Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.

Remember that time of the angry anxious skittles. They were scattered across the white playing field of keys; with all those ******* letters that could spell anything they wanted. Kind of like my mind. What was yours spelling? Lets get food. Real food. Mine was more along the lines of kiss me please, or did that already happen. Those ******* skittles, which I hate the word, embodied our beings. The green jealousy of what those letters could spell. The angry red of which I wanted to do and be. The ******* orange, my fiery passion to jump and collide and the keys to spell NOW and LUST. The stupid yellow that would spell LOVE because that’s what it was. It just wasn’t bright enough against that ******* computer to stand out; to scream, “TAKE ME NOW or else you’ll be living your life waiting.”

Today I was alone
I didn't go to school
I stayed sick at home
Under my own rule

The day went by too slow
But then it went too fast
Doing nothing I now know
Something I want to last

It is now the evening
The sun no longer shine
I'm sitting here and reading
While feasting on skittles and wine

"I've always felt like a yellow skittle in a sea of red skittles."

"what a coincidence. yellow skittles happen to be my favorite flavor of skittles."

"ok."*

*"ok."

The
Life's amazings
you've got so much to live fors
people love yous
are too much
I'd rather go out wildly
or by botch.

My defences are like chewing glass Skittles;
they're too brittle, my mouth full of shards
I'm spewing blood by the yards,
while switching wards;
I've tasted the rainbow,
the flavour was like ****
blow after blow, I've taken all the hits.

When I was 16 and done

Cleaning out his horse stalls

Mr. Sodie Hampton said,

"Son, don't never work for less than

$1.50 an hour the rest of your life."

Momma who grew up choppin and pickin

Cotton said it a different way,

"A hard day's work deserves a

A good day's pay."

Momma also said,"You ain't any better

Than anyone else, but nobody's

Better than you either."

My Tennessee Momma also said,

"Son, your word is your bond and

A man looks after those weaker than him."

I learned as a man that children come first.

Syd and Sam taught me love

I'd never known.

We are all children of the same God

Breathed to life with the spark of

The Divine.

That's all why it ain't workin today.

We forgot all that.

We ain't all individual robots

With the strongest devouring the weakest.

And too many never worked for

Mr. Sodie Hampton and learned there's a

Floor beneath which we will not work

Indignities we will not bear

And disrespect we won't accept.

And our children deserve joy and freedom

And even skittles on a summer night

No matter their color or their clothes.

Too many of us got it ***-backwards

We make up all kind of reasons to

Hate and fight and **** and some

Even try to justify reape and ******

When Momma and Mr. Sodie Hampton said

It so different so long ago

In Tennessee and Missouri.

Hating someone for their skin color
Is like hating a certain color of skittles
Don't you know
All skittles are the same flavor
The colors just represent different smells for the flavors
That make people assume they're different..

Love cannot be overcome
indeed love overcomes all else
Love is stronger than all strength
love abides mightier than steel
love sends its shock wave
and all falls like so many skittles

I don’t use it to escape
or make the pain go away
or to numb my feelings

it’s frowned upon by most,
some find it deadening
and others to be fatal
but I find myself crossing
swords with the few who
are brave enough....

its the fuel,
the self medication
that makes me feel
alive and goes
hand in hand
with my writing
and my daily life

it gives me the answers
that fit in with the questions
that so many people yearn for

while they sip on their
coffee and tea and
write poems about
skittles and unicorns
in their fantasy land
that doesn’t exist,

I write
what I see,
think and
feel is to be true
and real in this
maddening world

anybody can play
the protagonist
but it takes guts
to play the fool
stepping in the
wrong direction
in life and to be
deceived by those
who are on the
outside looking in

I have no use
to sugarcoat
anything.
I am here,
naked,
in a crowd full
of clothed people
with nothing to hide
except my face
behind a beard.

I am the disease,
the *****,
the conformist,
the cancer of society,
cells reproducing and I’m
eating up all your resources
with no logic or reasoning.

sober Rick,
when hungover,
will thank
drunk Rick
tomorrow morning
when he finds out
that he made a lunch
for him and didn’t lose
his car keys

his drive to work will
be more peaceful
and the food on his
lunch break will taste
more delicious
than those he’s
surrounded by.

bend over world
and deal with it,

I’m a drunk
in moderation
without any regrets

so
pour
me
another  
mother
nature

I want two bottle nutella
I want three pack of skittles
I want two Pepsi
I want fried chicken with cajun seasoning
I want lasagna
Mostly i want foods

I count the pills that were discoloring into the bile on the kitchen floor.
Like when you hold skittles in your sweaty hands for too long.
The contrast between the comparison made me shudder.
Though at that moment I did feel like a child.
The red was almost comedic against the white tile.
The beer cans were a crescent moon around the scene.
I can see you there sitting on the cold floor.
Palms on the ground, back against the corner.
I can see it and you were beautiful.

I straighten up.
My heart tumbles down into the pit of my stomach.
I feel so selfish.
I was glad to have you as my companion in this alternate world.
This world where for so long,
I felt like the only one to want to live there.
Now you are here, with me.
Of course you are.

I paint the world with the colors of my creativity.
I emit a prism of optimism, and a rainbow of joy.
Bright blues, and exciting electric green,
Green forests of my envy over the mountains in my mind.
Dancing purples over frolicking yellows,
and mauve, when I'm feeling a little cheeky.
I skip through my life sparkling like glitter.
It's more fun, you know, to be carefree and full of joy.
Not to worry about the grey clouds that hover over other's heads.
But then you remind me, again, that the world is not black and white,
but shades of grey.
Is it worth it to waste my colors on the colorblind?

My entire life, I've been around the police force.
Mommy, Uncle Tony, and Anita have always been my favorite.
My heroes with the shiny cars and badges.
In my eyes, they are reigning champions of
"good officers still exist" during times like this.

I've never seen a storm last this long,
and I've kept my silence for far too long.
I was stuck.
For all I knew was a good officer until my brothers
and sisters were exploited on tv screens and magazines.
Blood seeping down and staining shirts, eyes wide open,
and bodies lying in the street.

Growing up, all I knew was a good officer.
So my world shook when I noticed the bad ones, too.
They make it hard for me to defend what I've always
known to protect me. At some point, the bad ones,
we must ****. And with a corrupt justice system
that dismisses the actions that we see, it gets tough...
For both you and me.
"STOP ******* KILLING US," we scream.
But no matter how many octaves we reach,
they still aren't listening. And we are left to wonder,
"Who's next: you or me?"

We make posters with blank spaces,
prepared for another one fallen.
But it's apparent that they refuse to see
that our people are hurting; and that
the chains they put on us not that many years ago
are still bound to us as if they are the latest accessory.

