A voice comes and goes
A thought flows then no-shows
A word stays but the idea frays
A poem is everywhere then nowhere
A cloud crosses the sky like a line in a page
A shape of sound surrounds the day
A song is a quiet kind of chaos
A moment is a door into something more
A door opens only to close
A voice comes and goes
A thought flows then no-shows
A poem is everywhere then nowhere
Time is measured by experience. Experience is the story we tell until it is stored in our memory. How many stories have we told that remind us just how old we are? Stories are time. We’re running out of stories. I tell a story, and something comes alive. A detail crackles into a spark. Reading is a conjuring. The voice in my head arcs and bends. When I read, I search for meaning because meaning is what summons my memory. In understanding the language of right now, I almost ways turn back to my memories. Who empowered the past to cast such a long shadow? All of us did. Thinking is time-travel to a certain extent. Not quite a spell but how can it not be magic? How many of us have traveled back to the past with nothing more than our words? Neruda wrote: Love is so short, forgetting is long. He wasn’t wrong.
I wish speaking Spanish was like making tortillas
Something I could do after watching
my grandmas hands from afar
before trying to form the dough in my own
Was it ever supposed to be easy?
How much time
do I give
a language to rise within?
After years of studying,
I tried leaving my voice
in the bowl on the kitchen counter
of my childhood.
Nothing changed.
How can one language
carry the sounds of
belonging
and
envy?
I’ve asked every question
asked of me
By Spanish-speaking folks
who demand to know
Why hasn’t Spanish
rose within me
like the ancestral
promise of my name?
I have the answers:
I spent my whole life
biting the guilt on my tongue
And now,
only my fear is fluent.
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.
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.
“Tell me about your life since I last saw you.” I asked.
“There are no great mysteries to tell. My path is always the same and I do everything I can to follow it in a dignified way.”
“What is your path?”
“The path of someone seeking love”
He hesitated for a moment, fiddling with the near-empty bottle.
“And love’s path is really complicated,” he concluded.
– Paulo Coelho, “By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept”
Standing outside El Taqueria Palomo, I hold a taco in my hand on a Wednesday night
beneath a sky that is not falling, beneath a sky whose moon knows to call my name when
the darkness stays a little too long. Am I wrong to think the universe is speaking to me?
You may not assign meaning to every moment, and I understand your resistance. I guess
I’m just tired of believing there is no significance to the seconds that pass and the seconds that last.
I’m not talking about destiny. Though, I do believe we have one. As I speak, white rose petals leap before my eyes, falling to the ground until they become someone else’s footprint.
What I’m saying is, the path you lead is half the battle.
What I’m saying is, the path you leave behind is a line in a poem the universe wrote
when you thought you were alone.
Me? I got me 4 brothers. Corey, Brent, Jesse, Kyler. Blood-bound. I love these men with all my heart, always have, ever since the start. How lucky of me, to be both big and little brother. I used to be a bother. I used to be a small king. I used to be a pawn. I used to be a boy who knew joy was simple like falling asleep on Brent’s shoulders in the backseat of the car cause Corey always got the front. Jesse asleep on mine. Eventually Kyler on his. This is the song I recall. Sometimes the words change. Like I’m never forgetting what I’m not. Always searching for who I’ve been. You know I can count the poems where I throw the word loneliness around like a stone but truth is, I ain’t never been alone. Not truly. I was raised by boys whose names I knew only as roots, as proof of who I am or was or could be. My bruised and busted lip is a trip down memory lane. I lie awake thinking of my brothers somewhere away from me. Their faces are my history. Their names a story only I can tell. One hug from them and all my pain is resolved. I got me 4 brothers. All of us the same but all of us different. Like clouds in the sky. I know we belong together though we may precipitate with different precision. All my mother’s sons. Blood-bound. Can we pretend the light that shines in the sky is each of my brother’s reaching out to me? Our father calls us grasshoppers and I become a creature of habit, hiding in the low-grass of the past. Did you know grasshoppers can only jump forward? Never backward. Never backward. Never backward. Never backward. Never backward.
What I’m trying to tell you is: I’m blood-bound to these men like the soil our grandfathers worked in, and every day I miss them.
The shell is a fortress
(badly designed)
to protect its green king
Any shell will tell you:
it’s what’s inside that counts.
I’m counting the cracked shells
all the green hearts
living outside the bodies
they were given.
I hold myself like a soft secret
Like the portrait of a seed
that never saw the soil.
Inside, I am covered, concealed, hidden.
If any hands opened me,
if I had the choice,
If I had a voice
I’d probably run
myself into the ground
back to my roots
back to the tree
that knows my name
The man holding me now,
I see how softly he pulls me from myself
Does he know I was cultivated
for this moment?
Does he know
there is a part of me
nobody ever sees?
Please help me
understand
the things
I need to know
I am not always
who I should be
How do you know
what you know?
How do you know
when to keep going?
How do you
name your pain?
How do you
word the secrets
you keep?
I am in the middle of a story
I do not remember telling
Please help me
understand
Nobody tells you the truth
unless it’s easy
I don’t know how to say what I think
without sinking into the ground
like a seed out of a season
In my head, all the heroes are dead
But I want to re-write the ending
I keep holding on to every little thing
that has happened to me it still feels like
it is happening to me
Please help me
I wrote a list of questions with no
answer and all I want
is your voice
to be a whispering map in the madness
A POEM A DAY 