A baby from Burundi sits next to me today.
He coos and drinks and swallows his mother’s milk.
His father speaks Swahili. Smiles, tells me that his last son
Is going to grow old in Rochester, NY,
Where I sit in a white-walled waiting room, watching
Mothers drag their babies by the armpits to be weighed.

A boy with braided beads holds up four fingers and tells me he is five.
He is too skinny. His pants are sagging and his iron is low.
His mother takes his vegetable checks, stuffs them into the back pocket of her jeans.
What the little **** needs is two percent milk, she says,
Her gold hoops fluttering.

Her son struggles with the small wooden chair he is carrying.
It drags along the carpet, hitting the high spots, and his tiny biceps flinch.
He sits, facing me, while a name is called. And another.
Another woman’s son hands me a book and waits.
He is watching my face and I watch his mother kiss her boyfriend in the first row seats.
He tucks his chin to his chest when I ask his name. Whispers, tells me Jayden.

First page. What color is Elmo, Jayden?
Shoulders shrugging. His lower lip, puckered out and innocent.
What color is he, Jayden?

The color of Jayden’s skin slaps me across the heart when he says he doesn’t know.
He was born in Rochester, NY,
With trash bags and Burger King wrappers wrapped around the fence
That separates his house from the street on which he will grow old
Too soon.
He starts kindergarten in the fall and I tell him Elmo is red, like his t-shirt.
Like his mother’s fingernails.
Like the tomatoes and bell peppers and beets he has never seen.

A girl who went to my High School carries in her youngest child
Who is old enough to walk, but wobbles.
She calls her daughter “thunder-thighs” instead of Jazmyne
And strips off her shoes. Her belt. Her gold bracelets.
The scale says Jazmyne is too heavy for food assistance.
The state says her mother isn’t poor enough for welfare.
The girl I used to know leaves without her daughter’s shoes or the food checks she came for.

In conversations of pretension
We talk about first and third world.
Pretend that America is the land of second chances
Where a baby from Burundi can grow old in cashmere sweaters,
Even when his parents couldn’t pay.

The father who speaks Swahili looks at his shiny watch and his family’s vegetable checks.
Smiles. Tells me his last son is going to grow old and full
In Rochester, NY.

You’re not Pro-life, just Pro-Forced Birth
Despite proclaiming loudly
On signs accusing, “******!"
To one in three women, proudly

You’re not Pro-Life, but Anti-choice
And Anti-women, too
Shutting down Planned Parenthood is
A War on Women’s coup

Your Pro-Birth stance is but a sham
Backwards in time, you’re swimming
Saying Jesus is your Lamb while
Cutting aid for pregnant women

I saw you there, in Salem, too
Pointing, declaring them WITCHES
Burned alive by your testimony
Betraying and damning your SISTERS

My mother used to say self praise
Was not really praise at all
How can you say you’re Pro-Birthers
Causing WIC funding to fall?

The schools that once were funded
Providing breakfast for hungry kids
Was cut-yet congress spends like Spartans
Government sold to the highest bids

Sixty percent of our money
In good ole USA
Goes straight to the military
And I demand a say!

‘Health’ gets only five percent
And ‘Education’ six
Yet that’s where congress goes
To cut funding to the quick

You shut down Planned Parenthood with
Dishonest screams and shouts…
Support Accidental Parenthood-
Is that what you’re about?