I didn't celebrate the fourth this year.
My people are dying, and here I am breathing
and hoping that anyone near and dear isn't affected by this mockery.
"Black on black crime is a real thing." No denying that statement
but why say that first knowing that some of the ones
we are told to trust don't want to see you free?
Do you understand that any black man could be next?
Even though I'm a woman, ****, it could be me.
My *****, are you listening? Did you get word?
Homie said, "Set your clock back 300 years!"
How about that for a rude awakening?

Quit telling my people that this **** here is an illusion.
You wanna be "a *****" so badly?
Cool, my *****, this is our reality.
We out here dying every day, b.
Pictures of dead bodies and videos of the crime scene,
mothers and children crying.

I never know what to expect.
I'm just praying I don't get a call saying (insert name here)
died at (insert time here) for their melanin radiating
and minding their business.
#JusticeFor___: Trayvon, Sandra, Kathryn, Sean, Eric,
Rekia, Amadou, Mike, Kimani, Kenneth, Travares,
Tamir, Aiyana, Freddie.
Alton and Philando with six shots to the chest.
****, y'all know what's next and I'm so ******* tired.
I will say their names unapologetically
because my heart can't take
my people's hearts tearing at the seams
from the mutual pain we are experiencing.

Black kings, I will pray for you.
Black families, stay whole.
Black children, alive and unborn, I love you.
Apparently: a wallet, sleeping, Skittles, a cellphone,
loud music, cigarettes, cigarillos, shopping at Wal-Mart,
toy guns, failure to signal, CDs, and reaching
for your license and registration can get you all ****** up.

I've never seen a storm last this long.
I've never seen the good officers be seen as the criminal.
I've never seen a people so desperate and anxious
for light at the end of a tunnel...
Until the bad cops thought it was okay
to play illegally and get away.
*7716

The Checkout Line

I wish to speak with you
ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

The words and meanings you carry in your pants, the pick-pocket steals your hopes from time.
and the visions of empty trash receptacles
with their late evening drunken lovers' bouts, at restless end tables. And the bums with their ******* attitudes **** covered clothes, and soiled minds

the clarity of the curbside drunk, picking up shades of filtered cigarettes of twilight scandalous
pickup lovers in their evening best.

And to talk with you ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

They're Green Beret head ornaments
detailing the porcelain platforms of Delft
Lining up for one last line to carry them into another faded sunrise at dawn's forgotten memory of yester night
and they walk their gallows holding pride fully their flags of exalted countrymen.

The republic of teacups of literary proficiency.
Wearing the necklaces of paid tolls to an afterlife they find in the miniscule car crashes of engagement with a grinless driving mate in a neighboring car in its pass into the forethought of turned corners.
Where they befell the great disappointment of failure in the frosted eyes of their fathers' expectations.

Who carried the shame of their mother's incessant discontent through short skirts, and high heels.

Who disapproved of the **** whom wore the sneak-out-of-the-house-wear clothing line, and traveled by night over turbulent asphalt by way of sidecar through turn and turnabout hand-over-hand contracts of lover's affection, and slept in tall grasses of wet nightfall with views of San Francisco, and were trapped in the inescapable Alcatraz and Statesville of unconsenting parents and their curfews,

through trials and trails of Skittles leading to after school Doctor visits in the basement of a doting mother, whilst she sits quietly in her exclusive quilting parties with noble equities of partners in knowledge, listening to Edith Piaf and the like,

All the while condemned to time, trapped in the second hand, hand me downs of the 21st century, decades of decadent introverts with their table top unread notebooks, and old forgotten score cards, and the numbers of scholars of years past,

and to talk with you ten years from now will be my greatest pleasure, for you will be....ten year's behind.


They push the sterile elevator buttons, and descend upon the floor of scents flourishing from their crowded family rooms, only aware of distinctive flavors, in their middle eastern shades of desert gumbo,

Who speak ribbit and alfalfa until midnight of the afternoon, sharing fables of slaughtered giraffes and camels that walked from Kiev to Baghdad in a fortnight,

Who are aware the power is out, but continue to scour for candles in a dark room where candles once burned, where candle wax seals the drawers of where candles can be found. Where once sat gluttonous kings and queens in Sunday attire waiting for words of freedom from the North.

of Florence, Sochi,Shanghai
of Dempster, Foster, Lincoln
of Dodge, Ford, Shelby

Of concrete fortune tellers in 2nd story tenement blocks with hairy legs, and head lice, wearing beautiful sachets of India speaking ribbit and alfalfa.

On their unbirthdays they walk the fish tanks wearing their birthday suits to remind them who serves the food on the floors of the family room fish mongers tactics.

The old men wear gargoyles on their shoulders.

Lo! Fear has crept the glass marbles of their wisdom and fortune, blearing rocket ships and kazoos on the sidewalks of their Portuguese forefathers.

Where ancestry burns cigarette holes in the short-haired blue carpet, where Hoover breaks flood waters of insignificance across hard headed Evangelical trinities.

Who share construction techniques one early morning at four, where questions of Hammer and **** build intelligence in secondary faces of nameless twilight lovers, who possess bear blankets, and upheavals, finely wired bushes of ***** maturity. Eating *** and check, tongue and pen.

Where police caress emergency flame retardants over the fire between their legs, wielding the chauvinistic blade of comfort in the backseat of a Yellow faced driving patron.

With their innocent daughters with their nubile thighs, and malleable personalities, which require elite words and jewelry. Wearing wheat buns, Longfellow, and squire.

Holding postmarked cellular structure within their mobile anguish.

Who go curling in their showers, pushing afternoon naps and pretentious frou-frou hats over tainted friendships with their girlfriend's brothers with minimum paychecks'.

Through their narcissus and narcosis, their mirrored perceptions of medicinal scripture of Methamphetamine and elegant five-star meat.

Who amend their words with constitutional forgiveness, in their fascist cloth rampages through groves of learning strategies. And the closets, cupboards, and coins
with rubber hearts, steel *****, and gold *****,

Tall-tales of sock puppet hands with friendly sharing ******* techniques, dry with envy, colorful scabs, and coagulation of eccentric ****** endeavors, With their social lubricants and their tile feet wardrobes with B-quality Adidas and Reeboks gods of the souls of us. Who possess piceous syndromes of Ouiji boards in their parent’s basements.

When will fire burn another Bush? Spread the fire walls of Chicago, and part grocery store fields of food. Wrapping towels under the doors of smoke filled lungs, on the fingernails of a sleepover between business executives with the neoprene finish of their sons and daughters who attend finishing school, with resumes of oak furnishings,

And I long to talk with you ten years from now,
For you'll be talking ten years behind.

