A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: poems

April 18, 2016

17/30: SOMEHOW, I KEEP ON LOVING

You don’t walk into the wind, you walk against it
Contrary to the spellbound leaf, thrown around,
lifted up and taken away, unlike you, feet on ground.

Resilient soothsayer, rhythm—with your steps—maker,
Who let the concrete spin the balls of my feet? Ink-blot.
I tip-toe across a puddle and jot down the reflection

The questions I seek are answers in another form.

The wind wants to win but you have legs better than wings.
The rain wants to destroy but all it does is cleanse.
The elements want to touch you then leave, so they do.

But I am tired of losing. Watch me get caught in the rain
with my umbrella hands, malfunctioning inside buildings
I’ve built in my head, opening up, like disbelief in bad luck,

Nothing can hurt me. Not the rain, the gust, rusted lust.
On the highway, a man on a motorcycle zooms past the rest of us
while the storm is rife with hubris, my Uber driver, Asif,

Turns back to me to say, He does not love his life. And for once,
these words do not apply to me. Because I love my life. Yup,
sure do. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I yawp. Foolish talk.

Chalk-teeth. Don’t care if the words will last. I need to speak.
Taking care of my weaknesses like baby teeth, I pull the truth
out of me the same way a knot is untied. Clumsy wrists. Tight-lips.

Walking downtown, I am the furthest from being a leaf.
No, I love my life too much. Exorbitant. Joy, Flood-like.
The last thing I ever want to say will most likely be a

Run-on sentence, chasing the next thought like a promise
I told you’d I keep. Man of my word. I turn sadness into sweet tea.
Have you heard the one about misery? We all need company.

At Phoenicia, one of the chefs and I are friends.
He asks me to call him Abibi. Abibi calls me Cousin-Brother.
He thinks I’m Lebanese, and when I correct him, he says

Lo siento. Then, another time, Adios, Cousin-Brother. Language lessons.
On Sunday, Fi Amanullah, Cousin-Brother. When I ask what he means, he replies
Allah will protect you, then hands me warm shawarma, and I reply,

I’m gonna need all the help I can get it, and it’s true. I take my food, exit,
only to walk against the wind, now knowing, my body is protected.
Nothing about me spellbound or in disbelief. Contrary to the leaf.

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April 18, 2016

16/30: I’M AT THE CONTINENTAL CLUB AND

I’ve been dancing all night.
Mighty body, light feet.
No part of me is discreet,
only well-kept, only secret.
Meaning is a recipe I keep to myself.
But tonight, I am emptying the shelves.
Forget rationing, give me irresponsibility.
Forgive the past, someone sip hard liquor.
Fear is a balloon too big for your wrist.
Your body was meant to last,
even if you crash, the crash is sweet.
Look at me, Patron Saint of Self-Pity.
I wrote a new prayer for despair.
Pray with me? Say it with me.
My hips are a spoonful of sugar
pouring moonlight into the sky.
I’m writing my own impact theory.

Strangers howl at me with their sweet teeth,
mistake me for the incandescent croon of la luna,
la luna, white balloon, silver truth, lonely ghost,
who roams above the sky it once lived beneath,
never once haunting, only reflecting its cratered longing,
wanting to return, la luna, who once belonged
to the same earth, as both you and me,
your friends, your family, all of us together
belonging to the same dirt I’ve been kicking up all night.
Everyone has their own path to follow, but tonight it is easy.
My hips are a spoonful of sugar
pouring moonlight into the sky.
The people I love who are afraid of the dark
do not have to hide, instead, watch how
My knees hurl commands to my heels,
My heels speak for my feet,
My feet reach back and forth, traveling so fast,
I’m floating above the ground, flirting with friction,
Looking at the future like a dance floor I already kissed.

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April 16, 2016

15/30: MAGNIFICENCE

I can’t name the powers,
flowers, fish, or dishes
that give me pause, nor
the colors that draw
my breath short, and
I can’t really explain
how the sweet air
in my lungs hung me out to dry,
like a fish fried above the surface.
All I know is the voice in my head whispering
Worth it.

When I grow speechless at the earth,
my closed jaw opens on command,
until the whole world is just
a wish list I hold in my hand.
One of my students once asked,
Do we breathe in spirits?
And I want to expose
the family photo albums
developing in my throat
each time I think of home.
Hence, the guisada groan
roaming like ghosts in my
dimly lit respiratory system.
But I never told her that.
Instead,
All I can think about is
All that surrounds me,
the day in which I drown,
the day in which I sound
out each syllable of my love,
with a mouthful of mud,
muddled by longing,
my lovely heart, muddied.
the sound of what I want
has always been
a flood underwater,
both the cause and the effect
of the wannabe blue in my blood.

