Straight From the Pencil

2012-01-08T10:09:00.001-08:00

I live authentically after midnight. Free
the locs of my hair. Disrobe
from this disingenous uniform; the symbols
of a surrealist reality that make dreaming possible.

I enjoy the nightlife provided by my couch,
an errant scrap of paper, an upright pencil.

The I who I am when I'm allowed to be real:
doesn't want power
doesn't want authority
doesn't want to wake-up one day and find my mask melded on.

Using Houdini methodology, I slip my bonds
dislocate my smile
to a time more suitable; a place less demanding.
A disappearing act, where I'm allowed to be more
me.

Psalms for the Disaffected

2011-12-27T21:54:00.000-08:00

We pledge allegiance with phantom limbs, over
the ill-stitched holes of our hearts.

Anomalies

2011-09-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

Poem #100 and I wrote this at work using only the letters from ^that word.

Soon’s a snail moan
slime line ill on saline
a lesson lost: all men lie…

An alias no name alien;
I sin no less,
Am insane—an ass…

All moons name me: alone.

Smile mama, loan me some ease,
a sail, some sol
sell me a session
mail me a sea.

Exit 17B

2011-09-17T20:31:00.001-07:00

I have known highways
and been a one-night stand
to exit ramps.

Steam

2011-07-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

You are another copper heart in a world of copper pieces. A hydraulic pump. A tin filament sorting through impurities. You are the crankshaft on the zeppelin mother-ship; your flywheel is spinning rapidly, uncontrolled. Break our ribcages open and watch our cogs countdown. Watch us become obsolete. Watch our mechanisms rust till they're irreplaceable. Watch us run dry, watch us die.

Touch

2011-07-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

Nerve endings like outstretched fingers,
hoping for a grip, a grasp
a touch.

There are promises whirling the tips of each pad,
epidermal edicts against being senseless.

Pollination

2011-05-08T18:14:00.000-07:00

Intuitively dandelions burst forth
a million wishes floating; dreams of chaos.

Weeds have already championed Darwin. Proliferate unchecked,
unbalanced equations of what equals beauty.

Blind your eyes of the beholder; you would settle for what is common. Mudane
in your ability to hate the thorns, but love a rose.

PAD2011 - Day 3

2011-04-03T21:42:00.001-07:00

I could take these steps
stumble towards you; oasis.
Drown in your waters that may be sands
or may be the one place I could imagine staying,
if it exist-- if you exist. I could stumble into you,
home after a night of binge drinking;
if I didn't think I imagined you real

PAD2011 - Day 2

2011-04-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Lotto

Luck is an algorithm
a charmed penny stuck next to the pocket lint
in your jeans. The last crumbled bill is a wish
a dream on a variable schedule. Pavlov
standing behind bulletproof glass.

You scratch to the rhythm of a bell.

PAD2011 - Day 1

2011-04-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

Maybe I've always been here
right here and you've always been right next to me
or behind. In the peripheral you look taller
or wiser or less devious than you act. Maybe
I look exactly the same through narrowed eyes
and maybe I'm invisible or there's an outline where I stand
a place filler, a human bookmark.

Cybergenetics

2011-02-15T18:15:00.000-08:00

Listening: Janelle Monae - ArchAndroid

Name one thing you'll never let rust red,
corrode...

because there are jagged holes about you, tinman.
You wires are crisscrossed and short circuiting;
synapses misfire.

Recycled, thin copper heart
conduit for false electrical impulses
stay steady, mechanical monstrosity
do that for which you're built.

Another android acquiescing to acting inhumanely,
another human marking time unemotionally.

These are the things ticking pass us; none
programmed for self-repair.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 21

2010-11-21T19:37:00.000-08:00

Start by saying "please..."
bite your bottom lip , pout, and flutter those lashes;
sucker punch the part of me the would say "no."

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 20

2010-11-21T19:30:00.000-08:00

There are two lips, or four if we're technical,
they are pressed together
they are hoping for a spark, a hint, a clue; they are unlucky dreamers,
their hopes are dying in their throats.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 19

2010-11-19T19:40:00.000-08:00

There is an emptiness you can't fulfill,
the minus you that fills the air completely.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 18

2010-11-18T17:50:00.002-08:00

I lost you somewhere, I think; or you found me
written on the inside of your wrist, tangled
with your flawed veins
I was just damaged enough to be completely perfect.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 17

2010-11-17T17:58:00.000-08:00

Tell Me Why the Toilet Tissue is Locked in the Trunk of My Car

And I'm sitting upstairs in the middle of this red brick building
behind the locked door of my loft
behind the open door of the bathroom
(because the space is nothing but air and me). I'm wearing a grimace
a palm thrown dramatically to slap my forehead. This is stupid,
and sitting here wondering isn't helping the tissue get here
not quicker, not sooner, not at all.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 16

2010-11-16T19:35:00.001-08:00

Why Card House Always Topple...

Because it is midway through the 11th month and half the day is already over. Because the fall is not the season of love. Because everything around us is dying...including us. Because I have walls, but no windows or doors. Because you can't be someone's shadow without sunshine and it's been raining nonstop for weeks. Because your best friend hats me and frankly I'm not too fond of her either. Because I'm socially awkward and I haven't learned how to hide it. Because I can't trust in something I'm not sure exists and although you are the most tangible thing in my reality I can't allow myself to submerge in you.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 15

2010-11-15T20:51:00.001-08:00

Peeking out the door
my breath comes in steady bursts. The quiet stretches
its legs and eases into warm comfort.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 14

2010-11-14T08:04:00.001-08:00

I saw the bricks falling ahead of me
golden and glinting in the sun. Make me more promises
swear by things we can't keep; turn doughnuts
parking lot dragster, I can keep up. I don't look it,
but I prefer the asphalt
gravel and dirt roads. Simplicity to the complex. Silver
to a Golden road. I don't believe in Oz
or wishes or Ruby slippers. I believe in weed-wackers, machetes
and finger nails caked in dirt.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 13

2010-11-14T08:02:00.000-08:00

Why so serious?

