A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: national poetry month

April 9, 2016

7/30: QUE PASO / QUE PASÓ 

Depending on the flick of flint
in your cheeks, you could either
mean,
what’s up or what’s wrong?

I. What’s up?

Mirrors on the ceiling,

shiny thieves of my body
my mother grabbing my hand,
what do you want?

II. What’s wrong?

That unanswerable question,
is always the worst,
as well as,
dry skin, peeling,
more layers
more lairs of dark
hair and skin
to climb through

my mother’s perfume
leaving the room
before I do,

the sore spots
of my baby brother,
the knots in his perfect
shoulders, the problem is
our freckles betray us
Too easy to pick apart

II. What’s up?

a microphone
amplified reminder: no,
you’re not alone.
my friends, walking in,
beside me,
the path I’ve cleared
leads them back
inside me,
I’m counting the
faces I’ve misplaced
when I disappear

beneath, beneath, beneath

my peeled onion
steel heart—it takes time
to discover the whole,
please,
begin with a part,
it’s really quite easy.
How far will you
go just to start?
Ready? Set? Show.
Your lips are a finish line
run your mouth,
win the race,
win a trophy,
take a pen, rewrite
everlasting
across your lips,
then kiss me
like gold and first place.

III. What’s wrong?

Oh, I would be remiss
if I didn’t tell you about
the bells I miss,
Their brave kiss, loud lips,
All of it, a treat,
and none of it, a trick,
the songs I fail to catch
do not miss me back
do not care if I am late,
their sound still
rings, sings, strings
me the way a pearl
curls off the tongue
off an oyster, or
the way
oranges and grapefruits
my neighbor grew
were pulled off the
limbs of her trees,
taken delicately into her palm,
pretty little sun with its wrinkled skin,

the gift is so simple
I could not comprehend
the significance.

after she gave them to me.

I peeled one after
the other, all day,
my hands
smelled like a citrus kiss,
curious, but
I did not preserve these
homegrown things
Instead, I left them outside
for weeks, mistook their
sugar for strength,
until
a swarm of gnats
grabbed
the last inch of orange
peel,
their hunger,
more than familiar,
but acceptable, real.
their hunger
holds me accountable
for the rot I’ve got
brewing up my sleeve.

IV. What’s up?

The sunroof of my
mouth, the floor
of my tongue,
Words stacked like ladders
each step a letter
whose shape I imitate
with the secret messages
my hands translate.

When I lift my head with
no hesitation, with
no ancient echo of ache,
just the image of a
wrinkled notebook paper folded
in half, held in Anna belle’s hand,
the same small hand
passing me a poem
she wrote at home
I read four words:

Love is a path—

then look in her eyes
the color of hope,
holding its breath,
she says,
It just came to me

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April 9, 2016

6/30: IF YOU CHANGE ONE LETTER

If you change one letter,
lonely becomes lovely.
When I say cast a spell,
I want you to misspell
the ugliest word
you have called yourself.
Misremember its parts,
take power by the syllable
Grab a letter by its throat.
Every word ever spoken
stays invisible unless written.
Name the shadows in the dark.
Pick your tongue up like an ax.
No, your tongue is an ax.
No, your tongue is a tongue.
Sling the word you have reshaped.
If you change one letter,
wanting becomes waiting.
If you add one letter,
heart becomes hearth.
If you add one letter,
star becomes start.

The beginning is always like this,
metamorphosis through addition,

Listen, each word nothing more
than invention, invocation, invitation.

Again, again, again, my tongue spins
a sentence, a spool of creation,

Silkworm imitation.

Yes, your tongue is silk with blood
Alive with the words you’ve drug
through the mud of love, erasure
is a patient process.

A word, like any earthly body,
must erode, if only to grow again,

Must end in flames, if only to begin.

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April 6, 2016

5/30: LALOOSELALOSELALUZ, OR ELEGY TO THE DARK

Lighter lighter lighter,
I want to light the dark
with a lighter, light
my two hands, look
at the light between
my two hands, a dark
history is on fire, light
my palms with prayer,
toss light words
up in the air,
light balloon of truth,
lost light of my youth,
the dark is far and near,
I peel the light from my skin,
like a bruised banana peeling
itself to look for
light at both ends, I
whisper in silence,
follow
the light,
make it
wake up the world
with the fast break of
light, lighting the unseen
Light for the lightheaded,
Light for the dread
Light for the white lies
Light for the night readers
Lighter, Lighter, Lighter
Make my head lighter too
We eat light foods to confuse
the heavy bodies
of darkness we feed, but what
if we lost the mood to be hollow?
instead,
what if we
swallow light? lighten, feel
lighter than light, flick the light
off, on, walk out the dark,
march like a match strikes
sudden light forged into flame,
struck in a straight line, like
the quick light surge
at the end of super verb,
a pervasive verse, a light tongue
persuasive as heat
held inside
the light.

