Thursday, January 04, 2024

Childish Fears

I have managed to flip my fear inside out.

Now you don't recognize it,

Now it looks like anger:

It ravages everything around me,

And everyone..

Could it all be something else?

All the empathy and the compassion?

Is it only because last century it was me

That was the child in fear?

Of the same terror, rolling its aRs

And mangling our 7as,

Like the flight of death?

I think of the one I love:

Was all his resentment only

Because, a decade or two ago,

He too was the child in fear,

Abandoned like all the children

Now ravaging our screens?

And what becomes of it?

All this fear? All this apathy?

All these angry childish stares?

What remains when the faces are gone?

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Holy Night

I think of my dead father,
How heartbroken he would have been.
I wonder if he knows what's going on;
I hope he doesn't.
I hope, after we pass, there is 
Only a peaceful void, and that 
All encompassing glow of love.
Though I sometimes wish for Hell 
For those who unleash it here.
But I assume She knows best,
She who is All, the Good and the Bad,
The Love and the Suffering.
I assume there is a meaning behind 
All this cruelty, all this injustice.
I think back to that night when
For a while I was Her, when 
Everything dissolved 
Into little glimmers of Love.
There was nothing else, but the breeze
And the hand of my dead grandmother 
Feeling my beard for the first time.

Friday, September 22, 2023

Useless Objects

I have my wedding ring still. 

I have the watch I gave to you on our anniversary.

Always on mind, it says; I gave it to him.

And your hand-me-downs; also gave some to him.

I have photo albums filled with people no longer there;

People I no longer talk to, people I loved once.

I have shelves full of music I no longer listen to,

Books I'll probably never read,

Films I'll likely never see.

And somewhere, I'm sure, 

There a piece of a life I'll never live.

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Absolution

To My People 

I absolve myself of you.
I absolve me of the anger
dripping morbidly from turbid eyes;
of the hatred, loud and raucous,
and stupid;
of the ignorance engulfing you
like summer haze:
humid, and sticky, and slowly reeking.
I absolve me of your sins.

I absolve me of your children,
dull and arrogant,
and devoid of hope.
I absolve me of your tongue,
its beautiful words
gone blind.

I absolve me even of myself,
this guilt of being,
this exhaust of writing,
this ball of fury in your throats.
I absolve me even of this,
the need for absolution.

(Originally posted on May 22, 2007)

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Exit

Of callous politicians everywhere

It’s time for us to exit
The stage and leave
The animals to shred
Their shadows

It’s time for us to exit
Without looking back
Turn off the light
Set the set on fire
And leave

It’s time for them
To cry our tears
To taste the salt
And the soles of our feet
And lick our spit
Off the floor

We shall burn in their retinas
Like the afterimage of a nightmare
We shall linger
Like the caustic aftertaste
Of regret

It shall burn
And we shall smile
They shall writhe
And we shall smirk
Through their moans

Spill me
Onto their gaping flesh
Like lemon juice
Bitter and bright
Scrape me
Off of their green skins
Like a dead dream

For we shall fester
Wherever they dare to smile
We shall bite
Like a ravenous hunger
They never knew

And we shall recur
Like a hallucination
Like loss
Like life

(Originally posted Aug. 6, 2004)

Thursday, June 15, 2023

We are the clumsy passersby

When words fail me (or I fail them), sometimes the only consolation is the realization that I will never approach the greatness of what's been said:
We are the clumsy passersby, we push past each other with elbows,
with feet, with trousers, with suitcases,
we get off the train, the jet plane, the ship, we step down
in our wrinkled suits and sinister hats.
We are all guilty, we are all sinners,
we come from dead-end hotels or industrial peace,
this might be our last clean shirt,
we have misplaced our tie,
yet even so, on the edge of panic, pompous,
sons of bitches who move in the highest circles
or quiet types who don't owe anything to anybody,
we are one and the same, the same in time's eyes,
or in solitude's: we are the poor devils
who earn a living and a death working
bureautragically or in the usual ways,
sitting down or packed together in subway stations,
boats, mines, research centers, jails,
universities, breweries,
(under our clothes the same thirsty skin),
(the hair, the same hair, only in different colors).

-Pablo Neruda

Wednesday, December 07, 2022

Silent Green

We pass through death quietly,
Sight unseen--
Slipping like ghosts at a party,
Unnoticed--
Haunting the spaces that carry
Our smells like second skins...

