A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: houston

April 4, 2021

2/30: IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT, IT’S FRIDAY, AGAIN (A BIRTHDAY POEM)

I feel it now: there’s a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it
All my becoming has needed me
My looking ripens things
And they come toward me, to meet and be met.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of a Monastic Life

I write a poem every year for my birthday
I never know what I’m going to say until I say it
I never know who I’m going to be until I see him
I read between the lines like meaning has a mirror
but it changes every year. 
The art of explaining myself to myself 
is never what it seems to be.
I’m not losing or changing my definitions 
There’s just more meaning to give
the longer I live. 

I know nothing has ever been real without my beholding it


Someone
behold this poem 
until it is real and becoming
like the first days of Spring.

I feel it now, 

the power that slept like a seed
between the wild roots of my being.
It takes time to become who you said you’d be.
There’s a birthday candle on the table
A small fire, my breath, and wishing for what’s next,
My big brother Brent writes in my annual birthday text
	
	You’re as vital as a plant providing oxygen 
	during photosynthesis

One day they will study the biology of a brother’s love.
Oh brother. Oh words—
the gifts that give shape to my world.

I’m reading all the words
coming towards me, to meet and be met
like the words of a song. 

Every year, I’m awestruck
at my unprecedented luck 
in knowing I am loved.
The language of this love puts the poems in my blood.
Oh, the words in my blood are brave and here to stay.

On the day I came into this earth,
I ask the universe with all my earthly yearning
Give me more love than my body can stand.
When the lovebirds sing, tell them I’m listening and singing too.
I’m singing a prayer like a birthday wish, 
the only one I know 
the only I say every year:
Gratitude is the only face of god I know.
If there’s still time, I’ll show you.
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April 1, 2021

1/30: Spirit of My Silence

I wrote more e-mails than poems in the last year.
Now, before the first day of April,
My wife runs her fingers through my hair
Like a rosary
and the spirit of my silence
leaves my body like a phantom
Outside my window,
A single wind chime makes the kind of music
With its body
that I’ve been searching for my whole life

Listen here.

Every sound on Sidney street is a revival
of more reasons to live
Light pools somewhere and everywhere
Stairways to forgiveness
I forget the fate of human kind for one second
A Houston sun cracks every tree
free from darkness
Laughter falls like pollen
The sidewalk
asks me to read another poem
by Ross Gay
and before the end of the day,
I am alight and awestruck
at my luck
at my love
blasting from the speakers
the sound system of spring
a karaoke of divine timing
I mean so many things when I say
I am looking for joy
today and always
The latest and last map of my heart starts with
my 4 year old niece coming to visit me,
Jessi demands we sit outside and take in
the beautiful view
Outside my front door
Where the black cats I’ve come to love run
Faster than the neighborhood
Children can rake the leaves
of their youth
Come on, let’s go.
And so we do
And so it goes
A blue-jay swoops and the train whizzes
Into action
Tejano music grooves
fuses with the smoke
from oak or mesquite
I want to speak the commotion
into a sentence or a lyric
And tell you this is all I know.
The locomotion is a promise made
for giving my attention
to something else besides my e-mail.
This poem is an engine
loud enough
to drown the things I lost
and remind me what I found
I invite the wind of a moment
Into my home
The horizon is a stone’s throw away
from who I was yesterday
By now, I know what I’m here on earth for:

The consequence of living is clear
Time rewinds every time a poem appears.

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April 22, 2020

17/30: SERENDIPITY, OR CHAOS IN THE COSTCO PARKING LOT

Taking our groceries to the car,
the Saturday sky looms like a bully
like Houston on a hot spring day.
We put the groceries away, efficiently
escaping the rain’s sudden arrival,
just a second faster than the downpour.
We missed the touch of a storm,
and I praise serendipity
with good timing
from my driver’s seat,
reminding myself that
even the tiniest miracle
is its own kind of chaos—
a silent disruption
in the plot of what
we thought was
going to happen.

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April 14, 2020

13/30: APRIL IN HOUSTON

Let me set the scene. April in Houston. Days after a storm. Blue sky and easy light slips through the blinds, fills the room like a river. A blue-jay lands on the fence outside my window. I’m overcome with the need to exclaim there’s a blue-jay outside! Amazed, at the phenomena of a day. The blue-jay flies away before I think further. Dusk is here now. Going on a walk with Adela, the fresh air anchors me. Across the street, two brothers toss the football in an empty lot. Draw routes on the football for each other. The trees in my neighborhood are as tall as the power lines. The air tonight is too cool for April. I am running at my own pace now. Seeing the world change frame by frame. Faster than the blue-jay that flew away. Over the treetops, the sky is an unbothered indigo. A star shines so bright, Adela thinks it’s a planet. I think it’s a star. We follow it all the way home.

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April 11, 2020

10/30: Today’s Perfect Moment

For Adela, my fiance.

Happened on Harrisburg
five minutes from home
with your hand in mine
The sky was alive behind
the downtown Horizon.
Pink light dripping
from the overgrown Oaks.
Oh, the beauty of a sun’s goodbye.
I did not trust my memory
to hold this moment
without ruining it.
That’s when you tell me
to take a picture, and so I do.
You are outside the frame,
smiling the way you do.
When we get home,
I post the photo on Instagram
with the caption
Today’s perfect moment.
Then I wrote this poem.

