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You appeared on a cold night 

With the odor of dirty smoke and dead guinea

Fear pushed its way through the door

I saw your teeth through the window

Your face once pressed upon it like a shrewd and handsome child

I saw it now eaten away by time

Through your veins 

Your insecure-stained face, still,

Showing in all the sweat that you cried

Reflections I saw again and again

One more time please 

I'm tired and I just can't with my heart

One more time, no my love

Please don't yell because the children sleep

I'm returning with blame so hot I'll burn your hurting punches

Bruising me with every touch

My days are grey when you're around 

But the sun comes out when you leave for town

The sorrows in my heart I've had to swallow with the flame in my heart

My face of beauty and youth

Has been aging in silence

Every time you call me bitch with violence

I wish your conscience dwindled and you fell sick

One more time please

I'm tired and I just can't with my heart

One more time, no my love

Please don't yell because the children sleep

I'm returning with blame so hot I'll burn your hurting punches

Bruising me with every touch

You're weak and awful

Don't think your better

Better than anyone

I'll smoke my cigarette

And blow the smoke in your face

One more time please

I'm tired and I just can't with my heart

One more time, no my love

Please don't yell because the children sleep

I'm returning with blame so hot I'll burn your hurting punches

Bruising me with every touch

Adapted from Bebe’s Malo lyric

•  

Hole in Hand

I dropped a bottle
Now, there are holes in my head
I stabbed a knife all through my hand
I see the pretty wave with rifles
The soldiers look ahead

Look around you and see the misery
Bleeding through the stifled histories
Green and greed all around you
Find a pillow and gun instead

I threw a bottle
Now there's a hole in his head
Sixteen guys will fight you
But you'll win in the end
Better trust who guides you
Words from the dead

Silent kills and violent pills don't mix
An open vein will leak or piss
Turn around and cry about you
Hardest hit, a punch, unclenched, an open fist

I dropped a bottle
Now, there are holes in my head
I stabbed a knife all through my hand
I see the pretty wave with rifles
The soldiers look ahead

Dunce Cap

Face to face
Failure gets the better part of you
A stream of letters and
Figures saying only some of you
But you think that
Really they’re a summation of you

Face to face
Failure gets the better part of you
Can’t hardly push away the thoughts
Disappointing you
Chewing and washing you
Like gum in your mouth

Denounce these pathetic worries
Unsubscribe to them
Never
Create a better you
Entertaining failures

Face to face
Failure gets the better part of you
Be cautious
Of the grades that follow
They may get the better part
Like the slice of cake or pizza
The one you chose before anyone had a look

Denounce these pathetic worries
Unsubscribe to them
Never
Create a better you
Entertaining failures

Nature

I saw her
Looked deeply at her
Specifics
And generalities.
Found her
Big,
Found her
Intricate.
Chaos, please make sense of her;
You, her awesome opposite
Let me not suppose,
Engross her with my tears and sweat.
Let me not impose,
Run her
Empty with regret.
She gave me life,
What I least understand
I tend to grasp its ambiguous
Nature

Taken

Torn from the creature I helped torture
Behind the conscience dungeon
The gloomy den of an empty dream
Given to slavery
Had to master his own
My given
Taken away
Made to survive
Alone
A technicolor in making him sweat
Battered
Bruised
Forgotten with time
The voice calls with little air
Yet not enough time

Sleep Talking

Desire's
                   lonely
Speech rolls
Empty groans
Asleep under the growing moon
Eyes stripped of the stars' light
Dreams dying with every snore
Turning hours rolling on their backs
And mine hurts sinking deeper into the couch
Had a terrible sweat, wiped it down
Evening's blanket
Dirty and drenched
Imbued by thought
I swear
I sweat enough

The morning after

Monday blues and Tuesdays burn


The better bottle froze when I tried to open it


I don't know about you

I don't know about me


The better moments were when I smiled, happily


A child misguided


Under guidance of his swooned mother


Otherwise a patron saint oppose to an evil father


Burdened blood never filters between the misty skies


And darkened space


This tragedy


This trajectory of paternal hurt and burdened pedigree


Follows you

And nudges you


Insisting to speak to people you dislike

My better bottle froze when I tried to open it

Now I'm ready to fight

Flag and Field

Lonely, it waves

Black, almost burnt,

In the distant night

Catching the freezing cold

Listening closely

It terrors

It waves, flapping

Justifying the winds and their force

Telling a story of memory

Disorder and exploitive punches

On the backs of foreign blood

Considering little their empty stomachs

And children born of the earth

Remembers a barren field,

The gorgeous shield

To pride's residual scorn

Deaf and barren field

Where sweat and crying moans

From soldiers roar

The general's men

And the meal they hungered too

Signifying distant histories of land

And men

Condensing them in coupled colors

On to cloth

Giving Up

Give up on love, the only drug that supported you


My gravity has taken me to the skies
My feet are bound but Earth's delivered
From crushed eyes, cold drinks, the fevers
Pretty sounds to my ears have drawn nearer

