PALOMAS

Produce withering in the rays of a hot fruit stand, market littered with footsteps of shoppers without coin in hand. He reads the paper.


Hears Jorge García singing Sin Título. Grapples to translate the words, imagines himself into another life. Dreams of loves never had.


Weathered shoes and borrowed time. Rough hands and brown bag aspirations that never transpired. Marvels at the vision of a son with his eyes. Knows better.


No grandchildren to bequeath his stand to, nor dance with to the refrains he sings. Words don't aptly describe hell.


Touched, though never loved. There was one who shared his time, but left with heart and cash in hand. He never missed either.


Dusk settles upon the crates he taps spoon rhythms onto. Eyes water as silhouettes of puerile notions ease out of view.


Knees ache from wartime harms. Melons and mangoes are stored within walls he built with dreams. Plump orange tossed in air before put in pocket.


Theft means little when what is taken, you possess already. Dust upon perspired skin dirties a tattered neckline. Harm isn't done when the hole where heart once was is filled with song.


Lyrics are sung off key in tongues replaced by imagined scenes only.

Tomorrow will come again. And again once more.

CONVERSATION WITH MR. YESTERDAY

You say you miss me, you say you can't stand it,
Dreaming of my kisses, got you shiverin' under blankets
You claim you touch you when recallin' how I work it
But you worked yourself out of this blessing
And now you think just [cuz] you're on my cell midnight confessing
That I would retract my words? Naw baby, you're mistaken.


All that beggin' and pleading, just has me further seeing
You for who you truly are, and though you call me Hollywood
Baby, I ain't no star and I ain't fallin'
For that ish you call "just being real"
Because for real, I'm over it
and over you.

Even though you can't forget my thighs
Or the poetry I whispered to you in the night
I think you should know,
That you’re not the only man that blows up my phone,
Interrupting my artistic maneuvers at night
Begging for another chance,
Because I turned them out like lights.


Left in the dark with no explanation
Shaking their heads in anxious contemplation
So don't think you're special or that I might cave
Our short time together was just another day
On a calendar of my past
I don't remember the specifics
But I know it didn't last
So please, quit dialing those digits.
Here’s a parting gift for you, baby,
It’s a program, now get with it.

COLLOQUIAL TORMENTRY

Much as the argument between repetition and redundancy, If I were to make for myself a mental inventory 
Of the attributes that hold for me the most appeal 
Your characteristics would fail to meet vital criteria  

Yet, 
I feel entranced, 
as though 

you 

have put

a trance on me.  

You fill my senses with participles and pronouns 
Conjunctions of spirits, infinitive as to sound 
Verbal liquor I want to taste, willfully drink down 
Languishing on phrasal flirtations,  
A fusion of two minds, surprised to have found.  

Tone inflections ever linger, as I contemplate how it is 
I could be so enamored with simple adjectives.  
Whispering emotions between strings of font and rhetoric 
Though I try desperately to remain complacent  
I've resolved that it's an action of futility.  

As no matter how many sentences I formulate 
Instructing my heart to keep you at a distance emotionally,  
In the end,  
I still want you desperately. 

The torque of this magnetized poetry  
Has me in the grips of colloquial tormentry 

Yet I must admit,  
that your diction feels 

so

damn 

good to me.

FISHING IN WINTER

Muddy worm held between two fingers
and our giggles carried like the wind across
the pond waters before us.

"If I catch a fish, I'm letting it go,"
I said with mocked defiance to my sister,
two years younger
but older than her days of calendar.

"I can't kill the worm either,
you'll have to do it."

Taking the wriggling thing from me
and laying it out flat in her hand,
we both stared transfixed
as it balled up.

"He wants to be free, I think."
She looked with intent towards the water,
tears in eyes not spilling over.

Shivers from breezes not external shook us both,
as dusk held off
for our decision.

Minutes passed,
while God turned his indulgent gaze
away from us,
though briefly.

Our eyes watched the movement of a turtle
slowly climbing atop a felled sapling.

"We could drown ourselves here
and no one would look for us,"
her voice barely audible.

The worm shrunken atop the lines of her palm
rolled slightly.

"Ok, but let's let him go first, please.”
This said twice,
as I thought the lack of response
reflected her not hearing my whisper.

