poetry?

you are poison.

the rotting flesh of

spoiled fruit

hoarded under the belief

that you could

stockpile security

by investing in the farce

that you convinced yourself

was your duty.

blind from the shining bright heat of your fantasies

that you are the most intelligent

that you are the most handsome

that you are beyond reproach

from all who remind you of your weakness.

including us.

i eat the weight of intention

and sit my way out of momentum.

fooled by the pace of life

and the technologies

I pray to.

So enamored by the rythm

of the world I create

in my head;

my body is no longer pertinent.

Yet pains are born in parts

I never thought of,

before when energy was alive

and lived in my veins.

lost the gift of feeling

the minutes and seconds

between intention and

the possibility.

as if dreams are a commodity

that is too expensive to consider

when it is so expensive just scraping by.

the cost of assumptions

heavier than rain storms

upon the naked.

Defenses raised without

understanding who or what

we fight for.

anger because of anger;

and love becomes trivia -

a set of ideas,

an argument,

instead of the truth.

someone once told me that being a mom was the loneliest job in the world.

even if there are always little people jumping on you,

even when they are shooting smile arrows into your heart

or crying for your arms to make them feel safe,

it is lonely.

truthfully, nothing can prepare you for the endless questions  of:

should i really care if so and so is mad at me?

or am i just wasting time on things that take me away from those smiley darts and cuddle hugs?

did i pack them diapers for the sitters?

where is my ipod?

random reflections on a life that has taken over my agency.

sometimes i feel like i’ve jumped into the wonderland..

tunnels of time warp running me through to other places and other beings.

as if i just disappeared from my past life

i can see into a one-way mirror to find out whats been going on.

there have been less calls.

not very many check up with me anymore.

the invitations are getting fewer and farther between.

and reality has begun to resonate

but through manufactured examples in magazines

or, other peoples  lives that i’m not really a part of.

at 456 am i hear you coughing that deep, dry cough you’ve had for several years.

stubborn old man,  you’re old but shouldn’t be.

taking the bottle to head faster and more often than you took breaths.

mom once thought you were looking for memories of your mother,

deep in the caverns of your stuppor.

The woman who left you behind before you felt sure enough to be you.

She was gone before you understood all she could have taught you.

Left in those years before rebellion even mattered.

I often wonder who you would have been had she won against the cancer.

I often wonder who I would have been as well.

Sitting on your chair in the porch, you tell me of how you couldn’t drive to Glendale from the house.

What would have been a 15 minute drive, impossible because of the bubble behind your eye.

Part of me is quick to condemn you for not taking care of yourself.

Suggesting, as my default has been, that you don’t care enough about us to want to live.

But tonight, I wonder how complicated things are in your head,

how messy and interconnected it all must be.

Not unlike the tangled wires you work with.

And it makes me sad.

How your love comes at the expense of your life,

how your pain is the cost of our joy.

How lost you must be when you speak with anger and judgement.

…

oh how i hate how your perfect lawn hides cigarette butts and various vitriole so well.

this time its for real.

me and you are done.  thanks for the memories, and any other cliche i could think of.

your facade is smeared with too much sweat and irritation that the Pacific winds can’t help.

good luck with the bikers, the longshoremen, the gangsters, the ice cream men and their bells, and good luck with all of those boring rich people and their hawking ways.

So what if i watch my kid from afar.

You are bullshit point fermin, san pedro.

the air is thick, even in the open market,

between walls that our compiled exhaustion built.

silence on the 23.4 miles and 2 whiny songs home;

hours of adult swim and studying 12 pound books later,

it is 3:25am and your leg crosses the divide

unconscious peace treaties with mine

and we wake forgetting all about it.

in the dark my son squeaks, mommy i’m scared.  too dark.

i do my best to soothe him on the left arm while

sister squirms trying to find her spot in my right.

i whisper how i love him even more than i get angry

into thick filipino hair, curled by the genes of black america.

oppressed people know oppression in their skins and their tongues;

and their legs move in the direction they are told.

green and gooey

seeping out of our noses

scratching their way out of our throats

wanting to attach themselves to anyone, thing.

wanting much harder than you want