I broke up with God
at our favorite eatery
in our favorite booth.

We settled into familiar creases
and asked for the usual.

My eyes lazily staring at fingers
stirring the straw around the ice cubes,
God cautiously spoke up:

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.” (Thinking about the dormant phone
concealing behind the lock screen
the open Facebook tab
lingering over the relationship status section.)

They silently mused over the laconic reply,
til the waitress showed up with the food.

“Thank you!” God blurted with agonizing alacrity.

I received the sustenance lifelessly
and aimlessly poked at the burgers and fries.

The waitress eyed me with vague inquisition,
popping a bubble in the gum between
big teeth, refilled my water
and pirouetted hastily.

We ate in ostensible harmony,
the silence gripping like a chokehold,
the visible anxiety and subdued resolve
settling like a stifling blanket
over the child waking
from a nightmare—

Til we couldn’t breathe,
and I ripped back the covers
and looked into the eyes
of my tormentor.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

God, taken aback by the curt statement,
dropped their burger with shaking hands,
silently begging with wetting eyes
a greater explanation.

So I elaborated:

“It’s not you, it’s me.

For your immaculate conception
was created by human hands,

your adages rendered obsolete
by human words,

your purpose and plan for us
distorted by human nature—

I cannot hate myself any longer.

I cannot pretend to know you at all.

Who my mother and father say you are
is not who my friends think you are,
nor my teachers, my pastor,
the president, Stephen Hawking,
Muhammed, the KKK, Buddha,
the Westboro Baptist Church,
Walt Whitman, Derek Zanetti,
******,
and Billy Graham.

I am told you care who I bring into bed (and when),
and what movies I watch,
and what music I listen to—

I have not heard what you say about
child soldiers, the use of mosquitos,
or the increased destruction of the earth
which you proudly proclaimed your creation,
or the poverty and disease and famine
which has ridden so many of your children—”

God interjected,
“But you’re chosen!”

I snorted,

“You say I’m chosen
to spend eternity with you—
why me?

Why’d you pick me among
thousands, millions, billions?

I’ve been told I’m ‘chosen’
since birth
by others like me—

those with fair complexion,
blue eyes,
blonde hair,
a firm overt ****** attraction towards women,
and a great big house
with immaculate white fences
delineating their Jericho.

I’ve already fabricated eternity
here among the other ‘chosen’
and there is a world of suffering
right outside the fence
and I see them
through the window of my bedroom
every day.

Am I chosen,
if I don’t vote Republican

Am I chosen
if I am Pro-Choice

Am I chosen
if I cohabitate with my girlfriend

Am I chosen
if I never have kids

Am I chosen
if I say ‘Happy Holidays’

Am I chosen
if I don’t want public prayer in schools

Am I chosen
if I don’t want a Christian nation

Am I chosen
if I don’t repost you on my wall
or retweet your adages?

I’m tired
being the ubermensch,
for it has not brought me
happiness
and I blame you.

I will not ignore
the cries of the suffering
believing it is I
who is destined to live
in bliss.

I will not buy
Joel Osteen’s autobiography(ies).

I will not tithe
you my money
for a megachurch
when another homeless shelter
closes down.

I will not tell a woman
what to do with her body,
or a man
that he is a man
if they say they are not.

I am neither Jew nor Gentile,
and I will stand with
my brothers and sisters
of Faith and Faithlessness,

Gay and Straight,
Black and White,

and apart from these extremes
free from absolutes
the ambiguous, amorphous
nature of Humankind
which I praise.

There is much pain and suffering
in this world,
potentially preventable,
but hardly can I believe
it’s part of your plan
to save
me.

I will not be saved
if we are not
all saved—

not one will burn
for my divinity.

The gates will be open to all—
and perhaps you believe that too,
but I’ve gotten you all wrong
and that cannot change,
as long as there is
mortality, and
corruption, and
power, and
lust, and
greed.”

God whined, growing bellicose,

“It is through me that you will find eternity,
I am the one true god!
I am the God of your fallen ancestors,
it is because you have fallen short
that you need me!”

I replied, growing in confidence,

“We have all fallen short,
yes,
but we are also magnificent.

We have evolved,
we have created,
we have adapted,
we have survived.

We have built empires,
and we have destroyed them.

We have cured diseases,
and we have created them.

