Hospitalization
December 13th, 2007
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.
“If there’s trouble, sometimes all us freaks have is each other.” –Abe, Hellboy add to del.icio.us
Rage
December 7th, 2007
Rage feels
like a 20 pound 4 headed demon
spewing out of my 12 ounce stomach
Knowing full well, I can’t win confrontation
I force it back
scathing the back of my throat
collecting skin and tears slithering down
like cheap Vodka searing raw wounds…
God, I fell like the mouse in Boa’s friendly hello.
For now the mirror is hazy
For now that is okay
Breathing out words like sweat
That I promised myself not write
Not meeting the goals,
I promised myself to exceed
Showing pain where I can’t fail
Running till my stomach hurts
Eight miles later,
silence tames the rage and I return
Sometimes it’s difficult to remember
Every barrier requires flexibility
Every obstacle requires learning
And a warrior is not cut from flimsy cloth,
But forged from the blade that perseveres any pain,
any action
any opponent
And learns walking by standing after each fall.
Memory of a Kiss
November 13th, 2007
Parted lips kiss the soft pillow
remind me of the gardenias
that bloomed thrice the month I left
How many times will I speak, write, or wonder of love?
The kind that hurts, heals, or accompanies?
The silent one inside my book
Or the loud one that once filled my pages?
The one I wanted to call daughter,
or the one that loves me as their daughter?
The one I can’t see but keeps me in their prayers
or the one that hugs me every morning,
because the only word she remembers is teacher?
The one that doesn’t speak but guards me vigilantly
or the one that couldn’t start a song without me one Christmas afternoon?
The friend that never fails to say hello
or the one whose rosary I keep close to my heart?
How many times?
Infinite, if God lets me.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
–1 Corinthians 13:13 add to del.icio.us
Syllabic
November 5th, 2007
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.
Plank
November 1st, 2007
Today is just one of them days
when the boss has a bee in the bonnet,
And all the decapitated fish being fried
have a salutation in 241 tongues of fishy clemencies
searching the penitence of my nose…
At least the residents of the mental hospital
across the street smile with the tiles
and the trees and anything laying on the mural sea
or the sebaceous underground from the landfill
where they done built
Strange follows me or is it…
I set the mood with my linguistic mind?
Today’s mental list:
The black belt, the turn, the drop, the take
The breath, the run, the weight,
The how much of this can I take?
the school, the grade,
the time don’t waste, don’t hesitate,
the cam, the comp, the internet
the job, the money, the pay,
the heavy hobby mountain
climb
exploration
exultation,
conquest is so divine…
There are so many things to do
Anything and everything all at once…
And I wonder why
I can’t take a decent photo of myself
but I love the pic on my student’s phone?
Why is it so hard to hide
this jelly heart of mine?
Unsatisfied with concrete things
I feel like I’m walking the tight plank
To a place I know that always hurts
It’s so difficult to want to trust another.
The pirates wait in line…
It’s just one of them days.
In Cinquain, edited
October 28th, 2007
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.
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