Poets of the Concrete Jungle

Beat-Boxing at West Hollywood Park

2006-08-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

BEAT-BOXING AT WEST HOLLYWOOD PARK
for Matt B. and Stephy M.

I kept on swinging, I kept on staring
into the teeth the night was baring.
It was cold and dim, yet empty of children,
full only of silence; that, and of old men.
They stood in streetlight framed just by the swings
discussing the evening, and all types of things.

I kept on swinging, I kept on staring
into the teeth the night was baring.
She sat cross-legged, at the lip of the slide,
with him beat-boxing, just off to her side.
I caught just the edges of the rhymes she set free,
Some fell before him, some landed on me.

I kept on swinging, I kept on staring
into the teeth the night was baring.
Her hair glowed with starlight, his eyes with delight,
they both kept on flowing with all of their might.
His hands cut the rhythm before it went far,
and they stared at me, and I at the stars.

Halogen Twilight

2006-06-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

Halogen Twilight

3:00 a.m. was a halogen twilight
condensing in a fog around downtown.
soft as a cat, its light squeezed the city. i hurried toward it
splashing through puddles of freeway lights
the hum of my car’s tires on asphalt
mimicking the beat of my heart against bone

from a distance the sky look mismatched:
the stars seemed scattered, like needlepoints
sewn wildly into a tapestry of night
patched occasionally with halcyon blocks of dawn

morning pawed impatiently from its stable
standing guard like a lion stalking its prey.
soon the night would dissolve like a tab of seltzer
and with it fizzle away the worries of the day prior;

that, and the memory of his breaths rising
and falling like the summer tide as he slept next to me
or the delicious tickle of his beard against my nose
as i leaned in to kiss his lips again, and yet again.

even the stars must find solace in sleep
curling themselves into tiny embers
ready to shine again when rekindled.
absent tonight was the crescent moon
faithful scythe for my overgrown dreams.
hungry for hope, i, too, surrender.

Coffee With A Drunk Man

2006-06-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Coffee With A Drunk Man

Angled in curiosity, Paul burped, and pointed
at the half-finished sonnet I was writing
as his chest and bare arms hung over the café rail
muttering something that sounded like an apology
that gathered in the corners of his mouth in foam.

I offer him the empty seat in front of me
and watch him lower himself into it slowly
as if it were a cauldron of hot water, or an interrogation.
Suddenly shy, he turns the bill of his dirty red cap sideways
covering half of his face in shadows, leaving the other tanned half

exposed, enhancing the blue eye lodged in it like a shred of sky.
An awkward silence steals the confidence from him
until he again sees my open journal waiting patiently in front of me
and pulls the pen from my hand, nearly tipping over
the cold, bitterly sweet cup of coffee on the table.

Paul’s blue eye darted stealthily from side to side
mimicking the flight of some invisible bumblebee
as he scribbled in French the beginning of a novel he’s already written
about the life he used to lead before he began to drink, he says,
that same life that now led him here, to my table at this West Hollywood café.

His sister was very cruel to him, he laments between sips of my cold coffee,
punctuating his words with his fingers; I watch as he sits mired in sadness,
and I suppress the feeling to stop his tears from dripping into the cup.
In this milk-colored light, Paul’s face becomes a blue-eyed moon
whose renegade tears confess his humanity, wrinkled from years of soaking in alcohol.

A cool breeze softly uproots a fallen cherry blossom.
Evening has fallen all around us, lying crumpled on the sidewalk.
Paul’s blue eye remains fixed on the empty seat in front of him
as quietly I push the stained coffee cup closer to him
I squeeze his shoulder as I walk away, feeling his terrible silence behind me.

Love in Haiku

2006-06-09T22:26:00.000-07:00

Love in Haiku

wet skin clings to me
bathtub grips us in its palm
you seep into me

my eyes swim in tears
my cat’s tail a question mark
answers sharp as claws

smooth me with fingers
you’re hard as young bamboo shoots
shadows wet the walls

past: heavy like sand
present: not a gift of light
future: no room for

lips nude as flowers
passion mute, collects like dew
i love you, wordless.

Los Angeles Speaks

2006-06-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Speaks
from the hilltops of Culver City Park

I’m not stretching. I’m yawning wide, exhausted
from the metal insomnia flowing through
my concrete veins. From a distance it resembles
a silent ebb and flow of movement,

the endless performance of a perfect ballet.
Yet lean in a bit, look closer, and a cacophonous
rush of ants comes rudely into focus.
I’m not a whore, as some would have me;

a few minutes before sunset I shed
my smoggy dress like a snake its skin, and don
a simple golden fog and a cold, dark breeze
that slowly floods me with shadows.

Evening has arrived, and just the Pacific remains
my faithful lover, polluted with indecision.
Her hoarse voice washes over me hungrily
until its drowned out by the punctuated voice of traffic.

Ever-vigilant, the moon has always borne sole
witness to the stars’ nightly detachment from the sky,
like cherry blossoms from a tree, and each night
watches me catch them in my navel.

The moon’s ivory face is carved in one expression,
and when a hushed veil of fog appears, ghost-like,
over my wooded thighs, my dried-up eyelids,
her face grays obscurely, cloudy as glaucoma.

Just the airplanes buzzing above me,
fireflies of modernity, are visible to me; that,
and the tiny pinpricks of light suddenly piercing
through the darkness covering me, hip to hip.

Those hills in the distance are not my verdant
borders, but a tiny fingertip of mountain
to part this veil from my eyes. The spotless, starless
face of night peers back at me, blind and mute as a sage.

A poet’s heart sobs beneath me. His eyes brim over with
flames still undiscovered, and a future unetched, and still unwritten.
Saddened, I look upon the night sky, and relive its perpetual
furling and unfurling, the stars falling like heavy raindrops

on everything below. The night seems terrifyingly bland,
stripped of ingenuity, a continent long discovered;
suddenly nude, I find myself devoid of secrets.

Moonlight & Memory

2006-05-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

MOONLIGHT & MEMORY

long after you’ve disappeared into the fog
made from the smoke of my burning dreams

you still seem so real, more alive than fire,
and your memory is less acrid than even i can remember.

long after we have devolved into two parallel lines,
destined never to touch, yet to always face each other,

i cannot forget the hardened glaze of anger
in your eyes, nor how that rage fell limp as a curtain

as our mouths clumsily met. mute at first, just
the moon bore sole witness to our amorphous diplomacy

as we began to fall into each other helplessly,
hopelessly, desperately, still silent as a comma.

the fare to relive these memories are my tears,
depression’s most inutile currency: pronounced one way

you find yourself waving helplessly beneath an ocean’s tongue;
voice it differently and you’re flayed alive with saltwater.

and yet long after your colors have all faded, fled, and run
from even the time-piqued corners of your eyes;

after my dreams have granted your sleeping form in my arms
for just a few fistfuls of time, and when the silences between

us were more expansive and real than the dark liquid
in which the stars float, buoy-like, until being dyed light blue;

i beg the moon to tell, and tell again, the fading epic that we
both forged every time you were inside of me.

perpetually vain in her canopy made of night, the moon
sings our tale every night. i remain transfixed; you, distracted, sleep.

Missing Loveliness

2006-04-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Missing Loveliness.
Forgiving everyone – eventually.
Wanting that desirable figure in a fond and recent memory…

What can I do to have the object of my affection (and intermittent obsession)?

Maybe I can’t and probably won’t
Since I choose to be myself and no one else -
Except the defiant and skeptical woman which my trials have prompted me to be.

I recall my days of ignorance and misunderstanding
When I trusted and confided in every dude that showed a glimpse of support and care.
So unaware of the true complexities of relationships and social sanctions.

Infamy becomes the commonplace for a woman who asserts her agency
In love, sex, or dignity.

While empowering for some,
I find this a burden….
That so much is weighed upon the sexuality and independence of a woman.
It is NOT an issue.
This is just the way being human is.
Females do not inhabit some special realm in the land of sexual pleasure.
We are just like men in that we want, enjoy, are turned off by, and engage in intimacies either for pure pleasure or for ethereal experiences of love.

