poetry?

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

brother,  your woman is costing you the wealth of your people, good people, who loved you when she didn’t, before she was is and always will be.

scrubbing you free of the imperfections of life, the beauty of our uniqueness.

because of her discomfort of our fit into the perfection of your union and the challenge we present to your status quo.

in other words, all that was the soil of your growth, sustenance of the spirit that flew and soared and sang to everyone around you.

will we hear from you again? or is it what it is? is it? it is?

i mean, i get it.  i have built a nest and populated it with eggs and spouses as well.  and shit gets tough, trying to live high on the tree when your folks seem to be all over the field. so far away.  so far from who you used to be.

but we’re still here.  not so present, but still waiting for you and the music…