Tell me if it's so crazy to smile?
Hysterical, the irony of laughter. Chuckle
now. Cry only when it's appropriate. Come costumed, a clown
juggling the masks you have to wear to survive.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 12

2010-11-12T06:15:00.000-08:00

The weakest point in the chain is where the kink is;
the part that keeps knotting in on itself. The ends are moving
away from the center towards infinity
and that kink just tightens, pressured
until it breaks. You couldn't care if it breaks. It's not you.
Not you breaking into pieces. You had the common sense to be steel,
and steel can't bend backwards to fortify nickel.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 11

2010-11-11T14:04:00.000-08:00

No One Wants You...

I'm known to be mean, but not cruel;
not an ugliness that likes to tear things apart. And I could shred you,
toss you like confetti; but I don't
thought about it , but didn't. I can't find my pleasure
in your pain; the sight of you cracked and holding pieces of yourself in.
I am no longer a hero, but I won't be your villain either.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 10

2010-11-11T13:55:00.000-08:00

To say my heartbeats is redundant;
of course it beats, hard, in my chest
but it's just because I'm alive
or it's Thursday
not because of your presence
it's never been you.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 9 (two for tuesday)

2010-11-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

Not until death. Run as if life is something escapable.
No one gets out alive. Be a torch, burning. Be
the ashes, not the darkness. Be the light...
Be the only thing that shimmers
like a river bed full of washed over rocks. Don't stop.
Not until death.

Breathe. While the lights streak pass
like a carousel ride, a carnival of neon. There won't always be more time.
There will always be days you're burning at both ends. Days you are the wax
not the wick. Deeply, breathe
and step lightly, the stones are loose here.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 8

2010-11-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

Can we agree you're a bitch? I'm willing to concede
I'm an asshole. We can agree that we're both bottled up issues.
Though you can't believe you're less than perfect,
and I'm pretty sure my mother still thinks I'm great. You disagree.
Which is fine, great, fan-fucking-tastic; let's just agree to disagree.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 7

2010-11-07T18:57:00.000-08:00

Pro-bed

There is an empty bed
or not so empty their are clean clothes curled like a sleeping body
on the left side. Pillows tumble on top of each other, an unkempt mountain.
I shape myself, spooning the clothing. It's cold
and blankets call my name. I answer, a whisper with closed eyes.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 6

2010-11-06T20:57:00.001-07:00

Looking for the Man...

Peering at me over her glasses she sighs--disappointment;
I am not the woman she planned on me being. Not the vision
of ladylike endeavors. She knows somewhere there's a "he" to make me more
"she"
less it. At least that's how she's always seen it. How she's trying
to teach me to see it; but I'm too old for secondary education. To set
in the comfort of my mold. Or maybe neither of us have walked
each other footsteps and maybe neither of us is ever going to...

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 5

2010-11-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

I was born bare-boned, a skeleton. Threw on a bodysuit
of muscles, a coat of skin. I have been becoming,
not yet settled on been; growing into being.
I have swallowed a muscle built like concrete
and let it sink, weighing me as less than worthy.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 4

2010-11-04T19:27:00.000-07:00

Because veins are not highways
I cannot travel the tips of your outstretched fingers
the inside curve of your elbow
sloping under your breasts to your heart.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 3

2010-11-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

It's easier to get warmer than cooler
add another blanket
or two. Cuddle with a pillow
or five and burrow into the mattress. Hibernate.
When you awake the sun will be half passed midday
the season will be in full swing.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 2

2010-11-02T16:43:00.000-07:00

I can tell you about concrete. Tell you
about barb wire, about burnt bridges and bruised bones.
Love, is not something that can be deciphered
or explained; it has a language
my heart is just now learning...at least it thinks.

I can tell you about murmurs. Tell you
about holes, monitors and clogged arteries.
I can illuminate the tangible, the constant. I cannot tear
these foundations asunder and rebuild.

NovPAD 2010- Day 1

2010-11-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

Taking cues from the Poetic Asides Blog I'm going to try to post a poem a day for the entire month of November...it may get a bit dicey at the end though because I'm moving the week after Thanksgiving. Anyways, here we go:

Stand still, stand perfectly still. When you look back there will be no footprints--
the trail you blazed will have been swept away.
Toss away your book of matches and curl into yourself.
She was always miles ahead of you, I was ever the omnipotent narrator.
I'm unable to write happy endings, so you can just stand still,
stand perfectly still
wait for her to run back while you watch her run away.

Red Bull

2010-10-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

I crave wings
call me Daedalus, Icarus
Earthbound Seraphim. I will flex my naked shoulders, subconsciously
and dive for the sun.

*this came about from being very very very tired one day and being stuck alone to fight sleepiness alone...*

How to Be a Vampire....

2010-09-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

(This poem is really one of my favs right now...cuz of the snark and fun of it...)

No matter what be brooding
even if you’re usually carefree and spry;
be brooding. Be dark, mysterious, and cryptic.
Speak needlessly in painstaking riddles,
don’t speak at all. Avoid humans.
Live among them, but separate; blend
into them seamlessly
a cousin, an uncle,
a long dead mother. Expose your bloodlust.

Sue Whedon for defamation of character.
Start an evolutionary phase of mankind: Vote ‘Yes’ on Vampire Proposition 9.
Stay hidden. Scoff at the caricatures of yourself and other monsters.

Believe you are demons
believe you are cursed
or normal
or Gods.

At all costs avoid the sun! You will crisp
like a Peking duck
or instantaneously cremate
or implode
or explode
or at high moon you’ll weaken like a coward avoiding a gunfight
or it will have no effect on you at all,
and you’ll wonder how Hollywood comes up with these things
or you’ll do something ridiculous like sparkle.

