You know I would write your name

Across my mattress after dragging you to

Friday Night Slam at the Nuyorican

Barely three poets in I’d ask you “Do you want to come home with me?”

And you would say “I thought you said you liked live poetry?”

I would breathe onto your neck

“Yes, I like alive poetry

You, My bed, Right now”

When we would get to my apartment

I would slam you against the bed,

Reach for my dresser,

And throw you a pen and a sheet of paper.

The smirk you had all the way home would fall

“Really?”

Catching your smirk I’d say

“No.

But tell me you don’t have a million things

To write about after you kiss me”

Q.E.D.

Maybe, you’re right.

You’re too damaged to fill the variables between us

I can feel the scar tissue “she” left,

But just when I’m about to get an angle 

You’re looking for all the ways to lock me out of the grid.

Probability, you call it. 

You and me, we’re two scalene triangles.

Acutely looking for some more congruency and a little less guesswork.

But for all that tangent you’ve gone on about the now baby,

It’s been you that’s been going ahead and doing the math.

I see the way you’ve been mapping me out of your head

And finding all the complex numbers.

Trying to find proof of why it won’t work.

One more day

Just one more goddamn equation.

Fuck your trigonometry. 

Q.E.D.

Emotionally Unavailable

Some men just wanna be sad boys

Drinking and longing in a dive bar

Singing sad songs about women who slighted them

While spiting the woman they’re with. 

Some men don’t know who they are 

Without their chasing or yearning.

And some women just wanna save ‘em

Rescue them from their Fisher King wounds

Try to fill that need to be a mother

I don’t blame ‘em

I too once felt that hunger.

I too once foolishly tried to love a melancholic man

Who had a thing for conjuring ghosts

And picking at sutures after a couple of drinks.

But you know what they say

You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

And you can make a man drink, but you sure as hell

Can’t Make him commit.

I learned the hard way in the matters of the heart

That some men will tell you just about anything 

To mask their ambivalence and keep you danglin’ on a string

The worst ones are the ones that don’t even “know” it.

The ones who won’t spare some change or their heart

While nickel and diming on your time and buying theirs.

Some men never come out their shame

Some men howl at the moon and wait for a prey

Some women pray on a blue one,

And wait for a change. 

Some women, Some men

Stay chasing pain. 

But no, I won’t make the same mistake again,

I won’t bid on potential

Or wait for a change.

No.

I’ll keep my enemies far

And my lovers further,

I’ll keep my heart tucked

And my sleeve, shorter. 

I’ll keep my onions in tact,

My eyes peeled.

And they can keep their goddamn wistfulness & nostalgia,

They can have their breadcrumbs & stay tortured with their double minds.

I’ll take a whole loaf for myself,

I’ll keep my own goddamn peace of mind.

Two nights

Two nights ago, I dreamed you raised my legs and mounted them onto yours.

I rested my head on your shoulder. You clipped my toenails.

Like the most intimate we’ve never been.

Last night, I thought of you while  he raised me onto his lap.

I hoped that somehow all the gin and tonics could fool and cast a mirage.

I closed my eyes, could almost see your eyelashes and count them.

We interlocked fingers. I pretended they were yours welding into mine.

Heard his voice. It sounded exactly like that drawl in yours.

I imagined it was you talking to me through the pillows,

Distilling my body.

In the morning, I felt my dehydration.

I reached over for an oasis, but found a desert.

Reached over for you, but felt him reaching over to me, instead,

Canopying me with his arms, trying to get me to join him in his slumber,

But I, I couldn’t sleep. 

I thought, how funny it is that often people say they fall asleep best when they’re next to their lovers.

But if I were with you, I don’t think we’d ever get much sleep.

The last palabras

Te hubiera dicho JAMAS

Never sounds better in Spanish.

Te hubiera dicho NUNCA

Never sounds better in Spanish

I should have yelled PIERDETE

Y quédate en el olvido.

Get lost and stay lost sounds better in Spanish

Palabras carry more weight in Spanish

They isolate more and cut deeper.

Alejan.

Cortan. Apuñalan.

The only lament I have is

Es no hacerte cortar.

I wish I had cut you

Un

Poquito

Mas.

Death

I am not afraid to die 

 I am afraid of the minute right before it

 That last remainder of consciousness

I wonder what I’ll think about in those last five seconds

 If my life will flash before my eyes in moving pictures

 or if I’ll laugh absurdly- finally reassured of assured sleep.

I am not afraid to die

I am afraid of the certainty.

My mother believes that as the dead leave they retrace all their steps

She says the day my grandfather died

She saw our kitchen lights flicker on and off fervently.

And I don’t need to go out swinging 

Or become the next shot heard ‘round the world

But I do want to feel like from somewhere

I could hear my own footsteps, bidding me their farewell.

I am not afraid to die

I am afraid of missing it.

And I know we never really know

When it’s our time to go

Because I’ve thought about it too often,

Come up with too many justifications,

And never left,

But I don’t know why given the choice

Between the blue pill and the red pill,

I’ve consistently gone with the latter.

I don’t know why I carry the truth

Or what I conceive the truth is,

On my chest,

As if it made me better

Because if death has confirmed one

Thing, is that I consistently keep 

Knowing less.

I guess what I’m trying to say is

I am afraid to die

I am afraid of all the things I will never know

And of all the things I will come to miss

I am afraid to die

I am afraid of everything.

The House Sparrow

The old man that stands outside of the Cuban Dry cleaners

On 48th and Hudson, and greets my mother and I sanguinely

As we walk home from school, has a little mischief in his smile today.

As we approach him, his grin gets wider, and wider.

