Nobody believes in me. But, neither do I, and that’s OK. But they don’t really know how I am, and if they knew, I am pretty sure they wouldn’t feel the same way. I sometimes feel like coming out of the closet, not because I am gay, but just for my personality. Then, I realize we are all in the closet. Even when you come out of the closet, you search for somewhere else to hide. But basically nobody will get out of the wardrobe, which makes sense, because we judge. We dislike everything. How people talk, dress, look, or even walk. We are so caught up on ******* that we don’t even get to evolve as people. I know I don’t. Could that be part of the system we grew up in? How do we differentiate a critique from simply judging. The critique highway goes straight into judge, or does it not? We might say — this is just a critique, it’s for your own good— but in reality, most of the times, we have already spoken about it to someone else. Why do we always need to get people’s approval to fit into this world, and therefore, are most unpopular “outcasts” really the most honest people to be around. I will never know, because I am as guilty as everyone else. Involved in the society that simply sits in the caffe window watching people pass by as you consider yourself better than them. Whatever. Once again, I am no better. I just find it sad to think that I am always searching from approval by bashing on other people, who have decided to live their life without caring about the dumb girl sitting by the window.

It’s always been just coffee kisses,
they’re all I have left to bring.
Overflowing mugs of latte love to spill on your hands, your lips, your heart,
Caffe mocha affection
laced with cappuccino hugs.
Iced or steaming, you decide.
Hazelnut, peppermint, French vanilla
(dulce de leche piquitos para ti)
warm espresso admiration,
americano dreams,
sugared and creamy to sweeten your tongue
served up with a coffee house smile—
bitterness hides in a candied disguise
but not today.
No sugar in the raw, no milk, no cream,
no sweet sticky flavors to trick your lovesick mind,
no fancy names to make you think it’s worth the cost.
Just pure, dark caffeine,
ground up this morning,
rich and smooth, but bitter and dry—
brewed with intention.
Just one coffee kiss, for you.
One plain black coffee kiss.

Take it or leave it.

Which Is Greater?

I break a vow.
A serious vow.

In a place, in this site,
Where the fluid pain
Is the water of the world,
The element that is crux,
The amniotic liquor of creative flux,
The morning juice,
The afternoon caffe,
The first beer of the day,
The liquid that we rinse and spit out our every day,

I will write about pain,
Arrogantly, as if there is any unused combination of
Letters, vowels and consonants left unspoken, *****,
Having sworn not to, for pain is cumulative.

Asking myself,
Which is greater?

The pain of creation, inception, origination and birth,
The pain of  wreck and ruin, destruction and death.

Homework Self-Assignment: Compare and Contrast

Suddenly, I am expert.

Creating a poem a day is very painful.
A poem that is the sum of
Reflection, research, and purging.

Once I wrote:

The poem is the afterbirth,
A conflicts resolution, an outcome,
Battlefield debris, the residue of
An exacting vision, a sentiment surging,
And your army of words, inadequate to the task,
Fighting to capture that insight flashed,
Each word a soldier, disheveled,
Crying, let me live, let me be saved,
Let me make a poem,
Let it be inscribed upon my victorious flag.

The poem is the sweat left upon the brow,
Having exercised the five senses,
The salt of struggle and debate,
It's completion, each word,
Both a victory and a defeat.

Suddenly, I am  expert.

My mother is dying.
It is a process. Days pass,
She neither eats or drinks,
Yet she lives on.

I watch each labored exhalation,
A subtraction, a countdown,
It is as if she was returning each singular day,
Every word e're spoke, every dream dreamt,
she ever possessed to the atmosphere,
One breath at a time.

Is that painful?
It is for me.

Now you complain. They're different, not to be compared, et cetera.

Pain is pain,
Whether it is in the service of creation, or
Creative destruction.

Once I wrote:

With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poem's birth diminishes me.

So, one and the same?

Nope. Yes. But. Cannot one be the greater?
Yes, one is greater.
When I lay on my deathbed,
I will exhale the answer
Into the atmosphere
For your retrieval.

The Saturday night crowd, all here to see Dave Van Ronk,
sit huddled in the fashion of Antwerp diamond cutters,
sipping cinnamon/marshmallow coffee at the tables.
Caffe Lena is Saratoga's happening place in the 60's and
we're here to forget the war and civil strife in the ghettos.

Sister Mary Katherine, sans frock, is the warmup act,
but no one really gives her any mind,
as she struggles to seat herself upon the stool
intended for the six-foot plus Van Ronk.
Joan Baez prepare to eat your heart out!

Without so much as introduction, she
breaks into a high soprano Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.
Heads pivot like synchronized swimmers toward the stage.
Her silken voice emits notes blinking
into reality from quantum fluctuations in space/time.

Every quivering high-C grafts the audience together.
She's spinning veils of sound,
the like of which our ears are unfamiliar.
The quavers in her throat match the tremors in my coffee.
In the back of the cafe a drunken Van Ronk passes out.

written one year ago, upon the passing of my mother.


I break a vow.
A serious vow.

In a place, in this site,
Where the pain is the fluid,
Is the water of the world,
The element that is crux,
The amniotic liquor of creative flux,
The morning juice,
The afternoon caffe,
The first beer of the day,
The liquid that we rinse and spit out our every day,

I will write about pain,
Arrogantly, as if there is any unused combination of
Letters, vowels and consonants left unspoken, *****,
Having sworn not to, for pain is cumulative.