Our specialities are rooted in our own innate beauties and cognitive and creative functions – not in our sexuality. Nor is our ability to procreate an indication of our worth.

All I ever want sometimes is to fulfill those lost possibilities and curiosities.
These are some of the hauntings of the past.
Just as I’m sure I haunt some even now.
Lamenting, we am missing…

4/25/06 (10:43pm)

The Rainbow Drowned in Oil

2006-02-19T04:51:00.000-08:00

THE RAINBOW DROWNED IN OIL

Caught by the sun, it sunk, resigned; it bleeds
its coloured life from cloud-shaped gills. Drowned fish,
its captive beauty seeps in fattened beads
into this black lagoon, this asphalt dish.
No hook remains in this brave rainbow's mouth,
nor did it mutter a pained cry of grief.
This martyr feared not death's most secret south,
its brilliance raped by this pond's oiled thieves.
The sunset made the rainbow squirm until
the rain-born fish gave up its sky-kissed breath.
My heart, too, lies devoid of ink, and still:
alive with hope, now both share quiet deaths.
Though sky-thrown fish now dream robbed of a life
This grief, this hope, persist, rippled with strife.

Sunday Morning Role Play

2006-02-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

The morning I came home after that pinche borrachera
smelling like a perro muerto with arroz con frijoles
mixed with beer and tequila splattered on my shoes,
you let me in, like you always do.
I began to complain about my goddamn cruda
only after you asked how I felt.
You had that concerned / I know what to do about it look
a mother gives her child when he complains about a pain.
You walked into the kitchen and before dozing off
I said to myself, esa es mi vieja.

In my dream I saw you in the kitchen slightly shaking your ass
while chopping carrots, squash, potatoes, pollo and elotes,
mixing and cooking it all up, like you always do.
With that innocent smile of yours you turned and said,
it’s almost done mi amor, your caldo de pollo con verduras
to help you with your cruda.
Two bowls of caldo, a full stomach and two hours later
you satisfied the man in me, vieja.

Later that morning I woke up in your couch sniffing, drooling,
and looking hard around your house.
The kitchen was empty.
The bed was made.
On the table stood an empty Corona with a note clipped to the side:
Mi amor, pick me up from the mall when you get over your cruda;
there’s food in the fridge,
viejo.

After the Fight

2006-01-31T11:04:00.000-08:00

AFTER THE FIGHT
for Geoff

Needlessly sublime, you had a scar on your cheek
from the lightning bolts I had hurled at you that morning.
To hide your grin, in one hand you proudly held
the list of insults that I’d tacked to the effigy
hanging in the silent gallows of my mind,
occupied now only with anger’s thinning smoke.
I sat across from you in my upstairs loft,
and my eyes moved awkwardly from your face
toward the carpet, much like the flame from the lighter
casually and capriciously lighting the glass pipe you were smoking.
I, too, was smiling. (Then again, your happiness
has always been infectious, bragging a Bubonic impetus.)
Suddenly the Resolution I’d signed that proudly
declared to steal the words from our mouths and
hide them deep, deep in crevassed silences,
and to accuse my memories of treasonous sabotage
failed miserably; its Resolve became absolved of necessity.
We were content once over again, and I devoid of disbelief.
And when you left, we hugged; your cheek graced mine, and
I pulled away, your face floating, moon-like, before mine, eager as a child.
You – primal attraction of my pickled dreams, zephyr beneath my hopes,
patron saint of my despairs – held my heart between your arms,
and again I felt beautiful to you, warm as a cat, sweet as a flower.
Oh, how I longed to kiss you as we once again embraced,
cheek-to-cheek, my lips wanting yours, but kissing only air.

Northbound on the 110 at Dawn

2006-01-28T22:55:00.000-08:00

NORTHBOUND ON THE 110 AT DAWN
for Geoff

Transposed against a curtain woven of dark mountain
downtown Los Angeles spreads wide its gilded arms
that look bruised with dawn’s quick-rising purples.

Traffic – a brakelit sea redder than any one
Moses could ever hope to part – lurched forward,
clumsy as a child beginning physical therapy.

Drowsiness made heavy the bottoms of our eyes, and
blurred by impatient dreams were the city’s storied fingers
just beginning to poke through the cloak of night.

At your side my joy was more fragile than a candle’s flame
(and I was just as ticklish). Seeing your sleep-filled face,
turned pale and more beautiful than a castle made of melted stars

I reminded myself, words slipping through teeth, that morning had just begun.
From my heart I uprooted the tender, pain-tainted lily
whose florid lip hung half in today, half in tomorrow,

and reeked of yesterday’s crestfallen stars.
Long ago we both welcomed every morning’s ascent
and, laughing interrupted only by a kiss or two,

together we swept up night’s chaotic ashes,
occasionally dropping an ash-buried star
into our collection: the smooth, concaved hazels of your eyes.

Now, northbound on the 110, only the cold
patiently waits for our return at your apartment; that, and your empty bed.
Inside of me you once gave rise to stockpiles poetry;

More spent than wasted time, our poetry has lost its value.
But drive quickly; soon, you to your home shall go,
and I to work, that holds my future hostage, will surrender.

This city and my heart are always under construction:
tomorrow, ignorant of everything but itself, will bring yet another day,
one wedged between our love, my life, and fled angels there between.

Letter from an Empty Bar

2006-01-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

LETTER FROM AN EMPTY BAR
for Change, that angel with a terrifying face...

Our love has dried, even begun to mold
without the moisture of your eager kiss.
Alone it reigns over forgotten golds:
a stubborn past and futures now remiss.
What room exists for all us foolish knaves
too scared to welcome Change’s strong embrace?
Our memories dig us all our early graves
because we won’t release the Past’s sweet grace!
Your ghost and I toast to our Golden Age,
grief drowning deep in my martini glass.
Not drunk, in vain I try to drown my rage
at seeing my love’s gold now tarnished brass.
Yes, please imbibe me with this liquid trance;
relief I’ll find deep in sleep’s ignorance.

SEX

2005-12-18T03:50:00.000-08:00

SEX

Columbus must have felt it drawing the Cross
with the edge of his sword in the warm Yucatán sun.
What the future, in its one-sided visions, like
a cycloptic fog would call Mexico yawned
in all directions, one long arm made of desert
and the other suspiciously thin, striped in jungles
shadowed with unknowns and filled with
the monsters inhabiting the labyrinth of our minds.

Inside of him I was a welcome invader,
a perverse fit in an odd-shaped body groove.
I felt him tighten around my hardened pain
as my desires to see him whimper or wince
evaporated from me like the smell of cheap lubricant
that hung in the cigarette-tainted air like
a guilty, soot-stained curtain.

His smile was wider than his legs were spread,
and as he pulled me down by the back of my neck
to his quivering, moistened lips I shut my eyes
tightly, tightly, tightly. My face pressed against his,
buried in the yellowing pillow, I mouthed a strained
thank you to a God too deaf to hear my silent prayer.

He implored like a squalid beggar to
fill his insides with my pain’s confused arousal,
and I did. My body shook with reluctant release
and my hand quivered as it grasped onto the pillow
threatening to fall off the bed’s squeaky lip.
I wanted to go blind staring into his bedroom lamp,
the bulb burning furiously like a rival to the sun’s jaundice,
incinerating in its angry gaze a thousand Jesuses.

I watched his body ripple with lust’s breath
like a breeze skimming a pond’s quiet mirror,
and when he scratched my lips with the
thorny stubbles of his three-day-old beard
as his hand granted him what I would not,
the smile that wore my face was pulled tight as a drum.
Showering only with your ghost, tears have
never tasted so acrid beading down my throat.

And as I got dressed, like Eve covering up her shame,
I avoided the mirror’s all-seeing glaucomic eye,
lest I break it in your name with my clenched, wrinkled fist.

