1:30 am

I lay my head on my pillow,

Cotton feels like hammer to nail,

My thoughts trail and I make

The mistake of thinking of you.

My thoughts cascade from Niagara to Iguazu, 

By now, it’s 3:00 am in

I’m not sure which time zone

And I still can’t sleep.

But who I am kidding? 

I was thinking about you five hours ago, 

While I was trying not to-

After I turned the musica romantica off,

Did the dishes,

And a whole load of laundry by hand.

I was trying to focus on something more kinesthetic,

Anything just to get out of the habit.

I got myself reading up on theories of emotions, 

Been trying to deprogram the physiological responses, 

Control the compulsion and repress the cognitive instincts,

To mull things over and think of you incessantly.

I’ve been trying to cure the necessity to ruminate

Been working on hyper-focusing on your yellowed teeth,

The twice worn shirts. 

Anything to snap me out of the fixation.

Last week, I went three whole days 

Without thinking of you much.

I was almost proud of myself, 

Until I found myself furiously 

Making out with you in the back of a taxi.

And I know it was just a dream,

But I woke up with your taste still in my mouth

And I smelled like you.

Fuck.

Champagne Problem

I know these things happen in epochs-

Some seal into your bones and others break marrow.

I just guess yesterday,

I wasn’t counting on counting tomorrow.

If I scrape harder, will I cut?

And if I remember to forget

Will the city forget to remember me back?

And if I shed now, 

Will I have to shed again?

And if these old cells need to die-

Will I ever mend?

And if I do nothing, will I stay?

Will the years I spent keep the worst of me at bay?

And if I run. will I run again?

Or will I always be hellbent- on finding home?

And I’m scared to death that the world that yesterday 

Seemed so vast, now is gone, and overly compact.

And if home isn’t a place, a self, or a heart

Will I ever learn the art – of letting go?

Or am I destined forever to be a rolling stone?

But if it’s true what if they say about cells

Could I find a way to hold space

For the next of me to sell?

And hell, if I make this promise, will it just be between 

Me and you?

And if I ossify and change into someone you don’t like

Will you promise to see the next phase of me through?

And I knew these times they are a changin’

I just next expected the rest of my life to arrive so soon.

But if I stay here longer, maybe I won’t disintegrate or break

And if I don’t go back maybe I can find a way 

For the rest of me to stay.

Hamlet’s Lost Soliloquy (2009)

(This is a poem I wrote for AP English when I was in high school)

It is not the frailty of man kind I fear. 
Only a fool deceives himself when he believes
That strength lies in all men.
For what are we more than concealing ourselves behind a veil?
We act as if we were not already shadows. 

Foolishly yet do we gauge our eyes
And swallow our tongues to praise falsehood.
“Death is worse than living,” they all say
Yet it is me they dare accuse of madman.

Genesis states that women were made from the rib of man,
But it is God’s formal way of disguising
That they are brewed from Lucifer’s astuteness.
For no one else can possibly teach
Treachery as well as Satan does.

Take note Ophelia,
Thee is fairest among the whores 
But it is thy charm that beguiled me
For thou doest not more than deceive,
And one becomes so green in the entangling vines of love.

But mother greater are thou a whore.
Thy beautiful lips only speak lies,
And thy lecherous hips only feed sin.
How soon doth black sheets exchange for white? 
Too soon mother, that the devil himself sleeps on thy throne.

The devil to who my misfortune,
Hath the same blood that is fed to my veins, 
But evil is he more,
The murderer hath the audacity
To drink from the same goblet as my father.

Oh Claudius, if I could just crush thy skull
And adorn it on an altar
For the world never again to forget
What Cain has once again done to Abel.
Thou art a power hungry and envious bastard!

But I would be in oblivion
If I said that my yellowness
Did not consume me nor define me.
Indeed, I am a coward,
And a conscious one at its worst. 

To know one is in err
And have not the valor to change it-
Is a flaw I carry exceptionally.
But I cannot endure the enemy much longer,
Thus must I, Prince Hamlet, become a man.

«

All Bets Are Off

Dear old friend,

I’m sorry I’m breaking your heart

And this is hard for you to understand.

I threw a wild card in

and you know I won’t be forced my hand. 

You’re calling my bluff,

but I’m folding and cashing in my chips.

I was there when the chips were low,

But you played your cards close to your chest.

So don’t call on me old friend,

Upping the ante, don’t call on me.

While I laid my cards on the table

And didn’t keep a single one up my sleeve.

So don’t call on me old friend,

Don’t call on me -calling a spade, a spade.

[Follow suit] 

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.