Nervously,
I looked then over rounded shoulder
towards the house I knew to
be deserted.

She kneeled down upon
sunken footsteps freshly made
and set the worm
gently into one of the tracks.

"It's too cold to drown today, Sis,
so we'll wait until it's warmer, ok?"
she rhetorically asked,
without need of answer.

Helping her up from the ground,
we walked together,
arms linked in solidarity.

Trudging through tall grasses,
we headed towards the corn field,
our favorite hiding spot.

We began singing quietly in sibling unison,
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
you make me happy, when skies are gray."

Death postponed needs no explanation,
neither did our pain.

I turned to whistle for our two puppies to follow,
but they stayed there,
resting on the banks,
without ever looking towards us.

FIRST MUSE

In memory you exist. The first day, the first moment, it all speaks of eyes which saw my future.

Walking into a house not of my own, I paused in front of the kitchen door. And there stood you.

A man mopping, ringing water out into a plastic bucket with fingers long, brown. Long tendrils of dreadlocks tied back.

Exhibited no shame for cleaning the floor in a house where four women sat in corners of large stuffed sofas.

One of those women sat eating red twisted licorice, womb swollen from recent growth of pregnancy you thought you created.

She spoke to me of winter's early arrival, oblivious to the bulging muscles in your arms. Forearms extended as you mopped in straight motions, 6'2" never seemed so tall to me previously.

"Clean that stove out too," she ordered, stirring the newborn from sleep. Tiny fingers, clinched, going to pursed lips which did not open to cry.

You looked at me for the first time, as I raised head from the boy to your hands, your eyes.

Frightened from guttural want, girlish desire, I turned eyes of guilt to floor.

Words of farewell spoken, exit quickly taken. A virginal girl's discomfort exampled in my haste. We neither one spoke, nor looked to the other.

I left you, yet carried you with me.

My stanzas summoned you for weeks. Being alone ceased to mean lonesome, when thoughts of you gave me comfort. I thought I must be mad. My aching left me angry with myself.

When next I saw those hands, two winters had passed.

Eyes met yours on Chicago deli corner. Frigid air inhaled as your smile forced harsh breath into my lungs.

You raised your fingers to lips, breath cold, blowing white air from between knuckles, "You ready for Christmas?" you asked.

I did not speak, could not, just nodded yes.

Could think only of lips and lust and hell and sin.

I lowered my eyes to feet, the only part of my anatomy not hot with flush of innocent blushing.

Fingertips under tip of chin and raising my eyes to yours, "What book is that you're hiding in the bend of your elbow?"

Your voice, which still today narrates dreams which come too often, startled me. The tone deep and laughing, you knew.

"Speak To Me," said as I looked down more to avoid the humor apparent in the creases of your eyes, than to the title I was well familiar with. "It's an anthology of poetry written by women."

So gently you took the book from my fingers, gloved in black leather.

"If you want this back, you'll let me buy you a cup of tea and read me a poem."

We walked in slow steps, the chill of wind no longer of consequence. You led me into the cafe which these days I visit to memorialize our life together.

You asked what first I would read to you. I chose Agneta Ara's "Longing Is Betrayal Of Oneself." We both laughed easily at my choice, but no amusement was felt after the lines had left my lips.

Our voices silent for long moments, as we drank tea and looked at each other, remembering former lives we must have lived together. Spoke of clandestine intersections. Of water. Of philosophy. Of jazz. Of possibilities.

"I've thought of those damn green eyes of yours so many times," you said then.

I smiled as I sipped my first cup of hot tea with cream. "Oh did you?"

You slid the book across the table then. Leafed through earmarked pages and began to read "Sometimes I Dream" by Ingela Standberg.

No poem since has so vestured me.

NATIVE AMERICAN ASSENTATION

Condensation of spirit
Compensation for the soul.
Reparations for genocidal warfare,
Attrition clearing protocol.

Remediation hindered by lack of contrition,
Ultimate sacrifices go without memorialization.
Generations birthed forth without possession,
Bequeathed little else than feted urban legends.

Homages to the martyrs lack substantiate pacification.
Revolutionized hearts harbor guttural aversions.
Embers igniting from ancestral communications.