Guilt

2005-12-13T19:39:00.000-08:00

Beer sipping and barbecuing
dropping food on the floor,
we could’ve fed 3 somewhere else.
God forgive us for we knew
but forgot what we were doing.

We let the spectacle consume
us and make us cash cows while
we laid beef stakes on the grill
to feed are bloated stomachs.

We forgot we are targets for
Anheuser-Bush and Grupo Modelo,
for “party like its all good” billboards,
commercials with carefree joy, piñatas,
fake tits and endless ass.

Beer sipping and barbecuing
we swallowed our knowledge
and pissed out our wisdom.
God forgive us for we knew
but forgot what we were doing.

Nightmare

2005-12-12T01:47:00.000-08:00

Liquid crevices of detonating darkness
Of evil spirits that tamed,
oh that night of luscious cold
Consumed all the known

Him and her, they and them,
An all conveying image of
Silent screams
Heard only by the entrapped Geopoliticus child,
Fear-pale faces ran for miles.

Away, away, in a fog of red
They all would dwell
Was it hell, I wonder.

Walls so high of darkened mass
Higher, rising higher
And just beyond
Those eyes aghast that numbed all fire

Two knees would plummet
To a sea of red
Ash and air
Had lived to dare
The sleep of another

Yearning Quietly

2005-12-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

My lips
Have been missing your lips,
Soft and Thick.
My hips
Have been missing your strong, sexy grip.
Fingers feel like feathers when you stroke me quietly.
But the creative energy which they endow,
Lets me know they are your quill without a doubt.
You have no need for muse or sunlit day
For inspiration you inquire within and ponderous stay.
Your art entrances me and calls me in.
Your dark eyes do the same from deep within.

Just when I think I’ve mastered my own mind,
And put lingering thoughts of you behind
You capture me with those dark and lustful eyes,
The spark in them reignites the blaze
In mine.
I cannot even glimpse upon your gaze
Without yearning for our bodies cloaked in haze
Of heat, passion, and energy
Alone and free for you to compose on me.
Your poetry on my body
I’ll be your canvas, earthen clay;
Whatever needed I’ll supply night and day.

My mind has been smothered
By your demanding being -
Waking, sleeping, walking, writing, dreaming.
I long to feel your caress and kiss
The soothing heat on my neck I miss.
You say I kill you.
No, you’re killing me
With yearning lustful urges as I breath.
Quietly, I ache to quench my need.
Surprisingly, the muse I used to be;
Now you to me.

12/10/05 (7:49am)

Not Knowing

2005-12-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

I know for a fact the C.I.A dumped crack in our blocks.
I know about the plan to invest in toxic rocks, about the
boiling pot with baking soda in every dealer’s home.
I know the contras in Nicaragua were given commands,
I know the coca leaves are clipped by campesino’s hands.
I know the Crips were cool with the Bloods, about the
business that came between them and ended the love.
I know about the socialist fear in South America,
I know the secret war was funded by ghettos in North America.
I know the C.I.A used poor people to fight it,
I know that crack was created so poor people can buy it.
I know about Freeway Rick.
I know the C.I.A smuggled every single cocaine brick.
I know the dealers the buyers the suppliers the addicted don’t know shit.
I know I could tell them, but
I don’t know how.

Aubade for My Boyfriend, Returning to His

2005-12-04T16:59:00.000-08:00

AUBADE FOR MY BOYFRIEND, RETURNING TO HIS
for both of us

Then go. Abandoned, my words will keep me from starving.
Let me consent to help you wipe the marks left by my fingertips
From your neck and the insides of your thighs, smooth as white tree trunks.

My body holds the familiarity of a Martian landscape to you,
Still clumsy with its two ridged scars, silhouetted many times over
With the shadow cast by your tongue, and left dry like autumn-sucked leaves.

He was tailor-made for you from strands of Psyche’s hair
And his sleeping form gives unrivalled blossom to
Flowers of dreams yet unpicked, sunset tucked in between their curves.

I’m still a prototype, not yet perfect, still misshapen,
Not ready to take home yet, defunctly-defective, barren as a parking lot, and on
Those cold winter nights my body seeps warmth to you like blood from an abscess.

I Love You sits like a fat turbaned Turk on his crimson-lined lips and like
Prometheus baring his liver, offers himself to you every moment.
Caught in the spiderweb of a sordid hunger, you never resist.

Allow me, please, to remain as unnoticed as the sky. I shall
Remain your toy soldier made entirely of Reynolds’ wrap,
Pretty and shiny with a beautiful heart that has a peacock’s song

Gurgling deep in its beautiful fucking throat. I’m cold to you;
My bones are made entirely of moon. He is that lovely blue rose,
Carved and firm like a delta’s mouth, permanent as a mountain’s silence.

My love and I were born between your sighs.
So go, then. I’m as insignificant as a sneeze-sized storm,
And my tears will wipe off the cracked windshield of your happiness just as easily.

Weaving From A Void

2005-11-26T13:36:00.000-08:00

(Inspired by Remedios Varo's painting "Embroidering the Earth's Mantle" )

You are the unseen non-seer of the panopticon
Confined in the tower
Weaving
Blindly
The mantle of a reality:
You go from idea
Thought
To a tangible product
(Behind every thought there’s a force
A motivation
A source
Before you.
Behind you a veiled bookman reads
You chose – or were forced to choose – the inflection
You are deaf to the innuendo
Then you have your idea.
Your back faces the source:
experience
a person
the past
death in life
life in death)
The mantle
Embroidered
It moves through your fingers
Seeps out of the tower
Down to a void.
It’s no longer yours.

Sonnet at 3:00 a.m.

2005-11-26T02:48:00.000-08:00

SONNET AT 3:00 AM

Don’t wake midnight up: it hears everything, and sleeps light.
Allow yourself instead to slip like a pen into our bed’s open palm,
Neverminding the distant giggles of cold coyotes or the
Fading moans of that phantom industrial train that never quite dies.
My fingers are cramped from patiently untying the knots
That life has made in your muscles; I did it slowly,

Much like the love we just made – thickening fog into free-falling rain.
Quietly protest against sleep’s sudden arrival, if you must;
Long have your eyelashes been dabbed down with drowsiness,
So the gentle deflation of your body into fatigue does not surprise me.
Dream, dream fiercely; never mind the dreams condensing in the hills.
Soon I, too, will join you, laying my arms across your chest like roses.

God's Fingers at a Rest Stop

2005-11-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

GOD'S FINGERS AT A REST STOP
for Geoff

Having licked his thumb, God smoothly dabbed the
edges of the giant puffs of clouds that sleepily
migrated above our heads, silent as balloons,
as they scraped their stomachs on the verdant knobby hills
on their way toward the sun’s western-blinking eye.

Your hands were especially cold, I remember,
as if you had stripped the horizon of its silver lining
or picked hail from out of the insides of clouds,
like a trick-or-treater picking his favourites out of a bowl of candy.

The sun’s setting autumnal equinox, flabbergasted in yellows,
prismed across the quiet, fading hazels of your eyes
-- not unlike the colour of the tree trunks stumped around us --
as you, the perpetual shutterfly, took pictures of the
rising moon’s reflection on the hood of your green Jetta.

“A lion’s mane of sunset surrounds the moon’s upturned face,”
I called to you from a distant bench, where I sat mimicking
the gnarled tree-arms that spun upwards toward the open-mouthed stars.
I squinted in the fading light to make out God’s finger
tracing the sandy borders of the small, murky pond

-- until you called me to you, and, after a kiss,
a sunset tasting of lips, we moved on.

