South Florida
if you were a body part,
you’d be an armpit.

You’d be a bulged vein
on the side of a forehead
forever locked in a scowl
behind sunglasses.

You speak the language of horns
middle name, finger
blood type, combustible

You're a melting ***
that's boiled over the lid
sweating salt water at the brows
eyes red as the brake lights
in the maddening brightness,
you’re torrential daylight
heating nerves like greenhouse gasses
waiting for a reason to explode.

You’re a tropical motilov cocktail
no one can afford
2 parts anger, 1 part stupidity
full of yourself in a souvenir glass with a toothpick umbrella
You're all image

You’re all talk: the curse words
breaking out the mouths
of the angry line mob at Starbucks in the morning
You’re the indifferent silence
in the arena at the Heat games leaving early,
showing up late
due to the distance
from Brickell to Hialeah,
West Palm to Pompano
the gap between the entitled and the under-paid
a skyline of condos in a third world country
You’ve always been foreign to me.

You’re winterless, no chill
you attract only hurricanes
and tourists,
shoving anything that isn’t profitable
out of the way like post-storm debris
into the backyards of the Liberty City projects,
onto a landfill off the side of the Turnpike
Hide it beneath Bermuda grass,
line it with palm trees
if only conceal your cold blooded nature:
I see you.
You are overrun with iguanas,
blood-******* mosquitos
hot-headed New York drivers
not afraid to get hit

You get yours, Soflo
and you'll go as low
as the flat roofs of your duplexes
and the wages that can barely pay the rent to get it
latitude as attitude
temper as temperature
if you were a body part
I swear you’re an *******

south of the brain, one hour
in all directions,
I’d find you.
You’d impose your way
onto my flight to the Philippines,
to Seattle, to Raleigh
You’d follow me like excess baggage,
like gravity,
bringing me back when asked where I'm from:

That area north of Miami, I’d say
(the suburbs, but whatever, we are hard in our own way)
I'd show you off on their map
like some badge of grit,
certificate of aggression
I know how to break a sweat
walk brisk, drive evasive
ride storms in my sleep
I know you, I’d say,
“He’s a friend of mine.”
and I’d watch them light up
and remember
the postcards you've sent them
of the sunrise,
welcoming brown immigrants
onto white sand beaches
You were foreign to us
yet raised us as your own
in the furnace of your summers
iron on iron, the forger striking
softness into swords
built for survival
I'm made of you

my South Floridian temper
cools down
in your ocean breeze

if you were a body part,
you'd be a part of me
a socked foot in an And1 sandal
pressed to the gas pedal
as my drive takes me north
of your borders, far from home

I see you
in the rear view mirror,
tail-gating
like a sports car on the exit ramp
the color of the sun.

A quiet life
A country life
Where the grass sways in the breeze
And the hues of green signify the beginning of balmy nights
A far cry from the city
Gone are the endless vibrant lights
Gone are the 2 a.m. trips across town just because they make the best doughnuts
In this place of air almost too clean to breathe
They stroll
A traffic jam is four cars at a stop sign
Battling rules of the road with polite hat tips of "you go first"
Fast feet and hot dog carts
Italian ices on every corner
Fifty-six blocks to a destination
A world of choices
A billion footprints at a time
Stoplight crowds of sneakers and pantyhose
Everyone is invisible and naked at once
The green haired freak and the business man
The limos and the gypsy cabs
The excitement only felt in a world of possibilities
The difference between pick up trucks and bike messengers
A hundred miles for supplies
Or fifty-six blocks of everything under the sun
Soot filled pores and too much traffic
Street sounds to sleep by and a world of opportunities
Crickets and junebugs
The world closes at eight
Nightlife turns into Wal-Mart and Taco Bell
The slow pace of growing grass
The warmth of a winterless Summer
Wishing for a trip across town at 2 a.m. just because they make the best doughnuts

First comes winter. The hardest to survive.
Cold and barren; the frost eats you alive.
Branches of hope bare; leaves of love decayed,
Around your heart and soul, you’ve built a barricade.

Next is the spring; winter gone at last.
The time for new life, no longer bound to your past.
Resilience gave you another chance;
You refuse to look back now, not even a glance.

Now the summer, best season of all.
You think you've moved on, standing proud and tall.
Growing and blossoming towards the sky,
Barely remembering the last goodbye.

Darker nights now autumn is here,
Doubts create fog this time of year.
Leaves of joy and fulfilment are furling and falling,
Memories of lost love you just keep recalling.

Then winter strikes again, but not quite as strong,
You wonder why you still haven’t moved on.
Reliving every mistake and regret,
The frost bites your skin. It won’t let you forget.

The seasons repeat until you become winterless,
Your bark has healed, you are finally splinterless,
Life now a lattice of long summer, carefree spring,
But occasionally the autumn may sometimes creep in.
Or so that is what I hear,
But I still have winter as part of my year.

Hear the motions of the engines,
Speed South to North,
As well North to South,
Care not they, the sounds they make.

It is a confession.
They speed in the land of ****.
It increases, then decreases,
As they travel past, the open window,
Winterless blast, a confession,
It feels close to spring.

Care not a bit that sounds, rude, to those who tomorrow,
Will wake up to snow, while the blizzard sounds here,
Are the rush of thoughtless trucks and cars,
Which are driven at speeds above the posted limit,
Even if they don't have to travel so far,
To get home in the drizzle, to their green grass.

Maybe snow would slow them down,
Or keep them off the road entirely,
No, no, not them, they are rude,
They have this attitude,
Drive like this, no matter what the weather,
They are better than the conditions, they drive in.

Another confession, they are in it to win, and no one
else knows there is a contest and contestants.

What a surPrize!

Hand him a sextant as he drives at night, after all he has to navigate,
Through Facebook and Likes and texts and bytes of downloads from
YouTube...would not want to be fashionably late in reply otherwise
Your social life, and status,
may die.

Trafficking bad habits,
Instead of "look out for the other guy or gal"
The phone and the life it holds,
can be dropped,
"worse than a dropped call",
is all the sirens wail as they go by,
Life in the balance, ghosts
White knuckling it with one hand,
While eyes are fixed, to a deathly white screen
And fingers dance solo in some sexless act,
The result is the same a distracted fact,
The mind is no longer in the car,
It has left the body already,
Waiting for it to die,
Watching from above and reaching to all
Who have fingers and a phone
Wanting to be ghosts and sticking to the life,
Which will make it happen.....by accident.

Drive defensively,
Leave your phone in the trunk.

It is the excitement filled in a world full of opportunities,
It’s about taking a jab at a gateway of possibilities.
A world full of choices where you are invisibly naked,
a place where everything under the sun breathes money that’s sacred.
Where it doesn’t draw its shutters at night, there is always not enough daylight.
The difference that lies between a Lamborghini and a Swift,
it’s how fast you go, not how strong is your drift!

It is this place that I swell up in wordless pity,
At a pace which the grass grows in the warmth of a winterless city.
Fear of embarrassment that kept me from achieving legacy,
told me to stay down and accept my destiny.

Then one day the blue circle sighed into me some sense,
how I could take it lying down with no pretense.
Made a dent in a world that I told me I can’t rise above,
To jab-cross-hook-uppercut with or without a glove.

I maybe a nuisance I maybe a ****,
Yet I grow – while you may never sow a seed.
I am blades of grass down against the wind,
Proving nature’s law is not for the win.
Its not fair that I get to have this much fun,
I will not give up until my time is done.
Poems are made by fools like me,
but who knows one day where I will be!