There’s a boy in Miami
Who’s perfect to the T
And “te quireo mucho baby”
About me.

Coming from afar
Se los lleva el mar
Rostros de arena.

Feeling two instead of one
Sé que pronto llegarán
Ships to use me as an anchor.

Me gritan "súbete aquí!"
But I only float to sea
Mareándome en pudor.

Which sail will catch me?
¿El norte y sur del que salí?
The faces in the sand must know.

I estaba enamorado
No se how
pero one dia, yo fell
yo fell para tu
I vi en your eyes
y vi the world
Yo saw el possibilities
I vi el infinity of stars
hidden en tu eyes
an infinity of stars
Soy now trapped in

Que lenguaje mas hermoso
el que produce palabras de alegria
como es el te amo, te quiero y te adoro.

Dicen que los latinos somos ruidosos,
llenos de energia y poca cordura,
pero es que no entienden que el español
no tiene limites, no tiene volumen, solo frescura.

Grita tus palabras indigenas,
huracan, coqui, fotuto, Boricua,
esas palabras tainas tan bellas
que usamos cada dia.

Porque tienes miedo cuando te sale el "Spanglish"
si los gringos no pueden pronunciar ni "Porto Wico"
asi que curate con un  "bad english"
porque nunca tendras que procuparte por decir RRRRico como un chino.

Mi lenguaje no puede morir
porque dentro de sus palabras
estan las llamas de un Neruda,
la negrura de un Llorens,
la fortaleza de un Albizu.

Oh cuanto te amo, te quiero, te adoro Puerto Rico
por enseñarme el español que uso para enamorar a tus hermosas mujeres.
Oh cuanto te amo, te quiero, te adoro Puerto Rico
por eseñarme el español que uso para luchar contra los que ya no te quieren.

All my life I've paid,
I've paid taxes, dues and sacrifices
I've paid bills, attention and detention
**** I've even paid a visit to the county jails a few too many times, either as son, brother or inmate
Either way I've paid, but
Why Do I Gotta Pay?
Why do I have to pay every time a cop sees me on the streets,
Why do I gotta pay every time they slam me on the concrete,
Why do I gotta pay every time they serve and protect me,
Why I gotta pay taxes to subsidize the incomes of those who disrespect me,
Answer me,
Is it because I came from a broken home, or because my Mama was on drugs and my Pops left us all alone,
Is it because I was baptized into the street life b4 I could even decide between wrong and right,
No, no, no, I know why, it's because I look too Mexican and not enough white, right? Nah, it's probably because all my friends are high school dropouts, washed up or strung out,
Or is it because the Indigenous, Latinos and Africans are worthless, well ****, I didn't get to choose my race but if I did I'd still choose Mex!
Why Do I Gotta Pay?
Is it because I'm a threat to the status quo and looked upon as the states foe, well that's not fair, I pay a bigger percentage of income tax than Mr. Koch, Wait! I think I know! It's because my family's from the other side, **** that border! Daddy, why couldn't you be white? It's like what I told you on the 16th of September, We don't belong here because we have indigenous blood, remember? This is the European man's land, duh! Y'all are just so ignorant huh?
Why Do I Gotta Pay?
Is it because for a little bit of contraband from the Earth I'm a convicted felon while Ray Rice is free after he crushed his wife's skull like a melon, is it because I can't find a job and still I haven't robbed, is it because my school won't give me financial aid so I was forced to sell dope to get paid, but still I don't get paid, I pay taxes or the carnales will have me put in my grave
Wait! I know why I have to pay!
It's because I'm a slave, not to celebrity gossip, consumerism and materialism, but to imperialism of the state, I'm enslaved cuz I got too much soul to behave, my stilo is Zapatista & I'm **** with my head shaved, They made me a slave cuz they know I'd take their wombmen away, not by force though, cuz who could resist a date from this Latin Lover from around the way, they mad cuz I got Spanglish from the barrio, lingo from the hood & an academic vocabulary from the Pecker Woods, they scared cuz they're wombmen wish they could, every time I step out Miralo, I'm lookin good! These cops could never be us, and when I'm thuggin, Man, I wish they would! Im a slave cuz I don't understand, understood? I'm standing over my land, understand? Cuz I don't ever stand under! I only Overstand! That's why I gotta pay! Cuz I'm a slave that won't work for minimum wage, I'm a slave that can't be put in a cage, Im a slave that don't know his place, I'm a slave that just won't go away, I'm a slave that can't behave, I'm a slave that charms sharper than a blade, I'm a slave that steals hearts and makes way, I'm a slave that plays and never gets played,
And that's Why I Pay
Cuz I'm a slave that chose his own fate ✊

Blue Hill Avenue

It begins with Spanglish-speaking merchants
conducting business inside of bulletproof stalls,
where the faint scent of dried cod follows you
to the flat fix next door, into the auto body,
a hair shop, and to the steps of a church
for first generation Cape Verdean-Americans,
their offspring and that old lady --
someone’s  grandmother --
who wears a black dress on Fridays
and walks home from the Market Basket
the same time that you get off the bus
who wears a shopping bag full of tropical foods
and memories on her head.

