Open Window

To be awoken
By kisses up my back
A pale kingdom under the sheets
To be told, in secret,
In corners, in whispers
The million ways to fall in love
To memorize the story of the initial meeting
To meet eyes at every boring party
With awareness and playfulness
The world will be born again-
Out of the ashes of old, past, dead
As a playground
And I hope to be the first
And I hope to be adored.

Blue Moon

Searching for a blue moon
Between bubbles of laughter
I beg the fear not to set in
I offer a green bowl of tears to the black hole
that has already taken too much.
Distraction, distraction, offer simple distractions
So when we're alone
I can crawl into your mouth
And catch the words that come out
Afraid that I'll have nothing when you're gone.

Straw Men

When I'm done being mad at myself
for all my bad decisions
for all the things I set up to make sure
I won't get what I want
The straw men I built
to create a beautifully crafted distraction

(And maybe I could fall in love with
those delusions
for a short time
And maybe I could love you
for your part
in them)

But when I'm exhausted from
all that self-sabotage
it's still me
and only me
in this mess.

Two Burnings

Walcott watched the Ramayana
Transform children into warriors, princes, and gods
Actors crossed through their mirrors
Stepping into an alternate reality
A moment where past and present shared a bed
To birth the beautiful union of their drama
And a God-like umbilical cord was ignited.

Walcott was witness to this ritual burning
The metaphorical igniting of a God
On the edge of a sugar field
A vibrant flash of light
Descending on the horizon like a sunset.
The ashes used to paint memories
Onto the Caribbean landscape.

Fire inhaling and exhaling
Breathing life into ashes
Red lips
Orange anxiety
Blue night sky.

Burn has another name in Queimada
A fictional island set on the outskirts
Of a colonial empire
Where waves of truth and fantasy
Wash up on the ivory beaches

Slaves mirror the pallid shores
And the masters
Mimicking their wickedness
In dance and song riding
Tides of vibrant colors
Carrying a human hand that
Waves goodbye to flesh

Profits ignite a fuse
In pale isolation
Inhaling green
Fumes from a poisoned sky
Exhaling dark ashes to cover the shame
Walker serenades memories to sleep
Singing “One builds to make money,
And to go on making it,
To make more,
Sometimes it’s necessary to destroy.”

Sad Egos

I leave the warmth of a café and the comfort of coffee
To face the dark, violent streets
Littered with the muffled voices of women
Who were caught on the pavement
Their hair and fingernails scattered in the wind.
The forgotten, the ashes, the bloody hearts.

A pile of poems for all the men
That never asked about the circumstances of my life
That never saw me until I was in their view
That never thought I existed before them.
They say to forget about the before.

The Aztecs cut out hearts to keep the sun coming up
That bright ego that needed feeding,
From virgins and spoils of war.
We can't break away from this sad ritual,
I found Monica's fingernails under a tree
And I won't forget about the before,
I won't forget about the superfluous sacrifices
Of this sad ego.

Tiger Claws

I've perfected the art of letting go
Even though,
At times
In the silence of my bed
I grip my pillow with tiger claws
And moan
Wanting to hold on so tight it hurts

Connection

brother, sister
I went to find you behind the
bright billboards
folding like blankets around
hard, cold concrete
screaming obscenities
and masking all the atrocities
of a slow and draining war

I know I can sneak a note into the city grate
and it might make its way to you
but tonight I feel love's urgency creep
up inside my throat
a million words bubbling up
so quickly that I need to shout them out

I miss you, I miss you
I tried to tell my stories to a stranger
while sharing a cigarette
but quickly realized there wasn't
much connection left
except for the black tar,
razor tobacco cutting us apart

What about when you feel like
you are drifting in blackened space
with nothing to tie you down?
Sent spiraling like a satellite
orbiting to catch the big picture
but missing all the little things
like packing in the back seat of a station wagon
hanging on to someone's coat while they lead
you through a crowd

I need to crawl under the cardboard refuse
find you waiting with compassion
and laugh until we cry
forgetting about the tin,
electric, wire, clock,
assembly line pushing
us apart.