Perhaps I reach for this because someone else has pushed,

someone else has paved the path and now you cross it

the moment I was searching,

but reasons don’t change the fact that I know it when I see it.

I know the pleasure of its ache,

the pain of its burn,

the possession of its desire,

and the surrender of its gasp.

Yes, it’s true by my understanding and requires no qualifier.

poetry does not live

it does not require breath or consciousness

or anyone’s recognition

it exists

it exists simply like the stars of galaxies

that are as far as light is fast

beauty is poetry

I wish I could slam.
I wish I could pull out my innards,
spew them for the world to see,
to gape, to gasp,
to react,
a reaction as a consequence of making passion
palpable.

I wish I could slam
so that even my visible spittle projectiles
will move you.

Because I have been moved and I have
felt pain, but most of all,
I have hope–
–hope that beneath our botox toxicated skins,
beneath our waxed high brows,
beneath our violence politicians spin to win,
beneath our nominal, virtual powers over each other’s degrees and titles,
we share the common denominator of being kin,
human kin.

So today, I try
to slam up the spirits that have been slammed down
and to rehydrate the tears that have dried
so we can all taste the bitterness
and rejoice in the beauty of pain inside
as one once denied but now one voice to decry.

We know, what it’s like
to be second class.
We’ve been ching-chonged back to the yellow devil’s kingdom come
and we’ve been slashed and slit into eyes that can’t see but submit.
We thought education cured racist ignorance, but the intellectual elites dish us just as many dirty glances,
just as many shot down advances,
just as many half of half hearted chances.
My child, born in this country, in this culture, in this land of the free,
thought he was white.
He loved his country, his culture, his land of the free,
but he was unrecognized.
Even when he self-baptized in an attempt to disguise his skin with his speech,
he was disenfranchised
over and over,
openly and unchastised.
Even the sworn defenders of justice,
given money, given the enticement of righteousness,
were biased, callous, and just
bogus.
They crushed my child with trauma
and I could not protect him,
the ultimate failure and pain as a mamma.
My child is defenseless against the darkness
that enters the white man’s retina,
defenseless against the unspoken dogma,
destined to the bottom as omega,
deprived of the right of merit achieved alpha.
And I watch my child cry
and talk of wanting to die.
How is it that try, cry, and die rhyme so nicely?

As much as I fear the cliched and trite,
there is no originality in the words I spat.
Racism is old, and stubborn in its ways,
but you must forgive my format,
because I need to hear myself scream.
I need to hear myself scream for vindication,
scream for validation,
scream against the violation of my child,
scream to hear,
for once,
to be heard.

God felt my pain and spread my favorite orange on the sky, the ocean, the rocks. The black volcanic bolus softly gilded with my joy.

But I wonder. Do these people who sit with me on this precipice also carry broken hearts? Do the tireless, violent waves also remind them of love’s unproductive pursuit? Can they also see their sorrow in the lingering foam of the broken waves? While that gorgeous orange has chased away the ocean lovers along with the warmth, it has also chased away my nostalgia. Beautiful, gilding sun of my favorite.

If I could talk to you, I couldn’t tell you everything because it would make both of us sad. You changed me though, definitely for the better, but that change of attitude brought about many smaller changes that have swelled up into a battering wave, rising higher, and battering continuously. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you I’m getting too much attention and I don’t know how to manage, how to refuse tributes. You would laugh and accuse me just as everyone else does, but just maybe, you would understand how it hurts. The first crash of waves into you is thrilling, exciting, unexpected, refreshing. But the nature of the ocean is to wear majesty into sand.

i am inspired–inspired to try

giving up

I’ve been diving, hard.

The mounting pressure popped me in the ears, hitting the space behind my brows,

The ocean pushed into me as an army, desperate to penetrate,

The salt coerced enlistment of my bodily tears, joining forces to blind me,

and depth’s darkness grew as it fed on hope.

I dove harder,

because I saw him sinking,

and I thought I saw his arm wave at me.

It could’ve been the careless undulation of water,

but what if.

I wouldn’t be able to live anyway.

More pressure, more ocean, more salt, more darkness,

but maybe his lips were moving at me.

It doesn’t have to be seen for it to be possible,

so I dove, because I could die just to know that was true.

But desperately deluding fear can’t fight off exhaustion forever.