Who profligate their padded inventories breaking Mohammed and Hearst,
laying the pillows of cirrus minor
waiting for the rain to paint the eyes of the scriptures which waft through concrete corridors,
and scent the air with their exalted personas,

With the different channels of confusions, watching dimple past freckle, eating the palms of our tropical mental vocations to achieve purity from the indignation of those whom are contemptuous for lack of innocence in America,
this America, of lack of peace,
of America hold me,
Let me be.

Whom read the letters off music, blearing Sinatra and Krall, Manson where is your contempt?

Manson where is your manipulation of place settings?, you deserve fork and knife, the wounded commandments that regretfully fall like timber in an abandoned sanctuary of Yellowstone,
Manson, with your claws of the heart.
Manson, with your sheik vulgarity of **** cloaks exposing your ladies undercarriage,

Those who take their pets to walk the aisles of famished eyes,
allowing the dorsals of their backsides to wonder aimlessly through Vietnam and Chinaman,
holding peace of mind aware of their chemical leashes and fifteen calorie mental meals, holding hands, unaware of repercussion,

With their vivid recollections of sprinkler and slide, through dew and beyond,
Holding citrus drinks to themselves, apart from pleasure, trapped with excite from sunsets, and in-between.

Withholding reservation of tongue to lung.
Flowing ribbit and alfalfa, in the corridors of expected fragrance.

and to speak with you of ten years from now, will be a pleasure all my own, for you will be talking ten years behind.

They walked outside climbing over mountains of shrapnel, popped collars
and endless buffets of emotion,
driving Claremont all the way to art gallery premiers
and forever waited for plane crash landings
and the phone calls that never came

Glowing black and white cameras
giving modelesque perceptions to all-you-can-eat eyes
giving cigarettes endless chasms of light

Colored pavement trenches and divots
cliff note alibis
and surgery that lasted until the seamstress had gone into an
endless rest
and
empty cupboards

Classic stools painted with sleepless white smoke and bleached canvas rolling tobacco with the stained yellow window panes of feral tapestry and overindulgent vernacular

Like a satiated cheeseburger weeping smile simple emotion
on November the 18th celebrations
and Wisconsin out of business sales

Too much comfort, stealing switchboards from the the elderly, constantly putting gibberish into
effortless conversation.

Dormant doormats, with the greetings that never
reached as far as coffee table favelas,
arriving to homes of famished
furniture, awaiting temperate lifestyles and the window sill arguments from pedantic literacy

Silver shillings and corporate discovery clogged the persuasive
push and shove
to and from

Killing enterprise
loquacious attempt at too soon
much too soon
too soon for forever

Wall to wall post-card collages
happy reminders of the places never visited by drinks in the hands of
those received

Registered to the clouded skies of clip board artists
this arthritis of envy
of bathtub old age
wrinkled matted faces
logged with quick-fixes, anemia, and heart-break

disposed of off the streets
of youth, wheeling and wailing
rolling down striped stairs
of shock and arraignment
holding the hand rails of a wheelchair
suitcase
packed away in a life

Down I-37
into the ochre autumn fallen down leaves
and left memories behind
their green Syphilis eyeglasses

weeping tumuli
recalcitrant
mulish, furrow of beast and beyond

yelling, screaming, howling
at the prurient puerile tilling
of sheets

****** the voices of words
and vomiting the mind into the pockets of the turbulent perambulations
expelled from meat-packing
whispering condescension
and coercing adolescent obsessions
with fame, glamour, and *****

Creeping out into the naked
light of the Darger scale janitorial
closets, carrying the notorious gowns
of red wine spells, backpacks, and pins

henchmen, plaintiff, and youth

All the while
ripping at the incantations of the soul
whispering ribbit and alfalfa
in the guard-rail scars
of the dawns decadent forgotten

Here’s a little story
About a daughter
And her family

See the daughter has depression and anxiety
But the mother is oblivious
The mother is unaware of the depression
She genuinely believes that cutting and the fact that her daughter goes to therapy are linked to anxiety

And yet
Even though the mother seems to think that it’s only anxiety
Meaning that the anxiety is that extreme
She still wakes the daughter up
By screaming
She still questions the daughter
In front of a crowd
She still yells at the daughter, overwhelms her
And sends her into a panic attack

And yet all the people on the outside see is a mother worried about her daughter
And trying to help her
By taking her to therapy
But they don’t see the locked doors
They don’t see the screaming
The name calling
The belittling
They don’t see
That the mother
Is the reason that the daughter
Has to fight
So **** hard
To want to live

They don’t see that the daughter is only happy with her friends
They don’t see the scars on her arms, legs, and hips
They don’t see that the daughters only escape is when she’s not at home
They don’t see that the very therapist the mother takes her to
Is proud of the daughter
For staying alive
In such
Rough
Circumstances
Blood doesn’t mean family

But enough about the mother lets move on to the father.
The father that refused to pay child support for the first 3 years after the divorce
The father that had a second child, the daughter’s half brother, with another woman
The father that is engaged to a different woman now
The father that, when evacuated from his city due to a fire, took his fiancé to Jamaica instead of seeing his kids
The father that forgot his daughters birthday
The father that is “old school”
Which just means
Sexist
And homophobic
Blood doesn’t mean family

Next is the sister
The sister that supports me
The sister that laughs with me
The sister that understands how I feel
The sister that helps me when I need it
The sister that believes in me
That loves me
The sister creates fun and amazing stories and experiences with me
Just because she’s in the mood to have fun
The sister that raised me to be a good person
That taught me
And teaches me
How to get through life
Blood doesn’t mean family

Finally
The friends
The friend that gave me a reason to live
The friend that gave me a reason to laugh
The friend that showed me that it can get better and that they love and care for me and they don’t just “hope I get through this” but that they are going to be there and make sure that I get through this
The friend that marched with me with a rainbow
The friend that treated my relationships the same as straight ones
The friend that told me she’s open to the experience if I want to kiss her
The friends that I can flirt with and we laugh about it
The friends that I can flirt with and it becomes a little more than just friends
The friends who maybe I’m not as close with but who still show interest in my life and what I’m interested in and let me talk about activism because it makes me happy to empower people
The friend that made me believe in beautiful
The friend that stayed up with me when I had a nightmare about my molesting and help my hand until I fell back asleep
The friend that stated up all night on FaceTime singing songs together from our favourite band
The friend that boosts my ego when we go to the gym
The friend that cried when she found out I self harmed
The friends that worry about me and want me to get better
The friends that live far away
The friends that live close by
The friends that have shown me more love and happiness in the past year than I’ve known my whole life
The friend that was there even when I felt numb to the world and they just let me be but they made sure I know they’re here
The friends that ask questions when they don’t understand
The friends that are interested in what I do
The friends that offer me a place to stay should I need it
The friends who make sure I eat
The friends who worry when I don’t eat
The friends who sit at the back of the bus
The friends who get drunk
The friends who throw skittles at people
The friends who are in my class
The friends who are older than me
The friends who are younger than me
The friends who help me with homework
The friends who show me there are good people in the world
The friends
Who stick by me
And show me
That
Blood doesn’t mean family

We don’t choose the situation we are born into
But we do get to choose
Who our family is
So thank you
To my real family
For not only keeping me alive
But making me happy to be.