No one came before them
The original gangsters
Took a leap of faith
Found nothing is fixed (perhaps)
Silent progression an its svelte curved finger
Starting our engines, we dived through the door
Roaring regression, salute of four fingers
Down is the price that we paid to stand up
Back to the bricks, carved in a niche
It never told us we'd have to buy shoes
Flashes of future opened a portal
A game made of blocking, where no one can lose
Born with our minds blown
We've sure kept our eyes on the prize
Even dumb, dark and pegged
We'll still have our picture books
Our consciousness needs a hug and a kiss
Incinerate cyclic denial
Insinuate a means of escape and
Psychically break with your own form of exit

Blink Blink...Where did it go?
The Time?
The Moment flies when we lack the material in which to fill it.
Empty spaces...A Lack of Bravery? To come forth with some creative
Self Fulfillment?
The wic must be lit in order to speed the rocket to blast...
The Rocket shoots the message, in our works, if we fill the right
Creative Powders to Blast from within it.
Can you blame another soul?
If you fail when you never stepped a foot forward and tried?
Through fear you sat in front of the TV with some "Kentucky Fried."
As your friends shake their heads and watched as you sat there and died.
Moments shall take from us just as they can add...
Parts to us if we never add them...The pieces to the puzzle...
That are lost are never placed in
The picture that was our life.
As we allowed ourselves to fade to sin.
The choices were clear as we made them.
Even with a huge sign to point the way, we ignored that still.
So, who's was that weak will?
Fear can never conquer or control us unless we give into it.
So jump up and rejoice as you regain bravery
and "get with it!"
A mind sparks to flame...Lights the powder of the rocket from where the true creativity came.
Not copies of a copy of an already thought up creation. No.
It was the fresh slice of the pie that earned us another penny.
Placed in the jar that is our thirst for "winning."
One,two,until it adds to A Million or more.
Due to our bravery....Our wills are free to score.
Now the moment arrives again. Where doubt weighs you down.
In front of the TV is where you are now seated
with that Bucket of "Kentucky Fried."
What is the path you seek to take?
That's it!
Off the couch, you turned off the Television.
Plopped down the delicious fatty, and  dream-killing snacks..
to the void...you are not headed.
You are now,braver. You put one foot in front of the other.
Now you are still winning my "Creative Brother."
Now you have the life, the change, and the jar from which it came.
For each of the moments that you carefully used up in your life...
A penny was earned...
The celebration cake shall now  be cut....
through the sharp blade..
of Success' Knife.


Where fear shall never,Freely
Roam Amuck.

If I am waiting, why not now I ask?
Must I receive your elegance in a slowly introduced doses, simply not to overdose on that of which is your perfection?
If I am waiting, what defines my love to be that of the tangible,
an idea shaped and distorted horribly in my own head?

I’m always that of a time keeper, counting the intervals between the dials of each millimeter between the second markers on the grandfather clock, stretched into a string of ever-expanding infinity.
A line that over laps beyond comprehension, builds that of dimension, time and space, we come colliding!
Yes we do, we always do, if one thing I can count on, it is this.

We are that of every love, repetitive but never stagnant, ever shifting, ever changing, just… beauty in the bell jar.
Captured mid second, frozen in time, in a place
where we meet simply by chance, I will live that of a billion lives, if not for anything more then just one single chance.
I would put my mind in every living creature that has echoed before me, along side me, and will continue to do so long after I depart.
I will short end a fuse to a bomb there for springing a chain reaction, surging convulsions of electricity that only then could even conceive to recognize that of which is my own consciousness!

The purity in the moment of coincidence that takes place when we meet.
That of a flutter of a butterflies wings, the rippling effect of said butterfly.
We are and forever will be locked in sight, because I believe, oh how I believe-

And does my pinky hurt so with the tug of this red string leading me to that of which is you.
It was never a safe path I admit but one for the likes of the profound and the brave.
To build me up, to break me down!
I follow this red string and endure every challenge the gods deem fit for my conditioning.
Because on the other side of that red string is you, and when I say.. It just had to be you….

