A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: national poetry month writing challenge

April 17, 2021

14/30: MEMORY & MEANING

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.

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April 6, 2021

5/30: ODE TO SELF DOUBT

I hear you
talking shit.
I see you
in the comment section
of my greatness
Taking up all the space in the room
of my possibilities
As a person
As a poet
As a lawyer
As a husband
As a son.
You never want me to become.
Every day
I see your face
imitating my own,
wearing a crown
of What ifs
Doubt, your majesty,
You are the King of What Ifs!
The opposite of optimism
The opposite of me
Yet you only exist because of me.

But you know,
your voice is the loudest
only because I let it be?
You’re a failed plot, fool.
I’m the proof
Regina Spektor
sang it best
I’m the hero of this story /
Don’t need to be saved
Doubt you’d understand.
This story is mine.
I do the saving,
The swooping in,
The super hero landing!
Like any good antagonist,
you are the reason
I never quit
Arch-nemesis,
I will take every opportunity
to prove you wrong in this old song-and-dance.
Shit-talking self-doubt,
I hear you yammerin’
I know what you’re about.
But if this were show and tell?
I’d be the hammer,
and you’d be the nail.

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April 5, 2021

4/30: I NEVER WANT TO SAY GOODBYE

Easter Sunday
in Red Oak, Texas
A family celebrates
its faith

Cascarones
contain a congregation
of confetti

My grandparents
are also my godparents
Adela and I are blessed
in the Sunday shade
of Pine and Oak alters

The sun swims
across the
Blue stained glass
windows
holding life
under the sea

Red dirt and
green grass
surround us
like the past.
The bloom of
a bluebonnet
reminds us all
where we come from.

Without a word
I offer
a thousand smiles
to the sky
in between
slices
of pecan pie—

I never want
to say goodbye.

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April 5, 2021

3/30 – THE CATS MEOW

For the 4 stray black cats Adela and I take care of, Shado, Rogue, Lil Mama, and Chicago

We listen to the sounds of morning
before our coffee
brews the momentum we need to
leap out of bed
The morning storms our senses
Fine-tuning our attention
that always seems divided between
our dreams and newsfeeds

We listen  
Through the windows
over the morning train
over the growl of the neighbor’s leaf blower
over the chirping birds
over the howl of too many alarms
for the cats’ meow—
the simple plea of feed me, human—
has now become the call of duty
I answer.
Ah, nothing like a day that begins
with responsibility
But is love really any different?

Adela opens the backdoor in a sing-song
Her audience sings back
A gentle harmony
A little chorus
composed by
The memory of trust
and
The permission of touch
The cats rush towards the hand that feeds,
Their bright eyes in the soft morning light
Impatient but adorable
And this is how it is
for now.
We listen for the cats to meow
It’s no secret really
Just a fraction of a second
A tiny crevice of a moment
A little pause in this play of life
Where there is a need
and we meet it.

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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 9, 2020

7/30: Ode To My Newfound Grey Hairs

You exist in the deep night of my hair
despite the sunshine outside
When I bemoan your existence,
and attempt to remove you from my life
my fiance warns me against it.
I don’t even think about you until
I’m standing in front of the mirror
watch my hand get lost in the
Pitch-black battleground
that is my skull
only to find you all there
my newfound grey hairs
little knights in shining armor
like waning crescent moons
silver seeds that stress sowed
I thank you
for being a tiny blessing
that continues to grow back
evidence of change
the proof of time passing
that things won’t always be
the same.