Dear Mom,
Hey! How’re things?
So, LA is weird. It’s all sticks and stones and billion dollar homes. Last week on the Metro I forgot my headphones, but it all worked out because there was a homeless man who was naked from the waist down except for a pair of Spiderman underwear with the tag still attached who was singing “Sweet Caroline” at the top of his lungs.
Everyone here is someone important. They live the philosophy of Descartes like scripture.
I think therefore I am... exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping because my mind has taken up running, which means it’s acclimating to the culture here quicker than my body because everyone in this town ******’ loves running almost as much as they love vintage shoes and car horns.
It’s strange though, I can’t shake this feeling that I’ve lost something.
Anyway, I love you.

Dear Mom,
Thank you for the eyes.
Last afternoon a stranger told me they were beautiful, and on a day where every mirror seemed to be of the funhouse variety, it was a welcome compliment.
I’m sorry I haven’t called in a few weeks, please don’t think it’s because I don’t miss you.
It’s just, lately, I’ve been feeling a bit like a marionette whose had his strings clipped.
Slumped and crumpled.
Small.
Collapsed and sprawled cracked in some forgotten corner--the hollow knock of wood bouncing across the walls of this mezzanine dressed in finer things than me that have been fostered by
Father Time and his Mistress Stillness.
And I know how you worry.
You worry ‘til bones bruise and still your skeleton aches to shoulder my melancholy yourself, so I can’t bear to bridge this distance with crestfallen phone calls where the past year locks fully loaded on six-shooter lips--the way heels cling to cliffs edge--before finally, reluctantly, free falling; firing off each round.
Six words aimed with eyes closed as if it were up to God to decide where they’d hit:
“I wish I could come home...”
Then your silent, empty-cartridge, catacomb sigh would just teach this telephone how cavernously a mother’s heart aches for her children.


Dear Dad,
I know it goes without saying, but thank you for the check and the note attached to it.
It’s hard to describe how much home I find in the deft curves of your surgeon’s cursive.
I hope you’re doing well. Last time I saw you, you seemed a bit like a lit cigarette filter tip watching the singe approach.
Maybe it was just the embers of your eyes glazed over by one too many heavy handed nightcaps.
And this isn’t to say the Superman who stayed up late nights holding me through fits of anxiety has up and flown away, this is just to say you seem to be flickering.
This is just to say I hope you still laugh at bad movies with the thunderous bass of July fourth fireworks.
This is just to say I’ve been staying up late nights holding on to yesterday.

Dear Mom,
The care package was unnecessary.
I now have more Skittles than any one human should ever consider consuming in a lifetime. So thanks. I know I told you, at some point, years ago, that they were my favorite… but *******.
Really though, waking up to that box on my doorstep choked me up quicker than a swift kick to the nuts. You have a way of weaving through this heartland like a Middle-American interstate and I love you so much for that. It’s just next time, maybe try something that doesn’t have the nutritional value of flash-fried butter sticks.
But not too healthy. Maybe fruit leathers?
P.S. Keep the homemade fudge coming.

Dear Dad,
Forgive the handwriting of an earthquake.
My hands are shaking again like when I was young. I’ve been finding stillness, though, in between sips of five dollar coffee and midnight cigarette drags beneath and incandescent moon that seems to use breeze hands to play cat’s cradle with strings of smoke.
Life is fast here. It’s all gas pedal and touch-and-go breaks.
P.S. If you see mom, don’t mention the cigarettes.

Dear Mom,
I got your e-mail about smoking and the ensuing health issues it leads to. Graphic stuff. That was super informative and totally unprompted. Thanks for that.

Dear Dad,
...

Dear Mom,
Stop worrying so much, you’re making my bones ache.

Dear Dad,
In my dreams I am a lighthouse with an unfocused beam. I’m searching for something, I just don’t know what.
At least I’m sleeping right?

Dear Mom,
These days blur together with the fading speed of a half-life hardly lived to its fullest.
Was it different for you when you were my age? I shift between a drifting stick stuck in a current and desert stone.

Dear Dad,
In my dreams I’m a lighthouse.
There’s a fog horn distant.
I’m still searching for I don’t know what I’m searching for something and there’s a fog horn far off like it’s from someone elses dream but at least I’m sleeping.

Dear Mom,
Do you believe that streams take sticks where they need to be?

Dear Dad,
Have you dreamt of fog horns lately?
I am a lighthouse looking for a nameless something in fog so thick I should be choking.
But I’m not.
At my feet there are rocks and they’re jagged but I’m not anxious because they stay up late nights holding me.
And in the distance there’s a fog horn that seems to be saying “All is not lost.”

Dear Mom,
Do you think that desert stones are waiting for something?

Dear Dad,
In my dreams a lighthouse is built upon jagged rocks that are shaped like your hands. I’m searching for something and even though my lamplit electric torch eyes can’t touch the sky through this ******* fog, I keep them burning because I should be choking but I’m not, I’m finding stillness in the way breeze plays with smoke strings and far off there’s a fog horn distant promising “All is not lost.”

Dear Mom,
This town is all sticks and stones and broken home drifters.

Dear Dad,
All is not lost.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that if the phrase “adding insult to injury” had a feeling,
that would be it.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it sounds like “hands up, don’t shoot,” like “i can’t breathe,”
like blood hitting a pavement that seems as though it was built
to catch those droplets.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it tastes like skittles and arizona tea,
four years old but still carrying the fresh sting of a wound just opened.
i imagine that it tastes 
like history repeating itself,
like seeing your son or daughter recycled each week
on every news report, on every tv station.
each time it is a different body, 
but it is always the same hand pulling the trigger,
the same black blood being spilled,
the same cries left unheard;
we shout “black lives matter”
and yet, still,
they cut them too short.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it looks like a web of lies too thick to cut through — 
every strand another weapon that he did or did not have,
another order that he did or did not follow,
another sin that he did or did not commit;
the only black they care about
is the color of the ink they use
to draw your angel-headed boy
a set of horns.
i imagine that it looks like evidence hidden,
like sparknotes-type skim-throughs labeled “thorough investigations,”
like another unindicted officer walking freely atop the cries of those 
who charged into a battle they knew they would, but hoped they would not, lose.
a battle they have fought too many times before.
i imagine that it looks
like an empty chair at the dinner table,
like cold-blooded ****** disguised as justice
with the help of a blue hat and a badge.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but if you listen closely enough,
you can hear it
in every cautious goodbye she says to her children whenever they leave the house,
or in the silence that those goodbyes used to fill.

can you hear it?
you will have to push past the shouts
of the big bold letters that they want you to believe.

somewhere,
somewhere in there,
a black mother’s heart is crying.
it is a gentle, hushed cry 
that the world does not want to hear.

but the tears are still just as wet.