Sideway glances in a crowd,
The sound of laughter receding,
Entering the cool darkness of the air
Willingly--
On the other side, imagined relief,
A new beginning, or respite
From weathered selves?

The train passes. Let it go.
Another will come. You wait.
You listen into the tunnel:
Fluorescent light on white tiles,
And a faint hum...

The story continues. The world
Never fails a beat. You want it to
Notice the absence. But it churns
Beings like dust, lives like smoke,
And hurtles on...

Someone will notice. Someone will choke.
Someone will face the night alone tonight.
Reaching an arm across an empty bed,
Someone will feel the cold of the sheets.
Absence will resonate somewhere,
Will echo, and rage, and plunder...

Facing the night, with the knowledge
Of life elsewhere, undeterred--
You hold your silence,
You face your absence--
This once you will not look away.
It is here. And you are ready.

(originally posted on May 07, 2017)

Sunday, August 21, 2022

Here's to Beirut

 "...Above the city of losses, the city of Lights
Bouncing back off a starless sky, the city
Where we'll try to save this night from the death of nights."
    - Joe Bolton, "The Name of Desire"


Here's to the glitz of a dying city 
That no longer resembles itself
Because its light has been stolen..
Here’s to the glam of a deranged city
that no longer resembles another
Because its promise has been broken..
Here's to a tired city, a toxic city, a cruel city
A city of thieves, and of charlatans
Of open sewers, and blocked roads
A city of revolt, of anger and despair..
A city that has died a hundred times 
And deserved every single death..
A city that has killed a million times 
And savored every single one..
Here's to Beirut, the Medusa, the Hydra
And the ever burning Phoenix 
The masochist and the sadist 
The victim and the crime..

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

The Smallness of Life

(To Katy)

This,
the smallness of my life, I said,
can you see it?
But she said nothing,
she just wrote
a series of details
and small spaces.
My life used to spread, I said,
over pot-holed streets and easy laughter,
a time when youth was
just another smell in the air.
But she said nothing,
she just sniffed;
from where she stood,
she could smell it still.
But my life has stretched so thin, I said,
it has shrunk into this square mile
between where I sleep and where I yawn.
This corner of the world, I said,
that I call my own;
this bit of the earth
I staked as home.

This piece of life, I said,
that I squander at will;
this circle of friends
I ignore to call.

This head resting on my hip,
this hour of the day when the sky
looks like Mary in front of the cross.

This hollow in my heart
where they used to be;
this cat, this breath, this,
this smallness of my life...
But she said nothing,
she just blinked.
Her life wasn't any bigger.

(Originally post on January 30, 2006)

Monday, August 15, 2022

I Thought We Were

To friends departed too early

I thought we were endless,
raging against the night,
laughing life in the face,
and running...

I thought we were shameless,
masters of our indolence,
wasting time like we owned it,
and yawning...

I thought we were spotless,
dazzling and daring,
dreaming of one day,
and dashing...

I thought we were painless...

I thought we were later:
first grandparents,
then parents,
then us...

I thought we were future,
till the past piled on,
today slipped by,
and now…

I think we are naked,
humbled and defenseless,

standing in the wind, and bowing,
seeing for the first time our culling

what remains of us, scattered
and huddled, and hoping…

Originally posted on Friday, October 05, 2007

Thursday, May 05, 2022

Teta

Today is the 20 year anniversary of my grandma's passing, the event that got me into poetry... I seem to have dried up recently, but here's some of what I'd written for her during the years:


I miss you, Teta...

Monday, April 04, 2022

Comfortably Numb

: Of Grief IV

To those left behind..
Stuff the slices down your throat
And choke on a smile
The end bounces off of a black screen

The line thins between the zenith and the abyss
He tells me my pain is only resistance
"Grieve!" he says, my agony does not suffice
Grieve loss upon loss until you are unaware of losses

Now it's their turn to fall from grace
From the stars, from above
And my turn to put them back up
Where they belong

My laughter sobs
And I become, I hope
comfortably numb

(Originally posted on Aug. 3, 2004; re-posted on July 24, 2006)

Thursday, March 17, 2022

I’ll Be (Nothing)

I’ll be nothing, that’s what I’ll be.
I’ll be the limbs breaking on the ice,
I’ll be desire melting onto itself,
I’ll be the longing that possesses me
That I’ll never possess.

I’ll be nothing, that’s what I’ll be.
I’ll be the vicious hope that rides me to death,
I’ll be just another breath, another step
To nowhere...

(originally posted on December 06, 2004)