Will someone
light my black hair
in this blacker than
light night?
All the moon and stars
are gone, and so who
is left to
catch the light,
but me
with
my light bright
hands,
palms alight like
the first
light bulbs, light
hovering above
our lighter heads,
shedding light,
the darker the better,
when I say
look at my
new skin
made of light
my light head
lit with radiance
light as patience
it is
another way to
say,
the light
does not lose
a spark begins
a flame spread
behold,
the light is loose,
the dark is dead.

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April 5, 2016

4/30: HOW YOU THINK ABOUT YOURSELF

At a party where no one is listening,
a woman I’ve never wanted
whispers in my ear, leans over to say,
I know how you are,
And she is a liar as soon
as she says it, as soon as she says
know and you,
the air in the room sours.
She, a fruit fly, a gnat, a small
bothersome thing, hovering
beneath her false certainty,
and I cannot kill what I cannot see:
truth dimmed in half-light
a lie dug in the dark,
invisible, dangerous sparks,
catching fires
more troublesome than the storm
forming inside my throat.

On the phone, a woman I do not want
to want me back anymore says,
I think, I think
You have trust issues,
And as soon as she says it,
am I supposed to be less true?
Is my skin the soil she needs
her words to take root in?
People misconstrue
bloom and blame as the same,
but who gave both my name?

I read a text message from a woman
who does not want me to want her back,
who wanted me, then stopped wanting me,
who kissed me, then stopped kissing me,
who, at once, remains both
blameless and blooming.

She, typing,
me waiting,

three dots bounce like a wave
transmitting
the blue crash a new rash
now sending
slowly bending towards me,
the words move up, delivered
like the river leaving the ocean,
the words touch the earth of my skin,
leap off the touch screen, unleashed,
touching me without sound,
I think, I think
you felt more for me than I felt for you,
And as soon as she writes it,
I read it, each single syllable of
her words jump into my body,
barrage of silent cadavers
pierce the paper on my skin&
all I can do is weep in my garage,
inaudibly alone, sitting,
neither beside or outside,
but as my disgusted self,
listening to Azalea
croon out the wicked moon
of Louis Armstrong’s cratered
throat, a songbirds words
blooming off my tongue,
the garden of my blues
recoiling, repeating
the melody
of m’lady melancholy.
I confuse so many
sounds for hope.
Is my heart wrong?
In the dark field of my longing,
all the flowers are dead.
I know who you are,
the pain says
the pain says,
now and always,
your hurt
belongs to me,
while
the pain of your name
your long history of blame
now and always,
only
belongs to you,
and all I can do is murmur
alongside the sideways summer storm,
yearning to unlearn,
still not knowing what to do
other than follow
the soft curve of my palms
form around the jawline,
like a poorly written sentence
I don’t want to write.
I know who you are, and
I know who I want you to be
the pain says, but you’ll
never know the difference.
I say,
Pain,
How do you
think about yourself
when no one is there to witness?
when your grief stays, unanswerable,
never beginning, yet always
unfinished?

 

 

 

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April 4, 2016

2/30: YOU CAN’T STEAL MY VICTORIES

Looking into the mirror,
saying to myself:

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here
and inside me are many.
I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive
and my love is plenty.

I hear hope is the a good thing,
maybe the best thing
in low volume on the television,
but I forget to believe.
Let me tell you
how I remember.

When I go to hide,
all I see are eyes
closed above the noses
of all the noses
I know and love.
We rub
our fists against
our eyelids,
rid
the blur out
our slurred visions,
the ones we try to outcast,
rearrange,
switch the shadow
with the past’s scarecrows,
even though we leave
the body
uncured in its
stupid uncertainty.

We tell ourselves,
No one owns our wild,
and it’s true,
your survival is
the only truce you
cannot break.

The best thing about today
is that
our closed eyes
open
to a better place
to a place better
than where we came.
I don’t want to feel the same.
Where have we taken each other?

Every one of my students sing
Happy Birthday to You,
the breath in their laughter
undoing all of my disasters,
a perfect chorus of wind
to carry me back like sand
moving towards the sea.
I run my hands through
the wind, then through my hair,
then do it all over again, meanwhile
my smile is a guess
you shouldn’t underestimate.
I have left
the only arms and legs
I have left
to chase the sun
before it leaves.
I have left my hands
behind for you to hold onto.

Catch me if you can

I want to yell
I want to groan
to the well of feelings I feel right about now,
this moment
where the stars, the moon, and me
are lingering along the bayou,
alone in our darkness,
harnessed in a light
that surrounds the sky
I celebrate beneath on
the anniversary of my birth.

I’ve learned
you can turn
sadness into a memory,
then you can forget it.
In my twenty-fourth year,
I’m here, I’m here, I’m here
and inside me are many.
I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive
and my love is plenty.
You can’t steal my victories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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May 1, 2015

30/30: FAITH IS A DARING EXPERIENCE

We had a catholic service
for my Uncle Jesse’s funeral.
And I was a pall bearer,
which means I carried his body
which means I carried his casket
which means he really did kill himself
which means he really did want to leave
and I felt weak in my strength.
But the priest who spoke at the ceremony,
did so about the soul, about its longings,
how death perplexes, but faith persists.
Actually, I believe his exact words were,
“Faith is a daring experience.”

