To My Friend

We sought to touch the moon
Cupped hands held high
Swinging from stars
Like monkey bars

Our skin still smells of beer,
Red wine, stale sweat,
From nights we thought perpetual,
Stealing from taverns, sleeping on trains
Two drifting butterflies, frail as tendrils
Plunging like swan divers,
Ignoring the high tide

From nights of running wild,
Like careless cherubs
Bruising our knees, scraping our elbows
Drugged on art, drunk on breathing,
Always challenging The Time, The Time, The Time
Two vagrants swaying
To the cadence of young spirits

Our city will outlive us,
Its sky will shimmer silver
When our wings have torn and rusted,
Its luster, like ceaseless lanterns,
Will glow when our pores no longer swell
With passion, and our voices
Start to croak

And the fevered flesh will frost,
And my blood will dry like paste,
And age will abate the hunger,
And the perennial quest,
And I will crumble knowing nothing
As absolute as friendship

The Time has finally come
Fulfilling its belated promise,
Severing the stem from the root
Like a child plucks the petals
From the most beautiful of flowers 

Transition

They say that Time cleanses
Wounds, like waves lick the shore,
But my chest is charred by memory,
My flesh has scars like carcass
Seething from within the skin
Like fresh blisters, or splinters
That won’t surface from the tissue
Of my fingers

I cannot see fishes in this sea
I said
It is black as oil and thick as night
I said
Don’t you know the blind must be led?

And I have found no oysters
But shovels to carve the ground
With holes as wide as bodies
Of water, where I lay my dreams
To drown

There is no warning to treason
But I forget
Life cannot be fought with reason
But I forget 

A Poem for the One

We Fought

With our banners raised
High, like flailing flags
Extended arms
Rupturing the sky
Brows soaked in sweat
Tears thick as raindrops
Shoulders, like boulders
Rubbing, close
Like marching men
Wounds gashed, infected
Deep as bomb craters
Anthems, arrhythmic pleas
Like dehydrated hearts 

We meant to occupy

Not bend or bow
Before pellets or pistils
Nor crack or cry
Before bombs or batons
But attack with books,
Veins gorged with verses,
The prose in our palates,
Spitting meter and rhyme

We are sorry

If famished faces offended
If our boots, layered with dirt
Perturbed the sensibility
of Liberty Square
But our troops did not know
Marble, it knew mud
Did not know
Castles, it knew fences 
We knew
Failure, not chances
We knew
Pain, not romances
We knew
Hierarchy, poor circumstances
Not opportunity
      
          not democracy

So we fought
With wits for weapons
We occupied
Like squads in war
And we are not sorry 

The bars won’t take us
We've crawled too far
But found no destiny
Or promises in gin

We look up with bleary eyes,
Where the stars rest aflame
In the pendulous black shadow
But this night cannot protect us

Tremulous angels,
We left our history with strangers
And danced our fright with jazz,
Sweet baritones of sex

We sat on rooftops
Where life could not escape us
Where death could never take us
Exchanging verses with the moon  

I drink to youth
I drink to you
I drink

We lost our map to paradise 
While we drank our hopes from bottles
Burned romances with cigarettes
Let them wash away with rain

And now we tremble bare
Bodies blistering with Time
That holy con-man,
Father of pasts gave us nothing

We lost everything, tragic gypsies,
We fucked the future like fiends
Lusting like drunk harlots
We lost everything

I drink to youth
I drink to you
I drink  

Our heads rest on our shoulders
Our eyes lifted like martyrs
To that vacuous eternity
But this night will not protect us

And now the bars won’t take us
And now we pray to death
But we were not believers
Blasting, burning like volcanoes

