Yo soy *****

**** immigration and the racist white tèjanõs, please tell me how the hell would they ever know what I know, shout out to my Mexicans Hondurans and black Cubanos shut the border down call it the no fly zone. Adios Americanos me and my amigos are stealing ya women and playin em like pianos, vocal terrorist this lyrical revolt should be your primary interest. Public enemy number one the domestic hectic terrorist I'm influencing your white son, right to bear these nuts I'm taking the tea parties guns stealing your freedom from right up under you, all your jobs, and way of life, your point of view. I'm the original black power ranger hide your right winged minds if not I swear they'll be in danger. I am the broken brick the stone left unturned the rhythm of the wind the willingness to learn and the desire to fight and get what you earn. I am the individual placed on the no fly list with my hand balled into a fist cause my turbin is too tight and my beards to thick. I am the man choked to death by nypd for selling cigarettes now I'm rioting with my words doing lyrical pirouettes.  Yo soy ***** spitting jive like lingo I want a Pam Grier keep your Marilyn Monroe, from the 6th borough buckin like bronco they said finish em I'm educated and black had to hit em with the combo.  I'm non fictions Huey Freeman battling congress and their demons catch me flexing on the law lookin like the black He-Man Standing up for what I believe in writing in my notepad I stay steady schemin with my head up in the clouds I stay steady dreamin. Yo soy ***** freeze em like sub zero not concerned with dolores or the dinero yen or bills yo, I'm still waiting for marvel to make a Mexican superhero.

Their lies are prompted
from teleprompters
and executed flaw-fully
from taxpayer's helicopters.

They say we're protecting
foreign daughters
while filtering profits
to desert clad marauders.

Blank faced public
fear conversing religion and politics
while passively electing
lunatics with trigger switches.

Arm the rebels
they bite the hand that feeds
the middle east burns
while America ******* bleeds.

The white, blue and red
camo helmets on their heads
farm fed frat boys
equipped with jackets of lead.

We watched Saddam crumble
his statue beaten with shoes
but the same war we already fought
the puppets now will choose.

Fight the good fight
support the troops.

Drone strikes by twilight
**** the troops.

An Army of one
Sempter Fi
Do or Die
I won't shed a single tear when you come back in a casket
covered in a flag you valued more than your life.

Our heroes are our welfare
stop blaming single mothers
plastic bags tied around throats
water boarding dissent, it smothers.

**** the Medal of Honor
I'm tearing up your portrait Obama.
How many can benefit from free tuition?
But we give it to those trained to slaughter.

Our priority is the police state
Nazis pretending to tote freedom.
We sip our Americanos
And retain nothing from the newspaper we are reading.

**By Evan Ponter
@evanponter

About 4 years into the friendship, or whatever it had by that stage become, during a chat on our Internet **** preferences
over badly-filtered Americanos
in the UCD student cafe, I said to her
" I think I enjoyed our friendship more when we used to get coffee and just laugh for twenty minutes. "
And after a half second of unusual silence from her, those pools
of ever-renewing blue eyes of hers almost incisions
into my consciousness, I added" That was pretty unique."
And then I laughed unbound, and she almost shrugged
and definitely smirked as if to say "this is where I am now, it took some time for me to realise but it's where I've always been."
Unapologetic, as only she could seem to be.

And it was, like any tryst, fling or abandoned half-romance is, utterly unique. Half on the way
to becoming something we were going to hang on to and definitely regret
and half-stopped, sulking out of a puddle,
dead damp weight created by the differences we made ourselves
for the other to behold and dismantle.
The immediate was meant for us, first the attraction, then the disgust, then the despair, then the cursing off, then round to the intrigue all over again.
She remained the great question mark of my undergraduate years. Heartaches after her were equally demeaning, but far more easily explained.

You know you've found someone irreplaceable when they tell things you really shouldn't know,
things shoved up in boxes for years, things too unformed to be really caught sounding out, in the moments after your first kiss.
And every clever undergraduate will tell you how negative all connotations of "irreplaceable" are.

And yet these are the backhanded good graces,
the immeasurable gifts that memory serves
I wear this like a wound I can find wry mirth at the very sight of,
I have learned all this from her without her ever intending
These memories are indented in a music box with an imitation sacred heart all mine
distempered by the candid lines of a girl who never wanted religion, divulged somewhere in our seat of learning.

when i think of you
it's always christmas in my heart.
it's always icy cold and brisk -
not the kind of cold that you bristle at,
but the cold that makes you gasp for a breath,
like you've just realized you're alive.

the feeling swells from my heart,
up the sides of my neck,
warming everything it touches,
enflaming muscles it has no business brushing,
until i can barely get any air down my windpipe.
my lungs seize up, just as they are,
and i can't remember ever taking a deep breath in my life.
are you buried down there in my solar plexus still?

i know i've gotta be out of my mind -
that's one thing i'm sure of these days.
but i can't shake that excitement from my heart,
like i might see you this time,
you might be around just for a few days
and we might sneak off together to talk,
dreaming dreams bigger than each of us,
bigger than both of us,
or just sit somewhere and be silent.
i'll make up and excuse about seeing an old friend,
not a lie, really. no, not a lie at all. simply understated.

god i'm thankful for these memories.
i'm so grateful, through and through,
for the blaze that flames on in my heart,
a feeling i could never forget, never replace.
God bless the freezing air, the frost on the windows,
the leafless trees, stiff and cold on the side streets,
the brick buildings and all their contained heat,
a hot tea, and you forgetting all the words to all the songs,
the fireplace in the downstairs den that I'll never see again.