The distant reach, what burns is never weak
Play a tune on your lune for the dream
Gravity, tortured fean, bring me back
Reality is a pain, from crushed eyes to cold fevers

Angel wings and the stars beyond
Days can freeze or be gone
Mornings graze my spine
Nights are my better afternoons

The tender sqeeze of lemon juice into your drink
A sucker's punch below the belly and you sink
Opposites give light to each other
Watching each other after the burn

Separation is a stubborn call for me,
me,
me
The teller will scream into your ear till it bleeds

The ballons popped in the crowded room
Where your mom was found first in her knot

Screams and Moans

Euphoric nightmare
Swayed sleep as my lips imbued
Euphoric nightmare
Swayed my lips as sleep imbued
Euphoric nightmare

Waiting

Watching in the day
Birds rustling upon the pole
Waiting for the moon

A burn in the belly...

A burn in the belly swells with blood
and no pins avail to burst the pouch
It glows beyond the beating thump
Of heart, we might chill in such affairs.
When a friend befriends a foe's air
Changed and you, left to hear his tone unfamiliar.

Time

Let time spin for itself';
It has and will for itself.
We're the better governors--
We speak, or tell, just the same.
Organize the revolving day
Through every blink and say,
'There are no stars', beyond
The the broken meter
Of the spinning clock.

The Color of a Word

They use it not knowing
They use it not seeing
They use it not caring,
Among themselves
Around other people
In the crowded train.
Talk, loud enough for
Others to hear.
They use it not knowing
They use it not seeing
They use it not caring
Talk among themselves,
Not hearing.
And they repeat
And repeat,
Abandoning
The color of a word
Which they paint with
Careless drip.

Brother

I blurted, "Frost
Is Boring!
Corny?!
No, Boring!"
And his eyes widened, up
And glowing, maybe not,
And I was left to Explain.
But I was stumped
Between sound and meaning
And opening-up.

No,
There'll be no day
There'll be no day
When "... ich, ich..."
Or Irish Blues
Are news to him
No, no
There'll be no day.

I had urge

i had an urge
to take the
point of pen and
jam it straight into eye
my heart raised in slight
Panic
Hope of restraint
i have not done so
the eye still sees clearly
as far as I am allowed--
the cherry of
Sanity.
If i let go
the Fall
into sweet juice
will allow
for a laughable state
i will be drenched--
Insanity.

Because, Because

Your youth stays so long with you,
You grow out certain things and wardrobe,
But style bends to old character.
And we all know
Just a perfect sense from a certain book
As fleeting as midnight dreams
And as when you took your first lovers hand.
We have broken interiors
Which some detail in full oratory of mouth
And others leave for dying leaves at the cemetary.
There's always that fond togetherness.
That some years tell more than others,
It's true
Because forgetfulness lives near the truth tellers
But are often lonely
Because the forgetful live nearest these tellers
But reign in loneliness.

IN my dream

with a nocturne
embedded in my eyes,
Fire burns and
Reason dies.

Adrienne Rich's 'At a Bach Concert"

Coming by evening through the wintry city

We said that art is out of love with life.

Here we approach a love that is not pity.

This antique discipline, tenderly severe,

Renews belief in love yet masters feeling,

Asking of us a grace in what we bear.

Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer -

The vital union of necessity

With all that we desire, all that we suffer.

A too-compassionate art is half an art.

Only such proud restraining purity

Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.

This poem’s last two lines invite a discussion about the sublime integrity of the artist. Rich speaks of an all too real notion of “too-compassionate art”, giving light to her awareness that for artists, emotions can restrain the artist’s conscious and slow the juices of delibrate creation.

Shakespeare as reminder

Of some several poems running word for word in my mind, Shakespeare's Sonnet 121, very old I know, carries much weight. I've commited it to memory and have found a comfort in resighting, even muttering it, to myself.

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,

When not to be receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed

Not by our feeling but by others' seeing.

For why should others' false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own;

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel.

By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,

Unless this general evil they maintain:

All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

If you choose to write about a poem like this, I was advised to write the poem in your own words; listen to the words, so read it outloud; then, consider the message you believe it is trying to convey. Don't take words for granted. Shakespeare was a master with diction, so look words up, consider their meanings and return to the poem asking what he meant.

I memorize the poem in hopes to generate a reminder of what value I have of being human, what consequences my actions hold, the measure of responsibilty my actions generate and the subtle politics, regarding varying degrees of 'badness' we succumb to, existing in the social arena.