Please whatever you do don’t fucking sparkle.

And drink blood
while you’re searching centuries for your mate
or before you escape the sunlight in your coffin;
while you fight hunters or slayers of werewolves
or each other. Anita Blake
or Blade of the Vampaneze.
Drink blood.
Take lives of take only what you need.
Take animals or humans, but take.
And when you’re done taking remember to brood.

Submerged

2010-09-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

The decisiveness I lack I make up in dreaming
the ability of my off-sync heart to unscrew your hinges.
I see you better than you see yourself
and I always see me the same: a little abstract
like a pointillist painting from a distance;
the colors are all bleeding together,
into something that could be beautiful if it tried.
I’ve never been known to try
too hard.

I can’t tell you where I’ll be in five years
or five months or five minutes, but I know my heart is nothing
if not potential
like I am waiting to be sprung kinetic
like I am waiting for you to realize I am 75% water; you can drown in me.

Blitz Poem

2010-08-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

Got this Idea from Robert Brewer's Poetry Asides and tweaked it a bit to work for me...

It's sketchy at best...I mean I finished it earlier today on my last break...so, let me know:

It Opposite Death

For the ladies,
for the hell of it!
“It just happens sometimes…”
“It just went that way…”
Way we might have gone;
way of our fists.
Fisting my way through life,
fists clenched.
Clenching muscles, cramped.
Clenching, grinding teeth.
Teeth, forced smile.
Teeth chemically altered white.
White masked malignant,
white walls.
Walls, in an ever shrinking box;
walls padded and restraining.
Restraining order;
restraining our hands.
Hands: scarred and peeling.
Hands: out, open, upturned…
Upturned life,
upturned and carefully chaotic.
Chaos in the middle of order.
Chaotic designed survival.
Outsurviving the fittest,
Survival against the odds.
Odd, that we have turned to this…
Odd, that I am me not we…
We are, that, which we are not…
We diverge on forked paths;
paths cemented in bones,
paths of which only our strides are aware;
aware that we are moving,
aware that any moment we could stop:
Stop pretending.
Stop breathing.
Breathing in slow and deliberate.
Breathing out shaky and shallow.
Shallow thoughts lead to empty plans.
Shallow dreams lead to empty hearts.
Heart un-begrudging its beating.
Heart fortified for fighting.
Fighting: because we were born brandishing tiny fists.
Fighting: because we don’t know a better way to survive.
Survive another sunset.
Survive because the only other option is death…
Death, because you stood too still;
death because you were too scare to move.
Moving
Still…

Another Wayward Love Letter to Atlanta

2010-08-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

I’m still wondering if you can be homeless and homebound at the same time? Concurrently adrift and set to some unknown path. A lighted beacon, a glowing hearth…
I know without realizing I don’t belong or realize without speaking the words.
I know you write love letters to Chicago, Providence, New York; I leave post-its for Atlanta on my fridge. We only speak in snippets; terse conversation of an impeding divorce. She wishes I’d sign the papers already and leave. And I wonder if we were ever in love or in love with the idea of being so.
I wonder if this was a marriage of convenience. She kept me afloat for a while…
And perhaps, I owe her something for this, roses on the eve of tomorrows that might never come. She always tried harder than I to make this work.
I’m still wandering towards something that instinctually feels like home. Both well aware she can’t be it for me, no lighted beacon, no glowing hearth; but she leaves the lamp on in case—still lost—I find myself stumbling back.

Making Arrangements

2010-07-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

My left breast vibrates insistently, midday
a Morse code: ._. . ._ _.. . _ _.. …_ _ _ _ .._ … (rendezvous)

there is no silly sentiment in the urgency of your texts
no imagined fantasy of candlelight and rekindled romances.
Whisper her: “I miss you’s…’”
Growl I: “Fuck Me’s…”

Guttural and moaning are the only ways I recognize your voice. Save
the subtlety for her; reserve the hotel room with cash for me.

Have no expectations of coherent conversations
or afterglow spooning; no hopes for exhaling
“I love you’s…”

And I’ll quiet my snickers as you lie her beguiling “sweet dreams”
and scream when you balance me quivering a secret you can’t keep.

Mesopotamia

2010-06-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

I have daydreamed of you
my palm cupping the underside of your earth. My hand
impossibly perfected your diameter, molded
to your curving horizon.

Three heartbeats in sync...

I find myself cradling you while you cradle
life; call me Atlas enamored with her weight
call this the new geocentric galaxy and I'll be a faithful satellite;
or keep my arm pretending the Euphrates and Tigris, enveloping your fertile valley.

Pact

2010-05-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

-For Gee and Ness, R.I.P. 2/25/2010

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH! / a train hammered by— / a teenage girl screamed // “This is a deeply fearsome thing / we’re not wired for it; our bodies will recoil…” // nothing romantic about broken spirits and broken / bones. Nothing romantic about thundering trains. Nothing // fixed by balancing on third rails; tangled limbs and steel. Forever / hugs, last instances / as the train barreled it way south.

I read this article: Teen Suicide Pact

and this is what came from that...

National Poetry Month - Day 30

2010-04-30T17:14:00.000-07:00

Is there a sort of death in stillness?
In silence? In turning in on yourself
so much so that you are translucent. Poor
translucent stagnation; this thing that won't allow us to step forward,
we can't always be circling the same decisions.
There are no answers lying in the shadows of circumferences.
What we need is what we dream
desires
those things we have forbidden ourselves from...

National Poetry Month - Day 29

2010-04-30T01:10:00.000-07:00

Another late one...this is almost over, but until the end of today...I'mma keep on truckin...

I could be the Mad Max of the mornings
unconciously pressing the petal
I jerk forward, feel myself streaking
the pre-dawn feels collapsible around me
I know it's not, that there are things that might be sturdier than myself;
I haven't met them yet, still aware they might exist.