(a.m.)

Poker faces on Balboa,
the rainbow as our chips.
An orange glow blows past us in the thick, salty air.
Golden blue sea water carrying itself our way,
in tall graceful strides.
A vulnerability shared.
Just for us.
And the only thing I can think is:

Can I keep you?

I use to be like Summer. A burst of brilliant red like when you bite into a perfectly ripe Strawberry. I stained his lips with my sugar-sweet kisses. Like evening’s Cotton Candy sunsets and blushing clouds trimmed with falling golden light, I was your whole sky, morning, evening and night; you marveled at my untouchable beauty, so close but yet so far. I was a Summer storm, rolling thunder and shattering lightning, electricity running through your bones. I was the pitter-pattering rain, tap dancing upon your room, humming you to sleep, every night you saw me in your dreams and always played them back to me. In your sleep you would see me, dancing far away  to somewhere where there was no other-side-of-the-fence, grass was always green wherever my feet touched the earth in between joyful leaps. Where the wind was music in the trees and the grass flowed in fluid motion like dancers caught up in the melody, where the wildflowers bobbed up and down and where the fleeting Robin never left, for there it is always Spring. Yes indeed, I was like wild flowers in mid July, I was the magical meadow tender and warm, hidden away in the pockets of your heart away from the dark, I was a safe haven you happened to stumble upon while fleeing the snapping jaws of the shadow wolves in the Forbidden Forest. Bright and strong like a sunflower, I did not bend in even the most wild wind, and you could lean against me and take in my strength, my untainted, yellow light. Soft and simple but still enough, like a daisy. I made a necklace of my prettiest flowers and hung it around your neck, a most beautiful and delicate daisy chain, my petals kissed and tickled your chest. But I was also vibrant like a Indian Paint Brush, I painted you the prettiest picture, promising passion in streaks of brilliant color, I promised you everything, my roots, my stems, my leaves, my blossoms, everything. And the promise ignited a wildfire within your shivering heart, and spread through your bones, to the black of your eyes, reflecting the fragmented image of me swimming beneath the broken lake’s surface, the white of my skin and the ripple of my hair, you reached into the water blinded, you dug through the sand until you caught me. Oh yes, I was the sunlight dancing on the kaleidoscope forest floor, that you chased trying to catch a handful of light, and I was the fairy circle you wished upon. Yes, I was your Summer.

And as the days grew shorter and the nights became colder I discovered that whenever my mind would wander it would always seem to fall back to you. I remember one night, it must have been in August, the night was pure and honest, and I was caught up in the infinity of the swirling, silver cosmos. My father joined me at my side and pointed up at the sky and showed me the North Star, I had never seen it before. He told me that it was like a compass that would point you home; the lost man’s final hope. Something about that brilliant twinkling star rendered me helpless, I was lost in it’s hypnotizing light. I stared at that star for the rest of the night wonderstruck by it’s beauty and the comforting thought that it knew the way to anywhere you wanted to be. And as the Sun ascended the horizon’s heavenly staircase and peaked in a mirage of smudged pastels for the first time in my life, I felt lost, I felt lost without that star. I all of a sudden had so many questions but no answers, I grasped for sure footing in my jagged thoughts, but was startled to find that you kept popping into my mind, as bright and clear and undeniable as that, stupid, beautiful, bewitching star, and I found myself wondering if somehow, someway, you had become my North Star, the compass that could show my wandering soul the way. And as the world was morphed into view under Daylight’s knowing hands, I realized it was true, you were my last hope, you were going to take me home to a place I didn’t even know, but suddenly was desperately homesick for. And I tried so hard to fall out of alignment with you, to break away from your orbit and run from the galaxy that would soon be us, and the black hole that would **** me up. But I was going up against Gravity, and I was pulled down, down, down.

No matter how I tried, how much I told myself that you were not the only star I could see, that you were not my infinity. But it was futile and somewhere I knew that, I knew that as well as I knew that I wanted you to be my infinity, and I yours. I wanted to create the most beautiful galaxy the Seven Continents had ever seen, so vast and far that no telescope could capture it, and scientists would forever marvel how it came to be. But nowadays, I ask perhaps, If I had known what would happen when the Universe could no longer contain our overpowering glow, what would happen when my North Star exploded? When all I would have left would be memories that would leave a deep scar, but I wouldn’t be able to remember why, leaving me as clueless as I was that first night; when all I would have is whispers that were almost too quiet to hear but would constantly be a murmur in my ear? Have you ever stepped outside and looked up the night sky when the world is asleep and still, but the sky is more alive than you?  Have you ever tried to take a picture to remember the wondrous spectacle Mother Nature and the Heavenly Father have laid out for you? You can try all you want, and use up all the memory on your phone, but no matter what you do, you cannot capture the beauty above you. The pictures if not blurred from your frustrated shaking hands, are simply screens of black, with dots of white that could be dust where stars are supposed to be. And you must walk under those stars, to you they shine so loud and clear, they are right there for God’s sake, but you cannot capture their beauty, you cannot touch them. You must endure the torture of knowing but lacking. And that’s what would happen to me when my North Star exploded into whimsical stardust, when you left me in the pitch black; slowly I am being crushed by the weight of absolute nothingness. And ******, even if I had known this is what would happen to us, that this would happen to me...even if I had known all this to be true, I know I would follow you into that unsure, perilous blue where every man is for himself. Because everything is fair in love and war. And even to this day, over a year later, I would retrace my steps back to that night, and let you destroy my horizon, my faith in 11:11, and belief in shooting stars all over again, if only for a glimpse of you, my darling North Star, Pivoting Axle of my world, my Gravity, my Endless Summer; my Infinity.  