Theses lives we live, these perceptions we carry, the sounds of music pleasing to the ear, and the books we read that make our eyes soar.
I find myself here in a pool of my own tears dabbed with a sense of poetic justice and as this unusual shade of blue, oh that unusual shade of blue that car bared that day in it’s paint.
The whoosh and whirr of the engine roaring so silently but valiantly, if not to be a that of a last act effort to simply warn me of the moment I’ve been waiting for only my entire existence.
That sound it couldn’t reach my ears in any plausible way but somehow I knew when my eyes were lifted by that passing shade of an unusual blue that was that of a fleeting glimpse of scenery.
My alerts were called to attention, if not just to gaze and check the progression that time has had around me.
So tell me what is the chance of a million chances if not one but of infinitely shifting possibilities and interchanging ideas, what is the chance, that my eyes met with yours that day?
When that car that was painted an unusual shade of blue passed on by in an explosion of fate and destiny.
I bet you the driver of that car didn’t even know how important his role in fate & destiny was that day, what leads me to you that of which was of an odd and unusual shade of blue.
My attentions were called to this date, this second, this very moment, and as I become aware of my shifting surroundings, in the fog of the overwhelming take in of absolutely everything…

I see you, with a voice soft and elegant, hair stained with mystery of time, a face, oh she has a face! with eyes the ones I dream only to stare into until the ends of time, a mouth with lips I can only compare to the soft touch of velvet, and the skin I rub the back of my hand on to check if you have a fever….

For time is not that of restraint, because some part of me knows the whoa of your ever lasting echo.
your existence is so potent with fragrance.
I could smell you since I was in the womb, and when I cried for first the very first time fresh out of my mother’s womb, I cried with the worst feeling I had ever felt, to be born into a world where we have yet to meet.
Almost as if the Angels of oblivion “shh”ed me of the knowledge of the love I will come to know, but I am left with this eternal void with a depth so great it is beyond any means of measurement.

Oh the sorrow that moans, alone and riddled, all the time that is infinitely expanding, tick tocking, and slipping into the future ever so slightly.
Between my short spark of existence and yours was a magnet that chose you and I to be intertwined in the fibers that are the forevers of time.. When I found you.
Because some part of me knows the whoa of your echo, I’ve always known.
Your existence is so potent with fragrance, I could smell you since I was in the womb, and when we first touched you awakened me with the familiarity of that fragrance which I already somehow knew, but never really could put my finger on the idea.
The “I’m home” that rushed over me, the forevers in beckoning, chiming to a melody of birds singing in joy, with the hormones of spring in full roar, an ode to the time keeper himself when I say.. I only want more time with you….

The beauty that lies in that moment is the realization, that I can wait, though I rather not.
Because I can feel you echoing in the fibers of my existence crying out to be found and awakened, and oh am I searching in the eyes of every love that ever fell short.
Only in failed attempt to capture the essence that is you.
Because you just know, you’ve always known, our souls calls out and little do our increasingly limiting minds know, the storm you will have on me..
The desert inside me screaming with drought, and your existence quenches my souls thirst.

I know my heart strings would snap if my life wasn’t that of a mosaic to be built upon just for you.
The time I spent in solidarity, the desolation grew inside me, so I seek, I look, and sometimes I make mistakes, but my heart belongs to you and only you, the women with hair that is stained with the mystery of time….

WHEN will you come out of your shadows, WHERE will I be, WHAT decisions must I make to perfectly aline my life to one day run into you by that of simply chance, and oh I’ve said it a million time but WHY must I wait?
It is nothing short of crippling to know that of which is on the line, I can feel your vibrations more than ever now if not before, and I see the flame that lights the wic of this candle burning method that is my soul.
I let go, and I trust fate and destiny because they hold something of great important to me, and dare if I forsake it, they might just make me not be able to find my keys the day I’m supposed to run into you by that of chance, and I need to be able to find those keys oh so desperately.
So I say “praise the lords of time!” and I swear on my existence if that of which is not meaningless, that you give me meaning, in every way, shape and form.
You are that of winters mid day, you are that of a summer sunset, you’re the smell of a never before opened book, you are the melody that catches my ear every time.
Because you were always there for every single living being if not just me, you were always there, and I will meet you in all the lives I live, because with hope there is a way, and sure there may be dead ends, and forsaken ending, but where I survive, where I live another day, where I see through the eyes of which is mortal, I will devote my effort to search for you my love…

The unspoken beauty of always knowing when I say.. “when I get married” “when I have children” “when I die she will be the last face I see” we and myself including say these things these silly things as if life is to viewed as a promise.
With ever so fragile existences, we die a thousand times if only just to meet once.