We lost everything, dear children
We are remnants after fire
We lost everything

I was meant to live

Mornings with a coffee mug in hand

And a cigarette clenched between fingers

Unsteady, thoughts

Rolling like a pinwheel in the wind  

The sun rays – golden locks of Adonis –

 Leak lazily, like rivulets in a river

Outside my window pane

But I was meant to live

Among fresh flesh and sweat,

Brushing against heavy hearts,

Like gaits in an empty cellar –

With an agitated moth in my chest,

Like a fly in the web

I was meant to live

In cities that palpitate like thunder,

Wild with desires that wane

Like the hands of a clock

Desperate to retain dreams

That scatter like puzzle pieces,

And decompose like dead matter

I was meant to live

Insipid afternoons in bed

Carving my shape in sheets

Smearing pillows with tears,

Eating crackers and butter

I was meant to live

Counting hours like failures

Letting days slip like pages

Of frustrated books

I was meant to live

And dance in empty spaces

Of adopted homes

Drunk on red wine

And mac n’ cheese

I was meant to live

Smudging red lipstick on crooked lips

Wearing boots that say fierce

Confusing style with attitude,

Attitude with pride,

Pride with courage,

Courage with strength

I was meant to live

And wake up on mornings

With a coffee mug in hand

And a cigarette clenched between fingers

Moon Sorrows

How lovely the moon in times of loneliness. How comforting the swollen moon, bright and bare, floating in the deep dark pond as if it knew how not to drown, resisting being swallowed by the black vortex, always with poise and glory. Should I know how, too? Should I know how to be beautiful when the face of pain looks its worse? Or do your craters, gray like ash, resemble millenniums of learning how to cope? Should I know how not to be swallowed by deplorable loneliness, or does it swallow you too? Does it swallow you little by little?  Full, half, crescent, full – should I know how to be full again, too? Should I have known not to rely on those that made me think I could rely, or did you think you could too when that star sat next to you last week, and when the clouds hugged you last night? Did you know they wouldn’t tonight? Should I have known that too? Should I have known that loneliness is more devout and faithful than friendship, and that, although it sometimes strays… sometimes… it never forgets its way home? Should I have known that I would have to shine despite there being no one’s path to pave? Like those that were guided by your light tonight, but didn’t stop to look whose light they followed. Should I know how, too?  

No one stopped to look at the moon that night. She felt an irresistible urge to stop the next passerby and say “look at the moon,” but would they understand? And more importantly, would she have the courage? She smoked her cigarette, as her eyes tried to penetrate the copper outline of her lonely companion. She reveled so deeply in her thoughts that they bounced from the walls of her mind, forming rippling echoes of hollow noise. “Loneliness, loneliness, loneliness” they whispered. The moon seemed to muster an ancient tune, an ancient thunder. Her heart pounded like drums, the wind fueled the embers of centuries, and blew the flutes of gypsies.

“Loneliness,” she thought.

“Strength,” mustered the moon. 

 

City Mornings

I like the morning city

With its crisp clean air

Like the smell of ammonia

On hospital walls

The sky, pristine porcelain

Blue – cool like fresh waters –

And clouds that glimmer white

Like the marble floors of corporate

Buildings

The city morning

Metropolitan bustle is like a

Nostril whistle

Of a dormant giant

That wheezes indolently,

Sways steadily

Like the dozing eyes

Of crack crooks

Dope dealers

Maryjane junkies

Heroin hustlers  

That sing on subway stations

With coors cans

On both hands,

Their nodding heads swerving

To the rust track rhythm

Of machinery

Good morning! We are Bronx bound

And inert, rocking in our seats

Like babies on cradles

Our eyes heavy,

Swollen,

Dark like our bodies

And our language

Our heads turned aside

So as not to smell

Touch, see ourselves

In others

Our reflections, weary –

Tremulous – carved

On the window

Panes

And outside, the tracks

Churn their steel

The tunnel walls – agitated –

Furiously rush past

Like film reel,
Memories or time

I like the morning city

And its feigned frailty

Its dainty innocence

Like a crystal ball

But you’ve swallowed us

Pure, and spat us

Raw