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The sign reads out to lunch, but there’s an x on lunch,
dinner on top of the word, but there’s a x on top of that,
breakkk… trails down and off,
finally, on whatever space it can steal and cozy up,
it reads: “Be back when I’m back.”

The concave tint of the taxi window doubles neon city lights
in 35 degree angles with a point of intersection somewhere in space
following the side door parallelly with an arc cosine equation
Intersections aren’t always clear, static, or rhythmically predictable,
mine keeps moving forward like the roll of a black and white film,
goofy little kiss made with mathematical intentions.

Logos was duct taped and thrown in the back trunk,
so nothing speaks–there’s no point to speech
Following hundreds of details in the duplex horizon with eyes wide open
where pictures are hieroglyphs slurped into interpretation:
I had forgotten what it was like to be an immigrant.

Predictability is easily translated:
where are you from and how long you been here?
Four months…four months and a world has changed
I know that I haven’t written but in my mind
the richness of the scene feels like my play:
i’m a writer, writing the script of my life,
while all the characters dance in their own free will
like the kiss’ complicated foundation following swiftly right beside me

Tonight the scene is New Years,
the phone is off, the email is shut, I’m where I’ve always been
and never realized how much I enjoyed it
When they ask my grandma where am at and what I’m doing,
She says, “It’s Claudia, she’s doing what she’s always done best:
working and studying…(stops)
you are planning to settle down sometime in the future, right?” (chuckles)

Every dating profile has been shut off
And today God sounds like the air paragliding down,
The skeletal of my year is planned,
The goals are posted and hashed,
Midnight is a three mile run and train, prayer and writing,
Time for really great beginnings.

She’s never quiet when anything is terrible but she takes true sadness when she can’t comfort pain. Going from EM nurse to project manager and hacker around the world, she’s lived her life to the fullest. Her bright green eyes, she says are German, against her African brown hair, look so beautiful. Today, she is dictating my exercise routine and I sit quietly and listen. Tomorrow, she will have 7 pound tumor taken from inside her viscera in a 5 hour surgery. One of many in the year to come. Sometimes, I feel like I came half way across the world to hold this woman’s hand. She reads my thoughts and says, “Because you needed a mother. No one knows what life has in stored for us.” Today is the celebration of La Virgen de Guadalupe and I miss hearing the taclas of the dried calabashes in church halls. The entry in my diary is short:

I’m wrapping my words around a wound that hasn’t bled yet
Dripping the rags like prayers to reach you
Hoping to be like marmalade yellow on lemon:
there even when you can’t see me

Far from here, my two friends have/are visited/visiting the operating table. I rely on textbook knowledge to ease popping static emotions on telephone –It’s just a body. It can heal. We’re just Lego parts on operating table. I just want you to think about how happy you’ll be afterwards.

Sometimes, living far away feels like wrapping a tree
Each revolution an onhmed color
and the smell of burnt camphor that I lay on the Virgin’s feet
Exhaled in each breath
fractally sculpting this pacific blue that will
travel the world and darkness to be there,
hoping so very much to be there,
like the single tree wrapped in rags in this sunset room…
Breathing and glorifying God,
Saying, “Everything will be okay,” in the mantra of your name.

The count, the break, the muscle
the minimalistic memory
that breath takes in language

Inside one syllable, a note explodes
stacking alpha blocks into organized mirrors
systematically painting the world:
this private conversation between God and I,
a fluke of memory triggered by sweet bread,
the color of love in a child’s caress,
this identity between us and them.

If I wanted to just live,
I’d keep my head down and continue walking,
Instead, sounds visit me like angry dogs barking,
fighting leash and nozzle, biting tongue and harness,
to make sentences, songs, and poems
In this new language of mine,
that holds maps mountains and people
thousands of miles wide
and hundreds of antemundane years long
when borders didn’t exist.

More than what’s being said,
I want to know what’s being felt,
So I read street signs smiling.

If language is a translation of grace, then
Knowledge is the continuation of awe.

contact
no where
have I found
so much sincere beauty
like in a child’s face

shot
frozen
beautiful
fearless warrior
eye to eye we meet

As submitted to InCinq.blogspot.com. First poem done on a word count second one is syllabic.

shot
fearless warrior
eye to eye
we meet
contact

I think I played with this poem for a good three days and a couple of pages in my journal. Above is the published version in InCinq.blogspot.