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April 9, 2018

8/30: POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE MY MOTHER WROTE WHEN SHE WAS FOURTEEN ON THE BACK OF HER HIGH SCHOOL PICTURE IN 1979

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

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April 2, 2018

1/30: SO SOME VULTURES HOLD A WAKE IN THE SKY OF MY MIND BUT I DO NOT GET EATEN ALIVE (THIS TIME)

“I wish I could tell you this story without being in it.”
– Michael Rosen, from Gaslighting in Several Parts

In the spirit of honesty, I think I’m finally ready to talk about it. Driving down I-10, the Texas sun writes the constitution of the sky. In my mind, another sky awaits my fate. On the side of the road, the colorless carnival or carcasses steal the bluebonnet joy of Spring as if grief ever had a season where it did not bloom. The song I’m singing is not exactly a prayer. In the air, a Committee of Vultures rise bright above the montage of Oak trees. As for me, I’m trying to raise my voice in this dungeon where I am. I spy a reason for living where death is a sanctuary. Death is a kettle. Death is the horizon above our eyes, where vultures circle the dead like a black Ferris Wheel alight in the sky. Whoever killed the monsters in my head left the meat on my memories. I’m waiting for the Committee to decide my fate. I’m curious if, each time I revisit the past, a vulture takes flight? My friend Michael reminds me there are stories I wish I could tell without being part of them. That I can’t just drown the past in a lavender bath. When the vultures of my mind finally swoop down to the ground, their bodies are furious and free. I’m not so sure I can say the same for myself. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve never buried the memories that kept me suffering and alive. What I’m trying to say is, there are vultures in the sky of my mind. Aren’t my memories a carcass by another name? I have a million stories where I am not the hero nor worth saving. Trauma tells but does not teach. Please don’t tell the vultures I’m here—all alone in my head, rotten and writhing—like I’m waiting for some bird in the sky to eat the idea of me like an elegy waits on the other side of my wake. Every day, I hold a wake for who I was and who I could have been. When the boy inside me lost his innocence, it was a life sentence. Sometimes I thank God I am not him. Why must I be a witness to my horrible history? The Bluebonnets come alive every Spring because it is a ritual. When someone dies, the family displays the body like a shadow everyone can all touch. A goodbye ritual. A wake. Have you ever seen group of vultures feed on a carcass together? A goodbye ritual. A wake. Ever confuse mythology for biology? It is a mistake to think every god-forsaken trauma entrenched memory is something we cannot help but inherit. What I mean is, driving down I-10 and seeing the vultures patrol the sky, I realized it is a blessing to know there is another creature who only survives on suffering alone. But in the spirit of honesty, I only have time for joy. Spring brings so many things back to life, I can’t help but smile at the power of wildflowers. I’m too sensitive not to smile at the sunshine. Even if there are shadows in the sky, I still choose to try. In the spirit of honesty, this song I’m singing is a prayer. I say, raise your voice in this dungeon where I am and a laugh blooms on cue from the woman I love. And I cannot allow myself to be destroyed.

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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 25, 2016

23/30:THE SECRET TO SOFTNESS WITH AN APPEARENCE BY YOUR EX-LOVER

What is there to say?
Who here is to be trusted?
The other day,
I bought four avocados
Dinosaur skin,
I used to think to myself.
Before, while still in the store,
with great precision,
I massage my hands across the skin,
measure the mustered force
behind my pressed thumb.
Me, an ordinary produce priest
In the aisle, with my hands,
little blessings performed
for the crowd.
Upon the skin,
the armor of each
green peach told
me to wait before
breaking open
what is enclosed.
[tip: this is the secret to softness.]
Later,
I placed each
in my fridge
Waited. 
Went about the days, pledged patience.
Heard stories of sour brown insides
I wish to unlearn how to say decay.
Still, I thought of the cruel yew trees rooted in me,
all the flowers I forgot to touch.
Decomposition is a sentence
unwriting the end of the story.
When I cut into them,
each spoiled before me.
Dead green darlings—
not a one to call mine.
When my hands
touched the green mush,
the color rusted inside me,
cast a spell over,
reversed
the light’s forceless arrival,
as I feel silent waves
leave behind the color of darkness.
This day of decay
found my hands
like the end of spring,
where I watch the color cave in,
but like all things lost,
Fate had prepared me.
When the color caved in,
I knew then,
it had everything to do
with the eyes of my last lover,
who,
last winter,
who took the song of her eyes with her,
her love, also,
spoiling before me.
The rot,
believe it,
or not—
still caught
in my unwashed hands.

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