from the dead

Two days under the sun, and I thought
the air was beginning to smell like bee spit
And the clouds were somehow
Lactating

I feel so raw, I thought under the sun,
so flawed. those were
My fishermen days

When men hung Jesus on a wooden frame
On a whitewashed wall
Whose gaze is fixed on a corner, eyes
Bleary

Oily Saint Mary, Moses!
Jerichos, echoes, my voice in a tomb.
How fleeting is life
How hungry the womb, I am
Numb, numb, numb.

One day, the Son of God appeared
His hair is white as wool, eyes of
Fire

And called out my name.

Today

Let Today be
Where I am, where I stand
In relation to eternity

Life is really One
day long
From wake to sleep
To right the wrong
From weak to strong, my soul

To keep
To hear Your Voice
And never let our hearts to harden
Or forget as in the rebellion

For we have yet
To rise and set, the call
For One day
You called Today.

Perfect in weakness

Symptoms of Post-traumatic
Reiterate in spastic motions, caught caught
Stuck
In a Caricature of myself. self
Nose, Trunk (Puncture, punch)
Punk, get out of my head!

Said the Artist's ghost from the dead
Get out of your mind.
Said the Shrink sh shSHhhhhh
(Everyone is watching) Shut your face.
Eyes, mouth is watering, brow

Everyone is faltering, now

Cheek, bones, rising in place
Contort tort torting (don't you frown)
Broke Broke

Broken and contrite basket case
Heart is sore and spirit poor
I am, finally

And, and, and
Finally and Complete(ly) before
You.

Land of ice

fold your heart

and fly my hair waves

of breaking continents of sound

breaking tunnels of echoing

glass

the melting mountains sing to me

wanting to swallow me

slice me, silently

rising with the fog, dripping

sweet sirens, soothing

bare, mellow. salmon, sorrow.

you sigh alone

you know if i’m at home

you sighed so silent

oh alone

you saw me fall down

like snow.

Lullaby of the South

I shattered the cradle at the crack of dawn

Crawled out to view the lake

Momma won’t come back, she’s long gone

With an empty bottle and a bellyache

Sleep, my brown baby, succumb to the beat

The moonlit drumming, the hopes of the villagers

Are as dusty as their bare feet

The silhouette of banana stalks

Stamps the bleeding weeping sky, the heat

Plucks beads of sweat from your cheeks

But I

Will remember to shatter the violence

That swallows your dreams in the night

Will scatter these seeds in the silence

That will burgeon into

Hush, sweet baby, this lush Branch

That will fight your fight

That will comfort you in the night.

World and I

Generations are enslaved by the prince of this age
Gaping wounds that are paved with a subtle rage.
I read this era like a tragic novel
I read chaos, grief and despair on every page.
Voices of an invisible chorus shrill to the chagrin
Each note stumbles over the last like an unpardoned sin
I hear their tears echo through a shell
I hear their bitterness swell and laughter wear thin
Like these garments of flesh, and its desires within.
I ask myself, where does life end and death begin?

Bubble

Anatomizing a translucent paradigm
Do scholars and pupils delight such fervor
Pontificating their esoteric opinions
In pungent wrinkles and salient murmurs

another simple song on my cheap guitar

He's calling, exhaling like the waterfalls
The rippling, rushing
is lovely, and loving

I hit the pavement running
Turn around to see if you're coming,
Let's go
Let go of

This world rains worries like ash
A whirling decadence
Burning to the ground
Swelling with the dead

I wanna hear the sound of His voice
I wanna fly to the sound of His voice
Let's fly to His voice
instead

The Dead Church is Deadly, the Deadly Nurse is Dying

Sitting in the pew, 'hush hush'
the holy suit at the pulpit speaks
Disclosed to him, the voice of God
We writhe on our chilly seats

'OH! The LORD!' sweating, flushed
I observe beads of eulogy glisten
upon his fervent brow
Oh, the burden of piety, 'listen!'

For God-fearing, knee-bending
uprighteous-delightless folk
I slap my lethargy silly
they roar at a mediocre joke

Reverence is a sea of bobbing heads
Spirit, a blister bloating with politesse,
We gather in your Holy name
How dare we otherwise suggest!

