Alright Poems from 2018-2020
1/
Come out to show them.
I’m looking for a memory
And it starts with a sound
That makes the water
In the glass tremble
Like the neighbors music.
The memory is singed
In the Texas sun
Do I have to?
Yes, you look fine. Your a’ma is waiting to see you.
But the sounds are all around
I feel the wall and it is dry,
It is becoming hard to see.
Outside the family is breathing
Heavy because I made them wait.
It’s not the right color.
They won’t know the difference, mija.
Self-worth is a bone.
2/
Turn out my pockets in the middle of the street,
I’m not going anywhere.
But the sound of my shoes is finicky. The eyes behind my glasses can
Barely see through the foggy lenses.
Pumpkins sit in the black windows and
A cop on horseback waves to pass.
The wind can’t sing very well
Because it has a bit of a cough.
The trees have an itchy back and the sky will not stop asking
For directions.
To someone these colors are just words like,
Buxom, Peeve, Wishing-Well, and…
Well basically rooms without people.
3/
It is May again —
Sanguine piles of
Thirsty “little” dots.
A thousand tall strands slide right under your eyes,
Because they never did exist.
Stomp them. Scratch them.
Make another time,
A some other time,
Miss you back.
4/
Burned my finger on the pot,
bit it off,
’cause it hurt
— a lot.
5/
We can’t pick those apples?
But our apples have flies.
Doesn’t matter.
You’re always wanting.
Leave me alone. It’s not funny.
See those smiles?
Yes. Keys in my hand.
There is a bench in the woods,
Put your little soul,
Your little light,
What’s left of a stubble,
The youth of a clenched fist,
The wide stripes of a scar,
The tallow, the moors, the desert sky.
Put it all in a shoebox and carry it there.
Then leave it,
You’re better off.
6/
Growing Up 01
It was the end of summer
when it happened —
no, it was autumn.
Good boy an’ all.
He was in the lot beside his home
and was crouching in the tall grass
growling like a big cat.
It was day so he could think
about all the swampy things.
She was asleep on the couch,
her wedges on the floor beside her.
He knew there was a big bird
that kept an eye on him.
The collection of toys
some borrowed were propped
against the lookouts.
They were watching him too.
His hands were like mitts.
His secret is that he’s always scared.
Growing Up 02
Mint chocolate chip,
Blue mirror,
Back flip,
Flat tire,
Pop fly,
Code book,
Knock knock,
Show me where it hurts,
The check is coming,
Fence hop,
It bounces.
7/
Archaic Poem a
Now, that I remember Spring,
A stranger has returned to sow.
Deep, in the pale black night,
His song remains on the leaves.
Archaic Poem b
Hark, no chains that I can see
Restrain our progress,
Though the fields are dark
And time has slipped by me.
Hark, if you are near
Like an invalid child
Convince the ears to learn
And congeal fast the matter.
Hark, my body is invention
Without a tutor.
It objects, it amends,
But it cannot create.
Hark, above all else
How the mind conceives;
In a motley court,
Whose play is one act.
8/
A poppy face
with enough space to breath.
When I wave my stone hands
the soft red petals turn away.
But it makes me happy when they stay in my hands
for a little while.
Then I have to put them down and let them go.
My hands are stone because I was cursed.
There are only two things,
curses and poppy faces.
When I hold them, I believe there are other things.
Good things. I feel good things.
When they leave me, I have stone hands again.
I can’t have them because they need to see.
If I hold them for too long,
they can’t see.
Because my hands are not good
at putting things together,
I’m afraid to hurt the red petals.
My hands have hard corners and crumble
if I press too hard.
9/
I don’t know how to tell you this, but,
above in the crumbling ends of a dream
there is a becoming cluster of lemongrass,
wisps of seeping sugars and other misgathered
and lost sweets from the loose pockets of a youthful patsy,
that all arrive and remember themselves
together in the image of a strangers young and crisp profile.
The face, a lonely sphere among other imitations,
can’t help but meet your eyes before you exit the dim scape.
Its eyes, talismans; thin smile, an army of warm bright mirrors.
In the sorrow of parting with the kinship of an unknown memory,
within just a grasp’s worth of light, you unfurl as the echo lingers in its last moments.
( Update on where I am creatively:
I am just going to continue writing in life despite the creative shortcomings. There has never been money in the business and if I told myself that I expected otherwise, I’d be a fool. It’s a hobby. A hobby whereby I take upon myself some of life’s most unyielding questions. I’ll try my best to listen to the voices and answer the questions, for free. I’ll never hold another soul indebted to this choice. Sometimes I ask whether I am doing it right. I seldom give myself the opportunity to try and in reflecting at the end of the day only wallow in all of the missed opportunity. I adjust each of the accessories so that the light may better warm the crevasses of my mind, and yet in doing so only make a hollow act of it. Most of the time I don’t actually write the way I say I do. And when I explain to others that I write, it becomes a way to sustaining myself through the defective picture they have of me in their own head. It’s in there that I live on.
Thank you for reading.)