We have done much in your name.
We’ve done good,
and we’ve done evil—

And unfortunately it’s all about
who you ask.

Your name is a burden on the oppressed
and a weapon of the oppressor.

You are abusive, God.

You tell me you are jealous.

You tell me apart from you I will suffer for an eternity.

I’m scared to die, yet want to die,
because of you.

You have made life a waiting room
that is now my purgatory. It is

Hell On Earth.

So you see,
it’s not you,
it’s me—
a mere mortal
who has tried to put a face
to eternity
and it has left me
empty.

And also,
it’s me,
for I have learned to love me,
as I have expelled your self-loathing imbibition,
and the deleterious zeal
I have proclaimed
through ceaseless
trepidation
and self-flagellation—

I have learned to love me
by realizing I am not inherently evil,
that my body is not evil,
that my mind is not evil,
and, ultimately, that
there is no good
and there is no evil.

My body is beautiful,
my mind is beautiful,
this world is beautiful,
and we are destroying it
waiting for you to claim
us.

I leave you
in hopes to see you
again one day,

and perhaps you will look
different than I have
perceived or imagined,

and in fact
I certainly hope so.”

Just then the waitress strolled back up
with a servile smile:
“Dessert?”

“No, thank you,”
I smiled politely.

And with that,
I paid the check,
and took a to-go box—

walked out into the evening rain
to my car,
put on a secular song
that meant something real to me
and drove off
into the night—

feeling for the first time
free
and alive.

my belly grows the size of a bag of apricots
there is a will at the bottom of a lake that needs retrieving
the car sank but the body made it to the shore and changed her name by midnight
come springtime the ice melts and the water is back
crawling upon shy ankles
there are growing pains who find a home between nettles and
the hives of adobe wasps
i never could cohabitate with nature
when they ask at parties where i've been
things that are at rest stay at rest

Pendulous eyes, weary and bleak
Immoveable shadows, the unseen torrents
Coyly divulge the once impetuous spirit
On his shoulders, he carries a colossal weight
For his is a cleft vessel, rudderless and floundering
The rise and fall of each swell, brings neither hope or despair
He contemplates the gilded life, an absurd apparition
And slithers back to obscurity where the worm and dreams cohabitate

they live inside the walls.
their bodies folded
and collapsed in dresser drawers.
the demon possessed.
with an affinity for red.
driving in red mercedes.
drinking coca-cola.
they want you.
they watch you
and they wait.