God bless the early mornings and late nights,
the trading of songs back and forth,
the wrapping of emotional gifts and
the excitement of opening them in front of each other,
the beanies and layers of coats and sweaters,
the dressing up, doing of hair, & sweet smelling perfume.
God bless the light beers and sweet wines,
antique shopping and long cash-wrap lines,
lattes and americanos, hot in your little hand,
the smell of coffee beans wafting through my nostrils
early in the morning when mom is the only one awake.

but most of all god bless the music.
the sound of church bells drawing out
a year's worth of love and hope from my heart,
eternal, transcendent and completely dissociated from personality,
the electric guitars playing "o holy night",
my mom on the piano, a text from you on the screen.

i'd be nothing without that music, different without you.
i don't miss the arguments and the fights, the awkwardness,
but i miss the rosy edges of everything,
all of my experiences at Christmas are tainted by you -
i miss focusing on what i'm doing,
while always half-focusing on you.
"sure, i'm helping cook dinner - but did my phone just buzz?!"
it did. it always did. whenever i checked, it was buzzing.

my brain can't understand this
or plan what needs to be done,
so i will leave the matter to my heart,
the ***** of deepening, infiltrating
penetrating and incorporating all of the love it feels
into every moment of every day of my life.

out here, a glass is raised,  always waiting for your cheers.

My roommate sat reading terry Pratchett
on our patchwork couch
Covered in my grandmothers quilt
as i boiled water
to make americanos for us
with the aeropress i just bought
her for christmas
It was her only gift this year
Our christmas tree wasn't up yet.
we put that up about three months after everyone else took theirs down
we watched the water drip
Like clockwork from the veins in the lime wallpaper
Collecting in her blind cats water dish
Which lapped happily before tripping over a mis-placed buhhda statue.
my roomate closes her book to say:

"being polyamorous is something you should only try is you are amazing at organization and have a fettish for complicated things."

By the time I heard her say this,
I had been trying to juggle hearts for quite awhile
I must admit my dexterity wasn't high enough
To roll without dropping a few
it's hard when hearts are never the same size
Or weight, or color.
I would be a better librarian.
organizing the hearts
Holding them just long enough to capture and
Stick on a shelf somewhere
That must be why I write so much poetry.

up to alaska,
tundra and me,
tundra and me,
spit on my hands,
shook your hand,
sharp grin,
sharp part in my hair,
you said i'd be bald,
i was a faux pas,
down to portland,
free your mind
in fish bowl,
in windowsill acid,
you said "loosen your tie",
we spent two consecutive
nights throwing dollar bills
across the room as we shook,
slid, stepped fancy, some clumsy,
until free of constraining clothing,
we called landlords
told them not to worry,
i bought you four americanos,
you pounded them out,
you bought me three bottles of wine,
worst night of my life,
across to pine ridge,
you scored peyote,
said it'd help me see,
all i got was sad,
staring at weathered, forgotten men,
and their starving spawn,
we headed back home,
spinning the only cd you own,
bowie's station to station for
28-hours,
i said i loved you,
you said i broke my promise,
bit me, stroked my hands,
said, "well, i guess we'll see where this goes."

¿Qué signo haces, oh Cisne, con tu encorvado cuello
al paso de los tristes y errantes soñadores?
¿Por qué tan silencioso de ser blanco y ser bello,
tiránico a las aguas e impasible a las flores?Yo te saludo ahora como en versos latinos
te saludara antaño Publio Ovidio Nasón.
Los mismos ruiseñores cantan los mismos trinos,
y en diferentes lenguas es la misma canción.A vosotros mi lengua no debe ser extraña.
A Garcilaso visteis, acaso, alguna vez...
Soy un hijo de América, soy un nieto de España...
Quevedo pudo hablaros en verso en Aranjuez...Cisnes, los abanicos de vuestras alas frescas
den a las frentes pálidas sus caricias más puras
y alejen vuestras blancas figuras pintorescas
de nuestras mentes tristes las ideas oscuras.Brumas septentrionales nos llenan de tristezas,
se mueren nuestras rosas, se agotan nuestras palmas,
casi no hay ilusiones para nuestras cabezas,
y somos los mendigos de nuestras pobres almas.Nos predican la guerra con águilas feroces,
gerifaltes de antaño revienen a los puños,
mas no brillan las glorias de las antiguas hoces,
ni hay Rodrigos ni Jaimes, ni hay Alfonsos ni Nuños.Faltos del alimento que dan las grandes cosas,
¿qué haremos los poetas sino buscar tus lagos?
A falta de laureles son muy dulces las rosas,
y a falta de victorias busquemos los halagos.La América española como la España entera
fija está en el Oriente de su fatal destino;
yo interrogo a la Esfinge que el porvenir espera
con la interrogación de tu cuello divino.¿Seremos entregados a los bárbaros fieros?
¿Tantos millones de hombres hablaremos inglés?
¿Ya no hay nobles hidalgos ni bravos caballeros?
¿Callaremos ahora para llorar después?He lanzado mi grito, Cisnes, entre vosotros
que habéis sido los fieles en la desilusión,
mientras siento una fuga de americanos potros
y el estertor postrero de un caduco león......Y un cisne ***** dijo: «La noche anuncia el día».
Y uno blanco: «¡La aurora es inmortal! ¡La aurora
es inmortal!» ¡Oh tierras de sol y de armonía,
aún guarda la Esperanza la caja de Pandora!