Mac Arthur Park

2005-11-20T00:27:00.000-08:00

You could really tell that their suits are dark blue
when they have you in a head-lock with their black baton.
While one officer executes this move
the other two stand in front of you like some steeled-toed cowboys with their guns drawn.
Fucken pigs.
They got mad because I told them these ladies were in the street making a living by selling
elotes
tacos
tamales
pupusas
atole
DVDs
and maybe some Mexican made penicillin imported from Tijuana.
That’s when they warned me and told me to
“get the fuck back before we take your ass in for disturbing the peace.”
Peace?
By then I had taken English 101, critical thinking and writing,
so I felt like refuting their false notion of peace
and make them at least see that these mujeres were
entrepreneurs
like any other Dick and Jane selling
lemonade
apple pies
ceramics
insurance
stocks and bonds to any one without being harassed by angry cops,
without having to see their home made investments thrown into sewers
or stuffed into black trash bags that a rookie cop carries to the station like a scrooge walking away with the goodies during Christmas.
I wanted to ask them to take off their badge
to see if some sense of empathy would pierce through their Kevlar
and maybe then they would see that every single tamal
is a gesture of trust in a God that promised free enterprise,
or that every elote, pupusa, atole, taco and bootleg DVD is a prayer
a response
and a deed.

Like I said,
I wanted, but I couldn’t.
The boys in blue were on a mission to serve
and protect.
I was in their way and ended up with cold black
steel on my neck.

"Looking for a way in"

2005-11-16T09:39:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning
With fire in my veins.

My body is full of rage,
For I am inprisoned in a cage.
This cage is psychological.
It is only an illusion.
I wish I could set myself free.
NO I AM TRAPPED!
I'm a fucken crack smoker,
Who cannot see.
The entire world
Is in my way.
I wish it would leave me alone
This way I could decay.
I know that life is rough,
Someday I will defeat it.
Now, I smoke crack all day,
I can do nothing with life,
Today I will admit it!

pinches calaveras

2005-11-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

The white powder,
Swims into my nostrils.
Mi cerebro lleno de cocaina
Prendido,
Perdido,
Ansioso,
Con el pica hielos en la mano
Listo,
Y con muchas ganas
De enfierrar a alguien.
Pero porque,
Quiero hacer esto?
Porque me da la pinche gana!
Pues me encanta
Verle a los ojos
Al pinche enemigo
Cuando siente el dolor
De mi coraje y soledad.
Remordimiento
Conciencia
Piedad,
Estos no existen.
Cuando solo estoy,
No puedo dormir.
Las Calaveras
me hablan de cosas
Que no quiero escuchar.
Tengo miedo
Y quiero correr,
Pero las Calaveras
No me dejan.
Que pronto se me olvida,
Que fui yo quien crio
Estas Calaveras.

One Word

2005-11-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

I know that it was faith that lured me to this moment
That sends to Hades any thought of returning.
And put away any feelings of loneliness and desolation
Which carried me through difficult moments.

The thought of being happy at last, crossed my mind
A hundred times.
A hundred times and a hundred more
Not knowing if thy love will come.

How can it be that such a difficult task as Love can come in such an easy word?
A word that can re-light the fires of hell
While it makes a plight to anyone who dares.
Ohh how a word can change the dark and treachorous ways of Love.

I cannot understand how someone can win Love's prize with such great ease.
When he has struggled through so many years.
One Love, one time, one moment, one instant
One Word.

Tell me how that one moment can spark the magic lost in the anguish of ones mind?
For shivers felt throughout the body as you felt the taste of flora
Afraid of rejection, yet all the signs are there
Can't help it, something grabs and tears your manliness.

No more wondering, no more second guessing
Those wonderful eyes cannot be mistaking
Such a beauty
What a breathtaking moment to fall in love.

All the excuses to be close to thee
Even though you are at a distance, I cannot help but
Peek.
Thinking, wondering how things could be.

The time has come, one last opportunity to make an impact
Right before the pendulum swings again, a head is placed on a needing shoulder
Signaling the moment,
That will glide our lives to never before reached moments.

What a fruitful December when you became my girl
The stepping stone for new heights.
The key that opens the gates that were once shut off
And allowed the paradise of Love to bring forth such great, everlasting memories.

The past is such a past that needs remembering
The supernatural worked in our favor.
And what a coincidence, that all it took was
One Word.

Pre-Historic B-Boy

2005-11-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

It must have been the Mayan or Toltec inside him that calculated the next rhyme with
precision.
The mic is his tool,
he holds it proudly like a jewel passed on from past generations of emcees.

He was a descendent of wordsmiths who spoke with natural tongues and unconquered
thoughts.
Orators that sang to earthly Gods
opening chests on stone pedestals for the hungry sun to scorch.

Now he walks on cemented streets designed to hide his footsteps from future breeds of bards
that spit the struggle out in its raw form using and abusing the enemy’s language in their rhymes.

A Meditation on the portrait on Ernesto "Che" Guevara

2005-10-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

The priest spoke of Christ
the rebel,
and all I could see in my mind were your eyes
staring intently at a distant something.
You are the crucified messiah of a thousand sermons
nestled and forsaken in my heart;
the silenced messenger of faith
ambushed in a jungle of doubt.

Guatemala was your Golgotha
with contras camouflaging among a world of conformity;
living agents of humanity’s skeptic impulse,
soldiers on a mission to fight themselves.

You are buried under my fear,
under my bundle of earthly
corrupted flesh,
under layers and layers of faith
deficient actions,
under the empty notion of peace
left by my life’s complacent thoughts.

You are a revolutionary,
the source of the redemptive quakes beneath
my skin.
Faith executes my body,
it leaves it with a stigmata of bullet holes.

Latina (pt 1)

2005-10-18T00:35:00.000-07:00

Niña
Mujer
and doña
spoke to me all at once on a crowded bus
at night.
La doña clutched her purse
tight like a rosary
as she spoke of making it home
to feed her children.
They were waiting,
alone
doing their homework.
The oldest, she hoped,
was in the room practicing flute.
She was tired but kept talking.
Her children were all that she knew.

La mujer spoke about her job,
about el blue eyed gringo
that dug his eyes deep into her cleavage
and then slapped her with a handful of clichés
at work that morning.
(“Immigrant
spic
wetback
why don’t you go back to where you came from”)
She was shameless
and didn’t mind to show me the bruise on her cheek.
These were her mornings.
She cared less about the words.
Her work was all that she felt.

La niña didn’t say much
until the monotonous sound of the bus, the sluggish
shifting of traffic bored her onto talking.
She said school bored her even more.
History, English and P.E
the same routine of
sitting
listening
shifting pages
from WW I
to Steinbeck
and all she could think of was her father
at work with a cold.

La niña
la mujer
la doña
got off together
quietly
from the bus.
I stayed to listen
after they spoke to me at once.

My Life To you

2005-10-14T12:34:00.000-07:00

Ah, the sound of exitement and will
When two engage in a gruesome duel
That is thrusted upon us as we feel
The multitude will rise as the other begins to deal.

What greater love is there for a child of only six?
Who sees his heroes triumphantly celebrate as he wished
His glorious eyes, his glossy look
Who can only hope that what he sees will come again in full circle.

Life is good, everything seems to be in place
A child full of love and care
He definitely can't complain
Could we speculate that he lives the perfect life.

Come, Come, I welcome you to my Xanadu
A place of peace, a place of memories
One where birds chirp and dreams come alive
One that will guide you through the quest of time.

Allow me to walk to a long the growing mind
One where imagination and understanding roam
While acknowledging how beautiful life is
You understand that everything is not as kalon as it seems.

What can go wrong in a relatively perfect life?
Maybe because I am an athelete dying young
I highly doubt it, something else is missing in the perfect life
For hades is what I feel, when I can't solve this hole that kills me inside.

The moment of doubtfulness consumed me, UNTIL
I reached an epihany
The type where one door closes and another opens
Nemesis has paid me a visit.

Like a mission'd spirit I behold
Until finally my Illion was dethrone
My heart dropped and began to fill what was once empty
And what forever will hold.

What is this I see?
My love or my seraph fair who comes to enrich this once lonely heart
Tasting of flora guides me to you
With nervousness shivering as I come to you.

A perfect smile, a classy look
More than enough to make my world go in circles
And light the passion that once did not exist
While bringing hope to a heart that cherished.