My father’s name is Adam.  As in apple, the core stuck to a throat halfway, jutting seed.
This is the middle name that the business world has no whereabouts of. It was bestowed upon
him, this name, I imagine like all things; deliberately searching the scaffolds of the bible with apprehensive sweat trickling through brown sugar colored foreheads. However there’s nothing
biblical about this man. He has six children, the most unlucky of all numbers.
Thus, I have 5 half-siblings. Each with identically strange sunken eyes and tired skin.
The same kind of shared headache. Like being submerged for too long. Like too many mistakes and too little oxygen.
I am unlucky number 6. An omen-child. Not the settling of dust but of the silent movement before
it was ever frazzled by frantic feet. The calm you don’t want to realize exists.
3 daughters and 3 sons because he was compulsively articulate and clean; a nasty habit of OCD that was coddled by the women that washed their hands twice and bit their nails until they bled.
You see, I never speak of them because they do not speak of me.
Memory is tricky. Sometimes you remember the smell of fried pork in hands that have known hard
labor and other times you recall perfectly the pirated DVD’s sold for a dollar down the street of your neighbor’s apartment. The distorted graphics on the front, the headline in Spanish and despite how many people are there buying these illegally distributed films you wonder why you feel ashamed and embarrassed when you tell your friends, if you tell your friends but you don’t.
I know of their existence, of where they are located and could be found easily, their names and what they do but if one was to ask me, I would not know their personalities, how they react to bad news or if they are fulfilled, whether they know that our psychological genetics are cloudy and erratic and that is why Sundays always feel sacrilegious. They are faces in a picture that I never had a need to frame.
Despite having the same father, we do not call the same man, dad.
There is a brother that lives by the beach with a guy twice his senior.
They share martinis and aged bottled wine talking about social movements and Bill Clinton.
You see, he chooses to cohabitate with a man he knows is living his last few years and not a person that tied his shoes until he was 7 years old because he was too busy making time for other kids, stretching himself for everyone else that he had time for no one. There are certain unforgivable things a parent can do, like leaving too early, taking off 5 minutes before when he could have waited 10, turning the lights off when they should have stayed on, always. Yet there is a certain kind of pressure that is put on someone that is no less human than anyone else. Someone that can draw architecture and buy ice cream on days when limbs are too heavy to go to school can’t be all bad. Despite the entire trauma, you still pray and rescue wounded animals and that is something that can only be taught and not learnt.
So as these estranged family members disintegrated and gathered informative pieces about me through loose lips curious to see if I would fail, ravenous to know inevitable tragedy.
I unflinchingly understood the arbitrary imaginative reel of what is to be alone. To grasp all things violent and horrific to witness and endure it with closed fists and well-aware eyes. To go on vacation trips and enjoy the sunburnt noses of tourists waving their flyers in the air like flamingos flapping off the insects from their pink wings. Instead of playing in the sand with a second pair of hands and having inside jokes there was a long inspection of scars and the way adults consulted with other adults by trying out different words like masks hoping to impress and even humiliate the other with their colorful lyrics but after all only jargon.  
My father’s name is Lazarus. As in open tomb, cheating death with the sweet victory of another pulse.
I often dream about his funeral. The day when there is no father to blame, no man to pin my overzealous heart of anxiety. To face a family that is neither welcoming nor reproachful but is always silent. Just dagger glances, fang and hiss.  I wake up in sweat. Sometimes it is because I am there and the casket is open but he’s laughing and no one showed up, there is no wind and my legs feel like a tube of jelly, microwaved honey. I try to say the things I’ve always wanted to tell everybody that has ever had anything to do with me, the apologies I shouldn’t have handed and the truth I should have had memorized anyway. But I just end up spitting seeds, a million of them flowing out of my hands dragging me out like a million wingless flies rejecting the tears that I cried for all the wrong reasons.
Other times it is crowded with people I didn’t know about, wasn’t aware of like searching through a private drawer and finding *** toys or things you wish you hadn’t discovered and the casket is empty, there is an imprint of a body but no one resides inside until the floor drops and there are stairs I’ve seen before, somewhere at some point. When I get to the bottom there’s a whisper
“where can I find you if not in here, on skin that is my own, on a forehead where no one asks if it remembers Chinese food and the pinch of birth.”

I love my father but I would never tell him no not directly.
I love him to death and am relieved to know
I will never be a dad.
Never be a forced hero.
Never proof of something that wasn’t trying to hide in the first place.

This is a letter to strangers, a dissertation, repertoire
to people I have known but have not fully held
to the ones that I am bound by blood but would not
recognize in a crowded room
out of all these ambiguous characters
I am unlucky number 6. An anomaly of chance girl. Not the settling of dust but of the silent movement before it was ever frazzled by frantic feet. The calm you don’t want to realize exists.

It is funny;
Funny how one day you can see the universe reflected in your own eyes
And blue-rich galaxies bursting from the hidden darknesses
And the gone-places of your mind.
Your pen is as ceaseless on your paper as your feet are on your bedroom floor.

Other days are like tepid water, or half-sour milk
That is undecided on the matter of its own freshness.
Those dark, gone-places of your mind are not even dimly lit.
And yet you wish for that eye-universe,
And those blue-rich galaxies,
And for your pen to skate across the page
As if possessed by the likes of Ginsberg or Kerouac.

So you wander down to the quiet places;
To the caged city forests where the trees cohabitate with basketball hoops,
And the birds sing their squeezed-in yellow melodies.
To the crumbling, sandy banks,
Where on a good day you can find a smashed white seashell
Or a pocket watch, rusty and decayed with time
And confident in its fragility.

But all you do is stare at the sky.
No miraculous inspiration comes to you;
No stardusted metaphysics,
No juice-rich red and purple existentialism.
No darling lovers dripping with candy-yellow sweetness
As the birds sing like Blake or Wordsworth.

So You return to the loud and cluttered places;
To your places,
To your off-white apartments where the water runs cold
And the refrigerator stinks worse than hell.
To your concrete-welded rivers,
Where the only birds are grey pigeons,
And the most beautiful thing you will find
Is a ***** green bottle
Or a razor blade
With more memories than you.

