Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Collective Pain



Is the world beautiful or disfigured?
This depends on the color of your skin
What does your environment look like?
It is contingent on the location your in
Of your body and the name of your country
What are your options, what are your possibilities?
Moreover, the socio-economic class that you fill?
1200 billionaires and 20 million millionaires
Own most of the world, most of the land and water

For how long can we play the role of victim?
In the theatre of suffering and inequality
Our consent sewn into our brows by coercion
Corporations prop up politicians, which just come and go
The state does not need shadows to do its dirt
The wicked are applauded for their violence  

Reading the capitalists explain, why the system is dysfunctional
They speak of spending exhaustion, talking about wealthiest
Who are tired of buying and purchasing what they never need
How can they tell us that the trickle down works?
When so many suffer from inequality and poverty
Contradictions built into the foundation

Every time we flush the toilet, filled with drinking water
We think of the people who walk for miles to dirty wells
What connects us, other then our collective suffering
This pressure on us, is not the kind that makes pearls
But the type, that crushes our minds and bodies to a pulp
Who will pull the sled filled with revolutionary dreams?
Whose back is strong from turning the wheel of pain?


Fast Food Mystics




Clenching spiral talismans in an rutted staggered gait
Our mantras disregard the third eyes as somehow deficient
Whereas spreading the scent of smoking sage into the wind
Whilst nudity resembles naught to eunuchs and mystics
What transiting modish hollowness requires rediscovering?
Crumpled within the greasy fast food wrappers of absurdity
Discarded alongside the audacity of someday and someway

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Grasping Chickens



What is it that you long to ruminate on?
Along the littered shantytowns of swaying occasions
Somewhere between the sea’s glass and forest’s grass
Walk the downtrodden, with slow and patient footsteps
Which erode the soil with rebellion and revolution

How many chickens are you attempting to grasp?
In your outstretched arms, dangling with rusty shackles?
It was my father, who showed me how to enthrall and
Fascinate chickens, with a slowly drawn straight line in the ground
Drawing a line in the dirt, does more then hypnotize chickens

So many of us, can’t acknowledge the disorientation
All these meritocracies and choices flash under dim bulbs
Where do you imagine smelling honeyed blossoms?
When the rest of us, dry heave from the stench of despair
Why do you not hear the teeming billions who scream for life? 

These isolated slanted silhouettes cast a shattered shadow
On the backlit walls of fixated, however yearning, ignorance
Our puppeteers speak always of untangling strings
The best they offer, is a nostalgic return to the beginning  
While the puppets themselves, dream of new freedoms

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Hole




We are warped and twisted like cheap plastics
Alien, to much more then our labor, as predicted
We are not sure whom, or where we are anymore
Lost, except to the putrid taste of the beast’s entrails
Enwrapping us in hypnotic, sticky strangulation
Even time, is, indebted, to someone
We are increasingly tangled in the psychosis of perplexity
All the work and time, we spend learning to lie and fly
While we have always been, able to soar, honestly
Even with the variations of these, deformed wings of poverty
So many years spent, fueling ourselves with
The wrath and fury of injustice
The grind of daily oppression and inequality
Our duty supersedes the future we tread lightly on
Our hearts begins to feel, as a crumbling hole
We are not from the past, but somewhere else
While we attempt to grapple with the mundane existence
Of existing in a delusional reality occupied with artifices
Of which, as hard as we try, we feel ourselves dissolving into
No one walks the deer’s path, but the mislaid and forlorn
While the marked trail is laden
With moral and religious righteousness

Monday, August 6, 2012

Distorted Selves

Cannibal's Web



Who is to say, we would know your face anymore anyway
If we passed each other on the smoking streets,
Which continually burn as Nigerian oil wells do
Or that you would be fare for the famished
Stares of those cannibals on the roadside
Who eat their own, who consume, like lunatics
In the tangled bushes with wild eyes under the moon
Awash with the graceful silken strands
Of the spider’s web and struggling next meal

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Self-portrait


The Lacrimation of Pigeons


The pigeons who flutter every
Morning on the fire escape
Act as if they know nothing
About sculpture and form
Pretend to be interested in
Only preening and pecking
Yet, they coo the secrets
To finding your way home
Which is never straight as the
Crow flies, or the wobbly linear
Descent of drops of wasted lacrimation 