How unfair is it
that I care this much?
What would it mean if I stopped
following the shiny shimmer of
a body I can hardly see?
Rewrite.
What would it mean if I stopped
seeing myself in my body?
Rewrite.
What would it mean if I stopped
my body from seeing itself?
The bathwater in my veins is the only way
I can say what I mean without disappearing.
Anchor for sentences, I’m swimming
deeper than any meaning you meant.
Yes, I have two fins, both called
Magnificence.
I’m standing inside an aquarium
where a tower of fishes
kiss the glass, the glass kisses back,
everyone around is speaking
too loud to see the mystery before me:
how
the scales move like wet feathers,
how
I relearn
grace
as a silent endeavor
how
this room has
seashells for ceilings,
how
my ears
peel back
sounds without me even looking,
until I find
the first wave I touched,
brushing my palm
against the simple foam.
This is when I learned to let
my touch roam,
when I knew my hands could not grow
the bones it needed, so I retreated
back towards my my father,
who brought me to the
edge of the Pacific,
when my
mother was still his wife,
when his love was won,
when our lives were one.

I forget
the color of the sea
has always been
the color of defeat.
When asked,
it’s true:
my favorite color
is the blues,
the feelings you can’t choose,
a song with the lyrics knocked loose.
Yes, the blues
aint nothing
but a good man feeling bad,
but am I good man?
Right now,
I’m eating a meal,
inside an aquarium,
drinking red wine
inside a glass
where my stained lips
kiss the brim like a gift.
I believe
a moment is most vast
when you stop trying to make it last.
The crevice of a moment
is the only river I follow.
Just because the water is hollow
does not mean you have to follow.
No, borrow its soft unbroken bones,
Slip into it like a leak, like a stone,
like a rock, like a ring, like your fingers
are flowers walking through the door of Spring.
In front of me, a man with love
in his sea drops to one knee,
slips a ring onto his beloved,
his lips ripple a promise,
all his true words
turned into a school of fish,
love again, is, the teacher,
my heart again, is, the lesson,
When my mother consoled me as a boy,
she would hold me close, and say,
I forget you’re such a sensitive boy, mijo.
I relearn
vulnerability
each time I vanish
off the face of someone else’s planet,
when somehow, I still appear,
letting fear go like a balloon,
reimagining the boy
whose softness
is his sword,
like instead of seeing
the bags under my eyes,
maybe, I disguise myself
with crescent moons,
pulling the tide from sea
and back to me
each time I think of my
father leaving,
or the spirits breathing in me,
or  disappearing beneath the surface,
me, and my two fins—
Magnificence.

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April 13, 2016

13/30: THE FIRST TIME I DODGED DEATH

happened after I slipped and fell
into the deep end, when the water
left no room in my lungs
for me to believe in buoyancy,
or breathing.
Who thought
a three-year-old boy
at the bottom of a pool
pretending to sleep
inside his blue dream body
could not die?
My tiny body,
a broken boat,
I could not escape,
the only thing I could do
was spill over the sides of
my sunken skin.
it happened so quick,
my cries, a pathetic ripple,
lost in the blue spool
of a hot summer day.
But, I did not die.
My oldest brother
jumped in to save me,
like a prodigal fish,
returning to the current.
This is what we mean
by sink or swim.
When death skimmed
my little life like a pelican
I was inside
a body of water,
a deluge of blue
blurring the line
between breath and death
But, I did not die.
My little unsinkable heart
crafted a life raft.
My little anchored body
uplifted by hands
belonging to a blue-eyed boy,
who would not leave me behind,
though,
we
both left the bright blue abyss,
returned back to the surface,
My body now braver
thanks to the bravado
of his own diving body,
took me against his hip,
and then we went back to earth,
and the sun kissed my face,
with big yellow lips.

 

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April 11, 2016

11/30: HOW TO MOW THE LAWN, A RECIPE

The line is everything.
If you want to make
the perfect lawn,
it must be perfectly long.
You’ll need:
a sharp blade,
a worthy roar of an engine,
a gallon of gasoline,
not to be confused
with your heart,
different sparkplug,
your blood, red skinned spud,
the glue, running river of salsa,
otherwise known,
as fuel.