National Poetry Month - Day 28

2010-04-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine if your words held any beauty
because your mouth perfected a sneer
a scar across your face. I'd already lived this present
past tense on what I knew you were saying
though you'd somehow gone mute
or I went deaf, suddenly. We'd stopped speaking
the same riddles months ago. Tongue-twisting a lie to fit the scene of the crime.
I would ask for mercy if it were yours to grant.
You play executioner in bedsheets
a cop to my increasingly convincing robber. I think the bad guy wins
today. I think I stole your heart and got away...

National Poetry Month - Day 27

2010-04-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'll leave the baggage you tried to make me shoulder on your front porch
between the potted begonia and the dying fern
I hope you recognize them;
if you don't they will surely recognize you
and your handwriting scribbled on the tags
and the scent of you or moreso a scene like dying.

National Poetry Month - Day 26

2010-04-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

I have been under the weather since yesterday....here's yesterday's poem:

Exhaustion
means I'm pass the point of caring
about the complexity of the webs we weave
or wove in the past with a passion

National Poetry Month - Day 25

2010-04-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Designing my own desires
I give firm voice to exactly what I want. Not questioning,
no wish or hope. These are the things I cannot give up
a dream from which I can't re-awaken.

National Poetry Month - Day 24

2010-04-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

The sun is disappearing behind these white plastic blinds
I barely notice the stress my eyes are under
reading by twilight. I strain to maintain this connection
to something else; words bigger than myself. I can't help it:

I built dreams on a story...

National Poetry Month - Day 23

2010-04-23T15:02:00.000-07:00

Preface: Today was a really sexually-charged writing day; who knows why...but I was writing and grinning like a fool.

I can hold my hand right here
just here, just so
silently, unless smirks speak
then I'm yelling "victory..."

My other fingers are lost somewhere
wall hair hip, hip hair,
wall breast. They are so inconsistent
unlike the others steady in their determination. I can hold you up

my hand
right here, just here, just so
holding you cupped to catch you should you fall

National Poetry Month - Day 22

2010-04-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

Dear You,
awkwardly standing across the room
your heart is a sabbatical shadow blooming
outwards like a mid-spring cherry blossom. I
am a refugee shipwrecked in your peripheral
a wounded satellite barely keeping orbit. I build beds
waiting for the day you might eclipse me
an outer ring of light, a radiance outpouring
in waves; to drown me.

photo copyright NASA

National Poetry Month - Day 21

2010-04-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

Sin never sleeps, so they call me an insomniac
my eyeballs are allergic to the lids, blinking
leaves me tearing; like I believe in emotions.
With anger I'm most intimate, one night stand
where the day never comes.

National Poetry Month - Day 20

2010-04-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

Transparency, a ghost of something past
I keep moving too quickly; my present
becomes a future, perhaps not mine: a clicking slideshow.

Slow-motion,
dancing to silent music

this song always plays here

It's our swan song
beautiful in it's one lingering note
we've been stretching it out by half beats

Pausing, until that plucked string finally breaks

National Poetry Month - Day 19

2010-04-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

She wants to remind me of some good day
some yesteryear, repeats a mantra of nostalgia.
"We use to think we could be..."
anything
or anyone. We're too old for fables.
Even our dreams don't end in "Happily Ever Afters..."
They've grown up. Laid down plastic swords for real knives
or fists; your bed owns a gun now, your nightmares ride bullets.

National Poetry Month - Day 18

2010-04-18T17:23:00.000-07:00

I battle me
so that war with you is unnecessary...

National Poetry Month - Day 17

2010-04-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

I enter the house of Saturn
running again from the return of the sun
I test her structures, sturdy yet unstable-
this is not a home for permanence
it is a home made of sticks, or straw; waiting
watching big bad wolves huffing and puffing at my heels

you've never been able to blow me away

Saturn writes love letters on wolves' breath
she wants to change my existence,
earthquake the value I've placed on this life
the motivation I've placed on my feet
she thrives on upheaval and her house is already a half-mess

I can't stay here forever...

I'm barely making it through today
limped my way through yesterday
running from the sun who's always three steps ahead of me
into the waiting arms of Saturn, who returned too, a lover...

photo courtesy of NASA

Happy Birthday to Me!

National Poetry Month - Day 17

2010-04-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

National Poetry Month - Day 16

2010-04-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

"Gotta shine my rusty halo..." -The Script "Rusty Halo"

I wear my halo as a belt buckle
thumb it loosely as I shoulder the wall
watch the people as they part around me

I make choices to not migrate with them
to stick out as something separate from them.

I wear my horns underneath my dreads
tuck them behind my ears
know the evil that I could get into

I make choices that lead me not
unto the path of temptation, the path most traveled.

National Poetry Month - Day 15

2010-04-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

I cannot accept this distance
the space that has grown above our knotted selves

National Poetry Month - Day 14

2010-04-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Atlanta,
you are my in-between love
or the love that happened without looking for love
(in all the wrong places)
or a really strong like. You are that kinda-friend
open door and free couch; letting me rest here
without a calendar, without motivation
without pushing me to stay-
or go. And I could love you for that,
but you would be well aware when I kiss you my heart wasn't really in it...
my heart is miles ahead of me.
I can't smile at you with my eyes, and I can't lie:
you've given me more pain than pleasure, left more scars
than your worth; that's why you're an in-between place
and I'm in-between staying and leaving you.

ugh..I hate that ending....jeez...

National Poetry Month - Day 13

2010-04-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

I stitched my heart up my sleeve
buttoned the wrists close so it wouldn't slide out on accident.

Thread can break sometimes
unraveling slowly til it pops, I don't know how to reinforce this.

National Poetry Month - Day 12

2010-04-13T01:53:00.000-07:00

I wrote this yesterday but didn't get a chance to post it...hoppped up on benadryl...

