"rebranded" poems
The day the ships came my ancestors we not of the aware of the forced melting *** that would come into existence
The combination of french and spanish confused the delta slaves
Little did they know that neither language would stick on their burnt excuses of tongues
The days the ships came New Orleans became the beacon of mulatos
And although the conquistadors could **** and beat their slave wives
Their spanish advances were not reciprocated due to lack of of heat to complete the melting
The languages that conquered the delta were combined into something that no outsider would want to encounter
That’s why the Americans came and took it like they did the rest of the country
They mistake the magic for voodoo then rebranded it for themselves
Centuries later the delta is still a melting ***
But it’s one my grandmother’s tongue was forced to forget
Her languages were lost next to her mulatto slave ancestors, left to spoil
So now when people ask
“If you’re hispanic why can’t you speak spanish?”
I can barely find the words in english to explain the years of torture my tongue has endured
When spanish speaking couples walk into my work
My tongue is eager to spill words it wishes it had the ability to create
My blood begins to hate itself over the fact that a third of itself is unrecognizable
My tongue is still waiting for the new boats to arrive and reconcer it
All it knows is to be conquered
No self defense here
When all you know is to be conquered
It becomes a challenge to think for oneself
My tongue can’t decide if english, spanish or french is better
My creole mind is yelling thousands foreign curse words not knowing which one is a true sin
Maybe the sin here is letting the burner stay on too long
The day the ships came
My slave ancestors looked at their spanish lovers and said
“My love, what shall we do once the french arrive?”
With their eyes looking into the horizon the conquistadors replied
“Es no problema para mi, pero tu, tu es la propiedad de estos”
Which according to simple history books means
“Good luck”
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 10:16 PM UTC
We were told freedom would make us artists.
We were told freedom would set us free.
But freedom made us consumers—
scrolling, streaming, drowning in plenty.
Peak content.
Peak noise.
Attention—the last currency.
And we are broke.
Then came the machine.
Infinite. Bespoke. Frictionless.
The tribe dissolved.
The story fractured.
Each of us—
a society of one.
Do not mistake this for culture.
Culture bleeds.
Culture resists.
Culture divides.
This is mimicry.
This is slop.
Outliers cribbed, stripped,
and rebranded before the ink dries.
This is the singularity.
Not awakening.
Collapse.
Not tribe.
Not ritual.
The machine as tribe.
Self-satisfaction—tribe enough.
But listen—
creativity still breathes.
Not to be seen.
Not to trend.
But to testify.
To mark the ruins.
To scratch in the stone:
A human was here.
Do you remember?
Sep 20, 2025
Sep 20, 2025 at 5:12 AM UTC
Remember, one Summer,
street was closed for construction
We'd careen through the roads
near each other's homes.
Wheeling through dreams on our bikes
in the swelter
we'd reach for the sky 'neath the cottonwoods'
dome.
Some nights, I still walk through those
baseball glove hours--
those sweat-smelling days
and
those Kool-Aid stain weeks.
And I can still feel that
pubescent laughter
which lived in my chest
and
still pounds for release.
I've leased some apartments
and filed my taxes.
I've broken some promises
and
I've been destroyed
And I've been rebuilt, but never rebranded
Those
Summer time sunsets
tattooed on my sinews,
they just wouldn't have it.
Sep 1, 2022
Sep 1, 2022 at 1:06 PM UTC
It's been a dark and ***** start to the year, and altogether
too many of my heroes are dead.
Too many of the old
villains too; those familiar monsters
are gone, replaced
by new and more appalling terrors,
as fear is rebranded for a freshly emergent demographic.
All the girls are much too young for me. Everyone
is too young for me.
When they speak, I hear
only static, like
the ghosts of extinct, pre-digital
TV screens haunting the
empty beauty of their
dead channel mouths.
In the supermarket, they've taken to
playing songs I like on their
in-store radio, wedged between
corporate jingles and adverts for
two-for-one offers on
hot dogs in jars, and I'm
so irrelevant I could cry.
I'm struggling with the world and my
own inability to find somewhere
I can be in it. I can't relax, can't
stop fighting against inertia, contentment
and any hope of peace. Maybe drugs
are the answer, but I think they'd just
make me forget the question.
I feel the cold, and I
want to sleep too much. I miss
my bad habits, but not enough
to relapse. I'm not
young enough or cute enough
to get away with
this much ******** angst.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 5:00 PM UTC
I've been a feature here for four years now.
You're an armchair or a doormat
Once you've been around
awhile.
I wanted fresh breath and a brand new face.
Maybe a companion just to
take up space beside
my side.
But the "EXIT" light was on too long.