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April 18, 2018

17/30: BREATHLESS, I READ A POEM UNDERNEATH THE POET TREE

I ask my body to move, and it moves.
I tell my legs to open their stride, and I glide in the wind.
I beg my breath to stay in control, and my life doesn’t end.

Do I need anymore evidence that I am alive?

Oh, sun. I give all my gratitude to your Tuesday evening gradient.
I repent for all the times I second-guessed your radiance.
Oh, sun. I bet all you ever wanted was a captive audience.

Sweating at sunset, I run with my head held to the sky.
The way my heart knocks against my chest, you’d think
my bones were a microphone.

The faster I move, the more pain I see in my rearview.
I’m not running out of time, I’m running through it.
With miles to go, I surrender to the sky’s invitation.
A voice whispers in the distance and it sounds like
my voice, but six seconds in the future. I’m chasing
the part of the story that has been untold for centuries.

Breathless, I become a disciple of stillness. Still,
I miss what it means to call the chaos home.
Along Buffalo Bayou trail, I catch my breath and lean against
a tree where all the leaves are poems, and
the way my heart knocked against my chest, you’d think
my bones were a microphone. I stand beneath the Poet Tree,
and read the tiny poems that hold so many voices inside.

Reading each poem to myself, I ask the words to hold me,
and they do.

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April 3, 2017

1/30: IT IS WHAT IT IS

This line is late. Weeks overdue. None of my thoughts are new. It is what it is.
The laws of loneliness are fixed stars in my constitutional constellation.
I am most free in a dream where I outdo death. Sleeping, the dreamy version of me drags his feet across the tops of the peculiar pine trees pissing off the power lines. When I say I am most free, I hope you hear how little I hold. I was told to put a pot on the past, Wait, then laugh at the steam. Levitate, levitate, levitate. This earthbound body comes dressed in stubborn smoke. In this song of hope, every lyric is moonbound. Name a scar the sky cannot solve. Spring has sprung on schedule but no one is here to smell the jasmine breeze with me. The moral of this moment missed its deadline.
Whether or not my faith blossoms, the season to show up has arrived. April can be the cruelest of dance floors, but today I abandon the rules of gravity-disguised-grief. For the sake of my ankles, do not ask me about anchors. Give me balloon bravery. Can I be a kite the sky keeps? I wish I had more to give than just my body. To date, Ask any woman I loved if I’m down to earth. They’ll tell you how I write poems for, to, or about the sky, but never for, to, or about them. I wish I had more than hurt to hem for them, but to tailor the terror of my affection is a lesson I left behind in the grinds of midnight. Reading Robert Bly aloud, I say, is there enough left of me to be honest now?
I’m afraid the answer lies, inside my body, scraping the paint off my walls.
Nobody but me can fix the hollow frames of the rooms I groom my shame in.
Hesitate. Hesitate. Hesitate. I place the sky back inside myself. Like a Magritte brush stroke, I am most free when I break all the rules of my body. In a dream, I raise my arms like wings though I do not move them. What happens if I never wake? The word I’m looking for is transcend. Yes, watch me transcend into some moonbound mystic meant to illuminate the intricate energy of the universe with every poem I visit. If love asked me to say her name, I’d say I am not ready. No, I haven’t failed at love. I haven’t succeeded either. If love asked me to let go, I’d hesitate. Inside my head, Ghosts of lovers leave their names in my throat like an anchor I didn’t ask for.
It is what it is.

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April 28, 2016

26/30: WHILE SHOPPING AT H-E-B

A little boy walks by the orange juice,
proceeds to shout “Dad! We NEED Orange Juice.”
A little boy walks up to me while
I confirm the integrity of the eggs,
his small voice grows beanstalk raises to my ears,
his face at my knees asking,
Are you a stranger?
I look at him, grab my eggs,
whispering back without a crack,
Yes.

Let me enjoy the mystery
I’m disappearing into the bread aisle
where everything rises, turning sharply
to look for candles, I nearly hit an older man
and I apologize, say,

Sorry Sir, I was coming in hot.

He apologizes back, adds in,
I was like that when I was your age,
I lose my breath at his sincerity,
the ever fond reminisce happening
in aisle six. But before I leave,
I say to him,

Well then, I’m in good company.

Then I abscond onto the olive oil,
soil of my growing appetite,
my absolute delight, the effortless
sweep of the wrist when I’m
cooking with rhythm,
and what are you
but another instrument?
look at all I can do with
a bottle of you?
Parts of you needing me,
me needing you, yes,
this constant need
to invite others in
has become such a gift.