"In reality there are no black outlines..." -Some art teacher somewhere

We are all shade and shine
a blended grayscale
softly, we yield to the existence of each other
malleable, light bends and breaks around us
or if we prove fragile enough, bends to break us.

National Poetry Month - Day 11

2010-04-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

The last time I said "I love you..." I didn't mean it,
there was a pause that stretched across the galaxy
I saw Jupiter in your eyes
cloudy and searching out something more in me
some sign of intelligent life
a heartbeat, a pulse...

the words escaped me in a rush of breath
a hiccup or burp
a complete accident, that I couldn't excuse myself enough for
couldn't take back; because you held it close
something fragile you knew you would lose.

National Poetry Month - Day 10

2010-04-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

It's nothing personal,
there's an envy that comes with death
for the living. This is just about survival;
base instincts and simple appetites.

If it wasn't your brain, it'd be someone else;
wrong place
wrong time
wrong side of the apocalypse...

One second to look away
or look off slightly to the left imagining life before
that your neighbor's skin isn't peeling from the bone
that there isn't dried blood smeared across an ex-lover's lips
that your mother's eyes haven't gone blank, flat and lifeless.

When they pull you back
with a strength they never possessed in life
how hard will you struggle? How much will you want to survive?

Question as their mouths descend on your struggling:
Is it better to run forever alone
or dying and walk in hunger together?

National Poetry Month - Day 9

2010-04-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

You are: me
driving towards the westward dipping sun,
squinting eyes and burnt retinas; the focus is askew.
I blink back shine-
the punishment for being heliocentric,
following stars; galactic paparazzo.

Blame gravity:
tidal pools and kissing shorelines.

Blame orbits:
invisible lifelines weaving through the constellations.

Circumstantial, evidence isn't science
conjectures are hypotheses without experimentation. Truth is tangible
a theorem tried and tested.

Paradigm Shift: You are blindness...

National Poetry Month - Day 8

2010-04-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

Stitching the veins of one hand to the other
I am all tied up, too tangled to tap out-
cat's cradles and stretched rubber bands

I wrote prayers in needlepoint
looping letters to God.

I haven't waited long enough at one address
to receive an answer
past stamped postmarks and pre-paid envelopes

God pays it forward...

Leaving my answers leaning on others' doorframes
perched inside their mailboxes, a bill inked: past due.

National Poetry Month - Day 7

2010-04-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Every brick has a history;
a century of ghosts live inside each column
I have marked the growth of my footprints next to the floor lines
the deep scratches of years before I arrived here. Months before I leave
or stay; growing use to my fingers trailing across these brick walls,
the creak of these floorboards beneath my hesitant footsteps.

I keep moving because moving has kept me alive.

National Poetry Month - Day 6

2010-04-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

You are frozen as this photograph of you
an imagination
bend yourself to fit my memory;
your memory is quite different, because you see reality in hindsight:
20/20
a dream that changes each time
what could have been, but actually never was. Unfreeze!
Everyone shuffles, makes poses to exemplify their lives
the pretend-believe of it all.

This is who you thought you were three years ago...

Who you are now fails all expectations. Breaks
all rules.

You always did...you never really could help it.

National Poetry Month - Day 5

2010-04-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

Cocooned in soft knit
jersey, shifting adjusting
to emerge sans wings.

National Poetry Month - Day 4

2010-04-04T17:50:00.001-07:00

And I hope your heart is insured
or stocked up on bandages, because I aim to break it;
hold it while it hopes for me
and I give you less.

Today this isn't working out. I kept thinking about the first line. I'd actually been thinking about it for a week now but couldn't figure how to work with it. I think this is my worse effort thus far, but who knows later it may work into something successful, just not today...

National Poetry Month - Day 3

2010-04-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

Walking the valley of metallic trees
iron trunks and copper-coated branches;

the air heavy with electrons, bouncing
the frenzied whirl of loose atoms.

They are quiet in their excursion picking
their way through the thickest part this night

both shoulder backpacks and weeks of burdens
heading without direction towards: escape.

Weaving moonlight in their footsteps,there are no maps in their strides
only purpose and a plan directed towards daybreak.

National Poetry Month - Day 2

2010-04-02T18:27:00.001-07:00

Shadows sleep awkwardly across his face
timid of daylight or another day breaking
silently; he shelters himself in polos and chucks
uses his backpack as a shield.

His peers are dragons

and he is no St. George; not fireproof or tested.
His skin is paper and they watch him crumbling
fraying at the edges, transparent in the center.

So I can say that I wrote this because all the headlines right now about bullying...

National Poetry Month - Day 1

2010-04-02T01:06:00.000-07:00

papier-mache lion you roar in crumbling notes
un-fearsome
unfathomably you matchstick the roads you've already traveled,
trailblazing. You comet flame
burning an ideal long past it's lifetime. You burn at half-light
I burn on a daily basis, end to end
a furnace brimming with ashes.

Submerged

2010-03-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

Too Soon or Too Late

2010-02-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

That night “we” were a nameless entity. Friends? Too simplistic for our complexities. Lovers? The connotation too tangled without tangled sheets. Abbreviated story: I already have a girlfriend; or rather until recently I had one. She is waiting alone in our apartment, for me; mind spinning wildly with imaginary scenarios of what we’re doing. The truth? We are watching TV innocently; she is chewing supermarket sushi, I too nervous to eat, keep thwacking her with her own pillows. I am a five-year-old boy, this is how I say: “I like you” “Do you like me?” “Check yes, please…this story I’m living hurts too much for me to finish it.” Saying, “Maybe you could resuscitate me…”

She turns knowing eyes my way, startling in their ability to pick me apart. “It’s time to go back…” She whispers, we both have finals in the morning; this is a moment of fantasy, it cannot last.

Idling her borrowed Honda outside my lit apartment we are motionless with what could be, but I’m too afraid of what already is to move forward. What is waiting for me behind these red brick walls? What is waiting for me in the weighted silence of this car? A smile that reaches her eyes…A kiss that comes too late? Another fist pressed lovingly against my throat?