Five years plus one half
To understand that we live in a symbiotic relationship
And in a land of dreams
That I wish we will never awake.

Who knows what the future will hold!
But as long as I am with you
One thing is certain
I will go down in Euthanasia.

A Poem About a Man (Pt. 1)

2005-10-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

I sat across from this incessant man, this restless strange figure of a man.
Watching how he drank milk with bread, watching how he stared at something but saw nothing that coincided with his thoughts.
You see I sat down to write a poem about a man but he sat down too, sat down
in front of me and I can’t help but look.
He’s a man no doubt, he’s a working man talking about how late it is for his children.
He wished he can do more tonight than just hold them, do more tomorrow to make more
even though his love is more than enough.
He thinks about how he still comes home everyday silencing his pains, suffocating sighs and complaints of orders he’s too old to take.

When I was five he told us he was made of steel, told us to feel his arms and his chest
with our hands and we did.
We were in awe with the touch, in awe because we knew our pops would never ever break
no matter how much you pulled .
We use to take turns trying on his shoes, hoping that our shoes would one day be warm like his,
so scuffed and useful like his.
We were kids trying to be men like him, trying our best to find and try on the man in him.

Earlier tonight he looked like a tired man, a man tired of working but he’s still a man.
To me he’s a man drinking milk and eating bread, a man thinking he’s a grown man.
He’s the man I sat down to write poem about, the man my poem about a man should have always been about.

Camping at Joshua Tree

2005-10-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

CAMPING AT JOSHUA TREE
for the phantoms

His finger not quite used to night
Connects the dots of stars
Sticking to the tent’s webbed roof
That sagged slightly with Night’s dark honey.

He listens intently to the wind
Tracing its invisible fingers across
The green nylon skeleton of the cheap tent
And tries in vain to sift

Through the weeds of human voices
That float to him like the phoenixed-ashes
of distant campires, painting shadows on the rocks
wedged against midnight's curving spine.

The Milky Way dunes in the celestial sands above and
Mouths the silent proof in forgotten languages
That God -- the most humble creature in the world --
Still walks barefoot across our only human hearts.

Freestyle Pt.1

2005-09-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

there are only 2 things in life that are certain, the first is your mom's unconditional love the second is your grave six feet deep beneath the surface,
I sit back while these snakes send diseases to hurt us,
there the same mufuckas that came in 1516 to convert us,
small pox and bibles, they covered our pyramids with churches...

Thunder Letter

2005-09-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Thunder Letter
for Misako M.

Her voice shook like a flower
newly baptized with prickly rain.

I felt it vibrate, dew-dropped with heartbreak,
and sag, heavy with anxiety’s sodden earth. But

before my poet’s mouth, clumsy with fatigue
yawned words more vacuous than the wind I saw

thin lightning bolts, pale as worms, quickly uncoil themselves
on the tops of distant hills, the knuckles of God’s clenched fist.

The world was made of lead, she said,
and no one likes to empathize with Atlas.

Though her soul felt pallid, poked-through with tears
and needles from science’s greedy nails,

between the ephemeral aurora borealis
of blue lightning flashes unrolling like film canisters

across the islands of clouds charred by the sunset,
the fog in my brain begins to clear, and I begin to speak:

Steal the thunder’s raspy voice,the hacking cough of some ill god!
Remember that your fingers, white like the Milky Way and

thinner than like lightning bolts, are just as mighty.
Force your memory to let you remember

that your strength can make the heavens crack open
and gurgle with the sound of a loaded pistol sliding across the sky --

sleeping, humble, delayed – yet riddled and shaking with power.

K-I-SS-I-N-G

2005-09-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

You hug me. It's warm, and tight, and sweet.
But all I want to do is kiss.
Lips come together like the sponge to my body in the shower.
The longer the kiss the more I feel your power.
Wetness seeps from where the sponge arouses-
Bubbles like syliva - I could scrub for hours.
Soft subtle lips, honeysuckle skin like no other
Open just slighty
Allow the miosture to enlight thee.
The caress of full seduction - shower me with your tongue
Grab me closer when you hug me
Grip my Hips, Kiss me til I'm sprung.
Neck Cheek Breast Belly Navel
Hip...Slide down angularly
Nice and soft, like you never knew me before
Never know me again.
Like a one-night-seduction to a nameless phantom in your dream
Move slow and precise
To ensure cream
On my lips, you can lick
The true candy of the Kiss.
Bath me in the shower of your kisses, fingertips, lips-
Lick and taste me from the inside out as we colide mouth to mouth.

September 18,2005 (1:27pm)

Los Angeles At A Distance

2005-09-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES AT A DISTANCE
lines penned at Griffith Park

silence doesn’t last long here.
soon the earthquakes from a motorcycle
or a pickup truck hiccupping up this hill
will carry it away in its mouth.
only the life of colour seems to persist here,
birthing in the crimsoned fire of dry leaves
that languidly nudge at their embers like
phoenixes about to soar once more; or
the mahogany-stained earth
whose brown rolls like a careless sow
holding silver-specked rocks and
pallid cigarette butts in its teeth.
yet not even the sky can hide its blue --
a hue as delicate as onion skin
–from the city stretching, open-mouthed,
for its hanging, elusive expanses.
soon the sky will wear a necklace of brown fog
and support itself with outstretched arms,
lest it fall onto the tempting lioness,
the concrete toothless maiden waiting below.
everything’s ephemeral in los angeles,
the service entrance to paradise, the city
where the furtive veil of smog is
made of everyone’s abandoned dreams.
there, in that land of walking stars
and where daily life is led like a
leashed dog on a theatrical stage;
in that city where at a distance
she sleeps urban and catatonic,
and there are more flies than flowers in her hair.
in that tragic misnomer without angels,
where our memories ensconce themselves,
painted on the ribs of a building
or caught between the jagged teeth of downtown;
here, in this city, where streets are littered with broken hearts
and where you once loved me.

Clenched

2005-09-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

CLENCHED

the clenched fist that was his body
strengthened its grip on his discomfort
and on my finger, lodged deep inside,
that threatened to scratch out its eyes

my tongue tasted the pleasure
that melted like a popsicle
over the stubbles of his neck
and the ticklish pendulum of his earlobe
as silently our bodies moved
together, scattered by the same wind

and every thunderclap of skin
brought with it a strained sigh
as his body whispered yes
but his mind moaned no

even the bed squeaked in agreement
as our breaths communed
into a zephyr that refused a name

but the tightness in his back returned
and with it the tension in his thighs
pulled tightly apart like rubberbands

as his face, turned deftly toward the closed window,
shifted slowly as a clock’s hands
away from my mouth that begged
to spill kisses on his lips
and silence the xenophobia
that pinched at the corners of his eyes

MISTAKES

2005-09-09T23:23:00.000-07:00

i didn't want to visit;
i didn't want to travel;
i didn't want to shake the waters;
i just didn't want to deal with change.
i had grown as everyone else
but didn't want to be admired,
didn't want to be loved,
didn't want to love,
didn't want to see you again.
for no reason in particular
nothing i did was meant against you,
nor was it meant against anyone else.
i just thought my absence would make me a bit mysterious,
allow all to miss me and wonder who i'd turned into
what i looked like
what i'd done.
i didn't mean to leave you
i didn't even think
i just left and decided i'd have time to visit
but never figured that you might not.
you were getting worse:
deteriorating from within-without,
you face losing color,
losing life,
eyes fading,
already gone,
bed-ridden,
incapable of caring for yourself
unable to simply exist by yourself.
i say this all out of imagination,
because even after knowing,
it never occured to me to go,
to visit someone i'd left behind without a second thought
someone who's existence i'd taken for granted.
if there is one thing i regret,
it's being who i was.
my stupidity made me leave and never come back in time to see you again.
not a single blink, smirk or smile.
you're gone and all i'm left with is my naivette and nothing more

HIATUS

2005-09-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

I know it’s good for you, I know it’s good for me
It’s sad, we both know this is how it has to be
You need your space, I need mine
Though we’re both lying when we say it's fine,
But there’s not much that we can do
It’s called a sacrifice for all that’s true
I need to grow, to spread my wings
To blossom and sprout and all those things
I need to find myself and understand
That my life right now is a little too bland
I need dynamism, intellectual spark
Lighten up my little soul, now cloudy and dark
Clear up a few things within and without.
“But I love you!” I whisper about
Although it’s true I realize
That this hiatus will make us rise
Rise stronger, more confident, successful-- you’ll see
To triumph in love and life you just don’t need me
I’m able to breathe without you
You’re able to sleep without me
I’m able to eat without you
You’re able reap without me,
The great rewards that life bestows.
I love you but…this is what we chose.

