Apples On An Archer's Range

The floor is the sky,
Endless black with white light,
it sits like us when we lie,
a scornful potent night,

Now its brown,
Makes us hurt and we're bored,
We look endlessly down,
Nothing to us but crossed swords,

Infinite math folding miles,
Connecting dots one by one,
With gold smiles,
War is undone,

Forest green soreful illusion,
Cure for diagnosed pain,
Insane talk mental confusion,
Freedom killing the brain,

Remembering the cure,
Once absurd never heard,
Unwritten word unpure,
Dreams obsequiously procured,

Complexity forms,
Colors under eyelids change,
Quiet under storms,
Apples on an archer's range.

Picture this post

Picture this post, labeling itself as prose, apposed to conditions, of verse, not rehearsed, preconditioned as written lines, supposed to attrition and rhyme, but containing rhyme, obtaining time cluttered lines redefining inclined, muttered in syllables, uttered in the lyrical in sync and cyclical and cynical the whole sense is stolen tense, even clinical in sense, golden intense shine, this wrapped moment in time, trapped stolen intimate but not inclined to refine its cluttered lines, time obtaining rhyme, containing, but rhyme and attrition to supposed lines written as preconditioned, rehearsed not, verse of conditions, to apposed prose as itself, labeling, post this picture.

Two Week, True Love

Two Week, True Love

I’ve been thinking
about this thing called
love lately, and
it’s become
just a little bit clearer,

I think it became clearer
while we were both standing
in front of my bedroom mirror,
naked, distracted, by the
conversation we were having about
the origins of Western love ideology,
its roots in Greek mythology,

About how the gods split
the human being into two halves,
when human pride tested their powers,
leaving souls cursed to long
for their mate, about how soul mates
know not the bounds of age or sex
and their love can overcome any social
construction, put in place
by those who don’t see that love
will forever float above human law,

And yes, we were still standing naked
in front of the mirror 20 minutes later,
caressing each other,
completely wrapped up,
in each other's words,

And yes, we were still
wrapped in each other's
words,
about another hour later,

We talk about it but,
What is it?
What is this “love,” at this age,
twenty years old,
just the cliché word used to fill poems?
Or a word we overuse, abuse,
laugh at when our friends get
tangled in its silky web?

Love is, the broken condom…
at 9:30 in the morning,
the lack of panic, shame and blame, it’s
kissing you after we assessed the damage, it’s
the me not packing my bags
even though my boys and I
planned to haul ass to Canada, to
start a new life when the first one
of us planted the accidental seed,

Love is, when we whispered,
“I need you, I want you” on the
R train to school,
forty minutes later, its that
you’ve been late to class
every morning for the past
two weeks and said fuck it,
life’s too short and you’re my baby,

Love is, that we’re fucken crazy; love
is that I’ve lost two earrings and
about five pounds in two weeks with you,

We believe it so its true,
when they say you’re young
and it’s just “new” we say maybe,
but fuck you anyway because
well we’re in it now, so
might as well live it up,

Love is that we call it luck,
that we’re young, impassioned lovers
who just don’t give a care, so

Pull my hair and kiss my chest,
in the dark, so when you
hurt me tomorrow's light,
it’ll be alright,
because tomorrow is tomorrow
and tonight is tonight, and

Trust me, it’ll be a long night.

You Embarrass Me

A Poem for my mom.

You Embarrass Me

Mom, I don’t go out with you anymore,
at least, not how I used to, when I was younger,
when we used to go to Flushing Meadows Park
and sell empanadas to old Hispanic men
in cargo shorts and faded t-shirts
while they sat and reminisced,

I hardly speak about you
when my friends and I share
stories of family and long gone pasts,
I don’t talk about how we used to stay
at home on Sundays, making sopa Paraguaya
for homesick Paraguayans, or about
how I used to be bored out of my mind
at the Laundromat down the street, while you did
me and my sister's laundry every week,
to make sure we had clean clothes for school,

I don’t bring girls over to have dinner with you, and
we both know it’s not because you can’t cook,
I don’t tell them too many details about you, they say
a woman could tell a lot about a man through
his relationship with his mother and
through their past so I keep both in the dark,
lingering passed shadows in my room at night, and
behind the dark brown shades of my eyes,

I don’t carry pictures of you in my wallet,
so as to not remind myself of the home
I’m going to every night,
so I don’t see your eyes,
when I pull out a 20, 10, or 5 bill, to
pay for another cheap drink and
distracting thrill;
to forget who we are and
what we’ve been through,

The truth is, you embarrass me

You’re a lonely teacher,
turned housekeeper,
turned cook,
turned single mother with two kids,
living alone, in debt, and yet
you don’t look back,

You embarrass me because you keep
ungrateful children on your arm and back,
one high school dropout teenage mother
whose baby, like her mother, has no father,
and another one, a son, with even more
wasted potential than you,
he who, quit music, quit sports, quit all the jobs
that fell on his lap, quit working hard, trying and
only stays in school because he doesn’t
want to end up like you,

You embarrass me because you drive
a beat down blue 94 Jeep Cherokee, with
reflective stripes on the back bumper,
red and white like the universal sign
for barbershop, and when I try to take
girls out on dates I have to wait,
till the night time so the car could shine, and if
I play my cards the right way, I have to mess around
with girls in the back seat on lonely Queens back streets
because my room, at home, is right next to yours,

You embarrass me because two weeks of
missed work would throw you into bankruptcy,
I’ve felt this instability constantly throughout my life,
when I close my eyes tight enough, I can feel
this boat we’re on being pulled with the rip tide
while the anchor chain floats loosely by our side,

You embarrass me because you did it alone,
every night when I come home, I see you
tucked in your bed alone, watching the food network
on t.v. and you look at smile at me,
make me dinner and talk to me about how a new 711
just opened on Northern Boulevard or about how
the weathers been crazy lately, the little things,
even though we both know I’m out growing you,

You embarrass me because you’re alone,
you do it all alone,

You embarrass me because
Ill never be as strong as you.

Clocks and Birds

Clocks and Birds

There's always a small ticking clock,
a keep sake of when you felt alive,
to keep, hold tight, and not unlock,
in your hand, its sits, held inside.

Sipped dreams feel like containers,
picking pages of warm winters,
not welcomed to strangers,
thoughts sifted through, filtered.

Insidious as you were,
letting broken lamps be known,
the hands for you not her,
a mansion crumpled up and thrown.

The night not near where it takes,
a short wind from the gathering,
whispering to the bar before it wakes,
"please tonight no staggering."

Laughs, too many, to hear beyond,
the dreams you have, inside, au fond,
they cry outside your window's mind,
to see the ones you hoped you love,
birds that fly so high above.