Relax?? (Untitled Poem)

2010-01-20T18:00:00.000-08:00

"Relax..." She husks lighting soft fingertips down my arm. She uncoils my springloaded fingers, tries to get them to lay flat. Doesn't realize that a fist is natural to me.

As much as I claim non-violence, the preparation for violence
is natural to me.

Fantasy, she is unknown to violence. A variable belonging to closed eyes and kept secrets.

She, inhabitant of a parallel universe is a citizen of my dreams.
I am a citizen of reality.

This means I am a citizen of fists

My hands don't believe in relax.

The Space in Between

2010-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

This is the space where you breathe, a hitched breath
I should say something prophetic:
I love you? Definitely not.
And my mouth is too tired to begin this lie again,
so we lay here awkwardly, not touching…
after touching so intimately moments ago.

Boundaries

2009-12-31T13:18:00.000-08:00

A Land Without Boundaries…

There is a stretch of Interstate 85 that reeks of dog food
the concrete slab factory interrupting the skeletal black of the trees.

I beat the sun to dawn; savor the twilight, the openness
rain-slicken road invites me to keep moving forward

I don’t need the invitation, never have. I am wired:
antsy; muscles coiling and uncoiling, waiting for movement—to pounce
waiting for the space to run.

Untitled...

2009-12-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

She wakes me with teeth dancing my collarbone
mouths 'good morning' against my breats
blinded by daybreak my fingers read her curves like braille
she interprets a moan to mean 'more'.

Fingers Crossed and Prayers to God

2009-11-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

I have been absolved
left every heartbeat as unopened prayers to God
save me forgive me save me forgive me save me
allow me to wash away my sins
cross and re-cross myself: head chakra root chakra
a daggered line pierces my heart chakra
it bleeds light
my eyes bleed tears, head bowed
in submission. I am higher than myself
vertigo visions warp my outlook
—I’m okay—
salvation for those who ask
and I begged; finally resolved to save myself one breath at a time.

Stardust

2009-10-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

We stumbled home drunk on honeysuckle blossoms. Our feet paced constellations with familiarity. Above us owls retreat telescopic eyes away from waiting dawn. Only the sun could wake us from our diversions; the moon isn’t as abrasive, nothing to prove. We have undressed our skins to prove our existence to each other. Our veins are translucent or our eyes are x-rays or we are made of a million stars. I like to believe that you alone are composed of seven galaxies; heavenly. I always knew you were extraterrestrial. An extrasensory perception, I dreamt you to life: Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood…My hand tenses to draw you across the sky, drawing me into the darkest recesses of a black hole. Your breath brings me back from my midnight musings to your thinly muscled arm linked in mine, the unbroken mass of our shadows, the soft petals of honeysuckles caressing our ears; us dreaming a better us to life in the morning when we stumble from an unmade bed.

Wish You Were…

2009-08-31T12:12:00.000-07:00

For S.W.

Imagine you had the guts to be me
your heartbeat as deep as your breath
be a woman, unsexed
sexualized to nonexistence
tarred angel wings, tilted halo
devour green apples

share the pieces with your lover
like the rib she was accidentally made from
swim through her hair
call her by name

brand yourself
allow others to brand you
limp through it, pass the pain, until the swelling goes down

the virus will never go away

wake up every morning knowing
and choose to live anyways.

~

2009-03-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

The power of a wave is measured in its crest. The way it beats the shore like a middle school bully, is just a cry for attention, no skill involved.

Versus the Uniform Directive

2008-11-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

There are hairs gently brushing the back of my neck
like fingers curled
around something they enjoy: favorite food favorite drink
favorite body
body part
body language
the hairs sing my body electric
tremors set loose along my spine
nape to hollow
charged along the crests of each vertebrae
a wave
all nature and uncontrolled
like those hairs
that always seem to cross into freedom gently
to remind me who I really am.

So She is Written

2008-10-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

I started to write this poem, but then you called
your sultry voice like honey drizzled
against my eardrum. Lost in the thickness of your words
I realized you were the poem.

Simpler Than I: Self-Portraits

2008-09-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

There is graphite and skin

caked beneath my fingernails; I'm either destroying

or creating--

The talent comes in doing both

at the same time

II.

A lone dread swings across my face

dissecting my vision

My concentration falters hypnotized by the falling.

III.

My heart is on showcase behind

barbed wire

sometimes it strains erratically against its boundaries

and I drown internally

IV.

There's a poem sleeping on my spine

out of reach of my itchy fingers

I'd scratch for it until I drew blood

and in my bloody picture I'd see self revelations

Thorns and roses grow wild

on my tongueinter

weaving in monstrous beauty

VI.

I look past my reflection

to my shadow piecing itself together

she always proves herself simpler than I

Continental Drift

2008-04-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

We tell time by the movement of our shadows
and mine is shifting ever so slightly away from yours
through tangled lines of miscommunication
you misspoke or I misheard.

Our truth will be revealed in fossils.
Our voices imprinted on our petrified teeth,

We wasted fifteen millennia letting this rupture widen
now we’re deformed masses
or metamorphic rocks forming moreso to our molds
or breaking them.

Moving past each other our frictions scars the surface
erodes a little of both our composures

Decades from now life will be less shifty; cooling from our fiery formation years
I will peer across this divide: a deep-seated trench of misses; at you
your surface a scar I barely remember.

Dark Matter

2007-12-30T16:02:00.000-08:00

Aidan reads bedtime stories under a nightlight from distant galaxies
an imagination sublime
he, too young to be forced into the confines of language
deciphers the stars from God script;
despite his limitations, into expressions of his heart.

His father lives within the confines of the ordinary
holds Aidan’s hand on the walk to school
all the while trying to fully capture what it is to be a man
to explain it to the son of a man
who was never his father’s son.