Distant

2005-08-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

I’m missing someone so distant
The problem is I don’t know who
I just know that every time I speak, my voice echoes
Because my soul is unfortunate
Because it’s hollow.

I guess you can say I’m unfulfilled
I’m feeling a little empty
All I’m trying to do is find myself
But how can I find someone I’ve never met.

I’m disconnected, out of sync
Not content with who I am
and unknowledgeable of who I should be

I’m missing someone so distant
Some manner, some quality
A characteristic to me unknown
I guess I’m really just missing me

Caminábamos

2005-08-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

Caminábamos entre paredes viejas y sobre calles empedradas
oliendo la tierra de la antigua ciudad.
A nuestras espaldas el sol, como un niño juguetón, coqueteaba y coqueteaba entre las
nubes que salpicaban el cielo.
Salía y se metía, se reía y lloraba
mientras que nosotros esperábamos con gran paciencia.

Y así fue que llegamos a Cholula:
esta eterna antigüedad que todavía resuena entre los coches, tiendas
bares y antros,
reclamando con un silencioso vigor lo que un día se le fue y se le fue.

Aquí en Cholula es imposible escapar la profunda
mirada de la pirámide: esa fortaleza de piedra sagrada
que derrama nostalgia entre sus grietas.
No se que me dio, miedo o quizás emoción, al penetrar su intimidad con mis pasos
lentos y ojos vírgenes.
Una vez adentro, olí su alma, sentí su alma, probé su aire calido mientras acariciaba mi piel y
supe que su alma seguía viva.

En ese momento quise subir hasta su cima y sanar su herida.
Pensé sobarla con mi propia mano hasta que cicatrizara la llaga
que la cruz de hiero le dejó.
Que ambición la mía, sabiendo que esa llaga se encontraba en mi propia alma,
que ha sido parte mía desde antes que empezamos a caminar sobre esta tierra antigua.

God is a Cyclops with an Orange Eye

2005-07-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

GOD IS A CYCLOPS WITH AN ORANGE EYE

God is a Cyclops with an orange eye
That we see at the end of every day:
Luna chases her Sol across the sky
Before he is extinguished by the gray.
God does not reign from castles made of clouds
Nor from a lonely tent that’s painted blue;
He dwells in prayers of the sleeping crowds
But lives and learns inside of me and you.
With just one eye that’s blinded every night
God stumbles, thunder-steps, public mourning.
The fate-full kneel to give Him back his sight
While we lead him with Wisdom to dark’s morning.

Do not live life through incense-filled façades:
Instead, be brave; un-blind your inner God.

Time not mine

2005-07-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

Time is my enemy.
I feel like socking that bitch in the mouth.
Along with poverty; it robbed my childhood.
Payless velcro shoes and thrift shop clothes
left a child callous and exposed
to ridicule and self doubt.

But I have understanding now.
I wish I could go back and talk to that kid.
Tell'm that it's gonna be alright.
Keep your head up Ese.

So I opened the envelop, filled it with my soul, sealed it,
wrote my current address on the top left,
wrote my previous on the bottom right,
licked the stamp, and sent it.

But Time returned the letter to the sender.
Time not mine.
But I'm still here.

The Algebra of Love

2005-07-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

My ex this morning called to see
How I was doing. He also added a question
(Minus reason, of course) as to
Why I had to be unequally, stealthily cruel, like mold
Softly tempting roses to fold
Before – one petal at a time – they kiss the ground.

Cholula

2005-07-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

Compuesta en las ruinas de la gran piramide de Cholula

Tierra fértil
que de tu nobleza surgieron imperios y
gente sabia, amantes de los horizontes vigilados por volcanes.
Hoy di pasos entre tus ruinas coloreadas por el tiempo
Visitadas por el viento eterno que tus cielos suspiran sin piedad.
Hoy con mis ojos penetré tu intimidad en la oscuridad de tus arterias.
Caminé, toqué, suspiré lo que cuerpo desprendió en esos momentos breves.
Pero me pregunto, ¿como pudiste haber caído?
¿Cómo pudiste dejar que te clavaran una cruz en tu corazón?
¿Cómo fue que tu sangre desapareció lentamente como el color de tu techo?

Pero hoy te vi desnuda y abandonado y esperando que mis huellas te recuerden de
lo que fuiste, de lo que eres y de lo que en mis palabras te conviertes.
Tierra fértil,
Tu nobleza brindó la vida

Unwriting the Canvas

2005-07-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

Unwriting the Canvas

I pulled the commas from his bushy brows
And from his eyes the semi-coloned tears
That fell down past parentheses for ears,
All melted actors in his plastic shows.
My kisses, scythed for him with question marks
Sliced the barren pages drunk with my love
And stirring, waged their war and duly wove
His bitter tongue – red dash – through Eden’s park.
How does one punctuate a Love that’s sighed
Its sentence through? No ant-like period
Or steep enjambments by the myriad
Can end, un-cry, my tears that never dried.
This poet must un-write and you un-seed:
Sonnets, like me, have broken hearts that bleed.

Eclipse

2005-06-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

Eclipse
for Geoff

That night the ocean was a rippling sheet of black curtain
Unperturbed by the little rhinestones of stars stitched onto its fabric.
He sat next to me on the rock, just beneath the bellow of traffic

That rushed at our necks almost faster than the foam that crescendoed
Lightly at our feet. Of course, we didn’t pay attention to little
Things like that. Shivering, he held my hand between his palms, warm and

Slightly damp, rough from the sand that coated them like quartz crystals
In the moonlight. The soft, flirtatious creases of his face
I kissed a few times, pulling away a few petals with the smile I caught

Like a seagull in mid-flight. Darkness began to crawl across the
Rust-coloured moon, but only gradually, at the speed that
Shadows grow longer with the sunset. Outlined in a violet

Thread, it dipped slightly into the sea, dripping with water,
Dirty with sunlight. The crescent moons of our lips locked at the
Same time, the salt of his lips sweetly splashing onto my mermaid tongue.

For Loss of Words

2005-06-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

I erased a hundred lines before I wrote this – where did they go?
With a single button I erased them so briskly
and I feel guilty now; where did they go?
My thoughts, my words, abandoned like useless brain mucous.
I pity these lines for in my mind its survival of the fittest:
“I fit in that rhyme.” “I make it sound fine”
Masculine and feminine rhymes duel their way onto this page.
They pull, they scratch, they throw tenses, images and tones at each other.
But that’s not all.
This page is still another showdown for words that proved their worthiness
but not wordiness.
I show some pity to my words.
But some don’t manage to escape my incessant index finger
from contracting, replacing, subordinating them or worse of all
deleting them.
I still wonder where they go.
These words, these lines, these rhymes, my thoughts.

