He stands with a weight in his hands,
Trying to show me he’s a man.
Asks if I work out,
I reply “Not much.”
Says he can tell I do sometimes,
Tells me he does too.
He wants to get really big,
Bigger than me, obviously,
More like some of the people he’s seen on TV.
He has a crooked tooth,
And a face that shows he’s still well within his youth.
And just began to see men who do
What he wants to do.
Men who lift weights
Because they don’t work all day,
Slaving away,
Building muscle because they have to be strong
To make a living wage.
But his goal seems somewhat unstable
Like he’s not sure if he’s able
To look like these new heroes.
Partly, he’s right.
He doesn’t look all too imposing
Built more for agility than might.
But in this new world, there is so much
One can be.
It seems unrealistic
To think realistically.
So he lifts the weight
And I’m sure he’ll grow strong as an ox.
He’s spent to long elsewhere
To not know what he’s got,
Here, among dumbbells and a bench,
Where men and women worry
About not being skinny enough.
Because, in the end, for most,
It’s not so tough to fill their stomachs up.
To complain about being too stuffed.
And to look to a television screen
And see the actors muscular and lean.
And think,
“That could be me.”
Our dreams are about better clothes and more money
And very rarely nightmarish memories
Of running and screaming.
Of fleeing our home countries
Barely understanding the reasons
To live somewhere else where people have the freedom
To be pigs,
To get big,
To be anything,
Or at least to stand,
Looking at the man on TV,
Lifting a weight,
And imagine how grand
It would be to be that way.


I sit at a desk.
This girl seems more on task than all the rest.
They filter through Facebook feeds,
And play online computer games,
Amazing, teenagers seem to all have the same needs.
But not her, with curly short hair.
She’s not there to simply stare
At a computer screen and pretend she doesn’t care
About her future.
She’s playing catch up
And the game is rigged against her.
And the problems on her paper
Are harder than I can ever remember math being.
So she and I sit at the desk and frown.
Computer games and status updates all around.
And a roar of laughter,
Yet the most deafening sound
Is the silence
Of not knowing what that equation meant.
So we skip that problem,
Try our hand at some others
To see if two minds can solve them.
It seems like a teenager
Should never have to do this complex math
But until she gets her grade up,
It’s all that lies in her path.
I realize, sitting there,
That I never had to work this hard.
She only understands
Every other word I say
Well enough to know how to make
Square roots and fractions
Do some unknown action
So that’s why it’s taking
So long.
She has to learn how to survive,
Live life,
Get by
In a world that is not her own.
And at the same time, somehow also grow
Into a young lady who knows
Complex arithmetic.
I wish I could just lift her up
Give her just a bit of the privilege
I grew up with.
A grandmother who taught me subtraction
When I could barely walk.
In a country where my parents talked
In the same language I heard
On the streets.
At the store.
In my school.
I want nothing more than to make it easier
For her to just be her.
Because she puts in more effort
Than I ever considered.
My success has never felt so undeserved.
But that’s what you realize among the underserved.
This isn’t fair,
For the girl with the short hair
Frowning next to me in her chair.


We both like to sit on the side of the room
And watch other people.
It’s just one of those things that you do
As you get older.
But, then again, that doesn’t explain her.
Because compared to me,
She’s at least a few years younger.
Still, we sit and we watch.
Me: because I don’t belong.
Her: because she does.
You see, I watch them sing and dance
Some of the older kids try their hand
At a bit of romance.
For me, it’s almost like a study.
It’s opening my eyes to a different way to be.
For her, long frizzy hair under a loose hat,
Of course, it’s just life.
It’s being in a strange place,
But finding somewhere
Where you belong.
People who know your dances and your songs.
Who don’t correct your words
In the fourth language you’ve learned,
Just because you got the tense wrong.
She watches because she sees
More than fun and games.
She sees her home.
She sees herself.
To join in would be
To become too much a part of it
To realize she’s a part of it.
To dance would be to quit being the dancer.
Sing, and she would not be the singer.
So we both sit at the side of the room.
Watching
Laughing
Knowing
That something more is happening here.
Something that, to a passerby,
Would never be clear.
There is brilliance in how freely they move,
Knowing that once they leave the room
There will be a part of them they lose.
They will return to their homes,
Sometimes alone,
To take care of a family of brothers and sisters
Mostly on their own.
Tomorrow, they will return to that scary place
Where they’re judged, not just for their race
But for being unique.
For being extraordinary.
Some may be ostracized,
Because difference in origin is not tolerated
In many high schoolers’ eyes.
But not here.
That’s not what we see.
Here, they are free.
And I know that it means something different to her
Than to me,
But it’s the reason we’ll always sit
On the side of the room
On our own,
Watching,
Smiling,
Knowing
That this place has truly become their home.

When dinosaurs walked the land,
Africa and the Americas
Fit together like it was planned.
And, still, to this day,
It seems like you can tell,
They were built for each other,
They fit so well.

I think that’s a bit like you and me,
Though I’m not sure if there’s destiny.
Cause our fingers entwine,
And I hold your body next to mine,
It seems to me like we were perfectly aligned.
Like some tectonic force
Separated us long ago.
Only to unite, here,
For reasons we’ll never know.

But now I wonder,
Seeing how lonesome the lands seem
To be separated by such an impassible sea:
Whether we’ve already crossed ours,
Or whether an Atlantic Ocean
Still lies in the future
For you and me.