A vagabond enters our rheumatic midst,
For he's heard the Name before,
He's exhausted every possible route
Opened all but one small door

A humble door with a disfigured knob that welcomes all seekers, but rather
We hide it behind an elegant door, behind yet another, and another

Hallways are full, chambers sealed by
Curtains that separate sinner and slaughter.
The vagaond approaches a barren altar
Hoping to find a drop of cool water

Licking his cracked lips, blinking
Sinking in the quicksand of neglect
Beneath his blistered, bleeding feet
While we are too busy feigning perfect

He croaks his trembling request
In a peculiar dialect that was once our own
Words that bleed like the dying beast
With a dying breath he breathes alone

(another to be continued...)

Cliché

Secretly I wish I had never known you
Secretly it hurts to remember
The laughter we shared
That chapter of the frayed moments
Where we clung to each other
For dear life.

This is a bitter tear, a burden
so dreadfully sore.

This is a cliche, I write for you
Because there are no other ways
to express it anymore.

(04Apr.2006)

Figurine friends

They smile in effervescent bubble
Talk, laugh like peals of tinkle
Metal but melted
Hallow, hollow, a halo of curious
illuminate expression
Tracing dialect fiber aroud their
Plastic waists.
Plastic faces whose cheeks I love
They glare, pose peaceful concrete
rosy complexion

Haiku from my childhood

Drinking the winter
It shatters my tongue and tastes
Like bittersweet wine

Unwanted territory

Hey friend, I don't feel safe in this heat
With you in this mineral valley
of misnomers and gnomes.
They tickle my feet with a gritty beat
Smelting grins between magma stones;

They craft a whiskered nest, in which
my contiguous skin receives no rest,
Plucking empty whispers from the blue,
Aching for this heart to arrest.
Sorry, I never want this home with you.

So few, the euphonious strings to resonate
Extracting from marrow a salty residue.
I'd rather otalgic to flattery, for vain
Within me boils to a viscous hate
Imbued with the obligatory migraine.

Your pox and sores putrify my puerile wall
(I like a hyperbole, you understand),
To illustrate the futility of it all.
You're not the culprit like I am, a fool
But sorry, so sorry, I just don't give a damn
about you.

The perks of Berkeley

minutia and matter
and rhetorical chatter
ignited, amazed
in a cerebral haze

riddled with pithy
sayings and craving stage
scramble to establish the next leading
phrase; your spray of excitement
lands on my face

I surf the deluded mood
sailing sea sharp to see flat
on a silver contrabass
I'm a shining tune whizzing through a shiny tube
on a mission
with paper mache paste
pinched alleyway by the name of Haste

Home is a soothing room
blur and ebonics
emits from muted laptop speaker hives

Here I'm an arabian dancer
radioactive like cancer canoe riding
on crimson tide
with ninja knives like romancer

We light incense
smoke tendrils to
fill my dream eyes at night

the porch invites a discussion of
an apricot moon who wears
fog like a plume
like the elites

chambers below us echo
the raucous buffoons
who bark and guffaw
across our dimly lit street

as I lay there and wonder
if they ever get sleep.

Cesarean moonchild

As far as i could remember, the purpose of my existence was to win a prize. The nature of this prize is still a mystery to me, although my parents have always had a clear view of it, it involves success and conformity. I was to succeed, and succeed successfully, within the confines of our cultural values down to the color of my hair, my tolerance to hot food, my posture. Before I was even alive my life was mapped out in painstaking precision, and it crushed my will while I lay stoic in the womb.

Apparently I developed a suicidal tendency before I was born because the doctors had to cut my out of my mother's gut and untangle me from my umbilical noose. My parents would lay in bed at night and quietly rage at the misfortune of their marriage, murmuring hollow agreements about my future. I felt my mother's desires like a hot iron against my back, whispering hungry secrets into my fetal brain,

"You will be such a wonderful daughter, I will raise you like a flower, soft and yielding. You are my beautiful obedient, braided child. Perhaps you will go to medical school, but if that is too difficult I am willing to compromise because I love you so. So and so and everyone will know you are mine, and you won't be like those others that flock with the gossipers and toss their hair at the boys. No, you'll be my porcelain daughter and I will raise you as such. Maybe you can take over my dream to be an artist, and everyone will marvel at your ingenuity. They will see."