Come one, come all,
to the Wonderland of
Equal Opportunity Extermination!

Stand behind fences,
throwing sympathetic glances in our direction.
Mass produced dream catchers,
the souvenirs of your amaurotic vacation.

Tranquilized dishonesty controls not the whispered rebellion.
This tour has now ended,
the last stop on the visitation of Native American assentation.

Declaration of War, Securing The Peace

Peace does not come as a result of silence.
And sometimes holding ones tongue
Serves only the purpose of choking yourself.
Swallowing on words unsaid and gagging
From the thickness of suffering
With taste of mud and grit of sand.

Rotten like fruit left out to spoil
In hot rays of sunshine
Which give life
Yet boil
blisters upon the albino skin
of whitewashed histories.

Fusion ignites as hate darkens eyes
like pigmentation gone awry
Looking out from muted faces
Lips closed while the mind races
Without action.

Sermons are to be preached
Even if it is to mirrored glasses.
Looking at oneself and acknowledging
The truth of ones nature,
No longer giving out passes
To those who trespassed against you for their own pleasure.

So you pour salts steadily into
wounds to remind you
Of pains purposely inflicted,
For times when secrets constricted.

Closing off breaths of fresh air
While behind the pigmentation of dark iris
Your eyes stared
Out at the world which doled out harm
Like garbage piled deep in landfill farms.

Raising stench like cattle, and diseases like produce.
Strangling love, preferring to breed abuse.
Fertilizing death like flowers which bloom.

Though the rain is too acidic to quench my thirst
I declare war so as to preserve life
Force my voice to erupt like seeds from the Earth,
Not gently peeking out
But pushing forth with such voracity
The dirt can not contain it
And if peace is not planted
I will claim it
With words that can not be stifled
Take aim with vocal armory, shot like rifles.

I won’t wait for social justice with tongue tied
Proclamations of happened transgressions
I refuse to hide
Under blankets of whispers and fear.
Don’t hold your ears near,
As I am prone to scream.

I refuse to let the refuse which was bequeathed to me
Lie buried inside quietly
Yes, I vow to declare war for the purpose of peace...
Boisterously
So that others like me
Will not
have to suffer
alone,
silently.

LONESOME FOR THE TRUTH

In the aftermath hurricanes of circumstance
a poet clings to her words.
Divulging skeletons publicly seems absurd,
preferring to abnegate the hurt,
surrendering truths serves only to disconcert
so you whisper
your thoughts
to paper.

The line between craft and life
your heart never distinguished.
Your inherent impulse can not be extinguished.
Rejection of the gift a pursuit in futility,
like a wild animal kept in captivity,
you may cage it, but you can’t tame it.

So inevitably
the truth pours from your lips.
Your mind is the womb, giving birth from your hips
Of experience.

Your lyrical conceptions are born,
narrator and mother,
under the shield of vocabulary
you seek cover.
You hide in the stanzas,
finding refuge in the arms of poetic answers.

Oxygenating your soul,
expressions you can not control
it’s as natural as breathing.
Prose keeps your pulse beating.
Inhaling the future, exhaling the past,
the present martyr of verses so vast,
You’re forced to make a truce.
Because misery may love company,
but you live lonesome
for
the
truth.

OUT OF THE FOG

Shadows are only noticeable when the light serves to illuminate their presence. 

The moon's entrancing glow would be lost should the opaque frame about it not exist. 

And without having had the experience of losing you, Depth of loss and endurance of grief would be lost to me. 

Clichés don't fit all situations. Sometimes pain needs no further description. Supplications are expressed when vehemence of blows are swift with fury. 
Minds race in circles without benefit of corners with which to take shelter in.
Though I might have prayed to God that my soul be saved,  
I have been damned by this constant state of lacking.

I point with fingers laced with gloves of hidden feelings.
I gauge my progression by the dissipation of staggered breaths.
When hands no longer clinch, for broken promises can't be held onto forever.
Empty arms collapse to sides when energy is drained upon dreams ending.
Astern steps I will no longer be retracing,
as I am finally letting you go.

I just pray that the luminosity of love, 
Shared when breath still filled lungs strong from youth 
Will guide your shadow in yesterday's fog,

Out of the darkness one day, 

None 

Too 

Soon.