Because soon it became clear that you were my Summer too. You wrapped your loose ends around me and rocked me to sleep in your makeshift cradle like the hammock out back that we used to nap in, do you remember that? You were the pile of books that I whirl through every Summer under the Weeping Willow Tree. You made me smile, you made me laugh, you made me blush and you made me terribly sad. For even then you were my defining phrase and favorite quote that I felt spoke to me the most. You were the birds in the trees singing their fragile hearts out, you told me of Summers past, and how you accidently went backwards and migrated straight into the darkest winter you’d ever seen and couldn’t find your way out of the storm. And that’s why underneath my daisy chain your heart was laced with icy carnations, that’s why your lungs were filled with puffs of smoke that looked like a breath in the biting cold. And that’s why your lips were so ugly, bruised black, purple and blue, proof of what you’ve been through, and every time you tried to explain your torn past, your lips got worse, your skin became terribly chapped, and your voice cracked as you tried to fight back, but the words eventually bled through your lips, so you learned not to speak, because you hated to bleed. But regardless of your cold words and colder shoulder, you were still Summer to me.You were the fireworks on the 4th of July, you lit up the world and were all that I could see, I couldn’t look away, I was afraid to miss a thing. You were the crunch of graham crackers when you bite into a perfect s'more, and you were the laughter when your marshmallow catches on fire.  You were my favorite time of the day, in between night and day, when the sky melts into this glorious turquoise blue, and the silhouette of the pine trees stand out against the fading light. You were quiet and thoughtful, the feeling you get when you sit atop a Ferris Wheel at the the County Fair, you’re a little bit scared, but you can’t help but be blown away by the world below your dangling feet. You were the spike of fear and the adrenaline rush you get when you dive off a cliff into the water, you can’t help but wonder if there are dangerous rocks at the bottom, even though you know it’s too late and there is no stopping your falling body now. But you feel alive, you feel alive and when you survive, you feel unstoppable. That’s the way you made me feel, I was afraid of how much I loved you, how you could tear me apart and push me to the end of the world, and with a brush of your heavy fingertips I would topple over the edge, and I faced the monstrosity of wondering what it would like to be dead, and just before I would let myself go and come to an endless end, you would pull me back up and dust me off, wipe my tears and bandage my bleeding elbows and knees; I was scared that maybe you hurt me just to be the only one who knew what would save me. And I was absolutely terrified of that fact that if that was true, I would still love you. I was scared of you, I was scared of what would happen when Summer came to a end.

I remember I went to California that year for the very first time in my life right before school started. I thought it would be good, to be away from you. I told myself I hoped that you would get bored of waiting for me to come back home and find another girl to give the world, but deep down I knew that I wanted you to wait more than anything. But denial is my thing, as you would soon know all too well, it’s what I do best. So I denied my feelings for you, I denied having any at all. (I still do to this day.) And it was only in California, that I finally realized that I couldn’t keep lying to myself. It happened late at night, as I suppose the most truthful thoughts always do. I couldn’t sleep, I tossed and turned and rolled and stretched but the bed was lumpy and the sheets were suffocating and I found myself slipping away,  tiptoeing across the squeaking floor and squeezing out of the heavy wood door, into the fog and sea salt air. I walked for a very long time. I think when people are near the ocean, and have sins they have to wash from their bloodstained palms, they find a friend in the Ocean, someone to hold their hand and teach them how to stand and walk upon water. And that night, I glided to the ocean like a ghost whose tables had been turned and broken, and now finds itself the the haunted one with blistering splinters that it can not see, left over from a world that could not be; made up of broken promises, what if’s and missed moments they can never get back. The Ocean’s magnitude overwhelmed me and neutralized the quiet chaos bubbling beneath my skin. The rabid froth and spit of crashing waves put out the fire that was eating away at me and the undertow pulled me into the blue. I floated through the undefined blur of the the aqua world. I ran my hands through the rocky sand and felt the urgent weight and staggering cold of the water pulling me under, but risking my life in that current among the frothing foam horses racing against the Moon’s tide made me feel so alive. I am no mermaid, I cannot breathe underwater, but for the first time in seemingly forever I had air in my collapsing lungs, and I didn’t know you could drown on dry land until I was dying in the sea. But it was not my time, and I awoke washed up on the scraping sand with water in my ringing ears, knotted hair and no feeling in my blue fingers. I sat there on the diamond sand for a long time until I was strong enough again to lift my arm and slowly I reached into the sky, and grabbed my North Star and pulled it into my heart and where it glowed, I scrubbed myself clean of my history and orthodox scriptures with the salt of the sea and was born again free of frown lines. Something about the Ocean brings clarity, and yes it is dangerous and chaotic, it could destroy the world and wipe us all away, leaving not a trace of the human race, but the Ocean is a lifeboat, a saviour of many in a way. When you find yourself faced with a whole new infinity, a horizon that only ends when it meets another, you are small, and you are still. You are pinned against your past but then can remember how to breathe again, you exhale the toxic smoke swirling in your lungs and inhale the mist. Exhale the past, inhale the future, breathe child-for you are here, no longer there. You are small and you are still but you are real. And that night I learned two of Life’s endless lessons. First; People love what kills them. Faced with death you are flooded with life, it ignites your brittle bones and breathes music back into the silent calamity of your echoing heart. People love what kills them. Second; the person you think of when you stand in front of the ocean. That’s the person you’re in love with. And I thought of you, you, you. I thought of you and I never stopped. And it’s killing me.  

But I knew something but really nothing of death back then. So when I got home a week before school I asked if we could meet somewhere in between. And we did. Beneath glaring flick of fluorescent lights in the gas station’s parking lot that didn’t stay any open later than ten, surrounded by everything ugly about humans, rusty pennies, tumbling plastic bags, stomped out cigarette butts and smashed beer cans, you held my hands and kissed me for the very first time, and suddenly, the world was beautiful. We walked hand in hand for the longest time, but found ourselves just a block past the lonely parking lot, by the town’s fountain. We sat there and splashed out feet in the ***** water enjoying the feeling of being. You had brought a bag of Skittles and sorted the red ones from the rest, and when I asked why with a laugh you sheepishly admitted you remembered that I thought that the red ones were the best and that the lemons made my face wrinkle and nose tickle. I poked fun at you for remembering something that silly, but truthfully it meant the world to me, because it meant someone out there was listening to even the simplest things I had to say. And in the fluid reflection of those pool lights rippling across your perfect face, I could tell that even though that pitiful fountain was no ocean, that you were thinking only of me. That night we shot ourselves into the dark like shooting stars and fell into each other, that fateful night was the night we became each other’s North Star. But in the end, no one knows where that star is taking them, they call it a lost man’s compass and the last hope, but if he is lost is his compass not broken, or else wouldn’t he be home? Is hope then of no use? Are North Stars just poetry to salvage doomed souls? I often wonder if, regardless of our faith in each other’s sense of direction, if that night was the most we ever knew each other.