I see that his hands are clasped and

As mysterious as his face.

“Hey Chiquita” 

He says in his Cuban accent,

Thick as a Media Noche,

“Look at what Ive got”

He opens his hands,

And reveals a tiny house sparrow,

Like the ones that clutter

My school’s back yard.

“Lo Quieres?”

My mother who is used to 

Giving into some, but most definitely not all of my caprices

For some reason says yes

And I walk home,

With the sparrow in my hands.

We give the sparrow a cardboard box, 

but our family friend, 

Hector let’s it fly around

Taking joy in watching the bird

Fly from box to post then wall paper

And defecate everywhere.

**

My mother that night finally coming into her senses,

Tells me to let the little house sparrow go,

That it is not happy,

And a four bedroom apartment is no home for a bird.

But I am not easily persuaded.

The sparrow is small, brown, cute

And besides 

I  want to take care of it.

The flying and defecating continues for almost a week.  

If my mother presses me, 

I pay it no mind .

But one afternoon, maybe on day six

I get a stomachache

One of those you only get

When you’re young and building

Up your defenses.

And I look over at the house sparrow,

The same way I looked over at him so many years later.

—-

When he chose to leave me,

I thought of the house sparrow that week

Fluttering its wings, desperate to get out.

And the way my stomach, so gaseous, hurt

I didn’t yet understand it’s pain,

But I knew I felt a version of it somewhere.

If you love something give it away

Well, I never loved him

Or the damn bird

But I do know pain,

And I think that’s enough

To let something go.

***

That evening,

As the sun started to set,

And my pain started to subside

I took the house sparrow into my hands,

Opened the kitchen window,

And unclasped.

I watched the house sparrow fly by to nearest tree full of other

Little sparrows,

And I closed the window.

Not looking back, 

Not expecting for him to come back.

The Inaccessible Island Rail

I was almost fifteen when I came out
As an agnostic.
It was in a room in St. Agustin’s
Where I was to be ‘grilled’ by a priest 
About why I wanted to do my confirmation.
It was then and there it came out like a confession
I said I didn’t want to confirm anything.
I didn’t know if there was a God.
I was in fact, more leaning to not one. 
It just hadn’t taken me until that moment to realize
I could actually say the truth aloud.

The priest did not really try to tell me anything
Just said maybe I should not stand at the altar and lie
But when I got into my parents car 
It came out like word vomit. 
All at once and then some more.
Next thing I knew, I was sobbing my whole way through 
What seemed like two hours at my town’s busiest McDonalds. 
Snot and all. I remember the exact sound of my heart 
As it broke when my parents asked “What have we done? 
And where have we gone wrong to make you like this?”

For the next three weeks my father barely looked at me. 
My father who offers to pay all tabs and has stopped traffic 
Just to let the ducks pass. My father who picked up a turtle
On the road and left it when he found a safe home 
My father who has nursed injured pigeons in our kitchen 
And calls me when the sky is the particular hue of pink I like.
My father who clipped my wings when I said I couldn’t fly.

I saw this Jodie Foster movie once where she played a scientist 
And someone asked her if she was an atheist did that mean
The rest of ninety-five percent of people were wrong?

I don’t remember if or what she answered,
But I do know there are about forty species of flightless birds
The smallest one is the inaccessible island rail
Named after the island it is endemic to 
No one virtually ever gets to see them or the island
Yet though both small in size and number
And unique in their genus
Somehow still they survive.

Going to show just because the idea of flightless birds seems absurd
And you are not regularly in the company of them
Something is not any less real just because you cannot conceive it,
And something is no more a falsehood just because it’s not your truth.

Since I have been fifteen and a registered Roman Catholic 
I have never gone to Church more than two days a year 
And I rarely bring up religion in front of my father 
But when I see bluejays, my dad’s favorite
On those rare mornings I wake up early enough 
To catch them while they are still singing 
I wish I believed, dad, I wish I believed.

Smirk

Just by slanting your lips, flaunting your quirk

Sometimes I dream of watching you smirk

That crooked half- smile that slowly nurtures

Sometimes I dream of it kissing my sutures

Squeezing and sucking away all the murk.

A tease of a laugh that works like clockwork,

Something about that mischief keeps me up perk

By nature you know how to torture

Just by slanting your lips.

If I could fix your smile to make it work

Decompress your heart and make it jerk

I’d never try to make it full on cheshire

Because something only in a half-smile that stirs

A kind of passion that could make firework

Just by slanting your lips.

Fire

Sometimes I feel like apologizing to myself for being fire,
For I am not embers waiting to be gathered and ignited
Or a small pyre kindled for the sake of one-night survival.
Because I am definitely not a volcano waiting to erupt
Or the smoke signals that go off
When you leave your iron on too close to the door.
I am fire.
The kind that could burn all of Southern California
To the ground before plate tectonics
Could ever even think of breaking it away.
Because I’ve never flickered like a candle
Or burned out like a joint.
Everything is too much with me,
And nothing is enough to tame the wildfire
That takes hold within.
But there are nights I wish I was fickle like the rain,
Or as flighty as the wind.
Because I’ve become so inflammable
I am afraid that if anyone lights a match near me
They might set the entire world ablaze by second hand
And I have become so combustible,
Terrified someone someday might accidentally
Touch or even look at me the right way
That I’ll burn so mighty as to leave no fire left.
I am so terribly tempted then to just incinerate myself
To see if there is something that peels away at my core

More than this desire to burn.
But sometimes I wish I was like a lighter
So easy to turn on and off, on and off
Or like a light bulb with the sole purpose of burning
Until exhaustion.

But I am fire

Come hell or high water
It cannot wash me away.