Up the hill
Past the blades of grass
A Man and wife 
watch in secret 

Women spinning an 
Ancient dance with 
Bodies in motion 

Repeating 
A bow and a bend
Of rituals passed 

And when all is done 
The morning after 

The wife returns to the hill
Alone

Chasing down a violet 
Beneath a mystic stone 

Where she falls down 
A hole in time 
Landing in a random triangle 

Of broken love
And a split lifeline 

Two rings 
A vow 
On each hand 

Her future read in the past 
Like a game of dice 

While  bones beckon her back 
Away from the the man 
She made her home 

Back to the man she 
Had forgotten 
#randomtriangle

Tear out their manhood 
Men will shed more than a tear 
 I promise you that 
#teartear

Someone blew the whistle
And everyone’s talking
There’s a virus here
I fear

  Seventeen
         Down
                I hear

I’m going out of my mind
Because I know the numbers
Are going to climb

Don’t tell me things are
Going to be fine

Wuhan is where it all began
And I’m just a visiting American
With a plan

To take the next to last train
Out of here

Before those tickets
Disappear

I have to outrun this disease
Before I run out of time

And they lock us all down
With me left behind

A ghost in a ghost town
#nexttolasttrain

The twins got punched 
With fists of steel 
And  tears of screams 
Came pouring out
Of their burning eyes
Glowing red
Smokey
And billowy black
Leaving a scar 
On history 
And a skyline that
Will never be the same
#skyline

That day,
In the 6th Communications Squadron building
I was on a project for the general
Designing a poster for the Corona conference
Where all the commanding generals meet

And the news was on the television in our office
Sometimes running in the background while we worked

On my monitor was the Tampa skyline
With the Blue Angels Cessna flying over
My hands gliding as it moved 
Across the cityscape over the terrain and towers

Then someone turned the television up

And I turned my head to see

Myself caught in synchronicity as

The American Airlines Flight 11 &
United Airlines Flight 175
Crashed into North and South towers
Of the World Trade Center

Surreality dawned on me

Later that day the General asked
To move the plane further away from the skyline

And you know what?
I couldn’t blame him
#skyline

Eros penetrates himself
After missing his Mark
On Psyche

Who doesn’t even try to be
Anything but herself

Unaware of her own
Powers

Her beauty blinds
Like an unapproachable sun

Unknowingly
Casting shadows of
Jealousy

In her marriage with Eros
She is caught in the embrace
Of a promise

A moonshine ultimatum
For the affection she received
As if she never gave anything back

That he remains
Unperceived

Concealing her
And his cowardice
From his mother’s
Vanity

Their union sways
On blind faith
And feeling

Senses devoid of sight

Riding on the enraptured
Short-lived night

Until the cock crows
At the break of day
When Eros pulls out
And he leaves
 
Psyche
Blushing
Almost innocent
With her story still longing
#whendayandnightisashortstory

What kind of truth
Are we searching for
When a body hits the ground
20 seconds
Short

Redacted stories of
     Brown
            Going
                      Down
In broad daylight

Because monsters no longer
Come out at night

They have come to the surface
Wearing blue uniforms
And a star

Under the sun
Where they have buried the
Truth
With a life

Their shadows are long
Winded
That run into the night

We have emerged from the caves
Seeking justice
Seeking peace
Out of broken pieces
Of bodycam videos

Unchained
With our eyes wide open
We reach out towards the light

For when the day turns into night
And the story is short
We demand a higher form

To cast off this allegory
In exchange for something
Whole
#whendayandnightisashortstory

Foil is my blanket
My mother is not in sight 
She sleeps on the moon

no se puede evitar

#concentrationmoon

Ojiisan served in World War I
Wore his uniform with pride
To proudly say, “I am American”
To soldiers who don't care

Shikata ga nai

Stepping into fairgrounds
Harmony in discord
Okaasans birth in stables
To babies born in dust

Shikata ga nai

Children pledge allegiance
To the flag with hands on hearts
Rejected by their country
Still happily they sing

Shikata ga nai

Surrounded by barbed wire
A village in a coop
Bullets shot from Towers
At bodies near the fence

Shikata ga nai

Otsukimi gathering
Rabbit lays down life 
Beggar carries rabbit
To the harvest moon