Sunday, July 22, 2012

The Tiger and the Hare




We all exist, as we are cornered
Chained together in a tiny room
With no windows or doors
Facing off, antagonistically
As we don't have any control
Over whom we associate with
Acting if our relationships
Are battles to the death
Instead of connections of vivacity
Everybody thinks you have to
Gird your loins against all
Let no one into your citadel
Tearing apart anyone who
Knows your secret places
The coiling paths, the vague corridors
The creaking and shuddering
Inner doors, so embarrassingly
Opened, in acts of vulnerability
The violence of our fangs
And the spattered blood of others
Covering the walls of our limitations
We are diluted, by the wretchedness
Of our delusions and mistakes
Every choice we make, is real
The ripple of the skipping stone
Echoes beyond the moments
We convince ourselves we steal
Our hearts are not prisons
Our loves are not wardens
Our friendships are not battles
Our bonds are not fetters
We will not fight for
The amusements of the elite
If you want to see us rip 
Each other to shreds
Do what you may
We outstretch our necks
Together, but we will not 
Kill each other for you



Thursday, July 19, 2012

Emerge




Despite my urgency
The smell of everything
Is in our nostrils
We always
Regardless of time
Miss the moments of joy
Amid puzzling over our plight
Always, we are powerless, except
To watch the pyre of flame
Lick everything away
As we watch it all
Turn into ashes
With patience, we
Wait for the phoenix
And you to emerge

The Arms of Strangers


Everywhere and everytime
My limbs grasp for you
So full of tenderness and desire
Are my lithe and lean arms
In proud recognition of who
You always have been and
Always will be someday
Maybe you can make me understand
Finally know, myself, as a man

Hide away quietly your gloom
However, I know of many things
The strong traces of your body
The flushed tinge of your loving
The blurred edges of your vision
The delicate width of your optimism
Let us burden together please?

Hey woman, beautiful woman
Have I ever told you that
I believe in forever, always?
Even though my mouth
Is rented, and indebted
My arms are always free
To search for you
Even when I dream

Stroll with me, through the blocks
Filled with dust, anxiety and plastic
And at least, we will never be
Enemies, when we speak
Together, wordlessly 
Who says I must lose before 
I find, but your arms?
Who says we need all the
Arms of strangers?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Somewhere River




When we are in the midst of the river,
I gather the flowers near my chest.
Which is naked and drips with cool waters.
But the moon makes them bloom like the lotus.

I give you my lilies
because they are beautiful,
And you always hold my hand.
In the middle of the rushing stream.

In the brook, time moves in every direction.
The universe expanding above our heads.
Feel the current between our toes.
Every river, holds my love somewhere.