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April 30, 2015

29/30: ASK THE WIND, CLOSED FISTS DON’T GET HELD

If you uncurl your fist against
Sixty miles per hour wind, outside
the driver-side window, you change
the weather pattern of your whole life. This afternoon,
half of my arm extended into the April air,
like the last good idea I will ever have. I open my hand,
like a valley, and gratitude arrives early, gathers, into a river.
All of it, earned. All of it, mine.
Today, I think of what the wind picks up,
and include myself within this strange history of elemental hustling.
I open my hand and become an expert at temporary emptiness.
I open my hand and the possibility of touch travels
back to me like music, for once.
This time, I open my hand and the wind
picks me up, carries away the rocks stealing me from the surface,
from sunlight, all these stones stacked into a sturdy sadness,
but I can feel my hardness eroding into a whisper,
disrupting silence softly like a hum yet to happen. Alas,
this soft skin of my hand, finally a sail, an open invitation. Alas,
the wind whittles my heart into an instrument. Alas,
I open my hand into the pouring wind and my heart lifts
out of the dust, is recast into the sky, is light like the April air. All of it—

Mine.

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April 30, 2015

28/30: AND ONE FINE MORNING—

In front of me is a poster of Gatsby’s silhouette,
reaching for love’s green light lost across the bay,
and this image is made with every word
from his most famous novel,
and I can feel the
length of my own famous longing curl with my spine
each morning I rise, tomorrow is already
showing in the way my ribs do after I
turn to the other side of myself, after I
breathe deeply, the way April does with the rain.
It’s funny how every motion forward takes me
both further and closer to what I am.
Listen,
love’s green light across my own stormy bay,
the moment you see my outstretched arms,
know,
it will not last.

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April 30, 2015

27/30: SUNLIGHT IS MY FILTER

Here is my body.
The heart inside my chest
is not a hypothetical, but non-fiction
like when walk into Half-Price Books
and buy a book at-half price.
From the window next to me,
the horizon is under-construction
each morning, the downtown sky begins anew,
another crane creates a new sky
line to look above, while beneath,
so much is going on. Look, to your left,
a man sleeps beneath Texas 527-Spur.
In front of you, your law school,
a building of privilege set in stone,
you walk out the doors and your head
is heavier with something new, what’s with reason
all of a sudden? Has this always been the standard?
I say law student
When I mean trial by fire
The amount of smoke lost in my chest
makes me want to replace my lungs like engines.
Intellectual curiosity
has ten syllables between the two bodies, and I find
comfort in the pieces needed to make a thing whole.
This day is a mouthful until I know I am not alone. Look, to your right,
Another man lays his body out on the sidewalk as if
he were only a shadow dozing off into the cement,
His eyes finally closed beneath the weight of all he has
lost in the slumber of improvement, in the name of
new buildings growing up just tall enough to block out the sun,
as if their bodies were meant to absorb negative space—the lightest form
of darkness.

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April 27, 2015

26/30: CANDLE LIGHT VIGIL FOR NAPAL, ROOT MEMORIAL SQUARE, WITH A TRUMPET

The breath entering the trumpet
is not the same as the breath
that leaves the trumpet.

The brass body of a trumpet
has the physiology of grief.
Both are an instrument,

Enduring the fractured sickness of breathlessness
until this miraculous sound leaps out, the falling sky
dismembered no more and finally, something broken goes unforgotten.

A black man beneath the green screen paneled gazebo
fills Root Memorial Square Park
with his own-echoed-lung composition.

His breath swam into the trumpet the same way
sadness always enters unexplained, and always, upon exit,
glides through the swamp of ache, finding a way to

Avoid the eulogy of what’s always at stake,
but this week alone, too many of us are losing,
this week together, too many of us have a history of loss.

I speak to a man from Nepal
who gathers with his Nepalese community
to remember too many who have been lost.

He tries to explain the catastrophe
Asks if I know what happened
I want to comfort him with something

More than sympathy, assure him I’ve listened
to NPR, have read the reports but what does
this failed attempt at understanding have to do

With knowledge, with his knowing desecration
of his most beloved, the homeland his heart
occupies outside its own quaking body

The earth dismembered in its
fractured sickness, the toll
of the dead rise but the bodies that remain

Are still trying to sleep
Are not yet done weeping
Are lighting candles for the shadowless.

Here I am, caught in a nation’s weeping
The Spirit of the Hero wants to fill my fingers
but if etymology has taught me anything, it’s this:

All around, flowers, plants, the scene
smiles in green, attests to
the effectiveness of spiting death.

If you listen to the colors of spring speak, they’ll tell you:
Through the history of evolution,
Photosynthesis is the earth asking for forgiveness.

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