And you will try tomorrow.
Maybe the ticking of your generic clock
Or the casual griminess of your old green bathtub
Will be enough.
But for now, you will sit,
And you will consider constellations
And contemplate the reason why your lover's eyes
Remind you of the Milky Way.
For now, the eye-universe is still, and the blue-rich galaxies
Are deep in sleep,
Just like you wish you were.

For this is a tepid water day, a half-sour milk day.
And that is not a bad thing, in the end.

April in Dublin signifies not only a time and place, yet a feeling. A feeling of the brisk morning air, woven into the intricacy of light, sparse rainfall; enough to coat the blooming leaves on Ailesbury Road in droplets of dew. Tiny puddles form in between the cracks of the ancient cobblestone road, drowning the lush moss – basil in colour – that once grew in its place. As dawn makes her presence, the radiant sunlight peeks through the branches of the Sycamore trees, originally sheltering the lane from the indecisiveness of Irish weather. The earthy scent of petrichor emanates from St. Stephen’s Green, while the putrid scent of damp cigarette stubs race to reach the nostrils first. Petals of blush cherry blossoms gracefully fall to the asphalt path, with some caressing tender skin with its velvet touch. In the afternoon, St. Patrick’s Cathedral echoes in Church Latin, whilst the cars pass – with their bellowing engines – on The Coombe, pacifying the hum of pedestrian chatter that cohabitate simultaneously. As cloudy skies fade to a blue dusk, the lights jig the River Liffey; its yellow reflection moving with the waves. Crowds drunkenly skip along the quay, singing old Celtic hymns off key, while also digesting the sweet, caramelized, mild bitterness of Guinness – the finest of Irish stout beer. At the end of the day, the night retires to her slumber, anticipating newer ordinary, yet sensational experiences that May will bring along.

I fathom ghosts in dark bars.
Tortured flickers in old neon,
whose tribulations,
frozen in the heyday,
of their soda pop,
jukebox glory,
are lost,
in the clutter of human extemporanea.

Figurative vestiges,
from an era of nuclear optimism,
that have been reduced,
to dime store novelty.

As cloaked and unrealized,
as the distillation,
of alcoholic dreams,
alchemical vespers,
paying wistful homage.

A tribute,
from inside this rat-**** procession,
of technologically greed,
which has wrought the shelving,
of blue collar heroism,
the extinction of the unsung.

It is in this,
that the neon finds its muse,
and labors on.
And the numbing of aspiration continues,
Prescribed on tap,
for those who seek to thwart,
the stampede of the fittest.

And at that junction,
where they are forced to yield
to imminent refugeeism,
They find one another,
misspoken and assumed,
momentarily relieved to cohabitate,

Where the beer is cold,
and the juke box is still,
A welcomed friend.

And the good times,
just roll,
and roll,
and roll.

clears throat*
Excuse me
Now I'm going to need you to listen
This is my public service announcement
Whatever judgments you have
Whatever stereotypes you believe in
I'm going to need you to leave those at the door
Because what I'm about to say
May make you mad
Or
It might just open up your eyes...

We should all be worried
I mean we should all feel some anxiety about the way this world is unfolding
And if you don't see it
Well then you are blind
I don't care about your 20/20 vision
If you don't see this crisis
Well then sit quietly and listen

Is it just me or are we far off from where we should be
Living this fake American dream
When people are dying
Trying to survive in this war zone we created
Hatred being the fuel to our fire
Our desire for money and power
This being the hour of our demise
A disguise to mask how we truly treat each other
Our sisters and brothers
Why don't we stop this
Humanity dying in the process
We need to educate the ignorant
Humble the arrogant
Give voice to the good people who stand on the sidelines
Why are the small being silenced for speaking the truth
While the clueless ask what we should do
Stand up
Speak out
If we don't change we will be wiped away
We won't have the brains to stay and cohabitate
Let's not make the same mistakes our ancestors made

I want people to see
I am 18
I see what others refuse to see
What others refuse to believe
All it takes is for the good to do nothing
While letting the rich take control
Knowing that they don't give a **** about us at all
What will it take for us to make great change?