Aidan never thinks about his invisible grandfather
his father bends light to his form constantly afraid
of his ability to follow his father’s deformed path

—unseeable—

His father walks carefully
leaving what he finds of the universe spread out before Aidan’s wide eyes
marveling at his ability to piece together the shadows of the world
how he curves the fabric of space in his miniscule palm
and presents the world with an image
a moment where the secrets lying behind the universe of his eyes
take form
in incredible elegant strokes
to a picture of his father, a man
the most reliable hand he has.

Annular Rings

2007-11-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

The natural light angles through an open window

little five finger smudges

streak downwards, vanishing growth marks

they are taller than they seem.

We are older than we look

our reflections, pasts outgrowing futures.

Speaking in Subtitles

2007-09-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

Inspired by M.E.

She says we reconnect worlds in dreamwalking / another instance of smooth-talking the pants off of creation / at war with a saner self / someone saying: Stop! Backwards talking / in circles // I'm too dipsy dizzy to make sense of rollercoasters / too off the track to flip for what's fashionable / a moment's notice / a moment's gone // this is a time for insisting on the inferences: // the assumptions of a living past / a ghostlike present / and the tendrils of our future floating above your head // reminding myself of roads often traveled and traveled back / there is no time for recasting old parts / new script, new director, new scene / same plotline, new twist // you translate my subtitles // to understand and not underestimate / your dialogue / you read my mental diary / and left me a hidden note // I leave u an open invitation / and you’re stamping return to sender / unopened / another wasted 41 cents / another walk of shame to the mailbox: // head down, heart open / I should be head up, heart hidden… / re-checking the/path of my footfalls / I thought I was sitting asleep / I'm running awake.

Map of Dreams

2007-09-29T13:53:00.000-07:00

My dream had a voice, a body, a third eye
a seamless idea of how the world was suppose to work, but didn’t.
See, my dream was a visionary
Took day trips to the mountains for Karmic meditations
un-distorted her harmonic balances during morning shower
Her destiny:
A patchwork path laid out at her feet. I mismatched my footsteps
to her rain-filled footprints.

Always in need of a home, I sleep naked in her entranceway. She leaves candles
burning to guide me to morning
and I follow half waking to the cover of night.
A wish. My dream. Fulfilled.

Longing (A Never-Was Poem)

2007-08-12T17:56:00.001-07:00

In my dream am standing right here / you were by the window / gazing at something more interesting than me / I was reading you with distant eyes / like my favorite book with folded pages / I have highlighted you / as important / and you have me down as nondescript / a black and white photograph fluttering to the floor / I've faded into many backgrounds / a moving shadow watching light from a distance / You are light from a distance / and I am all to ready to be your darkside.

Kids Are an Inspiration...

2007-07-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

Baby, Go Soft

He blows bubbles
thin fingers gripping the wand and huffs hard

the bubbles reflect the overhead lighting, refracting
and I see visions discriminating themselves from the soapy sheen
how many times we’ve blown bubble before
and we’ll blow bubble after
or I’ll put my lips together, paused to blow

he’ll learn through imitation
though my fingers gripping the wand are bigger
and the lips hold in harsher sounds
that’s the natural roughness of surviving life, sometimes it pays to just be more gentle.

Memorial Day

2007-06-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

I will always remember blazing across the state
following a course set by Sherman
I scorched Atlanta
and shaved a full hour off my estimated time.

I’ve never needed a compass to find home,
but in the middle of the movement
You never realize how fast you’re going.

II.

The fireworks burst in slow motion
insistent on attention; she adverts her eyes
unblinking, I stare straight ahead.

III.

I walk the vacant streets after dark alone
summer in Savannah; humid air, absolutely unmoving
a deep breath escapes pursed lips
it’s the first time in months for easy thoughtless breaths.

The Trouble with Remaining Professional

2007-05-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

Because he views speaking as a profession
he tells me, “memorize your piece, paper
shaking between your fingers is distracting…”
he doesn’t know that I seek the distraction
like an ADHD kid ‘stiming’ on moving lights

His profession is my secret garden

The audience’s divided attention makes me less
transparent, the paper my grip on what’s permanent
because motions are as faded as memories and words flee yellowing pages
as the years spin across my chest and I’m caught
standing still again, staring pass the window and the spotlit open mic
at another sun devoured by the oak trees.

Marathon

2007-05-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

She found faith through submission
the destruction of her spine and days
turn the wired spokes down memory lane a bargain:
be careful for what you wish.

She says the evidence of her life,
calluses cracked and bleeding rivulets across her palms;
I could have traced the lines
into an autobiography of self-portraits.

I visited seeing concrete frown.
The sky knew nakedness without eyes.
She doesn’t understand. My shoes were tearing sentences,
like being reminded of a waving checkered flag;

even monuments can be made obsolete.

Gamma Rays and Abandonment Issues

2007-05-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Dr. Banner,

You’re father never hugged you

enough. You have a right to be upset. Anger Management

gives you someone professional

to talk to. Open Up, Share.

From a Leonard Pitts editorial(See the Article at www.miamiherald.com)

2006-12-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

Sweet Soul Music

―A Found Poem for Gerald Levert

A singer of thunderous power, mimicking dance steps
he watched from backstage; borrowing
vocal dives and climbs, barrel rolls
from his father's playbook

imagine what it must be like
to lose a son

Remember when black music was about soul
and soul was about truth and truth
promised the moon and stars to a woman, and truth
pleaded with breaking voice and teary eyes for another chance, and truth
made you hear echoes of soul that came before, echoes--
Cherish women. Baby, please; is becoming a lost art

but imagine what it must be like
to lose a son

Sometimes, begging
is the best part. Sometimes make up justifies
break up. love requires vulnerability
more: baby, please
less: too proud to beg
we held one another and shelter each other from life
wrapped in a need deeper than sex

but imagine what it must be like
to lose a son

"Baby, hold on to me," he sang
because he knew what we were missing.