Monday, July 9, 2012

A Million Poems





I wish I could write a poem
That made everyone want
To create something
A poem so easy to remember 
That you never forgot it
That would offer comfort to
Those who grieve from loss
That would heal the heartbreak
Moreover, take away the tears and ache
A poem that made you like poetry
Burn inside, to write your own poem
I wish I had the words to describe
The possible futures, instead of the past
A poem that would last, not simply disappear
A poem, which would communicate all
The terrible suffering of poor peoples
I wish I could write a poem
That would make the whole world weep
Shudder with wracks of sadness and
Hug each other in long eloquent hugs
That could capture and seize
All the wounds we carry forward
Urging us to heal and move onward
I wish I had more courage to write
For all of you, and not always me
To see past the trees into the forest
I wish I had the strength to write
To overcome, all of our shame, to
Enunciate our self-humiliation
That which paralyzes rebels
I wish I could write a poem
To apologize to mother Earth
Also, share her agony with us
A poem that finds you in your desolation
Finds you in addiction, during self-mutilation
Finds you when you give up on everything
I wish I could find the essence
Of our humanity so we could see it
In ourselves, and in everyone else
I wish I could write about
The optimism of all us, even in
The reality of life’s shit and piss
I wish I could write a poem
That aroused your brain and 
Made the whole world orgasm
That found someone somewhere
Needing human touch, needing a kiss
Craving contact, this poem would
Rub the shoulders of your back
I wish I could write a poem
Filled with joy and celebration
That could make the world smile
A poem worth billions of dollars
So, that I could fund the movements
A poem that took away all the debts
I wish I could put words together in a way
That would call out your name
In the moment of despondency and terror
or simply when you missed someone
I wish I could write a poem
That repaired all the bridges we burned
Telling us to hold each other closer
A poem that made the rich quake
Speaking to power, confronting authority
A poem that raised goose bumps on
The arms of the working multitudes
That could explain freedom and alienation
Utopias and permanent revolution
A poem that would raise class-consciousness
That was not too dogmatic and condescending
I wish I could write a poem that was
So beautiful people would love themselves
A poem so generous and sympathetic
That we stopped being greedy and selfish
So horrifying, we saw war for what is was
A poem that told of the violence
Towards women, children, and Queer folks
I wish I had the words to tell you I loved you
To tell you that we can make it all better
I wish I could write a poem
That meant something to someone
Forgiving someone of something
This poem would have the power
To destroy everything and to create everything
I wish I could write a poem that would
Crush everything and let go of everything
A poem that described to each other the
Lives of bacteria, viruses, and the smallest life
A poem that the whales and dolphins liked
Something that the coral reefs did not hate
A poem that made the rains ponder falling up
Or the volcano to implode, the tornado not to spin
I wish I could write a poem that showed
That the emperor was naked
A poem that grew the trees tall and wide again
About the past, future, and present at the same time
A poem that made the
Ants and bees stop their toil for a moment
That awoke the cicadas and locusts all at once
I wish I could write a poem that
Exposed and put the army of shadows to rest
A poem that illuminated the shadow armies of death
That taught the map of the world
And the names of us all to each other 
Every town, every city, every person
A poem that made no statement 
That came after, end with a question mark?
I wish I could write a poem
That touched you somewhere, someplace
Enough to give it to someone else
What is a poem that cannot do of one these things?
If one poem cannot do all these things
I must write a million poems




Leopard Again



Peering into scents
Gossamer wisps 
Snapping in the wind
Encircling each other
Pirouetting in the flicker
These contaminants
Made me too wolfish
I will always catch you
When you are weak
I will always howl
At the moon’s light
Even when 
I become a 
Leopard again

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Walking Sticks




Our subconscious bristles of sabotage, ankles deep in the tar pits
This media detritus smothering us terribly, as this humidity does
Cultural hypnosis, everywhere we look, on the loci, we lose focus
Never touch the subway pole, cause its covered in mania and regret
Hand sanitizer; don’t ever, take the crazy off our hands, so stop smearing it
All these, drugged eyes, peering past us, into a faraway-faux-land-in-the-background
Been to every crevice in our minds, every new advance, a new way to waste time
Satisfied, with a lick of the affluence, at least we can smell the cornucopia
The road seldom traveled, is filled with hitchhikers, with walking sticks
Food prices skyrocketing, trying to water our optimism with drool
Why build the passages, traveled by only the mute fools of conceit

Clasped in the Paw of a Future Rat




I remember that I have
always been good at finding these
Large crowds, which march
with banner and hands aloft
I always find life in the chants
Defiance was my first toy

Lately, everything is poison,
which I find leaves little to desire
Everything tastes
like this 
quiet and silent death
My pillow is a ventriloquist
for almost dead people
Or at least an evil fuck

What about the living things,
which can’t find me
within this concrete and steel?
I stand, as usual,
on the other side of the valley,
just out of earshot of my totem

Where I am one of the
self-appointed rangers
of the urban sprawl
Lean on the illusionary walls
My tool belt is,
well worn and faded
With dry spatter
of everyone's blood

While feeling this weariness
of assisting in the erection 
of these complex conduits
Among the diligence
of maintenance of the foundation
I found our future
clasped in the paws of
the city rats

Which, when I unrolled,
each said, nothing memorable
Only a time capsuled narcissism
of egotistical nostalgia
Each had a detailed picture
drawn of a 
empty face
With the underlined word
"ME"
scrawled in pencil underneath

When driving pillars
for the next corridor
I met a future rat
Who had a encrypted note
in his paw that I 
can't read, but at least
I know in the future
There are still rats
who use the channels
We built by our hands