A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.
April 5, 2020

3/30: A poem, with light at the end of the tunnel

Sitting down to write always feels like

giving my memory the keys to the house.

As if, somewhere the real me ends,

And the narrator’s monologue begins.

A voice takes over, calls out from the dark.

A shape takes form, casts a shadow on the page.

A line takes time, craves a place to breakdown.

How I get from here to there is a gateway

only language can open. Afterall, language

is memory, is past tense, as in, the door to yesterday

unlocked. Ring the bell and walk in.

This is the tell, not show. I know

the words to this song. It’s a strange chorus,

but the one I know. Sitting down to write,

I don’t need a map. A path is found in every poem.

I suppose it’s why I let the mind wander like it does.

Dig myself a tunnel. Find light at the end.

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April 3, 2020

2/30: A THOUSAND LITTLE JOYS

“I hope you found little joys to celebrate today,
and more than enough reason to smile.”

– A birthday text sent to me from Ayokunle Falomo,

Every smile has an origin story.
And mine begins with the unexpected gift
of knowing I’ll never be alone.
What a relief,
saying goodbye to the old emptiness,
forgetting what was lost,
holding what stayed,
abandoning grief like a rival
not fast enough to catch
the speed of my joy,
scattering across the April air
like a thousand little black birds.
This gift opens itself up every time
I look up at the sky of my life,
and count how many ways I am loved,
stunned at the simple song of being,
lost in a thousand shining suns.
Light trickles through the space
between my crooked teeth,
staining my bones like glass.

So I’m doing this new thing,
on days other than my birthday,
whenever I need a pick me up,
I open my mouth,
and I fill up the bedroom,
or the kitchen,
or the street,
with a thousand little joys,
with the names of every moment
I ever gave my smile to.

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April 2, 2020

1/30: REASONS TO LIVE

With every effort of my body,
I tried excusing myself from the universe of giving a shit
Thought empathy was something you could exile
a tiny revolution,
so I walked out on my better angels
Stopped writing poems for god knows how long
Reasons to live were everywhere but I missed every invitation
Said tomorrow like a proud martyr
and walked back into my shadow.

And then, one day—
The myth lifted. I found the cure to this virus.
It’s called, I don’t need a reason to ask for forgiveness.
And I don’t have to explain why.
Don’t need to be a witness to my own suffering.
When the past passes me by, I don’t ask it to stay.
I found my purpose in life a long time ago:
To talk.

Survival is nothing like you expect.
I walk my voice into a memory and
A song becomes a time machine.
I go back to who I was
when all I wanted was
to become who I am right now.
Don’t ask me to explain.
I’m too busy
falling in love every day
in a thousand different ways
with the woman who found the soft edges
of my pain, the woman who sparks a smile
through the dark.

I learned, just by picking up the phone,
I can turn my mother’s voice to neon joy
when I call to say I miss her.
I keep getting more and more good news.
My grandma texts me and tells me to say a prayer
over the front door and back door
with olive oil, to bless the body and the house
and god becomes a recipe
I didn’t know I had the ingredients to

I open up the windows to let the breeze in
and laughter from the neighborhood mijos and mijas
spins the wind-chimes on my front porch
until nothing hurts ever again.
The sun sets in front of me when a
cardinal crosses the railroad tracks,
a scarlet red descent into the thick brush,
like a flame that disappears from birthday breath,
carrying a wish I’m not supposed to share just yet.
I wonder, what spirit came to visit me? I cannot say.
All I know is, I missed the universe of my own voice.

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May 1, 2018

30/30: I EXIST NOT TO BE BROKEN

I make a promise to myself, and like a law, I exist not to be broken.
Though I know breaking. Whatever the reason you have for going
where you are going, I think it’s best you leave an hour before sunset.
Time the drive home with the sun’s low descent towards the horizon.
Keep going into the sky. Take the long way home like an oath to remember
how far you have come. I’m running out of time. I’m trying to show myself
the meaning behind all my tiny moments. I’m in love with the miracle of detail.
With the way I tell a story. With the way a story begins with a voice and a purpose. Keep going if you can. I’m here at the end, and I’m miles and miles past worthless.

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May 1, 2018

29/30: A POEM FOR JESSI

Jessi,
bird of my heart,
monkey in my bed,
giraffe of my dreams,
you sing to me in your
baby-talk, in your
gimme-dat clap, in your
nap-time nuh-uh cry,
oh my Jessi, you are everything
you are supposed to be. Right now,
you are shouting for the sky as the
swing-set in the park down the street
from my house brings you closer to the
moon, the stars, the sun, each one: all shining
for you. This is what the light does: it tells us
to reach, to look up, to swing into our shadows
so that darkness will not ask for this dance.
Even now, the Oak trees see you becoming one
with yourself, and I am helplessly in awe at the
call of your voice, the raw power of your smile,
and how I wish you could stay a little while longer.
In this swing, your joy sings me a song. I watch you
rejoice in the shade, alive and singing, here with me.

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April 30, 2018

28/30: HOPE IS THE FIRST NAIL IN THE WALL

For Habitat for Humanity in Houston, Texas, who is partnering with the Houston Bar Association to build 22 homes that were destroyed from Hurricane Harvey. 

Under the sun, there is work to be done
and more work to do after that.
I know no word better than love
to describe the labor inside of the hands
that build and create. Just this morning,
I carried a hammer and held the bones
of a house cry out in joy, in love, in pain,
for what is left
to finish before
it becomes.

I can never join the legacy of my ancestors
who spent their days in the Texas sun
Sweat running down their face, hands
worn and blistered, skin turning to sand
as the minutes grow into a mountain
of moments. Not everyone knows how
to build a life.