With Her Six Words Etched in My Skull...

2006-08-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

Phoenix Rising

She masks her love in sardonic laughter, diagrams

her breaking point with chalk, maps of boundaries.

She says, “We don’t mix well, I’m oil, you’re vinegar

or water; I’m no chef, I just blow smoke.”

It’s too scary for love to be written in cursive on her spine and her heart

is too fragile a package. She says,

“I’m use to packaging other’s pain, it’s normal to hate

me.” Tries to mask the scent of fear in a strong stature, the unmarked change

in her spine. She stiffens

at the thought of weakness, chalk outlines of her tiny deaths

exhaling the smoke of burning funeral pyres

where tears are as good as oil.

Oil paint mosaics of lust have smeared with live creating

an unwanted package, a miserable masterpiece. Alone

she smokes long unlit cigarettes, leaning against life, wearing

a ceramic mask of cool confidence; feelings,

momentary butterflies, chalked up to indigestion—bad food—

she imagined tingles on her spine.

Sometimes, spines have been known to compress due to pressure, grinding axes

and bones make sharp edges, not body oils, unable to move without stabbing;

chalk-up inability to change to re-learning

history. She is packaged jade: smooth and hard. For years, she’s juggled

her handful of makeshift masks or she hid

underneath a thick screen, walls of smoke.

Through the smoke clouds, she watches a wounded back disappear, sees

her red handprints, a burden of proof, seared in her lover’s spine

time can’t mask the force of a shove, unwillingness

to oil a rusty heart, locked and lost

packaged to survive life, a war?

She never crossed the dividing chalk line, just sat

in her self-made cell marking off victims in chalk, comforting herself

with smoke, matching black lungs. She makes

perfect packages of heartaches, numbs

the tingles in her spine. Remembering to keep

her steel doors well-oiled and ever-revolving, someone has to perfect

wearing masks.

When love tries to ease the mask away, erase the chalk lines, she disappears

in the smoke of her oil-fire tears, off

to package her heart along with the awkward tingle in her spine.

After Sean Carswell....

2006-07-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

The Moment you Know…

-After Sean Carswell

When you walk into your second period English Lit. class on tender

teenage legs with nothing but fifteen years of angst to live up to

and you take the blue plastic seat in the back near the row

of huge sun-filtering windows, you fix a decidedly nonchalant look

on your face (though English is your favorite class) then she

walks in, your friend (and more…?), and takes the seat next to you

and you realize since she arrived you’ve held

your breath.

When she grabs your sweaty palm, smiles at you mischievously and drags you

to the empty girls bathroom; you sit on top of the dirty fifty-year-old radiator

and act cool and collected when really you’re all bundled nerves.

She sits next to you, legs crossed and lights a thin cigarette, recounts

some story that you only half listen to, because her thigh is pressed

against yours and she leaning conspiratorially into you. Her voice

becomes indistinct echoes and all you want to do is swallow kisses

from her neck or brush your suddenly dry lips against her

still moving ones. She asks, through thin smoke trails, “Are you listening?”

the only answer you can give is an ever-reddening blush.

When your best friend asks you to deliver his hastily written love note

and you jealously do, not because you’re a great friend, but you’re curious

what did he write? what will she say? and why are you feeling this way?

After she reads it, she laughs and you laugh too, she shakes her head

and you shrug, walk back to him trying not to be a happy bearer of bad news.

When she’s got you alone in her boat of a car, outside your house

and you both stall for time and then she gently kisses you, instantly

you increase her momentary boldness, as you break moments later, breathless

her smile reaches her eyes and she knows and you know she knows

you know.

Karmic Cultivation

2006-07-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

-“Tell me, who I have to be/to gain some reciprocity?”

-Lauryn Hill, “Ex-Factor”

I am the third reincarnation of myself; the daughter,
a woman, the holy spirit?

Malleability is the lack of formation, I’ve adopted—
she’s adapted to stone or she hasn’t developed at all

“Give me your heart…” Her long curved fingers grasp
at my chest, I hand it over still rapidly, beating;

she only showers ,me with steel flakes from her thick thirteenth skin
it’s bad luck or bad timing, she’s not shedding,

—I sew pieces of discarded layers with others; make myself: chainmail,
a shield, armor to sleep in.

Each day brings new cells a change in cytoplasm prisons that grow
not wiser, but weighed down by its own thickness, harder.

Mostly moisture making too big a show of cohesion, I can’t corrode anything,
lacking the acidity, too ph balanced…

So I replenish myself in myself, seventy-five percent water; submerged
I drown myself clean.

-For C.

2006-06-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from a Life’s Survival Guide

If nothing else, I’m a survivor;
this is what I will tell you: I am that cat—
whether pushed or jumping—who lands
on her feet, licks her wounds, and saunters
away. Rule #5: Never react, when a reaction
is so clearly sought. See I know the game
I choose to play, nonchalant.

When the life plan you so carefully sketched, begins to burn, in
from the edges; gently blow out the flames
and make your life a phoenix: rise. Rule # 2:
Follow the flow of the river—not rushed, in the drive
towards a destined destination—but, be aware
of the ever apparent undercurrent.

Rule #4: Never tread where your footprints
are not welcome. My arms
are halfway open, my heart is protected, and my vision
has been cleared. Rule #8: Everyone from sinner
to saint; has the innate ability to be like nitrogen
both, enriching and explosive.

Is this what you needed to hear? What we
are all well aware of—how humans
are dichotomous? So am I…defying your desire
for clear explanations, perfect in my paradoxes. Rule #1:
Walk your path, avoiding the obvious obstacles; never intentional
in your injury, nor accepting of the intentional injury
of yourself. So saying this more simply:
I survive out of necessity, navigating the narrow
passageways allowed; so should we pass, closely
know that there is always solid, safe shelter
in me.