'll go looking for it.

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 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.

And for her next act she
decided to become a pencil,
but only to use for the eraser,

her sharpened lead
made her look strong
and important,

and she enjoyed sitting
in her own pool
of possibility,

rather than contend with
the upkeep of her
success.

so she never really wrote anything,
she just paraded around town
as a pointed pencil and overused eraser

pantomiming her emotions,
hoping for someone to
drop a few quarters
into her ***** sidewalk hat.

It's so easy to pick up a color
and dance her to bed,

he picked up blue but
prefered green instead,

he tossed her aside
and mixed her with red,

without a color wheel
he painted her dead,

I am wary of your hands
from now on she said,

I'll dance with the moon,
and then eat an egg.

there are some things
that are just written in ink.
the books that line my shelf
the music I play with my fingers
the startling waves I attempt to hurdle
my surfboard over
the recipe my abuelita passed down to
me of her famous tamales
my subscription to Bon Appetit
these constants anchoring me
when characters sketched by
pencil become too faint to feel,
its these delicate yet sturdy constants
that yank me out of sadness
with a "remember me?!"
with a "remember your abilities, young lady!"
"remember your divine calling to perpetually grow!"

the hip children of the night
prey on logos and women,
they have created counterfeit cultures
made from images of yore
slipped their flesh under blankets
next to lovers or empty space
and declared war against
their own human race
chased down roads in eclectic threads
hollering into the wind with wild hair
that navigate over skin unaware of
history and tradition.

while the feral animals look on with
muted colors and salivate
with a thirst to apply
their instincts,
their tendencies
to seek out the enemy
instead of calmly waiting
for their alarming arrival.

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.

they try
to **** you dry
every last drop
of hope and kindness
they want to see just how
dry they can squeeze you.

a little game you see,
one thats not to understand
the sweetness of the juice,
but one to watch you see
as they flex their
skill of the purposeful spill.

I used to enjoy
spooning dead
creatures up
from deep
bottomless pits
to give them life.

I liked to
interrogate
their despair,
untangle their
hair and polish
the mirrors
I would
shove into
their faces,

telling them
to mimic my
words, bright
and round and
in harmony
with one another,

while i reserved
the jagged
and rusty
phrases for myself,
sharpening blindly
for the sake
of the sharpen,
for the sake
of tradition,
until I had
turned around
into my own
mirror
aghast to
witness the
knife I had
become.

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.

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.

i cant wait to meet
the future poems
i will write.

As quiet as the dancer lost in her own grace,
I was being replaced that afternoon.
I could feel it coming on like some seasonal flu,
or attack of the locusts

A new mindset or way of relation was
swarming around me and ready to land
into the day's equation.
I was being replaced

by another step in the ladder,
another shed of what didn't matter,
in favor of bigger fish to fry.
I was being replaced

by the thought of my 80-year-old self,
crinkled and ragged under the canopy of my past
wishing I had better surfed the terrain of emotion,
like the ballerina who can pirouette in silence,

making grand movements without a single ripple,
daring to be small within the large halls of my own world  
was something I was inching toward as I
looked at myself swarming into myself,

and crossing the rubicon of what I was yet to become.
It looked small where I was meant to go
and I was okay with that since these halls were
becoming too large for my next dance anyways.

It is nightly,
I shift from person
to sleeping archaeologist,  
as I shut my eyes
and fall into you.

And it is nightly
I set out to
decode the great
hieroglyphics
of your sky,  
etched out by
extraterrestrials
or maybe the great
ancient spirits,
who try to
relay simple
answers to
heavy thoughts.

It is is evident to see,
after my nightly research,
that you are simply
the dancer's ribbon,  
and the beings
yet to be written,
the ghouls in the attic,
and the poet's poem,
the union of electricity
and circumstance
colliding to
put men in
their place.

And as I fall
deeper into
the excavation
of my slumber,
I hear your whispers
dancing through my sheets,
saying: yield to me
when we one day meet,
not like the lunatic soldier,
but like the silken lover
who is reliably there
upon your awake.

you chose a rookie
over an all star.
because in order to
be with an all star,
you have to level up,
and to be blunt sir
you couldn't measure up.

now i look to you rookie,
its your awakening
time to be an allstar.

you threw me far flung
away from myself,
an act of hate and fear.

but it feels good
i have to say,
to look at myself
objectively from this point
so far from the beginning.

i am on the outskirts,
looking back at myself
with love,
and a dedication
to walk through
this new fire,
in an effort
to make myself even
bigger than before.