Jarod was talking about how
it hit him two months later,
how the air suddenly left his
body and he woke up at 1:30 am
with the burning desire to drive to
Texas, so he did. Although, he didn't
tell us any of this in the week that his
chest was splitting open while he laughed
at our jokes and sipped on in-house americanos
that didn't soothe any breakage

El cantor va por todo el mundo
sonriente o meditabundo.
El cantor va sobre la tierra
en blanca paz o en roja guerra.Sobre el lomo del elefante
por la enorme India alucinante.
En palanquín y en seda fina
por el corazón de la China;en automóvil en Lutecia;
en negra góndola en Venecia;sobre las pampas y los llanos
en los potros americanos;por el río va en la canoa,
o se le ve sobre la proade un steamer sobre el vasto mar,
o en un vagón de sleeping-car.El dromedario del desierto,
barco vivo, le lleva a un puerto.
Sobre el raudo trineo trepa
en la blancura de la estepa.O en el silencio de cristal
que ama la aurora boreal.El cantor va a pie por los prados,
entre las siembras y ganados.Y entra en su Londres en el tren,
y en asno a su Jerusalén.Con estafetas y con malas,
va el cantor por la humanidad.En canto vuela, con sus alas:
Armonía y Eternidad.

American politics is often paranoid
And not only Richard Nixon
The people are confused
American schools kinda ****

Played basketball at UNC
Walked through Carrboro
Met Max from Heidelberg
Ate at the taco truck

There are Americans with graduate degrees
They invade and destroy Iraq
They boast of church attendance
And they fear those who ****

But there's also Susan Meek
And Alex Nava
And Judi Kemerait
Wish us luck!

save our cities
widen footfalls,
build flats for ownership.
vote Labour to protect our libraries,
make Croydon travel zone four,
and try for Americanos for less than 2 pounds.

****** morgue fridges that kept corpses cold brought attention to
the troubling concerns 'tween Mongol cadavers unbought & unsold
to be flayed for exposition in: In China You Do What You Are Told
A red-haired foster boy asks, “******, phony-fake Daddy, is 'Blood
Spewing from my Throat' a love song or what?” 9 months later dad
answers, “Yes, it is a song to determine whether you make the cut.”
I like being ***-******* in Houston with the cellar door bolted shut
'cause it makes me feel something inside like a pure-breed in a mutt
or like 1 of Robert Joseph White's headless monkeys clapping a nut
against the dull cavities entombed in the petrified body of King Tut
Don't get thorn-pricked by roses when they're prickly because queer
Peter O'Toole was surrounded by sickly ghouls & cremated quickly
& handed a pass so you wouldn't chew out his gay *** in Sewickley
Your dementia praecox psychosis made my *** rotate with emotion
while my prong horn alarmingly stiffened with bed-ridden devotion
the queen's counsel addressed Prince Andrew's gaseous commotion
My loose, slimmer turds are shaped like listed federally-endangered
bald eagle birds, not Iraqi Kurds because they are alien Americanos
floatin' on plasm in the deep-seated blue sea where green meets ***
In 1995 I was given a pass, for it you don't have to chew out my ***
that'd bounded beyond the musical range of ham-***** Mama Cass
whose lousy death made another ****-tall **** gynecologically pass
by deck-swabbbers & cranberry-boggers whose prance invokes sass

Sugar in the coffee ***
Serves it warm, I like it hot
Perhaps Costa or Neros and pay a higher fee
A greasy spoon the place to be
Not refined but just fine
No frothy Americanos or skinny on the milk
Tetleys all day long, washed down smooth as silk
Across the way, Comedy Store, new comics where the crowd pan you
All else fails, nip over the road, a hot slice of Ma's lasagne 
Builders sat in the corner, tea break and a laugh
All day fry-up,
the best in town,
only at,
Ma's Cafe

JJB

So if you are with me this far
You see my thing with 37
Here it comes again
Diet Coke at 7 11

Probably apophenia
And my desperation
Did Shakespeare write 37 plays?
Is poetry bipolar elevation?

37 doctors in the Catholic Church
But I ain't gonna be one
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When the Day is Done

I asked the Canadians and Americanos too
Which European country as you travel through?
They all said Italy
Sunlight just might do

Why, I asked?
The people was their reply
Warm, friendly, generous
Mama Mia - What a sky!

I met a French waitress
So what do you think of France?
Se magnifique, I said
If you see her, ask her to dance

        In this Universe of Chance