REVELATION

Tossed myself into shards of a lullaby
I never knew the lyrics to.
Hummed the chorus
And cried for a lonesome
I could never verbalize
Yet aptly described
In expressions unseen.
Then rocked myself until
Morning came.

Found that it took drowning,
Body swept away in the undertow,
To swallow just enough
To quench my need for compassion.

Stumbled into a stack of wood
Laughed at the absurdly obvious realization
That perhaps it was just fire
I'd been lacking all along.

Wayside friends lacking names
By which to attach memories to,
But hers, I could never forget.
Neither could I my own.

Misery slept on the pillow next to my own
Interrupting tranquil dreams to remind me
Of the realities of life I ignored
Until I no longer was able to rest easy.

Prodded me until
I found the right person
While traveling the wrong path
Drank the half empty glass
And enjoyed the clarity of
The glass for its beauty
Rather than the utility
Of The Vessel.

If I weren't alive, alone
I would ask
If water always tasted this divine,
Though I know for me,
It just never did.

PLEDGE TO OSIRIS

My palms hold within their lines
Maps with directions to find
Pieces of you which to all others are unseen
Preordained to locate 13 parts of the King.

I would use my hands to mend you
My knowledge I would willfully forlend too.
Offer my softness so to ease thoughts which trouble you
My strength sacrificed, yours then imbued.
Give freely of myself to nourish you
Then fall 1000 feet in hopes of being captured within your arms.

Would conquer every fear
Trade in society to be shipwrecked there with you
Like Sheba, I would stand in awe of you
Though never could I depart unto a land
wherein your footsteps did never tread.

And when my days were nearing end
I would pray our love would over death transcend
For the 14th part, to return to you then
Jeopardize my own eternity
Just for one final opportunity
To assuage your thirst
and be submerged
in your presence
once
again.

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.

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.

WORST YET TO COME

I am slightly embarrassed to admit
That I misinterpreted his ability
to write journals of insightful poetry
To then mean that he could easily read me.
But the lines at the corners of my eyes
Were seen by him to be only a beautiful sign of aging
And no amount of lyrical lines on a page
Could ever be expressed to him in such a way
That he might then gain an understanding.

Nights of torturous questioning,
words screamed in angered supposition
As another man’s jealous accusations were hurled
Yanking me violently from my slumber
like Cyclonic winds ripping at skin
exposing the skeleton Of some imagined hidden secrets.
Denying sins I had never committed
Giving exacting accounts and details of every minute
Spent out of his presence until such time as he was satisfied
That my eyes weren’t hiding behind them
any
clandestine
meetings.

Beatings for affairs never came
with ample warning in which to escape them
And my attempts to escape from him where always thwarted
By my bodies inability to go without sleep
For that seemed to always be the time in which he captured me
Glaring down with eyes of murderous contempt
His lungs consuming stale air like the bulls charging in Pamplona
Until fists crushed bones like ice
Shattering the security found only in dreamless coma.

And for me, there came no justice
Just us
fighting endless night after another
Police gritting their teeth
inspecting fresh bruises coloring my cheek
Saying to me
“That’s what you white bitches get when you marry brothas.”
And, please, would someone tell me who the hell
Orders of protection serve to protect
To a man who worries not if newspapers
print stories about his crimes
After he’s sent home from doing state time STILL on paper

Years spent contemplating and
seduced by the plotting of his revenge.
For him, not a question of right or wrong,
but rather
just
one
more
good
opportunity.

First steps of freedom upon concrete lead him directly
Into the direction of the city
where I laid my head at night
Locks on doors in hidden buildings are no protection.
Not from a man consumed
by imagined thoughts of my indiscretions
Sensations tingling for slight seconds
before knuckles met flesh.

Only the sandman heard me confess that this time
I wish
he’d
just
kill
me,
for living on the run is slow torturous execution for the crime
Of only attempting of to protect myself.
So forgive me if even though years have passed
I still don't sleep lightly.

Nightmares of the nightmare I survived from
Still taunt me,
and the demons of my past are so haunting
That napping for half hour increments
Leave the skin around my eyes wrinkled.
Though now, the new love I’ve just discovered
Doesn’t understand that
when he pulls the covers over our heads
So as to make love to me in the safety of our bed
I just feel…
uneasy.

Though I may be insecurities about my body
I insist that we still leave the lights on
With a hidden knife close by head
And when he kisses away
the tears from my colorless cheeks
After he shaken me awake from night terrors he
Just doesn’t
Understand.
He whispers sweet, healing poetry
Naively thinking his rhymes can erase these lines
around my eyes

But what he does not know
is that while he rest there comfortably
In the bed at night sleeping
I instead like awake waiting

For the

worst

yet

to come.