Gaman

If you concentrate you can see it
The rabbit on the moon

#concentrationmoon

Dark vessels within a vessel
Drift through dark water

In a fate worse than slaughter 

Where the sounds of irons clank 
Across the plank 

And packed bodies in the abyss
Breathe in salt and feces

Bodies beaten by the breeze 

Where their blanket is the mist 
In which they freeze

And with every breath 
Some pray for death
To pull them out of hell

To fly them home 
And leave an empty shell

For fortune smiles on those who died 
To never know the tale 

The deeper thrashing of the hide
That follows every sale

In a black and bleak market
Where men and women are sold 

Their heavy hearts worth more 
Than their exchange in gold

In the heart of darkness
#darkwater

Donald Drumpf’s stew of unrest
A recipe for dismantling democracy 
Ingredients:
1. A pepper of suppressed elections
2. Some supreme salty judges packed tight on the right 
3. Hot and bothered conservatives who can’t stand the spice of diversity 
4. A spoiled orange chicken 
5. Faux tales from Fox News 
6. Fresh and flavorful helpings of fear 
7. Bitter brutality on citizens of color 
8. Sweet bailouts for the wealthy 
9. A heaping of robust Q conspiracies
10. Homegrown fascism 
Make sure to hold back on gun control.
Bring it all to a boil. Let it sit and spoil. 
Best served cold. 
Warning: May leave you with an upset stomach
#10things

American anxiety 
Is an underbelly of knots 
Tied in with the times 

Politicking with the clock
As the senate’s influence is  sold 
And bought 

While a paranoid right 
Hold their guns tight
And yet 
Again and again 
Another man’s shot 

American anxiety ties not so neatly in 
This knot 
Of words 
Where apprehension finds its home 
This tired poem 

Running out like the last man’s  breath  
Just another day 
Just another death
Because death brings no trouble  

When his clock runs out time
A pulse out of rhythm 
This poem out of rhyme 
Still senate doing nothing 
Might as well resign
This 
#rhymetime

As a kid I just took
       My crayons
Threw them down 
       And went to town

A young anarchist 
             Coloring all over 
                      The lines 

           The world was mine 
                    And undefined 

     The grass was red
      The sun was blue
And people blushed 
                          In every hue 
Like rainbows 
             My world had such
                      A different view
        
   But that all changed at school
       As colors took a new conviction 
          
And we had to follow rules
        Forcing bias on crayons 
            And other fiction-all
        Stories we had to learn

     From a system 
Discriminating 
         Color by skin
             Rather than teaching 
                  Us to discern 

                 The soul within 

#crayonsandotherfiction

Coined the Super Bowl by Kansas City Chief
Lamar Hunt

These stadiums stand on the edges
Of Dug-out depressions

Hiding depressions of the men who
Play in them

American gladiators playing 
The game of champions

Concealing the brutality spilling
Off the field

A broken bowl of black
Bodies in motion

Trying to make it
No matter the cost

Being sold a dream of being
More than just black

To white profiteers
Who covet them
#brokenbowl

Xenophobia 
On the rise
A community on the edge
Of a knife

With words incited by a tyrant’s lies
Lacking sanctity 
For human life

Phrases like
“Chinese Virus”
& “Kung flu”

Scorn felt under the skin
With the weight of stone
Words can be thrown
Rooted in anger and sin

“Go back to your country
You don’t belong here
You people need to 
Know your place”

All words from a letter to inspire fear
From a coward without a face.
#letterfrom

As a man of forethought
  Prometheus sought
     To help mankind rekindle
The constant flame
  That would bring him pain
    For such a foolish swindle
A transient transgression
     Lead to talons and A beak
A liver       and       A cry
   A fate permanent
                      And bleak
  One cannot deny
        The destiny one seeks
#constanttransientpermanent

“First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.”

It left me with a constant ache.
     A transient state
               from a permanent fate.

With it’s blow, it can knock you
                                 to the floor.

“You’re in a sacred place,” I was told.

“I don’t think I fear death any more
     than I fear being left behind
            by those I love,” I disclosed.

“They never leave you,” he replied.

I suppose . . .
                 Death is just a door.
#constanttransientpermanent



“No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,”

It’s hard to hear
The susurration
Of storm flags
Battered by a breeze
In a land under siege
Drowned out by the barrage
Of bombs bursting

It’s hard to hear
The susurration
From freak flags flying
In the dawn’s early light
Blocking out
An unsightly piece of
His story

Songs of the  black man’s plight

Lost in the fog of
Of Pat-RIOT-tism
Now in rage of racial reckoning

It’s hard to hear
The susurration of
White noise carrying
Monochromatic tones
Of supremacy

Land of the brave
Home of the slave

Owners
Where black is the Bull's
Eye for brutality

It’s hard to hear
The susurration
Of names trending
On twitter
Shuffling against the
Apotheosis of apathy
Of All Lives Matter