And if you stand at its first **** south,
you will notice how the families disappear
in the African American section.
There are fewer stores here, lots of energy boxes
with epitaphs: “Tiffany Moore Died Here”;
a seatless swing set, a playground gone fallow.
You won’t see any church steeples in this section
that feeds on a neon CITGO sign too small
to illuminate the skyline like the mega one in Copley does.

A few blocks away, a ghost of the Jewish past sits
with pointy stars of David nestled inside its
bulbous steeples that simmer on summer Sundays
where Haitian congregants stew inside,
praying and giving to the building fund
in damp envelopes that will go to the omnipotent one
who will someday replace the stars with crosses.

And as you keep walking, past the temple,
you enter Grove Hall’s Mecca, a strip mall
with a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts,

a Stop & Shop, CVS, Bank of America,
and a Rainbows that sells your teenaged aunt
the sequined one-off shirt she needs for a date
and the fishnets she wears to the carnival
that parades through a sliver of the avenue,
the very next section of our beloved Blue Hill.

Across the street, Check Cashers speak English
as good as the number of dollars and cents
they count when they hand you back your cashed check
or the double win you scratched out of a Gold Rush ticket.

Adjacent to them, a Greek-owned sandwich shop
that feeds you steak bombs as long as your forearm or
Festive Fridays: 20 wing dings, a pound of fries,
a Greek salad, and a gracious gulp of fountain cola --
essentially, a heart-attack meal.  

Next, another ghost of the Jewish past,
a church in the former Franklin Park Theater,
where Yiddish entertainers performed vaudeville acts
which nobody living can remember.

Then a building that resembles an African footstool,
one that will allow you to see over the **** of the hill
and down below at a gospel choir trapped in everlasting song
against the wall of the one-hour cleaners and that store
where a turkey-shaped lady with flour dusted hands
stands behind a window, noticing you,
while guarding her beef patties and cocoa bread
with a bulletproof smile.

The world is full of shade and prose
And I don’t know what to do anymore
Audre Lorde said “silence will not protect you”
But I been weaving my silences into a survivor’s quilt
Because I’m tired of surviving
And I’m cold and want to use it as my blanket
Out there in that cold *** world

The world is full of shade and prose
*** workers on boulder highway
Wanna be poets writing in spanglish
White privilege, patriarchy and all
I kinda wish I’d write songs instead of poems
You know, songs about love
But no
Cuz the world is full of shade and prose
Bus stops/stop and frisk
Judgment day enthusiasts/Holocaust deniers
I am tired of “it happened before I was born”
And “I feel guilty but I did not ask to be privileged”
And when I say: Then do something
They ask me “what?”
I reply: NO
The world is full of shade and prose

The chicken never made it across the street
There is so much deconstruction
And so little relief
We will soon end up homeless
And will have to pawn the master’s tools
Or maybe just sell them at the swapmeet
For a dollar or two

I mean who cares as long as we’re in love
If at the end
The world is full of shade and prose.

As time has passed
I've seen much that is great and vast.
My soul may wander
Up alone in the stars,
And my sight is clear
As xanax bars.
I speak fluid spanglish,
and sing of the sea.
Life is beautiful,
Oh can't you see?

Sleepless and Stupid
Sitting inside of a coffee shop
Sipping on something sweet
Silently screaming to yourself
So loud it sounded like singing
Scalding and stinging your throat
Speaking in spanglish to a stranger
Skulking in the alleys of a shopping mall
Starving for sustenance that isn't for purchase

but
Settling for Starbucks anyway

desafortunadamente
       I wake this morning, think Vicente
              he paints the stars, I am presente ...

             tired, lonely, yearning - parente.