You told me you loved Cheezits, and Lucky Charms with Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. You admitted that you chewed your nails to tiny stubs when you felt to much because all you ever wanted to be was numb. You confessed that you had trouble looking at your dad the same and saying,”I love you,” to your mom and tried to explain why video games were any fun. I pointed out all the scars on my legs and how I got them, whether it was from tearing through my childhood neighborhood on my Barbie tricycle or if it was from running over gravel trying to outrun myself and everything evil that clung to me. I muttered between my  hands and embarrassed giggles why I was terrified of fish and flies, and you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe. I recalled for the first time the night mom died and everything that followed that night, awful night that never seemed to end, and with a quivering bottom lip counted off everything th

You smile when you see me writing
tenably watching like a child
when I turn my prose into rhyming
I smile back: "this one's about you"
when I kissed you this morning
I suddenly realized you taste just like fruit.

Like a Pineapple, of all things considered
sweeter than a whole bunch of grapes
your skirt flaunts your skittles
and your legs take the proverbial cake
Piña Colada to go with my Enchilada
pretty please let me taste the rainbow?
I don't like Pineapple on my burger
on my pizza I don't feel it either
my taste buds become a bitter turbulent river
but I just love it on you,
that little thing that you do
dancing in that lil' grass skirt
make it our own Hawaiian Luau.

Your juicy lips
are a 100% from concentrate
like drinking from a can of Dole
blowing me a kiss, giving me a smooch
please drown me in them
a Pineapple falls ways far from an Apple
and SpongeBob lives in one of them.

From your eyes to your thighs
I think of way back when
my favorite fruit in the garden
you humbly became
it's been just peachy from there on end.
With the words we shared
as we laid in the hay
your laughter intoxicated my lungs
right down to my pores
and through my veins
and that's a good thing
always a good thing
put your hair up
the mirror loves a silly face
your sly smile for the camera
my photogenic exotic babe.

Endangered in this world
you are the only one of your kind
like an extinct Dodo Bird
please stay by my side
and let me one thing in you confide
that the forbidden fruit wasn't an Apple
alas, unknown to Adam
it was a Pineapple.

Ode to food . 

Barbecue Ribs ; 
I Swear If Youu Were a person  youu'd Have a Crown . 
You'd Be The Queen of your town . 
Youu make Other Foods Envy Youu Because of your delicious Barbeque  Sauce And Your Juicy Meat . 
Youu got fans because Your who their mouth wants to meet . 


Ice cream ; 
Your cold , 
But you never get old . 
Everyone Loves Youu ,Your Like Your Heaven sent .
Everyone Loves you Exept For the lactose - intolerant .   
You come in different flavors , 
Your served in different Dishes , 
You have different Toppings , 
The one thing people Is Scared To do to youu is dropping . 
Youu melt down people's Throat , 
Filling them with joy . 
Youu make babys Wanna leave their favorite toy . 

Chips ; 
Crunchy , 
Munchy . 
Who Dosnt Eat Youu ? 
Like , I mean everyone Likes you new . 
Your so fly . 
Not literaly Fly . 
Thats Apparently a lie , 
Its Obvious  you cant fly . 
Your different . 
Youu Come differently .. 
Your so good they clone youu Continuesly . 


Chicken ; 
Youu had to die 
To Satisfy . 
Youu do Good to my stomach , 
Make Me Feel good . 
Your so good . 
Youu Can even be barbequed , 
Your so good i wanna play a harp for youu .
You Can Be Boiled Too . 
But I Dont Like you like that , Eww .


Candy ; 
Your so dandy . 
You Come In Different Varieties . 
Skittles , M&MS; Even Jelly beans . 
Who dont love youu , i mean Youu That Babie . 
Everyone love youu Exept People with Diabetes . 

This Is My Ode Too Food . 
Food That Taste M-m-m Good .

What's up, Chicken Little? Whatchu think you know?
The sky is fallin', Skittles droppin’ out the rainbow.
Don’t hate me cuz I’m fast. Don’t hate me cuz I’m keen.
Hate me cuz I got more tiger’s blood than Charlie Sheen.

My rappin’ is a skill, wait, matter fact a habit.
This rhyme is so rare I threw a Masterball at it.
Ima get you to the point when you done think you had it
then keep on chuggin’ through like the Energizer Rabbit.

Runnin’ this game since I was born in 1990.
Ball so hard like Waldo everybody wants to find me.
Watch me as I fly free, practicing my Tai Chi,
soarin’ through the sky like Ben Franklin with his kite key.

I slay wicked verses like they fire breathin’ dragons.
Always down for an adventure so they call me Bilbo Baggins.
You got your feet draggin’ from all your pithy laggin’.
Chokin’ on my farts, left you in my dust gaggin’.

My girls be elegant while yours be nothing but ******.
No diamonds in my ears cuz I don’t like to be flashy.
You just can’t get past me, kilo in the backseat.
NOS tank in the front so them piggies can’t get at me.

Lyrics like the plague so they call my **** Bubonic.
Sittin’ at the bar gettin’ drunk on gin and tonic.
Blowin’ on that chronic, so fast they call me Sonic.
Watch me transform as I go Megatronic.

Is my **** too fast? You need to stop and smell the flowers?
I am just a human, I ain't got no special powers.
I could go for hours. The rap game I devour.
Like Frodo with the ring takin’ down the Two Towers.

My rhymes are heavy duty while yours be made of plastic.
Better call the Doctor cuz this **** is getting’ drastic.
Snap back like elastic, I made an instant classic.
Light the roof on fire with a flick of my matchstick.

I’m tellin’ all them haters that I’m wicked sick nasty.
Dissin’ all they want to but they too scared to come at me.
I go where the cash be, rappin’ makes me happy.
Don’t wash my hair for days cuz I like that **** *****.

All I really wanna do is have a rap battle
cuz my rhymes are so disgusting they’ll make your head rattle.
You’re in a boat with no paddle, on a horse with no saddle.
It’s lookin like you’re gonna hafta ******* straddle.

I know I have the sickest flow that you have ever felt.
There’s nothin’ you can do it’s just the hand that I was dealt.
Killa Kraig will make you melt, yes it matters how it’s spelt.
Get it right the first time or I’ll leave you with a ******' welt.

My game will give you chills from your head down to your feet.
Sittin’ on the couch cuz I love to chill with Pete.
I’m the man to beat cuz I bring all the heat.
Grew up in the burbs, didn’t grow up on the street.

They gave me a gold medal when I scored a perfect 10
cuz I got the versatility of an erasable pen.
Singin’ like a ren, no need to pretend.
Murkin’ rhymes like zombies like my Asian friend Glenn.

Honesty’s a virtue so you know I never front it.
Always swingin’ for a homer, ain’t no need to ever bunt it.
Now you really done it, watch me as I run it.
I made it to the center of the Tootsie Pop in one lick.