You see I believe the power is in numbers
The more we have, the less room there is for assumptions
We are all living for nothing
While the puppeteers pull us left and right
Being ventriloquists
While we play along without putting up a fight
If we all stood together not letting them have their power
They wouldn't have anyone to control
Total bombardment of their souls
Please just believe me

Thank you for listening
Now...
What are you planning to do about it?

I know how to love
Unconditionally
To give my heart to someone
Utterly and completely.

I just don't know how to cohabitate
To constantly share my personal space
It doesn't mean I don't love you
In all there's a time and a place.

Please don't be saddened lover
I'm not pushing you away
Be patient, as you have been
I may get there someday.

Everything is so vengeful
we cohabitate with hate
hold hands with death
archaic existential
armed embraces
it is time to smell
the coffee of evolution
there are no more falling leaves let's call it Autumn let's begin to forgive live love and exist.

Oh no I just live here
Just try to exist here
Don’t own my own home
Rather roam
Open road
Than be humble
Abode
Welcome guests
Nonetheless
To my house party
Mode
Where I’ll make your acquaintance
Conversing renascence
And cohabitate
With all
Homeostasis

I cried for a light, but fell through the floor.
There is no apt description for what I saw.

I had hoped to see the world bend and wilt like dried leaves curling in a brawl with flames.
The green invaded with ash which would take off into the sky.

But I didn’t.

I saw nothing.


Most of the world is empty, and yet we keep ******* it drier.

More food and mass for the black hole which will swallow us whole.

But before all that let me pick up this axe and drain the ****** amber sap,
Let me boil this ancient ones remains so that my tire may roll and my child can have a more sleek-looking doll.

My boots crunch on a shell, the earth is hollowed of life and paved, locked away in a scaly grey crust, tar. Staling the air, cloths and nails too, the air is stuffed with the stuff.


The man locked in the box without any lights knew that there were four walls, a ceiling and a floor.

He knew each step, each corner and crack, but could not say what was written outside, nor how tall or large it truly was. He could not stick his hands in to measure the width of the walls.

He could not see to find the door.


But in the pit the crowd went wild, a fit, ham ****** fight, bodies breathing sparks and singers speaking revolutions into royalties.

Our minds are empty, our fibres are flailing, they’re in the pocket whilst lining them too!

I saw no room for the bribery of interest and the interests of art to cohabitate this mental space.

The music spat out of the drums, and slid off the strings,
The bass drum and high-hat gasping, boom, tick, boom tick.
In-between the breaths, the guitar hovered over the top, whipping the crowd and the bass,
Shaking the earth, already buzzing from the stomps mashing down the dirt.  

I saw no room for silence when the sounds made shapes, and no room for sounds, when silence stole the stage.  

‘We want you’
Cries the buttoned up leatherneck, the premonition of he.
‘There’s room for you still, the war eats boys and ***** out men’
Thats how the get them in.
The next day he called ‘bye ***, ima go fly my flag and wave a gun’. She called ‘Have fun’.
Within three weeks of mud and rot, the boy got shot, face full to flat, wearing a green coat then black. Now there’s an empty place-mat. Just a conversation piece. The sad reminder of an empty chair.


I cried for a light, but fell through the floor
There’s just no justifying what I saw.

‘Don’t let them in, they’re vermin, they sin’
And if you ask what’s the difference between me and him, if you ask why the wall, why the dogs, Why we don’t take steps to emancipate, why anticipate hate when the power of love can overcome the love of power, that is when we reach our golden hour.

Today, I can’t imagine winning tasting so sour.
But I bite the prize and spit it out.

What the hell is everyone really arguing about?

So when they lower their bodies down, saying that we're dying proud, don’t sing our anthem too loud, keep the rhythm but listen, between the drum rolls and bullet snares, you’ll hear the cries of people outside the box. Perhaps if listened to they'll find a door, and shine a light. Maybe we don't all need to fight.

Reliving
The campus life
Now and adult
Not a student
Maturing
From youth in revolt
Thought I knew it
Community
Primed and prepared
Was imbued with
Immunity
To feeling scared
Could adapt
Integrate
And cohabitate
Seamless
Aspired
To overcome
Mountains of needless
And heedless of warnings
To opt for realistic
I shot for the stars
Like a missile
Ballistic
But missed it
The mark
Overshot
The world peace
And crash landed instead
On an uncharted beach