There was quite a crowd gathered when I reached my apartment building that morning.
Lots of cops and Emergency Medical personnel gathered everyone was just standing around.
I asked Wild Bill what happened?
Not sure, think it came out apartment five.
What?
A blood-curdling scream, and long wailing, unnatural sounds.
Right then I knew it was bad.
The apartment was occupied by cutthroat junkies and their infant daughter.
Tony “The Hulk” came out first, bloodied, bleary eyed, staring at the ground
Rosalie “The Muse” came next, screaming hysterically in Spanglish... muttering broken Catholic novenas
last soaked in solemn silence, Inca “The Baby”,
covered in a sheet, silent, never to speak again, forgotten.

I guess it should be expected from me
To still try looking for you in songs
Where have you gone?
You never warned me I'd feel this lonely
Octavio

Octavio, it is likely you're just another name
Faceless, traceless
Like the stars in my dreams
I'm all bones, you're all sheets
Haunt me in the realm of dreams, te lo pido
Cariño

Do you understand this Spanglish tongue?
Can you feel the latido of my anxious heart?
Octavito, chiquitito

If there was a time of pastel pinks and blues
And yellow ribbons

If there was a time of citrus and lime
And air-drying linen

If there were days of tu y yo
Birds and bees
Half-creaked windows
And shaky knees

I'd like to visit those days, mi gansito

Is there an us in the summer
Some summers from now?
The shortest nights, the longest season
Is there any way to tell?

I'd like to know, amorcito

Octavio, mi pan dulce
Mi corazon de papel, mi pajarito
You exist sweetly in my thoughts
If no place else

Qui Transtulit Sustinet

There sat CONNECTICUT, a twit
blue nanny-state, and doomed to sit
on welfare-warrens of the ******
her social service on demand.
She withers on NEW ENGLAND‘s vine
a bygone has-been, and a sign
of democratic overkill
where her once-dear and verdant rill
now stagnant flows: polluted stream
a moribund New England dream.
The richest state with poorest heart:
the Northeast’s saddest story. Part
of history’s renowned revival,
now irrelevant. Survival
chains her children in dependence
keeping back the state’s ascendance.
Apostate Puritan, grown old—
for LIBERTY, no longer bold;
a slave to Man, where once God’s WORD
awakened greatness. Souls were stirred
in ENFIELD (of all strange places),
Christ beheld in radiant faces . . .
Edwards held their spellbound souls
like spiders over flaming coals,
in gratitude for Gospel grace
renewing thus both town and race.
But I digress. Connecticut
is what I came to speak about:
forgotten dull colonial matron
yoked in failure, plebe as patron
nostalgic for her Charter Oak
whose deadwood limbs went up in smoke
along with dark tobacco wrap
while the plantation took a nap.
Her social programs overgrowth
pose forest fire-risk. Under oath
her public servants signal virtue;
sign which really should alert you
to the democrat-machine’s
impending failure (ways and means).
Nutmeg-addled Tax-and-spenders,
dollar drunks on welfare benders
widen economic rifts;
force single moms toward double shifts
while Latin Kings hold court in prison
waiting out their royal season:
fiscally unsustainable—
yet totally explainable
(nutmeg is a drug for witches
spendthrift warlocks, bankrupt *******).
Oh HARTFORD, city of the dead
which dies at five, then home to bed,
insurance once assured your rise;
but now your ghosts haunt sadder skies.
Your life displaced, outsourced, out-dated;
so, it seems, your fall was fated.
Meanwhile, close to New York City,
fairer fields are growing pretty
long on corporate commutes.
Data-driven growth computes
as data-drivers flood the roads
and enter by Manhattan-loads
from golden coasts’ Atlantic shores
and posh patrician golden doors
to bite the apple of our time:
a number-cruncher built on crime.
New England’s puritannic granny
(data-driven tyrant ******)
seeks to harbor tropic isles
with blandly bureaucratic smiles.
Your poor dear heart cannot afford
to welcome every island lord
who looks to better his estate
and so decides to emigrate.
Displaced Jamaicans outta yard
compel the soft verse to get hard.
Boricua separatists, dispersed
show nationalities reversed
and dwell between two foreign lands
in Spanglish no one understands.
Such nutmeg gets the covens high
to soar the stormy Liberal sky.
It’s Yankee hubris: condescension
taxing plebes for such dissension.
Though you connect, there I would cut,
excising from New England’s gut
metastasizing social tumors:
clueless and obese consumers,
teenage moms, pajama-clad
whose nenes wait in vain for dad.
QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET—truth . . .
but that was was in our nation’s youth.
She’s gotten worse with passing years
confirming citizens’ worst fears;
showing her colors every vote
her monotone, a droning note
on which the blue-bloods hang their hue
when hope and change are overdue.
Her atheist zeal meets Yankee pride:
a most progressive broomstick ride;
oblivious to her Christian past,
an enemy of God at last.