Crusin’ round town in my green 6-4 Impala.
Drop so many bombs that you think I worship Allah.
Dolla’ after dolla’, cute as a koala,
but ruthless as a renegade Viking in Valhalla.

My lyrics kick you in the nuts now you talkin’ like a munchkin.
Drop you to the floor like some Mohammed Ali punchin’.
Where is Conjunction Junction? Do the number crunchin’.
Get you home by midnight so you don’t turn into a pumpkin.

Stickin’ to the game like some universal duct tape.
Give you three tries while I nail it in one take.
I'm the sugar on the cornflake, the reason for an earthquake.
I'll toss you like a salad or a chicken in some Shake n’ Bake.

Now grab a pen a paper cuz here’s the final lesson.
I know who’s on first so now tell me what’s on second.
I did the number checkin’, I’m the best I reckon.
While you standin’ at the wrong end of my ******’ Smith & Wesson.

When I was five years old and first stepped into a classroom I had lint and skittles and hope stuffed into my pockets. My firsts clutched at them so hard that when they made us shake hands with one another I extended a rainbow palm to my partners. They gawked at it for a second and then took my hand and we were stuck together with a bond that only innocence and sugar can provide.

When we were kids we built our trust out of sticks and stones--a bond that would come to be stronger than sugar and innocence and hope--you would lead us through waters we were not sure we could wade yet.

In 7th grade the spaces between hallways and classrooms are where I learned that silence breeds intolerance and apathy. Our trust was no longer built on sticks and stones, but on those moments when we chose not to be silent--when we were thankful that someone said anything to us at all because life only ever matters when you know you exist.

And so I will write you letters so that you know that I see you.

Dear Girl In Class That Listens to Boys Making **** Jokes,

I see you. I see those boys too. And they will see me when I reach down their throats where the hate they spew lives tell them that I will not meet their intolerance with tolerance.

I’ll probably get a phone call from mom.

Dear Boy In Class Who Changes All Of the Pronouns In His Poems Because He’s Scared Of  The Students Around Him,

I see you, I see those edits you make too. You’re beautiful and so are your words. Stop making bad edits.

Dear Boy In Class Who Thinks Gay Is A Synonym For Stupid

I know that all hate is learned and that you learned that this was okay because no one ever told you it wasn’t. I’m telling you now. Stop.

Dear Students In Class Who Are Afraid To Speak Up

I’m writing this poem for you. I want you to take this poem with you when you leave. Turn it over in your mind like the cool side of a pillow when you lay down to sleep. Let it support your head and your dreams.

Repeat it like a prayer so that these words will stick in your mind, even when I’m not there: Just because school is a weapon free zone does not mean that you leave your mind, your heart, your thoughts, your questions, your voice at home.

Take this poem and place it beneath your feet. Stand on it, use it to meet your adversaries at eye level every time they try to look down on you.

Let this poem catch you when they try to blast you back with backwards rhetoric.

Use this poem as a shield--hold the words around you so that when the world tries to drop bombs on you you’ll be able to appreciate the beat.

Keep it like a secret and when you’re alone and writing and the words are stuck in the ink of your pen remember that poetry doesn’t come from words, it comes from a willingness to love and to be loved. I know this because the first poem I ever heard was when my mother held my head in her lap and told me the only Spanish I would ever remember--todo para la familia--everything for the family.

And so I’ll leave those words as a mantra for you and I hope that you’ll understand some day that you don’t need this poem and you can crumple it up and throw it away because your voice matters and even if it’s met with silence, nothing will change that.

To The Teachers That My Students Write Poems About,

Take this poem. Use it as a warning.

My students are better poets than me.

the collar on my jacket is frayed
but I have clothes on my back

(just)

the packaging is white with green print
but I have food in my belly

(of sorts)

the soles talk and leak when I walk
but I have boots on my feet

(for now)

so I’m OK

(I suppose)

***** deep into the Smart Price ™ life
this man, his daughters, his son and his wife
where all their food comes at discounted price
expired meat and rationed heat
sweepings and fat wrapped in plastic

the walk was wholly unexpected, but it was easy
leaving the town where the forward leaning walkers
were the slowest thinking talkers steeped in sugary urgency,
and all the way we **** giltterballs and Skittles

There’s a place, where licorice vines have climbed,
Deep in the night, that only children can find;
Where leaves of waxed paper on trees are hung,
And what grows on the branches is sweet to the tongue.
Garlands of butterscotch, chocolate, and mint,
In their bright wrappers, sparkle, and glint;
Bubbling springs of sarsaparilla, through the valley are poured,
Washing sugar beaches with reeds of sour chord.
Swedish fish swim in soda geysers with bliss,
While fizzing pop-rocks spurt, spittle, and hiss.
Sunset clouds of cotton candy sweep past in the sky;
Trees sway in the delicious breeze that smells like apple pie.
Skies will rain down skittles, when there is a storm,
Pelting molasses window panes in a giant swarm;
Sour gummi worms are dug up, free to take,
In the grainy, nutmeg layers of the coffee cake.
Carmel creams, Mary Janes, Black Jacks, and Almond Joys,
Coconutties, Jawbreakers, Carmel Rolos and Long Boys--
All these grow, in lines straight as peppermint sticks,
Planted in brown sugar, on fields of cinnamon toothpicks;
But when the sun lets out its first ray,
The entire land just melts away
And children don’t remember where they’ve been,
That whole night asleep, but they wake with a grin;
And through the whole day, their dreams will entice,
Until they visit again, the Land of Sugar and Spice.
8/9/11

Not eating chocolate covered cherries and strawberries and lychees and onions and chillies and grapes and marshmallows and turtle meat and cake and shark bones and oysters and camel and beef and beef with dog food and rabbit fur and smarties and skittles and twine and rope and yak and buses and buffalo and authors and novels and chipping containers and bicylces and emus and penguins and polar bear slippers and darned socks and stewed lobster and Darwin Deez and get well cards and ibuprofen tablets is fine with me.

Giggles escape between her fingers,
she breathes warm gold air,
and lets pink clouds melt on her tongue.

On a friday afternoon she paints her nails black
and they dry pink.
With her pretty pinky claw
she lines up her rainbow of skittles
and lives in each colour for a moment...

Red blooms on her favourite feather lenses

sweet Orange coats her tongue and teeth

warm gentle Yellow caresses her soft skin

fresh vibrant lively Green fills her lungs

dark seductive Blue vibrates in her ears

dangerous Violet spins her, her glasses fall

Black holds her tightly, she gives in.

On a saturday morning her black nails scratch
at the foreign bracelet on her wrist.
Squinting in the harsh light,
she gropes blindly for her
favourite sunglasses.