In making the line,
ask, what am I trying to say?
Take your blade,
have your way,
Little chef.
Erase each little blade,
unmake this made place,
break the grass into glass,
thyme, mint, rosemary.
Rip the handkerchiefs
of the lord, like a form of grace.
Sacrament bent to the will
of your blade, elegant dish,
the front lawn should sing
the same way a wish
leaves the mouth
forming a kiss.
Plot twist.
You’re actually writing
a poem into the earth.
Making the ground
less than, together
both your hands
pushing onward,
creation by erasure.
Me, always too busy
escaping into the landscape,
chasing
echoes of my legacy,
the soundscape of the past
brushes pass my nose,
fresh cut grass, red salsa,
tortillas sewn and rolled in velvet
language so spicy, we actually
speak in fire.
 

 

 

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April 11, 2016

10/30: THE LONG GOODBYE

we don’t want to leave, even when
we’re actually leaving, even when
returning home is the last thing
left to do, it’s not our style.
we choose to linger, stick around,
embrace again, embrace again,
our soft brown hands wrapped
around our soft brown bodies,
my grandma whispering blessings
across the back of my neck,
red lipstick stuck to my cheeks,
my aunt’s kisses,
my grandfather’s wisdom,
a bowl of tortillas
sitting in the center of the island,
an invitation to stay,
a warn place to put
your hands.
The swing set
getting closer to the sky
each time we sit next
to each other, our bodies,
old memories fitting against new stories,
I think the hardest thing to do
is leave when you don’t want to,
not always knowing
what you wish you knew.
Is it so bad to be late,
then? When the door
is such a chore to open,
let us rest in the love
we give, on the couch,
sitting outside in the backyard,
grandma’s flowers changing
colors and shape, their petals
holding onto the stem,
not wanting to leave, even when
the season has come to end.
My family,
we choose
the long goodbye
to close the distance
between us,
hug, and hug, and hug,
kiss, and kiss, and kiss,
yes, I will miss, miss, miss
all the parts about this, this, this.
My loves, my dears, the sweet names
I need to hear, that I need to see—
My family,
we all choose
the long goodbye
to make our beginnings
shorter, I’m sure of it.

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April 9, 2016

9/30: LOVE SONG

No one is awake
except the orchestral
male crickets, flexing
their wings, sound springing,
surrounding me, my mother’s home,
and for all I know,
the earth.
Over, and over,
a learned clockwork
of wings lingering
under the pinched-purple
suburban sky
where I too used to linger,
in the earliest days of
my heartbreak, before
I became used to it,
where I would walk, and walk, and walk,
until
the empty spaces inside me then
would consume whatever
I put inside, and now,
again, the empty spaces
inside me are still
filling up with song,
entirely
the cup of my heart
spilling over, all my wrongs,
chirping,

working to be held,

with such precision,
it must be a performance
of some sort,
a love song in
the pre-dawn
exposing
a creature of both dawn
longing.
Am I any different?
A cricket’s temptation is a man’s determination.
But oh, how I wish I could stop listening to
the music I have pretended to
make when I thought a woman
was listening,
when I thought
rubbing my hands
against each other,
would teach me the words
of songs I never wanted to sing.

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April 9, 2016

8/30: Fourth Grade on a Friday

It’s Fourth grade on a Friday.
Walking to my class, I stop
at the sight before me:
two birds chase each other
like a soft rhyme, their wings
seizing the same air running
through my thick black as new moon hair,
the same April air that kissed my face
when I finally decided to misplace
the sour flowers planted in the
deep soil of my unnamed hurt.
Walking to my class, I stop
at the sight before me:
Two boys chase a squirrel
The squirrel chases the world
Both move with no thought,
no belief in exhaustion,
no need to falter.
What you want will always run
Against what you have.

Can this moment last?

The other day, a black butterfly
cuts across the backdrop of green
in my backyard, the pink flowers,
the white crane, the bluest jay,
the wild worthwhile smile of the sun
is the sum of all I’ve lost and gained.

It’s Fourth Grade on a Friday.
I tell Jack in class,
If you turn anywhere in the dictionary,
you can find a new word with old meaning,
meaning,
you story is unfinished,
meaning,
your story is yours,
meaning,
life is alive in the light of a word.
He calls out to me, shows me
the word he chose out of the rows
of definitions, the possibility of
knowing something new,
redoing the unknown,
until known,
and
I know nothing
other than nothing is more
important than the moment
where, he says,
Look, look what I found.

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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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