When preparing to examine the apples,
an employee grabs each spoiled, rotten
apple and tosses it away, and I think
how hard of a job that can be.
Who is to say what is unworthy?
But he moves with confidence,
rubbing his hands across the
jazz apples, honey crisp, pink lady,
gala, granny smith, and he is making
my life so easy, it’s lovely. I’m so tired
of picking over the dead, of losing before
I even begin, and I am more thankful
for him than I’ve been of myself.
What’s with this strange history of mystery?
After I’m done marveling, I ask of him,
Are you tossing out all the bad apples?
He doesn’t say a word, just keeps tossing apples
and I think this has something to say about
the invisible work most people do,
the kind of effortless
that took so much effort
to perfect. I mean, to me—
this is a miracle, and honestly,
Who am I to deny the gospel
of gathering all the bad apples
which just happens to be
happening in a grocery store?

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April 25, 2016

24/30: HAIBUN FOR SUNDAY

Sunday morning, light pours through the open blinds. Birds with no names play their song for me. The ball of my body unraveling. Still small, but growing. the soft white sheets my mother bought me hold my warm morning skin. Soft feet. Soft light. soft blades spinning above my head, cool air moving. 8am stillness. No sound interrupts the silence. Alarm goes off, but no need to hurry. Changing positions, I pick up my body. The first thing I do is walk through a door, a hallway, another hallway, another door. Outside. The first big breath I take happens slow. Slow enough, I am only focusing on my breath. Invisible movements. From where I stand, green pine trees overshadow the magnolia next to my house. A spider spins a web from a tree to a roof. The web is a line designed with other lines in mind. The alive lines holding onto dead things. Green journal, black pen. I grab both with my hands. A poet spins a poem from his mind. The poem is a web of lines. I write, I write, I write. The language of the living praising the dead. Walking around making sounds in my head. Wind moving the leaves. My blood moving through me. Bells designed to ring at once. Yes, I am a vessel. The depth of what I carry, less scary than before.

The world is a con-
founding web of lines I try
but never avoid. 

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April 20, 2016

19/30: SESTINA FOR THE GOOD SAMARITAN

St. Martin Caballero also known as St. Martin of Tours is the patron saint of those in need. He usually shown in the act of cutting his cloak in half and offering a piece to a mostly-naked beggar crouched below him, who later appeared to him in a dream as Jesus Christ. Because of this, he is called on by those who need the assistance and kindness of strangers. The Saint is often referred to as the “Good Samaritan.”

The Good Samaritan just collapsed. 14 inches in 12 hours. A woman saves
her family by emptying the refrigerator, crawling inside the ice box, flood
water mocking her, but this is how one avoids death. The duty to change
is the duty of survival. A man slays his family, then himself. Give me pleasure.
I am under no illusion. I know how a thing becomes ruined in the wash, how time
thrashes like a wound in lime juice, the touch of jalapeno seed against your eyes,

As if another excuse to weep was needed. The world is greedy with my breathing, eyes
paralyzed by the damage we create, stunningly sad. Terror is honey for the bees. Who saves
the bees? The ways we kill each other. The knives we hide in our words, weapons old as time
as original as rhyme. The darkness cannot be locked up, says the bayou after the flood.
So who wants to swim in the mud of love? Our bodies drowning in pleasure,
forgetful of what we’ve lost, remembering what we’ve won. The world is afraid to change

The Good Samaritan has awoken. He anticipates needs, green thumb, tends to change
moment into miracle, sees the grief in the beggar, stares down loneliness with both eyes,
The prayer in his voice akin to the promise we give our lover, the lies we tell for pleasure.
Do not forsake the world, my love. The best is yet to come. It will get better. Time saves
the best bite for last. But, too many are swallowed whole, disappearing beneath the flood,
fishing in the mud of love. Opaque ache for bait. Tossed into the deep end. Is it time?

Your best is good enough. Your open heart is actually a gift, and now is your time.
Open it. Harvest happens first in the eyes, beginning the search for change,
Then by touch. Palms a precise kind of pull. You are not rotten because the flood
forgot to leave. Deadwood and oak, choked, but not defeated. Keep your eyes
tenacious, impatient. If the tree doesn’t have fruit, rip it up. If the world saves
itself, can I go back to bed? Look at this weather. The Good Samaritan is tired of pleasure.

I know not how to build or fix. I am not content with my fate–plate full of pleasure,
Cruel hunger, my appetite numbs. The child in me wanting seconds, my hands time-
tied, tongue lying out on the road, heirloom I’ve groomed like a cure. Pleasure kills, saves,
sends waves. Orgasms to bridge the chasm, to cross what we’ve lost off with a kiss. Change
is a strange prayer. Indifference is a virus, Please, somebody look inside my eyes
without seeing the flood.

The Good Samaritan is in love with everyone. I know the trouble before flood,
everyone’s secret is the same. We all want someone to say our name, simple pleasure,
simple song, familiar longing. Am I wrong to want kindness to blind both my eyes?
Come in, come in, come in. I’m opening my heart up like a gift, and now is your time.
Both the drowning man and the man in ecstasy throw up their hands. I refuse to change
my dance. Touch is a song in my hand. Sing with me, the Good Samaritan says, as he saves

The best part for last. Spring in his eyes. It is time
to forget the flood, cruel hunger of the sky, tongue tied to pleasure.
Alive in the love of mud. The duty to change is strange, but oh—how it saves.

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