I come from the
hands of nails and hammer,
I come from the
hands of hard work and hot cement,
I come from
the hands of if not me, then who?
I come from the
hands that need to fix the broken
In this life we build, hope is the first
nail in the wall.
 

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April 30, 2018

27/30: THE LOST CAUSE OF LONELINESS

In love, I watch you put your make-up on as the loud hum
of my longing stumbles back to the mountain I carved it from.

Outside of myself, I exit a door marked disaster, and the faster I walk,
the closer I am to your hand writing to-do lists against my unorganized skin.

I’m crossing loneliness off like it’s a lost cause. Somewhere, there is a mountain
made up of all the things I told myself I never deserved.

Each stone is a small thing, is a piece of earth bone, burrowed into the body.
Darling, I am digging my hands into the riverbed, where the soil is damp and

The current carries my secrets by the handful. The time has come for me
to forfeit myself to the fate of this moment, to throw my hands up and wait for daybreak,

Where your shoulder turns into the morning light beside my window and
I do not wait for love to say my name. I’m giving up on trying to see past the now.

I know the future of my feelings are something I cannot rewrite. I present myself to you in the darkness without a plan and without pain. What I’m saying is,

My longing used to be a locked door inside a mountain of shame. And now,
every smile you leave on my pillow is a key you carved for me, and I am in love,
And I am free.

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April 27, 2018

26/30: ARS POETICA OR IF YOU ARE HUNGRY, HERE IS A POEM

Surrounded by cedar, magnolia, and oak trees
I’m standing inside a library
explaining myself to strangers, again
asking folks to walk into my poems
and sit down in the middle of
any sentence they like,
asking folks to dig in to my
heart of disaster with knife and fork,
and see how I still taste like joy.

How did I get here? Mostly?
By listening
By asking questions
By showing up
By staying
By writing
By trying
By writing
By trying

A poem isn’t a prop, a ploy, or a toy
It is a bridge
It is a seed
A poem begins and once it’s over,
it still never ends

Words, precious words, please
remember me as I am:
Lying among the tall-grass
of language
as the fire flies
ignite the next word
I am going to write
Every night
I am blinded by so much flickering light
I chase a poem across a page and
suddenly I hear my voice on stage,
or in my kitchen, or in my car,
or in the living room, or this library
where all I do is carry
the story of my life,
and ask if you’d like
a bite.

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April 27, 2018

25/30: K.I.A. OR THE FORGOTTEN WAR

For Pedro Caballero, my great-uncle, who served in the Army as a Corporal in the 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, and was killed in action on March 9, 1951 in the Korean War.

I want to talk about the flag, but first,
I want to talk about the wall,
about walls,
about the way a wall
is a curious structure that defines an area
by telling me what is not allowed in.
There is a wall no longer standing
A wall that once stood in Lockhart, Texas
This is the wall of my Childhood
The wall in my grandparent’s living room
that carried the portraits of Mexican Men
in their military service uniforms and
when I speak about this wall, I mean,
these men defined the pride in my family

In Washington D.C., the Korean War Veteran Memorial is a wall
less than 2 miles away from the White House,
the same White House that wants to build a wall between the borders of my blood
History lesson: On March 9, 1951,
My great uncle Pedro Caballero was KIA
Killed-in-Action
in the war with two names:
The Korean War
and
The Forgotten War
And from what I know,
his remains were recovered
which means his body
was not forgotten
even if the war was

They say dying for your country
is the most American thing you can do
so I ask you,
If a citizen is part of their country,
does that include the blood in the soil?
If a citizen is a part of their country,
and a flag is a symbol of our country,
then every citizen is a symbol.

History lesson: On February 1946,
my great grandfather applied for, and was granted
the suspension of his deportation at the Immigration office in
Brownsville, Texas
which means: he did not break the law,
which means, my great grandfather gained a flag, but not his citizenship
which means, he gained a country, then lost his son to that same country’s war, a war nobody remembers.

Did you know the colors of the American flag have a special meaning?
Red is for courage. White is for Truth. Blue is for justice.

I want to talk about the flag
as a symbol
as an object
as a pallbearer
that carries
the coffin
that carried my Uncle Pedro’s killed in action body
back into a country that does not love him.

I want to talk about the flag, and how,
in the 5th grade, I was in the Color Guard,
which means, I guarded the courage, I guarded truth, I guarded justice
Every Friday, I carried the flag like an ode to democracy
I held my head, raised my voice like a flag,
left, left, left right left,
Picture it! A Mexican boy presents the flag
before he pledges himself to America
until he would become the perfect citizen,
or at least,
a part of this country

I am a citizen of this country
but a glimpse at recent American history
will tell you,
citizenship is divisive, but I don’t want to be divided.
This poem is where I cross back into myself,
where I praise the history of my people, my family,
If I stopped writing poems about Mexican people
I’d probably vanish, like a war we forget we lost
like the blood in Pedro’s body,
Red as the republic
For which it stands
One Nation’s wall
between justice
and liberty
for all.

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April 25, 2018

24/30: WHO OPENED THE DOOR?

When we speak of medicine, what we mean is
we are waiting for a miracle to open the door

But before: let us address the Despair carried everywhere we go
Who told your hurt to come home and open the door?

On the radio, I hear if you don’t transform your pain, you will transmit it,
And what better way to explain pain than something that opens the door?

The best thing any of us can do is anticipate the eyes of our lover
when we hand over our dark, deserving hearts, and ask them to open the door.

Lead me into a room full of mirrors and I know I’ll find a way to hide
myself from the side of myself because I refuse to open the door.

I know the opposite of shame, the opposite of fear, the opposite of violence
all depends on the listener. Isn’t meaning the key we use to open the door?

When I lost my innocence, I ran out one room and into another.
My god, the child in me wants to know: who opened the door?

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