I never realized how warm my fingers were
Until they were pressed to my skull.
Never realized how they seem harder,
In some way, than even metal.
And believe me,
Right now, I would know.
I know I won’t feel the heat;
Not really. It’ll be too quick.
But I can feel each knuckle now,
Their sharpness should make me sick.
Because if I take them off my skin,
I know I’ll be doomed,
As long as they’re there,
My ambition is pointed at the roof.
Even if I do, I want them to be last
Of the things that my body feels.
Because, even as they stab into me,
I’ve never felt a peace this real.
The moment of calm, before the storm.
No sun has ever felt so warm.
Maybe that’s where it’s all gone.
My extremities stealing the fire
That began in my heart,
All along.
Maybe I’ll stay here forever,
Never moving my hand.
Never following through
With this most recent plan.
And maybe that will be enough.
My fingers are so warm,
Pressed to my skull.
I won’t take them off
Until they make me feel whole.

No one would come to the funeral for Earth
Or for Sol or the whole Milky Way,
So insignificant in the grand scheme.
It's easy to think that our worth
Is really not much to say.

I feel so small
Because I don't really matter.
It's the undeniable truth,
That we are all
Only loose collections of matter.

And we are but part of part
Of part of part of part
Of the universe as a whole.
And if we died right now,
There'd be no one else to know.

Or if they did, someone somewhere,
With galactic cable or pay-per-view,
Our series finale would not impress.
They'd watch Earth fade without a care.
The credits would leave out the extras,
Me and You.

Trying to rip a paper down the middle,
Because I only need a half sheet.
And as I'm ripping it,
It does one of those little microtears by the hole punch,
Where it tears away from the line that I'm trying to rip it at.
You know, the thing where you're like,
"Paper can't you just follow directions?"
Picture it?
Okay.

It tore on either side of the hole punch.
And for a moment,
I reflected on how incredible that was.
How beautiful the forces that move things are.
You see, in trying to tear the paper along my little pre-folded line,
I put pressure on both sides of the paper.
Near the hole, that pressure became too much.
In an instant, one side of the hole punch began to tear a little,
And allowed for some of that pressure to be dissipated.
But it wasn't enough in that instant, so the other side tore.

By the time that both sides split,
The pressure was no longer too much
And it didn't tear any further.
Though the paper is non-living,
Let alone non-sentient,
It follows the same doctrine that living beings do:
Give a little so that you needn't give a lot.
It tore just enough
To no longer need to tear any further.

Perhaps this is not so brilliant.
Perhaps all things simply tear
Until the force exerted cannot tear them anymore.
Perhaps that is how we work too,
And we only ascribe some sort of meaning
To the fact that we stop tearing.
Perhaps the very nature of being able to tear
Includes within itself the inevitability
Of not tearing anymore.

Disheartening, maybe,
Because it means that we are not the arbitrators of our defense,
That resistance may be futile,
And we need only allow our own microtears
To dissipate the forces which barrage us
To stop their onslaught.
Empowering, maybe,
Because the paper did not give all of itself,
But only enough to allow itself to not be torn any more.
How indestructible may we be,
If we only drop our defenses a little?

And yet, perhaps not,
For it was only each half which succeeded.
We mustn't forget our dear friend the 11" by 8",
Which was torn asunder
Even as his fragments held true.

Some forces are just too strong.

I'm the man women write poems about.
No, not the love poems.
Not the ones with a tear and a smile.
There're no daisies, or roses.
No dances in the moonlight
I'm not the Mr. Right,
And we never have the perfect love.

I'm also not the bad boy
That they knew was wrong.
The smile and the wink
That lead them to what they think
Was the greatest year of their life.
And the worst.
I'm not nearly that exciting,
Or simple.

That just leaves one more
That women rhyme about.
The one that seemed perfect,
The one who they thought
THEY would break.
The one that tricked them.

The one who fixed them,
For a time.
And got them to believe in something,
Again.
But that's just the beginning of the poem,
Prior to en media res.
The rest
Is about how they were SO wrong.

Somewhere I become the villain
Because I held their hand
Then let go.
It's not something I intend.
Just what continually seems
To happen.
I emerge unscathed.
THEY don't emerge.

Or if they do,
It's not the same.
Those poems are about being wrecked
By the guy they thought cared.
The guy they thought would stay.
The guy that came so close
And then just drifted away.

But the tragedy, for me,
Is that I believe
All of those things too.
I DO care.
I AM the right guy.
I guess the best way to fool someone
Is to fool yourself first.

Denied
Pushed-aside
Objectified
The responsibility
For inequity
Lies upon my ancestry
And now comes down to me.
Because we've lived so long
Seeking to prolong
The ways of keeping others down
Because they have a different creed
Or because their skin is brown
And maybe now,
We've settled some scores,
But there are still more
That remain unresolved
And even more left in store.
Because we now judge those who's ideas we deem poor
And those who's love an ancient book abhors.
And we try to hide
And deride
And ostracize
Those who differ from our way of life
To the point
That some are driven to suicide.
It was long ago that someone first hated
And we've evolved,
But that issue is unabated.
And the calls of those hungry for
Change
Have not been satiated.
Because there won't be change until we ourselves make it.
And we can't fake it.
It has to be real.
Something that you cant just hear
But also feel.
Because hatred never wins a war
But only prolongs it with more
Bloodshed
More minds, bodies and souls dead.
And no one left unaffected.
Acceptance is what we need
And less reward for human greed.
Because the truly great are those who feed
The hungry sick and poor,
And change the minds of those who settle for inequality
It can be you or me
Who leads
Others to clarity,
With words or actions which broadcast unity.
And when others listen and understand,
We may create a land
Where people can finally, truly feel free.