The currents turned, I gave to it, looked to the surface, and saw what I’ve known all along.

He had let me chase his shadow.

He watched me sink for his sake from above.

I want to sink again,

this time for my sake,

because no one will save a suicidal in love,

diving towards death for shadows,

but unlike a freshly drowned body,

mine can’t fight the density of the ocean anymore.

It floats face down

and rejoins the sky in shame.

What is it about this warm poison that intoxicates me into single-minded lust?
Is it chemical? Emotional? Is there a difference?

I am in as much love as I am in hate. I think.
As far back as my inflexible memory stretches, each day counts the savage internal battles to decide the war between love and hate.
Which is it? Is it love or is it hate?
Should it be love, I as an individual lose to the tragedy of unrequited sacrifice.
Should it be hate, I sentence the solidifying passion and tenderness in my soul to death by cynicism.
Love, or hate?

————————

Today, I recognize ego as the source of all pain. Ego makes pawns into men, makes phenomena into purpose, and makes death into god.
Today, my ego shall make innocence into philosophy.

————————

Thinking about love, I obtained that which I have been craving.
I feel sad.
I feel the slow cooking of the mind
in despair of fate, cruel at the limits of design,
in unappreciated suffering of innocents,
in the unnoticed destruction of beauty.
This sadness is a state of the mind in cooking,
an act that can stop with the heat but never be reversed.

————————

I sat behind the wing that remained large while all the things I knew to be large fell away into smallness in mere seconds. All of a sudden, I felt suicidal and wanted to take a leap all the living feared. I wanted to feel oblivion, to be oblivion.

In just moments, we were hundreds of feet higher and i wanted to connect to this unfamiliar atmosphere. With my fists through the window.Would I put everyone in danger?  Would I go to jail? Would it affect my future? Then I saw the design from above and wished to play as god. I would roll a boulder methodically over those thousands of chips people lived in, people lived for, over those colorful nuggets that people drove around. In a motion like mowing the lawn, I would return the world to the way it should be, without human purpose imposed upon it. The urge to kill was strong in depraved compassion. I wanted to destroy the destruction.

Then we entered the clouds, and my dream came true.

————————

Like us, the earth covers its bones with its flesh, but we carve it out like bark. How sick we are as humans. While we do not scoop out the skin and flesh of breathing animals for pleasure, we scoop out the living flesh of the earth for modernity.

Though you’ve never asked, I answer.
Because you inspire me as a living, touchable, conversable person. You’ve shown me how you’ve lived on your own terms for your own contentment. You’ve given me confidence and a new kind of resilience. You’re the biggest contributor on my life philosophy after my parents. You’ve demonstrated tremendous courage, initiative, and determination; I feel like I should be able to do anything as long as I want to. You’ve inspired a different kind of desire in me as well. Before, my desire blossomed in my fantasies with misty hues of indescribable passion. Now, they’re rooted in memories of you, still passionate but now describable.

Lastly, I love you because you are my perfect tragedy. You are the love story I weep for with all my hearts. You are the love story for which they break and glisten in splendor as shards.

When I hear the sound of rain, my soul chills with a yearning to touch the dewy drops on his brow and to drink the rain from his lashes.

When I escape the layers upon layers of ceilings and the walls give away to windows, I might catch the blue left after the sky has cleansed. And I’ll think of you, because no one else has loved that blue as you have.

When their gazes search me, implore me, your invisible arm reaches over my shoulder and speaks simply, truthfully that I belong to you.

And when I run, fighting for strength with weakness, chasing vindication, aching with millions of cells respiring at capacity and reporting their pain to their guardian nerves, when I do, I run towards you, because you can drive me to desperation.

————————

those with their high concepts will fall to delusion, because the higher you go, the thinner the air gets

————————

I’ve never seen so many different types of clouds in the sky at once. There are the tiny puffs of cotton candy hanging so low that they pass by faster than the nearby trees. There are the large paste-like clouds hanging where they normally hang–that spot where kindergardeners draw their shapely bouncing arches. There are the high and thinly smattered clouds like cotton stuffing stretched just beyond the capacity to cover the exposed sky. And finally, there are the thick cumulus in the distance, puffed with volume.

We drove in and out of a rainstorm. Like a nightmare, it swelled and faded, leaving only streaks of tears on the windows as evidence when you wake again beneath the blue.