my foggy friend, my foggy fiend

i was cradled into the world yellowed and healthy
in a foggy, monotonous city where most people only drove through, never into
we only stayed until all the pointed fingers and shouted pleas were finally enough to make my mother come home

maybe the fog followed me like a friend
maybe like a fiend

in all respects, there are no foggy days in San Mateo
foggy mornings, the odd foggy mourning, maybe
the weather is a year-round mild

so, friend:
i am blind, i see no longer like my small handed days
guide me, reassure me that others too
have felt your wispy fingers curl into their eye sockets
that if now you will take my sight
they too, as the years come, will see no more
ignorance
is a bountiful and lovely thing

so fiend:
i am blind, i see no longer
leave me, your hands
have stripped me of color
my mind knows no relief in a rising sun
there is no new day

and yet

haven't you heard that you can cure cataracts
sometimes glasses
sometimes surgery

go on and follow me, follow me

friend, fiend

i'll rid myself of you yet

i will taste sunlight; i will see stars

tomorrow will know a green stare
and i will know its smile

you may be cold
but when you're cradled by a mother
whose arms know your weight
the love's warmth burns through

the scars ache, the chill bites, you wail
the wounds heal, the heart beats on, i'll try

and so,
i'll try to see past you




 

link to one of my favorite poems

"let my body be a godless church, holy for no reason beyond itself"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0HrhNGnT0

It goes this way

you are dust mote morning

lethargic slow motion 

drippy 

do not stay 

you are one wide night 

Poetry, she says,

Poetry, she says,
poetry is eternity,

let the sound and silence break through the barriers of time,
let the existence of different letters craft their ways into words,
into meaning, into love, into greatness, into poetry,

Poetry is the cereal we eat for breakfast,
the way we promise ourselves we will wake up earlier tomorrow,
Poetry puts the morrow in tomorrow,
puts the life in today,

poetry draws the pathway towards acceptance,
leads towards forgiveness,
is the beacon when we are drowning,
the last bit of oxygen when we feel suffocating,

Poetry is the sweet scent of cinnamon pretzels lingering on the corners of your lips,
so taste it in the warmth of the glowing sun,
Poetry is birthday candles,
castle building in the pillow soft sand,
while watching the ocean and the shoreline kiss,

Poetry is butterflies tingling in your stomach in the arms of your first love,
arcade games, standing under street lights smiling ,

Poetry is wishing for endless tomorrows,
thankful for each today

Poetry, she says,
Poetry is eternity.

This is for the self-proclaimed "ugly" girls

inspired and written in the style of "shake the dust"

This is for the self-proclaimed "ugly" girls,
for the people who spend their nights cleaning airports,
This is for the pizza and ranch sauce crunchers,
for the boys who tremble when talking to girls,
This is for the addicted dads,
for the ones who have belt marks carved into their backs,
this is for the former prom queens,
for the parents who have to work past midnight,
simply to feed their children,
this one's for the girl who I met last sunday,
the one who spends days as a housekeeper,
but dear god she's only sixteen.
This is for the midnight lovers,
for the ones who honeymoon to Paris alone,
this is for the girls who lost their mothers to cancer,
for the broken English speakers,
for the boy who changes the pronouns in his poems,
This is for the ones our country turns against,
for the ones who are stereotyped by their appearance,
This is for the ones who lose at bowling parties,
for the single mother dealing with cps,
This is for the ones who seal their mouths closed,
who hide beneath shame and shattered reflections,


Do not let the heaviness of defeat weigh you down like you are a burden,
do not let the cruelness of your classmates step on you like damaged wallpaper,

Listen to your pulse, it is a reminder that your body is powerful enough to keep fighting,
You have not collapsed yet,
struggle is just a journey to freedom,
you'll trade blisters and a tired climb for a view of the world,

You stay silent in a crowd of people,
you forget the sound of your own voice,

Every time someone asks you your name,
you give it them,

scream it until it echos,
and it will echo,
feel the reverberations of your own sound,
it matches the power of any other,
nothing less than human,
do not forget your own importance,
do not let go of your own existence.

To you I offer, edited version

Dear sister, 

You walked into my room telling me about people,
how we can walk down the hallways every day surrounded by people,
how we can feel completely isolated, excluded, lonely,
how people can just turn away.
How there are 7 billion of us on Earth,
each of us selfish,
each of us choosing to stomp on people,
each of us forgetting the human connecting us,
each of us lonely.
You tell me about how people are born to play the victim,
throwing out accusations like words used to fill up the spaces of silence.
You told me how people forget how the silence screams volumes
and the harsh sounds that entraps and entangles offs our mouths curve their way into shattered porcelain.
But dear sister,
you, you craft words into a blanket,
promising me love, promising comfort,
Today I am not lonely, we are not lonely. 

Dear people who shall refuse to smile back at me, 

Today I am thankful for you,
thankful because you made me realize how people create truths.
Truths about someone without knowing anything about them.
2 plus 2 equals 5, or 4, or 6, or 8
but today does it really matter?
Ultimately the most beautiful aspect of human nature is the myriad of truths existing that we ourselves create.
how we all enter life like a blank canvas,
letting the spectrum of different people and cultures and experiences color their stories on it. 

I do not blame you for ignoring me just because other people colored dusk over my name,
I understand how we tend to gravitate towards what is accepted, what allows us to just belong, what makes us a little less lonely. 

Dear everyone I hurt in the past,

I can count the number of times I apologized on one hand.
But today, I am sorry, I am sorry, a million times over,
I broke bones and used them as support for my own heavy ego,
but today I will not allow our friendship collapse, I will carry it on my back. 

Dear friend, 

You are my chess board,
protecting me from becoming trapped by sadness,
Today I am a winner. 

Dear world, 

Are we not all same?
Strip away our names, our face, religion, race, gender, love, hate, the pronoun we use in our love poems,
until we exist only as a looking glass of one another,
we are human,
so naked, so vulnerable, so similar that all we can do is smile,
notice how we share the same laugh,
how our hands curve around each other's like lock and key, like we were created to connect them, created to embrace the wrinkles on each of our fingertips. 

Dear life.

take a glimpse at the person next to you,
take a glimpse into their struggles, their aspirations,
how each person is a separate story, and a good one, composed of complexities, evil, goodness,

but today,
Dear you
stop performing autopsies on chapters you already lost the page number to,
stop wishing for re-dos, reincarnating what you should have said, should have done,
I'll wrote myself into your plot line,
to you I offer a better ending,
one that we all deserve. 

"We forget crowns do nothing for kings but put weight on their heads and a target on their back"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO7VlK7VAgQ