Even as I floated innocuously about her maternal cavern, I was confused at her dialogue. I felt that she wasn't talking to me, but rather at one of the unfertilized eggs in her ovaries. Whatever it was that summoned such fervent motherly love, I wanted it badly and convinced myself that I would go through great lengths to earn it. My prospective life spanned out in front of me like a distant pool of water, waiting to be perfectly pierced with a perfect dive 400 meters up. Mother, I don't want to jump. Please mother let me stay on this platform, the music is lovely and from what I can fathom these emotions are truly exquisite. But I'm afriad of the fear you so innocently deny. What if i lose my balance in the air or my head explodes from the impact of water or pressure underneath? I heard that you can lose an eardrum if you hit the water at the wrong angle, and then I really will go about my entire life losing balance. Balance is important, you know, because it helps coordination and mobilitiy, it's a talent, really. And with it comes grace and sanity. And stability like electrons and photons in the elements that my body is formed with. I was there for a split microsecond, like a blue flicker and then I became a billion atoms, multiplying like my soul was in a hurry to manifest into this motal realm, and through the whole process I remember feeling such overwhelming purpose in every animated atom...and balance. The molecules were in deliberate accord every chemical interaction. You wanna know something funny mom? I thought I was going to turn into fire, like the consuming, breathing Father, and it wasn't until my head formed that I grasped this dimension in my being. I am water, like the Spirit! I am a human, female, sojourner, a creature of space, time, will, faith in a perishable container.

So you see,
I have this one chance
and it's my life,
so couldn't you let me stay
here for a little while longer?

Happy 5th

Absolute means terror inviting discreetly but certainly frightening
nonetheless though power cannot exceed that whose value in writing
With ink stains on flattened tree threads though indirectly blighting
the very ground we once stood so harmoniously united

this ground upon which we built these epochal titans and towers
from trillions of units which served its massive corporate powers
Invincible, with freedom and justice for All who compromises ours
for theirs, in a blind anarchic allegiance to the wages for hours

and hours upon hours they plotted revenge for pain couldn't deny
as their loyalty and our Goddess crashed waves rocks ships gone awry
as their dignity we robbed through a game of demand and supply
The Game winking malice to her subjects' torturous cries

Cries like the black crows filled the blood-sweet sky...

one man's fantasy is another man's reality

Somehow, in the middle of the fairy tale
When the noble knights were riding up to
a dame singing with a nightingale
The dragon split open and shattered waterfalls
The castle guards catapaulted over
the molding castle walls
The moat dried up along with its fishes
in the bed
Our stealthy narrator got an aneurysm and
fell down dead
Then when all the green midgets and
chipmunks and hairy-ass gnomes
clocked out and headed back to
their low-income homes
The silver-striped gold-feather-winged
magical unicorn
Got shot by a hunter lit up on coke and PCP,
who eventually stumbled back to his computer
filled with internet pixie porn.
Despite investigative efforts by Dateline NBC,
which still makes him deucedly nervous,
He continued until he got caught and issued
A century of community service

(another to be continued...)

&ersand

punctuated by comma
my plural sighs
effulge this comma this
crystalline concept
colon the salt of destiny,
whose
my stagnant skies
attempt to condense (parenthesis)
but quote
I am but a wandering mind
end quote

hoping is breathing end
keep comma
on comma
hoping period.

Collateral damage

is pretty crappy.
Trigger happy,
What a trippy thought
I'm a hippie, caught
Up in the moment
Swimming against the current
without much thought
without her pot.

They

Drugs were my comfort
because she salted my wounds
Strange men were my counsel
because he squandered my dignity and worth.

Slandered, threatened, demonized
Yet neither feel the need to listen or sympathize.
Except to criticize
Something that is a by-product of their ignorance.

My voice ripped out of my throat, and my right to exist as myself.
Locked into a prison of ideologies and condemnation
Planting fear and shame into my daily walk
An enemy, beasts and demons created within me,
Nurtured by Their self-denial
Self-righteous
Self-hatred was my home, Suicide my prayer

In this ideo-fuckin-logical lair
To my left, Punishment
To my right, Failure
Above me was Damnation
Below me all Hell

broke loose to set the shit free that hit the fan-
fare that cost me a life worth living for-
feit
everything

They pretend that this struggle is a figment of my imagination
A sitcom goof, a casual stumble
Slip of the mouth, by mere folly
Slip of the mental process
to process and filter
what they wanted me to hear

But

Negligent manslaughter is a crime too
In the process of Their effort to hide their own weaknesses
Exploiting me for mine