Even with our own fragile existences thrown in the balance reality forces the idea that we are a pointless specs in all that is nothing, and I spit at that idea, I spit to it!
Because when I say those things I’m putting my trust in the fact that some day I just know we will meet….

Maybe we will be lucky and find ourselves in park as children and form a love in the shine of innocence that grows like a hundred year old oak tree.
Or if we meet in a place as old as time itself with that smile only to be lighted with a hint of embarrassment showing on your rose red cheeks and that look on your face filled with rush and panic, only to be becoming of you, a sense of urgency floods when you say, when you always say, what you have said so many times before, and will continue to say in the whoas of forever… “I’m sorry I was late.” And I will always return with “it was worth the wait…”

Herds of motorized carts
owned and operated
by loafers and gold bricks
hoard and grovel through
the hot asphalt paved parking lots.
Impatient soccer moms
take the lives of innocent pedestrians
in exchange for parking spaces.
Automatic doors open and close
as you enter and the cool breeze
hits before you grab
the preferred size wobble wheels
and fight viciously,
through crowds of the
other consumers to forage items
on your list at the food library.
Wide variety of beer selections
have everything you want,
except for the one tasty beverage
you desire.
Seafood department lures you
in like a lunker with their
buy one get one free deals.
Half off half eaten fruits and vegetables
from the produce department.
Red alert sales on red meats and beefs
from the meat department.
Persuaded coupons clipped
in the Sunday's paper
to coax you away from the
competition.
Patrons of the golden age
super market era,
distracted by discounted priced items,
come to a grinding halt and block traffic
in the aisles of damaged goods
and all life as we know it
stops instantaneously
as we shrewdly gaze
with prying eyes
and eagerly wanting
to push them aside.
Guttersnipes roll in off
the streets and back alley ways with unscrupulous thieving eyes
to stuff and fill their pockets
with cheap fixings of
counterproductive chicken feed.
Detained by those minimum wage
retail rental cops,
who take their job way too seriously,
threaten and intimidate these derelicts
with no real authority
other than to use a roll of quarters
and a nearby payphone
to call the imperials.
As you end your journey
of consumerism and
await customer service
in the back of the longest line,
you notice that empty
miserable look on the cashiers face.
It's like a time lapse of
soul crushing creativity.
Watch others unload
their provisions and
pay astronomical prices
on low quality pabulum
refreshments
with food stamps
and WIC vouchers.
Patiently waiting for the clerk
to ring up your totals,
you can't help but to think
how you could be so privileged
to overcome these grueling obstacles
and empty your bank account
to purchase these
momentary products.

To hell with the heartache
I'm tired and I'm angry
of seeing my better angels
saddle up and leave me.

I'd drown in a river
but sorrow is an ocean,
of constantly changing tides
and sickening emotions.

The candle is burnt out
but only partially melted
just left white stuff dripping,
while the wic was decimated.
I'm a hollow man and I hate it,
statuesque figure made of wax,
while my jaded colors are faded.
Left me standing solid with the facts,
cause the sculptor never changed them.

So, my never was lover
just left me to simmer
to sink in this pain,
cause I'm not a swimmer,
and I'll die with her name
scarred to my heart
like a nuclear blast
that left a black silhouette
of a stranger’s last breath.

Of course, I could keep on going
see my stanzas keep growing
baring my soul now
yours for the showing,
But the stages are all broken
the players have past
the poetry is gone,
cause true love never lasts,
thus, I must bow out,
and say a sad final farewell.