Tú y yo siempre
I whispered in her ear
The smell on her breath, mocha flavored latte
And I wish I could be there in the morning when she wakes those beautiful eyes
And she would beg me to stay just stay a little while longer by her side

And I love the sound of her voice
When she sings it makes me smile
Just stay and talk to me for a little while
It really would make my day
But she doesn't see me in that way
No hay tú y yo siempre

She looks at me funny when I speak my Spanglish
But it just sounds more romantic when I say you and I always rather than in English
Even though she knows I’m a gringa
She manages to comprender, kinda

Que acerca de tú y yo siempre
I guess that was just all in my head
Your flirting kept my spirits alive
But now they're dead
And you were never interested
I like to call you a liar
Tú eres mentirosa
But in fact you're not
You're just a tease
Tú eres provocar
Y tu personalidad es bonita
I desire tú y yo siempre but that is loca
And I would love to sample your mocha
Y soy no loca
Pero quizá para tú
It's just something about you
Now my heart can't let go
Todos porque usted demostró feelings primero

And I love the sound of her voice
When she sings it makes me smile
Just stay and talk to me for a little while
It really would make my day
But she doesn't see me in that way
No hay tú y yo siempre
No hay tú y yo siempre

Tú y yo siempre
Your flirting is what kept that thought alive

Stuck in 2 worlds
Forced to choose certain words
Tú or you?
Not fully developed
Its hard to pick and choose what i want to do
Que no puedes hablar
That’s just sad
I can’t find the words
Como se dice I have so much to lose

Mis amigos at BP
We talk a bit
Both Spanish and English
And Spanglish we say

Little restaurant
Little statue
In green
To Our Lady of Guadalupe

In Oregon, In Spain, In Mexico
                   In Carolina

We pray.

A is for Abigail, who shared with you a kindergarten trauma and
then forgot who you were in eighth grade, like Belinda, who
left without a word one sunday morning after mass, C is
Catalina, your best friend’s ex-best friend, who went
with you to Daana’s book launch in texas, and
Enrique, who you planned to room with in college but you hear from friends
crashed his car into a tree and joined the saints, but Flores had
another kid and his man bun is
slicker than ever and Gumaro, who you helped teach
english in fourth grade is still
hitting the gym beside Hiris, even as she
works at la perla full time and overtime, beside Isabella who
no white girl would talk to in middle school because they said she
smelled like dirt, or Juliana, punching
numbers into a cash register at the dollar general thinking
of falling in love with Kruz who made a
perfect vanilla cupcake candle in home ec but couldn’t
cook steak to save his life.  
Lucio remembers kissing you on the mouth in the church
nursery but he is now engaged to a white girl you’ve
never met, and he remembers a particular
messy Maria who would draw like her life
depended on it, and a Nadia who would cry in english 11
because her parents couldn’t help her with the homework
but still kiss him after her soccer games, who no longer
bothers to call Olivia, even though they were teammates for
a decade and now she works at her own sports shop with
a daughter who could have gone pro if only.
Profe, who was a migrant “helper” at your elementary school,
laughs at it all, remembering yelling at parents in spanglish,
although you heard her husband yelling at her on the phone at lunch,
laughing when Quito broke one of the chairs that the school bought with
its 4 million dollar bond that drained money and morale, who went
out with Romani and started a band in seventh grade that took
longer than usual to fizzle out, and the bullying stopped for a while, though
Sergio would never forget how it felt to bend down for hours with
bad black bruises up his back, wouldn’t ever stop
reliving every labored breath spent both here and there.  
And Thalia couldn’t even make a living, recalling almost
forgotten days of swingsets and slurping
pelon pelo rico tamarindo under the orange tube slide.  
Her ex-husband Umberto everybody but the feds
forgot about, and V is for Victor, the high school goalie who had to quit because he
strained his wrists in the fields, like Wanita, who is trying to raise
money for her second hip replacement, like father Xavier, who carves statues of
woodland creatures for the children he could never have, and
Yesenia, who sewed and sewed until her fingers curled and her
forehead wrinkled beyond repair, and she tells you that Zaida, who made the
best tamales in town, is now gone to the saints, and no longer
fears anything, even the government and their obsession with
small white slips of paper.

So much in a name, in a hyphen, in a tilde, but no, it
should be under V—“virgulilla,” and their names should be
written in your address book but instead
they’re in a list at some office in
the States underneath “undocumented” and “illegal.”