Memorial Day

2005-05-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day
for Brian

He says he’s getting over me as he nestles in my arms
and skips a finger like a sleepy ballerina over my stubbly cheek
that’s sharp with hair and pointed with light.
He purrs like a kitten that’s found its way home,
lapping at my soft smiles falling before him in pools.
Soon he sleeps peacefully, no longer afraid of the dark or silence,
his legs wrapped around mine like vines on marble,
dreams tickling his eyelashes slightly with their pink feathers.
I give up and begin to lose myself, drowning
in my little pools of black ink, my silent students of life.
I stare unblinking into a lamp pawing at my feet:
Memories of this our old apartment begin to bud like midnight roses,
black with oblong spots of blue, thorns still cutting into Cupid’s nipple,
making him bleed a crimson, pulsing red.
A little silhouette of love begins to crawl like a beetle from my tongue,
drawn to his eyes, his tiny moans, his pattered snores, his swollen jeans,
until I kill it with a mental newspaper and tell him I Must Go.
I rise from him quickly, before Downtown in the background brims over with water,
and give him a hug, kiss his cheek, squeeze his shoulder.
His eyes begin to thread a golden spider web in the shape of Hope
until I cut it with sonic scissors, seeing it fall like Zeus in a golden shower
just before I slam the door shut, chasing tears away with the rattle of my car keys.

Bullet Time

2005-05-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

The lone bullet lies eager in that cold chamber waiting for the sear to release the hammer from the barrel from the gun that’s pointed at you which in a few seconds will be the last thing you’ll ever see when the blast separates your body from your soul they are fusing slowly into air now your off to who knows where as the people simply stare at the scene with pity too terrified to embody screams then you hear screams from your mom as her motherhood slowly reverses dissolving back into her womb and onto your father’s thrusting love it captures his body in mid replication because this nameless bullet now encrypted your flesh and left a stigmata like hole for the masses to see the workings of a 45 38 22 times the dubious mind of the half reaper half dead in life gunman equals your exhausted heart and suffocating soul drifting drifting while the bullet plunders plasma tissue vitals searching for a place to nestle in your fleeing warmth in these last seconds that redefine existence in the end the bullet still lies alone in the cold chambers of your flesh.

Regress

2005-05-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

The fact that
he bought his Che Guevara poster from a store whose manager once fired a Muslim man for praying in the locker room, where he – the manger – had oral sex with his co-manager two days after 9/11
could not have occurred to him.
That the
Thai Food place where he and his wife ate that same night used to be a porn shop, where an ex-con rented snuff films made in Bangkok four years ago
was unknown to him.
He still did
not now that the man who drove them home that night once taught elementary school in a small village of Guatemala during the civil war of 1954,
but then again, how could he have known?

He doesn’t know because the past is just the past and it is separated, sealed from the subject that bears it in the present. We are,
after all,
victims of the present, always pressing and erasing that which links us to a past.

Ode to the Mic

2005-05-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

Something about this piece of steel that makes us wanna speak our mind,
thoughts,
that stand in line waiting to be clutched and molded as we hold it still until we achieve the rhyme.
Take your time now to let deep intentioned words surrender to the rhythm of the world,
this is for me, the epitome of me going back to 88 and 89 when BDP ruled high,
to 91 and 92 when Ice Cube didn’t fear to die when skinheads stormed his shows to show revenge.
I try to spend nickels and dimes to score Dre’s The Chronic,
legally and over the counter,
but because of my age the record store didn’t allow it.
Meanwhile the mic and I got really acquainted.
Mexican renditions of Jesus and booze, viral diseases, crack heads and Payless Shoes all in one image and the mic gave me tools to paint it.
And I ain’t gonna lie.
My first rhyme was co-written by NWA and Kid Frost,
Big Daddy Cane showed me how to talk the girls that walked by of course.
Public Enemy spoke to the blacks, but I interpret the facts to be
same to my Mexican state of mind.
The times haven’t changed,
in 2005.
I bet a few bills that 9/11 and how it affected street culture woulda been heard wax if Biggie and Pac were alive.
This isn’t a lie.
People have died paying homage to the streets that fed em’ with the scenes that gave root to the fruits of imagination.
This is a kernel of the most high’s creation whether they acknowledge or not,
and it aint gonna stop,
and it aint gonna quit.
In the heart of the concrete jungle I swore solemnly that I will never forget,
falter or let my mind betray the purpose passed to me by this microphone I met.

Copyright 2005.

When Love Attacks

2005-05-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

Love is a trap.
Ain't no goin' back
to the curved roads
and meandering thoughts...
That used to be your freestyle.
With every glance and
look, all the while
Your heart ventures another mile
To insanity.
Is it vanity?
That makes us run the course
With or without remorse.
Or is it unseen connections?
Of physicality
If lucky- Mentality.
Soul Searchin'? -
When you're missin' your own? -
All you ever wanted was a soft seductive
groan.
From the loins- groins-
Innate sexiness.
I must confess ....
Love is a trap
Ain't no goin' back.
It takes a long trip
To realize that.
What starts out so good
Can feel like whiplash!
Hence-
Thy say you're whipped.
Like whipcream
And Champagne
on moist bodies-
Turning you out
Whipped like the flavor of seduction on your mouth.
Love is a trap
So reap the rewards
Of consumption.
The calories stack up
Impossible to give back.
Be a P.O.W.
A soldier to the task.
Imprisoned in the lusciousness of a quality attack.
You hear the click-clack
of hearts that crash
Who used to have the purple heart
Has crumbled in the clash.

May 4, -05. (2:01pm)

Homie Love

2005-05-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

All that bad ass acting and gangbangin'
bought you a one way ticket to Tehachapi
California Correctional Facility.
Man, it feels like I'm in there with you
up in this square ass tower I live in.
How's that South Side life?
Full of vatos with black hearts.
Only thing worth the time
is a shot of chiva; Blows the mind.
Golden child of the ghetto- the chosen one;
Jesus' son that never left though
it ends soon and you start thinking
about the children you left out here.
The ones that ask about you.
The little casualties that don't have a chance
to escape a world of anger and frustration
because of your situation.
At any rate, if it's kill or be killed;
I say do your thing
because I still want to see you again.

Old Giftbox Scribbles

2005-05-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

Ten feet from home
But miles from me.

Don't get confused-
The Spirit blows
And maybe you can feel me.
Or maybe not.

When I stared out the
window
And longed for a smile
-No familiar faces
I knew they were miles
and miles....
Away from where you want to be.

Don't be confused!

I am me
You are you
We are we.
One within two.

Self Phone

2005-05-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

I called and called and it rang and rang,
but not a single time did anyone pick up there damn
phone.
It might be too late to talk but I’m alone tonight.
I always answer why can’t they do the same?
Considering that for years I have eased the pain of my condition by dialing certain digits.
The voices on the other side were in a way vicious to my problems, personal of course, every time I spoke.
Now I’m dialing even old numbers that I pretended to loose,
and perhaps I’ll use that as an excuse when they ask why I
haven’t called
How pathetic.
But I do need a soothing human voice as an anesthetic for my, my ahhh . . . lets call it condition again for now.
While the tone rings again and again I sit back thinking about this often.
Why call? Why bother them at all with my own self inflicted lonesome nights?
Wait.
This is somewhat therapeutic, I guess, for me at this moment.
Yes.
I don’t think I should call anymore and sink into frustrating levels of dialing tones.
Yeah, I’m alone, and I talk into my self phone.

Copyright 2005.

It's A Baby

2005-04-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one that seems to notice that infant walk adventurously across and in between the tables?
I mean this guy has nothing better to do but read, aimlessly, the nutritional pamphlets next to the salt.
Another girl talks on her cell, speaking potato pampered phrases into the speaker
splattering sauce all over.
Now we were all once on that stage; we too assumed the role of explorer, crawler, trailblazing through the frontiers of department stores, parks and streets.
What happened?
Where’s that joyful spirit or mindless urge to walk through unknown paths?
To instinctually book trips to unfathomed destinations?
To use our illiterate mind to write phrases into the randomness of the air?
Who or what road blocked our desires from reaching any satisfaction?
Meanwhile, this baby runs and runs across the dining hall free from our deficiency.
It is virgin to our time, our agendas, our predetermined thoughts and actions that ravish the
spirit.

Copyright 2005.

