Your Book

Your book you wrote with special care.
It sits now in your somber lair
Upon a desk, open, in the dark,
The light of the moon shining in--
The shadows in the room are stark.
The cold air turns the pages yellow
Like the candle made of tallow.
The pages covered with cherished thoughts
Are inscribed in black, the letters taut.
The foggy air comes through the window
And your beloved writings grow old and sallow
With time that leaves them undiscovered
Within this room, under night's dark cover.

Consuelo Maninguez Walks into a Bar

Apropos of nothing but a dream which maybe somebody had once had

And never told anyone about,

Consuelo Maninguez walked through the swinging doors and into the bar

At four in the afternoon

Smelling of catnip, chartreuse, and a dirty septic tank

Which had apparently exploded.

Smoking a reefer, he wore white Superman briefs

Which showed off his thick, Chicano legs

And protruding belly, moderately covered in hair.

He wore red leather boots with spurs and a violet hat,

And gazed out with wild, blood-shot eyes.

He began singing a song as he approached the bar,

Swinging his hips like the tornadas of two ancient love songs,

Thrusting his exceptional bulge forward like a theme,

Too obvious to be refined.

He ordered two drinks,

Pulled the pistol out of the back of his underwear

And set it on the bar,

Sitting next to the plump blonde diva sipping on whiskey to his right.

He downed his drinks, yelled obscenities into the air,

And tried to paint the diva’s face in the mirror behind the bar

With his drunken bloodshot eyes—a strange surrealist disfigurement

That makes him hornier than the real thing.

He orders another drink and makes a toast:

“A la derecha! Por su insingificancia!”

He balls up his fist, and slams it down

Like a ballast upon the bar.

He squeezes out an eyeball and puts it in the diva’s drink,

Pays the bartender in gold bouillon before making his way out.

As he leaves, he smiles as he hears the scream of the diva,

Who’s found the lucky eyeball,

And he replaces the pistol down his backside,

And it sits there, trapped by the two giant bulges of muscle

That form his ass.

Alas, We Sing For Children

Alas, we sing for children

Who know not how to sing,

Who wait in homes like caged birds,

Their tongues forced down in chains.

They wait—oh how! For the door to open

And set their voices free.

They see their shadow on the wall

And they cry, silently, to catch wing upon their dreams

Sunday Morning

The churchyard covered in morning light,
Little beads of dewy white.
Women dressed in Sunday best.
The men, chic-ly clad.
The church is white and red and gold.
Atop a spire, the Star of Bethlehem glows.
Perched upon it are little birds, watching the scene unfold.
The sky is blue except for a ribbon of violet
That sprawls across the horizon.
A man in a top hat sings a song
As the children listen, quiet.
The dawn has broken, and the church bells toll
Ringing out the prophecies old.

Near North Avondale Elementary

I walk along the tarnished, play-worn field

On a hot, overcast day.

The smell of the chalk lines in the grass,

The goal post, which might be the same one that I missed repeatedly,

The woods next to the field where I lost many a ball—

Pushing my way through the bush I searched, collecting broken twigs in my hair,

Scratching my arms and my legs.

The sound of boys playing basketball behind the school.

All this draws me back to when I was a boy and played soccer on a team.

For some reason, my teammates thought I was a stain on the team’s siding.

They bullied me mercilessly.

The leader, a tall, strong blonde with cold, ridiculing blue eyes,

Confronted me one day when the coach wasn’t looking.

The rest of the boys surrounded me as he stood inches from my face.

I made a feeble attempt at knocking the ball from his hands,

And he pushed me.

I was knocked around like a pinball

Until I fell to the ground and wept.

When my mom got there and asked me why I was crying,

I made up some lie and told her I couldn’t play anymore.

Now, on the field, a couple is tossing a Frisbee with their dog,

And three birds fly overhead toward the east on a warm breeze.

It will be autumn soon, and soccer season will begin.

Will some boy join a team and be bullied by his peers the way I was?

Perhaps.

If so, it will be the beginning of a long process for him

That never really ends.

Not even after twenty years and he finds himself back on his old soccer field, remembering,

Sad, strangely confused, and somehow misbegotten as a man.

Near North Avondale Elementary

I walk through the grass of the tarnished, play-worn field

Beside my old elementary school on a hot, overcast September day.

There is where I played baseball.

My coach branded me the team loser and eventually kicked me off the team

Because my mom complained during one of the games that he was being too harsh.

I cried like a baby that day.

Further on, I see the chalk lines in the field delineating the soccer pitch.

There is the old goalpost that I could never seem to aim properly at.

My teammates hated me from the beginning, and their cruel jibes

Eventually made me break down.

I cried like a baby.

These were the beginnings of a recurring theme throughout my childhood

And adolescence.

Sports and I mixed like gunpowder mixes with fire,

And I was always the one getting shot.

But that’s OK.

I eventually found my niche in poetry.

But even that makes me cry like a baby.

By the Light, We See

By the light, we see our souls controlled
And we walk so slow
Bound to love.
Our eyes, our eyes,
We cannot feel
For they are gone
Into the world.
The hours, they pass
As single notes
And life becomes a song.
The world, the world,
It knows our souls
And wishes for nothing
But them, I'm told.
But love, but love,
It grows. It grows.

A Poet's Stench

We poets stink of sweat and nasty breath--
Not from sun-drenched labor or foul foods
(A poet has no place for such things,
He is a victim of his sombre moods)--
But because he never thinks to shower
And is always drinking wine.
Forgive him, please. His words are so elegant and refined.
If only people would give him more respect,
He might have reason to shower and brush his teeth
And maybe even, hell, give up drink.
"Hahaha! No way!" he says to that.

I Wait With Long Thoughts

I wait

With long thoughts

Of what might have been

For the sun to rise.

These feet

Have not tread

The long road eastward

For very long,

But already

I am growing callous

To the hard earth

And the cold wind.

I think of how far I have to go

And my heart yearns for a love I once knew.