Day 6: an attempt at presence

letting the oxygen rush over old feelings,
old friends, old lovers, old enemies,
revisited at peaks of discipline
and abandoned in valleys of preoccupation
and self-deceit

my toes graze the shallow sand,
shoulders submerged, water enveloping every pore,
the shore and the sun promising gritty rewards.

ballerina feet on smooth stones,
a sudden cliff, free falling into
old feelings come friends come lovers
plunging into an abyss
cold but fiery, dark but molten, eternal but ephemeral

what would it be to never wake from this paradox

Day 5: portrait

gray skies, decrepit buildings, brick factories
revamped into lofts. trees bursting into little white blooms.
spring on the familiar sidewalks of six-years-home
etched into the soles of so many shoes
i thought i'd never own, but womanhood molds us
into things contrary to our nature.

red hoodie, cane, bow-legged limp, plastic bag dangling
from a hand wizened beyond its years, teetering on the edge of
gentrification, your skin out of place, your southern love
out of place, your "hello, sister," expected and unexpected at once

my six-years-home, my feels-like-many-years-world taught me
not to show my love, taught me hypocrisy, and the dust of self-loathing
settles as I recognize that quick wish
for complacent uncaring that will never come

hello, brother
my heart is paralyzed for what I am, what I become
you know me not as one of the thousands of
walkersby on fast feet who could carry your bag
but as your own

Day 3: Elegie

here's to the death of a salesman
the end of innocence, the creaking closet doors
the short circuited sins and skeletons
that made me the muttering father
his infidelities
and his disappointed son

here's to the death of
the baby's red fist wrapped tightly around the unsuspecting
index finger of an adult hardened by the world
baffled by love, indiscriminate love
the kind we are trained to forget
the kind we unlearn

here's to the depth of
feeling those words, those rhythms, those songs once evinced
and the dull currents of muscle memory that have replaced them
my lips remember and my heart is stoned
in by what is rote

the world whittled willy loman down
into the toothpick we all become

the difference between being and becoming
the conduit
we call age

his haunting escape, we call redemption

here's to the death of my salesman

Day 2: amanecer

The gloomy days awaken her, a spore in child's pose
the bony fingers of the trees, fractal silhouettes
against a foreboding periwinkle, breathe life
into her one rib at a time. The air, the pollen,
the delicate white wings of magnolia fluttering to the sidewalks
collecting and browning and decaying,
dying as all beautiful things do, fill her nostrils
with the scents of the macabre, the hopeless romance
waiting to trap her in its snares, its carnivorous tendrils

and the puppeteer thinks he is what is making her dance.

Alone

Silence, are you my friend or foe?
Thought the world of you until you showed me we were
never meant to be alone, you and I, together,
like cotton and fire, boys and girls on motorbikes,
mixing butter and yogurt with rice: too dangerous
so explosive that we became taboo
old wives' tales that scare young children
that unripe adolscents scoff at until they too
have grown wrinkled and wag their fingers,
shake their canes at the nonsense we do.

We were meant to be connected, now too connected
and I feel your absence with every breath, every measured step.

You were my muse, you begged me to twirl fingers
in those long curly locks and I could not resist
And how I succumbed to your seduction every time

Now I am a pilgrim and the weight of your death
drags down my shoulders, drips down my spine
like blood and honey for the ants, for the flies

With every step, every measured breath, I carry your wilted corpse
I cannot let go of you, my dear
I cannot

The golden crow

The crows are confetti against this startling sunset
i've watched so many times, but the slow motion flight
of these birds circling like bubbles encircling a straw
carbonated soda in a glass, rushing downwards, spiraling,
what keeps them afloat? Magnetizing, mesmerizing,
wish I had wings

Flocks, herds (searching for words), colonies, clowders
(still searching), how do they read each other's minds
how are they the same mind and my mind can't find its friends
childhood friends, best friends
true friends

murder

There are some words that crawl under your skin and
make your blood itch, make you hyperaware of every heartbeat.
There are some smiles that crawl their way into the crevasses
of your brain, make you hyperaware of your skin.
There are some days you can't help but smile because
you're with your golden crow.

Orion's belt

I'm not always inspired to write poetry anymore because the last year of over-writing and under-reading has stolen my words. Here's some moments worth coming back to.

We're sitting on top of a San Francisco hill under Orion's belt grasping for Blind Melon lyrics with Mickey, waiting for a cab that's never going to come. The capo's come off and his amateur fingers search the frets for the right notes that don't seem to come, either. I want to sing, but I don't know the words, because, I tell him, I have a melody brain, not a lyrics brain.

(This is the guy who rounded up 55 bottles of ibuprofena and throat lozenges for me to appease the not-truly-sick in rural Guatemala, back before customs started checking my suitcases and taxing me for useless placebos for the poor. I haven't seen MM in years, but I watched him learn to speak German from afar. He's that cheerful, amazing, genuinely good, uniquely talented handsome guy that every girl I knew had a crush on, but he's so self-assured, so adventure-loving that he was totally oblivious to it. Much to my chagrin, I didn't recognize him at my good friend's wedding. I blamed his beard, but underneath it all I know my brain has changed. Academia is slowly ruining my social memory functions, my facial perception and retrieval, it's slowly ruining me.)

Xing's melody brain tells his tongue to agree. His camera sits on the sidewalk, lens up, trying to capture those three little holes in the sky with a long exposure. He leaves it out too long and everything turns white. I point my futile phone screen, an eighteen-month addiction I'm trying to kick out of my life unsuccessfully, towards the heavens, and Orion's belt hides in the black.

(Xing I met at a 21st birthday party on Green Street. I recognized his face but again, no name. It evaporated where the turbulent waves of my conscious thought meet the air of drowning in too much. Xing agrees with me that life is quite dull, and this is the most random and exciting thing that's happened to either of us in months. He swipes across his smartphone screen trying to download the uber app. Mickey's eyebrows scrunch up in pity as he realizes how unlivably boring our routines are. He is free and I envy him and don't at the same time.)

I pull up a youtube video of "Lousy Smarch Weather" and we all watch Willie and his kilt catch on fire. I have five bars of AT&T reception up here despite the insistence of the cab company to the contrary. We laugh deep-throated at the genius of the Simpsons and I am thankful that I'm not alone in space.

When was the last time I accepted uncertainty in the midst of familiar strangers?