LA County Hospital Blues

2005-04-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles County Hospital
USC Medical Center
Indentification Tag on my wrist looks like a dam toe tag;
follow the black and white lines.
12 hours in room 1050/1060

Fuckin' old Cadillac cushions
rusted metal flake
gouging my eyeball
Where the hell are you jerk?
A man and his family needed a ride-yeah right.

We don't care what you say.
Why yall so slow?
We got people waiting from 1,2,7,8,11pm and 12am
3 doctors
3 hospital rooms
Doctor time varies with each patient
How long do I have to wait?
You can't make the doctors rush.
Lab results and shit.

Rules.
Trauma Hopital;
Treat the sickest first.
Can't rush it.
"Yall so slow back there."

A fight ensues
"Get up."
"What?"
"Get up motherfucker."
"Lets go outside."
"Fuck that lets do it right here."
Security intervenes.

Toilet paper stuck to a bums pants.
"I sold my electric chair.
I sold the mutherfucker for 1500 dollars.
I lived on the eleventh floor before.
Very quiet. TV and all that shit."
Old man with rattle snake hat.

On T.V. Oprah with Lisa Marie-
Tony Danza with Carson Daily talking about bullshit; nothing that gives me strength.

"Shit I'm a smoker the only thing I sell is pussy."

Piss-Shit-Mucus-Blood

Homeless gangrinated dispair
rotted ankle, pus, black, flesh; visable bone.

Gary Coleman on TV Cash Call

A woman does crochet.

"Rafael Reyes to 1060 door C" on the loud speaker.
A black man says, "Fuck Rafael Reyes, when the fuck you gonna call me motherfucker?
I been sitting in this bitch for 10 hours."

My mom saw a naked woman in the restroom washing off.

A man's wife in the waiting room.
He almost lost his arm helping the trashman with a trash can.
Let the machines do their job hombre.

Bassed Out / Spaced Out Emergency Room.

Homeless call the ambulence to kick it in the hospital,
A place to sleep,
Ask for money,
and perhaps be entertained.

Flushed out my eye with a lens like cup
placed over the eye like a contact lens.
Saline solution.
Eye drops.
Q-Tips.
Soaked towels.
I'm drowing.
Copyright 2005.

The Gathering

2005-04-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

At three we will gather, some mad and some calm and collected from their mere hope.
I am just another voice – perhaps – among that well of fear, compassion, disgust and faith that linger and ricochet from hall to hall, from brick to brick.

The voices say si se puede.

To think of it like such would be a wish they say;
those piercing eyes from leather chairs and coffee shops, that judge from sheltered homes and suburban streets.
Those raised in the ways of the in-di-vi-du-al.
Sentenced to serve time in gated communities by some paranoid judge or God.
No guilt no shame, no plea no bargain; only sheltered eyes that will watch us as we picket from afar.

What would they think of our sings I wonder? These wordless scraps of cardboard carved with the image of our loving mother.
Our guide in this procession from kitchens, lawns and loading docks; from careless dorms and shitty toilets; gum and spit infested floors red carpeting the paths of such prestigious minds.
From office spaces full of books that adorn shelves with ideas and theories of “social justice.” From classrooms of cheated students with frozen souls staring at orphanized chalk musings.

But at three the fervent crowd will clutch my heathen voice. It will fuse into that boiling cauldron no longer stagnant. Sanctify it from these vain teachings and selfish dreams. It will amplify it through imprisoned eyes and conforming hearts.
No authority will mute our chants and hymns echoed from our worthy homes.
Together they will seep through the crevices of marble walls and conference rooms immaculating the eyes of those ungrateful overseers.

Copyright 2005.

my vagina

2005-04-13T00:17:00.000-07:00

my vagina,

i want to wear it on the outside
to remind you of who i am...
or remind myself of what you see in me

i want my lips to do the talking
and make sense of my thoughts

i am pussy
cunt
incubator
procreator
nurturer
i hurt.

hot bloody tissue runing down my legs
i ovulate without conscent

Copyright 2005.

Random Centiments

2005-04-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

How I feel.
Confused, evil, misguided, Loved, forgotten…
Underestimated.
Under- - - represented?
(That’s what they tell me.)
The more they tell me the more my consciousness assumes the fact.

What does love have to do with it?
We’re all strangers in Life.
Trying to make the best of things, trying to reach happiness and, and,

Well – who knows?

All I know is how I feel.
Sadness, contempt, regret?
Aren’t I supposed to feel happy – excited - giddy?

I know, it was, is, the rejection that has overshadowed the happiness

of youth, wantonness, and glee.

The Glee experienced in first kisses and long, longing looooks
of yearning, and suppression of the instinctual urges.

The passions have failed me.
Or have they turned me astray?
Or have they alighted my way? … To visualize a whole new….
NO. Not possible. Not in my cards.

My royal flush has not occurred tonight.
I gambled, but didn’t go all in.

My bad.But I still have chips to play with….. I’d rather cash them in.

3:19a.m.
4/7/05 Copyright 2005.

Shells Shower the Concrete

2005-03-15T01:22:00.000-08:00

Click Click Bang Bang
Hot horizontal rain rounds a corner
and enters tattooed flesh
ripping life; braking bones
bouncing through a world of confusion.
A bullet makes a home of a heart
it stops; the body drops.
Walking up to the enemy,
Under the street light;
Revenge smears cerebral mush on the concrete.
Listen to the sounds of the alley clowns
Who would rather laugh and hide frowns.
Spray paint warfare continues.

Copyright 2005.

Tonight

2005-03-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

To escape, run, but not hide from what I can't control;
an overwhelming, piercing notion of wanting
to be there.
I've been there once, standing, crawling, holding that happy potion;
That nightly splendor; the nights potential; that confident air the night provides.
Tonight is tonight.
And my past was not washed down with the gulps, puffs and mist of
the midnight.
It is in the crowd, down the street, through the cigarette smoke
and at the bottom of a bottle.
But it is not here, on this page, nor next to me.
Tonight, it is out there, away – but close – from here.

Copyright 2005.

Un Hombre Sincero

2005-02-25T19:41:00.000-08:00

"My poems, short and sincere,
Have the force of steel
Which forges swords."

Jose Marti

Me Tiro Rayos

2005-02-25T19:02:00.000-08:00

Me tiro rayos hoy.
Con sus ojos entra
Mi alma y encuentra
Un nino callado y asombrado estoy.
Una cosa maravillosa camina enfrente de mi.
Si, se para y se sienta
Pero no se para de ser la belleza que yo vi.

Me tiro rayos
Y me boto de mi silla
Y no savilla que avilla pasion en mi todavilla.
Se sonrillo y se voltio
Y todos los dias un tonto volvio.
Sus labios electricos generaron un toque
Perdi la razon, la fuerza, y el enfoque.

Me tiro rayos
Ella es una sirena mas mujer que pez
En los suenos se me aparece
Y cuando me despierto el deseo crece
Y los rayos me los tirara otra vez.

an oldie, but goodie

2005-02-23T00:05:00.000-08:00

Rush Hour

A myriad of rain drops fall
On the filthy sidewalk,
a catwalk for women dressed in luxurious lust;
dust, filth overflow an empty cup
a man’s luck appears as a trash can’s lid pops up!
The harmony of rush hour
The smell of food, but the man is skipped.
“Here’s an extra plate for you girl” – I love your hips.
The rain now, pouring down on dirt and dirt
the woman’s skirt worth more than his own worth?
His bare feet, splashes the water, mixed with ashes,
again she passes, again she passes, holding on, clutching
her purse and nostrils
“Oh my God what is that smell?” – its him.
The stomach now growling, but only he can tell;
Cruise control down the block
a sudden stop! . . . next to him, next to him, next to him, next tohim.

A subtle glance at him mixed with shame and fear;
veiled by pride, satisfaction.
Tinted windows go up, a man’s worth goes down.
The Harmony of Rush Hour.

Introduction

2005-02-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

Somebody, everybody, better write

Genesis

2005-02-04T20:50:00.000-08:00

Poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility." William Wordsworth.