Category: Poem

You will think of a haze of color and light when you think of me,
remember the shifting of a kaleidoscope when you fall asleep.
Under your eyelids past tears and nightmares, there is something that unceasingly glows—
a memory in your eyes that the soul softly holds.
And so you sleep, and so you dream.
And so you hope to spread your dust ridden wings.

We did these things in our youth,
we spread our wings and we lied to the truth.
We found darkness, we sought light,
we seeked many and beautiful things.

In the city
where the graves of beautiful days are marked by dappled sunsets cast over skylines,
for us the harsh night never rests.
The cold air of midnight sets snowflakes into our lungs,
it is because of this that we will become.

We live in a trance; for the sunrise we’re seeking.
With glass in our eyes, this midnight, we’re dreaming.
Opposite to us, the stars belong to the night.
They long for the darkness, so they can paint the sky.

A daring thought might say to let the stars burn your eyes,
a nightmaring person might desperately collect fireflies.
But the time of shooting stars still has yet to begin, we’ll be graceful in our descent while we let our minds spin.

The stone foundation of a darkened sky,
paired with the thin-voiced singing of the deep twilight.
Observing this is human, our existence is divine.

And when the sun comes back around,
and when the stars lose their glow and fall down…
I hope the kaleidoscope falls apart.
I hope that the sunlight fills your youthful heart.

History hurts. They told us back in the day don’t study history whatever you do. You’ll see a life misshapen, possibly murmured in a vast derangement of your own. You might see a doomed love or a cruel man. You might see a coward. You might see a life-gnawed man, like the one in my sewn-shut dreams. But you also might see the ones with pueblo skin on turquoise trails, sleeping in the bruise-dark dirt. We go to that place sometimes, Los Cerrillos. That’s where he was from. It goes like this: lightning, in the wailing stretch of night, bright white. Starved wide, history hurting to the bone.

I always said I was busy
I never knew how much it would hurt me
To not have you around
I never thought we’d have to say goodbye
Where did I go wrong?

I always meant to call
But you know I get distracted easily
I never thought you’d leave me
Because we had security
Where did I go wrong?

But you left me when I was busy
Distracted so easily
How did I miss all the signs?
Where did I go wrong?

I was broken the day you left me
When no one even told me
The state that you were in
Where did I go wrong?

Now you visit me in my dreams
But what does this mean?
I can’t tell if it’s good or bad
I see us laughing and having fun
Before your actions were done
And then you disappear from me once more
Where did I go wrong?

I wonder constantly if you ever think of me
And how I used to be
So carelessly free
Instead of how broken I am now
Because I do
Now I watch what I do
And where I go
In fear of finding you
Because I can’t bear to watch you leave again
Where did I go wrong?

I think I’ll go insane
If I think about you once more today
I don’t know how to be alone
With no one to comfort me
How do I move on?
Where did I go wrong?

Who am I without you by my side?
Is there a reason to move on
Now that you’re gone?
Trying to live my life
But constantly searching for signs
That you’re still paying attention to me
Where did I go wrong?

I need to move on
I can’t stay in denial
It’s time for acceptance
And if I see you again
I won’t let past memories haunt me
And scare me away
I can’t keep blaming myself
It’s not my fault

De Canada soy yo,
De Los Estados Unidos soy yo,
Pero, el Español yo hablo,
También, el ingles hablo yo,
La vida es sueño,
Por eso, a países diferentes viajo,
Me encanta la aventura,
Entonces, vida es la aventura,
Yo hago la Aventura,
En el mismo, la vida es mía,
Siempre amigos buenos busco,
Porque, con frecuencia, mucha gente ya me encantó,
Disfrutar la vida no es secreto,
Nadie necesita bolleto,
Yo tengo el secreto,
No le voy a mentir Yo,
A otros conozca,
Y de otros aprenda,
De nueva gente, le encantará,
De todos, mucho aprenderá,
Creáme, todo lo que digo,
Es verdad, Yo prometo.

(Through the 2021 Texas Ice Storm I was in an Intro to Geology and College Algebra class and emotionally troubled by the goings on of the disaster, so this poem was an overflow of what I was feeling along with some key word terms I was learning in my classes at the time. Enjoy!)

My hands, my hands they touched a fire.
It was a heart full of pain and empty desire.
A cranberry red seat of emotion that bled out by the pyre.
Like a pyroclastic flow, they flowed.
Where they could go out to, they go’d.
But only walls built by its range became its domain.
Without a place to move.
Trapped and sufferin’.
The Earth cracks open.
And back into the depths we go again.

With a Hipbone swept for Mars and a breath for Venus,
a busted lip wailing
under the stretch of laughter, those two, we are
pairs up for interpretation, tarot card-boys
wearing drugstore deodorant & green earlobes,
ring fingers
dealing each other in to our games
with oven-roasted glee, olive oil hearts

put your face close to mine for pink in shades fit for paint samples,
we say it in the car, in the trunk, with your fold-up chairs
kissing like everything is a playground,
the moon, fat
sliding down plastic-metal-plastic
goes down
real smooth, you say, I remember
how my name sounded in the mirror.
it bounced off the glass,
put its tongue on my neck
you know, you say, and I do,
I used to hear lover and I’d turn
over in my bed, or red, or my stomach or something,
but now?
oh, now, I’d drink the whole ocean
I’m so dried up without.
my skin’s so fickle, you know
and I do

My body freezes
Turning my pencil griped fingertips
To blocks of ice as I come across
The boxes
I wish I had brought a lighter with me
I wish I had burned that paper
I wish I had watched the white page
Turn Black from the fire
Watching the Black ash fall to the
White
Tile floor

My eyes ride the letters
“Check 1 box”

It pains me to think but I am not one box
No matter the pride sewn into me
No matter my crown jeweled with pain
“Just be yourself” shines in a beautiful purple jewel
“Be true to who you are” glows in a stunning red jewel
But myself is non-existent
Myself the Loch ness monster
Myself Bigfoot
Myself a baby pigeon

I am not self
I am selves

My selves protons and electrons
My selves blue and red
My selves the war
My self hates myself

How can I be whole?
When my selves
Are halves of
Two different puzzles

Questions arise in me like vomit
Acid burning my throat
Decaying my teeth

Rising like molten lava
It overflows
Who am I?
Which box do I check?
Which am I related to?
The slave?
Or
The master?

My back burns with lashes
But I find myself
holding the whip
My fingers ache from
picking the cotton
From the hate
The bloodlust
Of my master
From the fear
Of me

The hot comb
Grazes, my head
Burning down my heritage
For the pleasure
Of the descendants of master
I burn for the pleasure of
Me

Two boxes
Two people
Two identities
Two selves
Only allowed to check one
The slave
To the master