"Eventually, they heed it or they just become
fading notes in a song
that we forgot we sung."
Or at least that's what you told me...
Or at least that's what I'll write here...
And what about you...?
It's a tangling grid of street names I
keep
tangled on my tongue
3 inches under my eyes
(They ask directions).
An end result of a series of
hasty,
maybe-good decisions
I made 4 years ago.
(Seek validation).
And what about you...?
There's a comfort here we can't escape,
take two for granted
and call to cancel coffee dates.
There's an ease that breeds friendships like ours,
Convenient and seasonal;
Friendships that really aren't.
"Rose Park" names our neighborhood
A few blocks slant, we prob'ly shouldn't
talk today...
Similar coordinates
A useless map. Mistake by any
other name...
Second chances, we won't get them.
And I guess we don't deserve them.
The State's an acci-
dental sigh.
The town's a too-comfortable lie.
And you, I guess
are just another neighbor of mine.
Apr 11, 2017
Apr 11, 2017 at 11:51 AM UTC
I hear her in the back of my mind
She is always present
You liked her voice
But Now you love mine
She crossed a line
That's why we stand here now
You liked her presence
But now you love mine
Do you still see her in me
Rebuild and rebranded
You liked her
But Now you love me
-N.T.H
Jan 12, 2025
Jan 12, 2025 at 9:23 AM UTC
You never took up space,
And raged only in private.
I know, I was there.
I heard your natural voice
Before it was edited and rebranded.
You've always been magnificent.
Back then your innocence was
hazardous to your health.
I was there.
I loved you enough to hide you.
I held closed your wounds in
The quiet embrace of the closet.
You're older now,
Outpacing the daydreams
that kept you alive.
Brandishing a loose razor
To cut only through the dogma.
You held on to life then,
And you hold all the power now.
I am there.
Apr 5, 2024
Apr 5, 2024 at 10:40 PM UTC
I was lethargic in lullabies
spotlight saturated and speechless
concaved cushions and dim lit kingdoms
fell away inside a chemical nap
I came here hoping for clarity
I found the same chaos rebranded
Imagination measured in concrete stretches
factories inspire assembly line portraits
The painters where all noble fiends
sketching skies for pleasant company
Still these habitats prove overwhelmed
exhausted figures faint from consumption
Familiar anatomy
Familiar tragedy
Calming colors on a brickwork spread
I move through their pauses
A mind full of static
A pocket full of amphetamines
Artificial antics from plus sign suitors
While supplies last the mind will not grasp the severity of such resolve
Unless it's contrived and longs for the fringe
Accommodating dust damp bunkers and fallout nooks
Temporary ploys
Projectile toys
What savage means for elation
Reality conducts seamless sickness
primitive surgery for existing
Confusion now for these faces and graces that perpetually stream
Conclusions now for a sigh that never speaks
I woke up laughing
tripping over notions of full circle lunacy
Reminding me why I never sleep
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 11:42 AM UTC
Patter the standards of the universe chorus verse,
Poetic, dirt dispersed
with fingertips singed from Orbit, Dec·li·na·tion
His breath oxidation, rebranded the "Memory"
we seize
Jan 5, 2017
Jan 5, 2017 at 10:21 AM UTC
Silly girl
You forget
It was I who consoled you
Alone in the night
In my arms I behold you
Was I who extolled you
The praises I’d write
As if serenades lulled you
To beckon my sleight of right-handed
Commanded
Deceptive, entrancing
Love potions rebranded
In simple semantic
Spell-checking pedantic
Atlantic allusory depths
Of romantic
Void undertow woes
Where we’d sink for forever
As I kept describing us
Perfect together
Sep 20, 2018
Sep 20, 2018 at 1:29 PM UTC
At 10, I didn’t plan to stay long.
This inhibited my ability
To think forward.
Equally, I struggle to look back.
I rebranded this, as living in the moment.
Truth is, I never planned to make it to 24.
And now that I’m almost there.
I just can’t figure out what to do with myself.
- Kata
Apr 13, 2020
Apr 13, 2020 at 9:30 PM UTC
They say my eyes are repairable
Like the monitors of a screen,
And I've waited a good while
To live that dream.
They say these plaques laced within my brain can be fixed
So long as they buy a new one
But I know it can't be me
If the photos and memories of my mind are none.
They say my missing limbs can be replaced
Just as the keys that rest upon your keyboard,
Yet I still cannot feel the tingle nor sensations,
Of its response to stimuli, forever ignored.
But why can't I just be me?
My mind, my eyes, my limbs,
They are rebranded - nothing like myself,
So why do people keep hoping they'll find
What they've replaced?
Sep 7, 2018
Sep 7, 2018 at 8:53 PM UTC