Asking myself,
Which is greater?

The pain of creation, inception, origination and birth,
The pain of  wreck and ruin, destruction and death.

Homework Self-Assignment: Compare and Contrast

Suddenly, I am expert.

Creating a poem a day is very painful.
A poem that is the sum of
Reflection, research, and purging.

Once I wrote:

The poem is the afterbirth,
A conflicts resolution, an outcome,
Battlefield debris, the residue of
An exacting vision, a sentiment surging,
And your army of words, inadequate to the task,
Fighting to capture that insight flashed,
Each word a soldier, disheveled,
Crying, let me live, let me be saved,
Let me make a poem,
Let it be inscribed upon my victorious flag.

The poem is the sweat left upon the brow,
Having exercised the five senses,
The salt of struggle and debate,
It's completion, each word,
Both a victory and a defeat.

Suddenly, I am  expert.

My mother is dying.
It is a process. Days pass,
She neither eats or drinks,
Yet she lives on.

I watch each labored exhalation,
A subtraction, a countdown,
It is as if she was returning each singular day,
Every word e're spoke, every dream dreamt,
she ever possessed to the atmosphere,
One breath at a time.

Is that painful?
It is for me.

Now you complain. They're different, not to be compared, et cetera.

Pain is pain,
Whether it is in the service of creation, or
Creative destruction.

Once I wrote:

With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poem's birth diminishes me.

So, one and the same?

Nope. Yes. But. Cannot one be the greater?
Yes, one is greater.
When I lay on my deathbed,
I will exhale the answer
Into the atmosphere
For your retrieval.
Greater. Think upon it.
~~~~~~~~
Lipstadt-Roth, Miriam née Peiman, 1915~2013,
passed peacefully Sat. July 20th, 2013

Critic, speaker, writer,  
her fiercest feat,                    
her leading role, creator.      
A near century of memories  
her legacy, memories that  
linger not, for incised,        
chiseled in the granite of the
books, papers, and poetry
and the very being              
of her descendants.            

Her faith in Almighty,            
unflagging, for he did not    
forsake her in the time of      
her old age, when                  
her strength failed.

I’m writing in this language
to forget about myself
to spit out the caffe latte
my mother’s milk
and my father’s  coffee

the mind has diamond edges
virtual slopes
the body is a jungle
writing to me is like
writing to you

I’ll let go
of the spitting image of you
of me
no slogans
no slop

you are some unfinished poetry
in the unwritten me

The opportunity to see Artist grow is an experience
Pulling on the strings of imagination.
Ideas mixing with ideologies
While Artist's talent flies yonder people's heads,
Giving the mind a chance to wander with
Loose predictions of predicaments only prevalent
Past current hands of clock towers hovering over
Boston's Freedom Trail, somehow ending at
Caffe Lil Italy.

Artist is on an elevated stage
Holding a piece of mysterious wood
Infront of billows of hairlines,
Presented by
Aliens from The World of Perplexed Tunes
Scattering under the grey sky
While the patient moon waits
Behind a cotton curtain.
  Rhythm was then resurrected.
     The next second,
     Perspective changes.
                                            We are now at
                                 The Show in the art of music
                                     While the crowd awaits
                        The next centennial syllable of the story
                               While an avid listener is caught
                                                In the grip.
Now,
He understands.



I applaud talent in a hierarchal sense,
In an illusioned matter of society.

I appreciate, the determination,
Leading to trees singing melodies
Whenever Artist appears with her weapon of choice from
The fifth dimension;

Presented to a four-dimensional audience.

I hear the joy in the tone,
Yet I feel the turbulence in the voice.
Something has hurt one.

While the hat might not sit correctly on one's head,
Sometimes it can't
So it can;

Spark sensation, Create imagination,

And understand the meaning of where we are
On this melting *** of a lightning bolt
Thrown by Zeus during a psychotic episode
On laced LSD, or maybe
Traveling through space,

The space, in the middle of her curious eyes
Where fictitious time is lost.

So, Dear Artist,
I want to say
Thank you, for helping me grow.
Thank you, for giving me the chance to grow.
Thank you, for the connections I never would've been able to make
If you had decided to never take the stage.

If you need me or this message again,
I'll be in the back of your mind,

In that scene,

Across The Other Ocean,
My focus over the horizon of metaphors,
On the other side of reality
As my feet remain glued to the jagged shoreline,
The sand on my toes washed away by
The waves of life created by

The Mother of The Other Ocean.










As my neurons recall the harmonies
Chiseled by you,


My mind drifts away,

Still thinking of hypothetical predicaments,


And it's endless possibilities.

Caffe latte
sunday morning no rush after
resident of the white hour
endless minutes spent on laughter.
You in the doorway
with your old luster
Yerba mate in your veins eyes green standing firm like a dream
perfect disaster
like a substitute for what’s about to happen
worth to question
what’s it all for?
Will your tenderness be the embrace of the summer and its grace
down the roads
of desert worlds
only sand no water ponds
just one road
headed to
Heavens’ floor
or how you call
that one place where I belong with you.