Their thoughtless prayers
Never sent to heaven

It’s hard to hear
The susurration of
Names worn on  T-shirts
And worn out bodies

Walking memorials
Marching in protest for those
Bodies piling in numbers
Buried in statistics

It’s hard to hear
The susurration of
“I can’t breathe”
“Please don’t kill me”
“Mama”

Voices usually lost to a jury
Sorrow
Full of justice
Delayed

Always with the promise of action

UPDATE:  On April 20, 2021 the jury finally heard and the promise
                   of action was finally served!
	      Rest in Power, George Floyd
#susurration

When my great great grandfather, the Great
                Don Manuel and his
                  encantadora esposa,
                     Dona Francesca
Traversed from their homeland across the Great        E x p a n s e
                    Off the shores of Archipelago
    To colonize a New World

They left behind deep roots from noble
        Trees centuries old
  Exchanging castles for the Principalía

      Adorning themselves with
             tortoise shells and gold

From a culture of accomplished conquistadors
These Castilians did not expect to be

                                       Conquered themselves
By indigenous tribes who greeted them with
Warmth,      Calamansi, 
                                            And LOVE

So it was inevitable that one day
      their roots would be
Intertwined,
     amalgamated,
                 entangled,
Mixed like halo-halo to one day birth

Mestizos who have lost connection with
      Those ancient roots
Centuries old from and twice removed from an
Old World                            oceans away
               Once called home.

House I used to live in, here in America,
           Was never a hut or a castle.
#houseiusedtolivein



I found it on Craigslist 
Desperate to break free
The sandwiched
Tight Condo 
Living

Complete with predatory 
Towing from my own space
And a grouchy neighbor
Below

Beating his ceiling with 
The end of broomsticks
Whenever the baby
Cried

House I used to live in
Was mobile with
Wheels that went 
Nowhere

On Pueblo land stolen
From the natives who 
Never got a day in
Court

I got a steal of a deal
From this granny lady
Moving in with her son
Too old to live
Alone

It had yellow vinyl siding
With baked-on enamel
And plastic flowers
In the garden melting in
The sun

The wallpaper inside
Looked like granny
Threw up roses
On the walls

Let’s just say, 
It needed a lot
Of work.
#houseiusedtolivein

Despotic draftsmen
Might as well have drawn a gun
Designing the Purge

Yellow badge of shame
Extermination humane
Cordon Sanitaire

Stuffed in like herrings
Falling asleep peacefully
In the throes of death

Docile like cattle
Avoidance is purposeful
Euthanasia forced

Civilized killers
Soothing balm to their conscience
Sterilize the strain

Following orders
Just a cog caught in the gears
Removing their guilt

Peepholes and mind games
Animal slaughter techniques
Killing them softly

Final Solution
A dystopic diagram
Cannot be erased
#dystopicdiagram


“Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven?”

And into the heavens he gazed
This messenger of the stars Amazed

With instruments of his scientific mind
Children of his Great design
Until condemned by the Vatican
Unholy men Who couldn’t stand to reason

“And yet it moves,”
He says, of the Earth

After being held in contempt
For writing his own scriptures

Timing the tides of the Adriatic Sea
Contemplating the nature of A comet
Trying to measure light From the dawn of a Golden Age

The polymath from Pisa
Once observing
Now observed

In pieces severed
And revered
Like the irony of relics

A vertebrae
Fingers
A tooth

All bone
As still as stone

Making rounds across
Auctions,
Centuries, and grounds

He flips a bird

The archaeology of A last nerve
And a lingering laugh

As if to say,
“I told you so.”
#archaeologyofalastnerve


Their theory of morality 
Measured the circumference 
Of their circumstances 

With an Atomic bomb 
Shining like a thousand suns 
That hot summer of 1945

They said they were 
Saving lives
With a utilitarian concept 

Seers who could not see
Foreboding darkness 
Before the flash 

Oppenheimer, the destroyer 
Bringer of death 
And man-made contagion 

Gave top billing to 
A new., sophisticated 
Way of killing 

Beautifully,
Marking such splendor in the sky
With an ugly way to die

“Woe is me,” Einstein cried.
#circumference

The circumference 
Fat man and little boy blue 
Up a thousand suns 
#circumference

An ambiguous sunrise
Sets in the West

Where white Puritans
With impure hearts
Set their sails

With a destiny manifested
From their own mouths

From Tax evasion to land invasion
An abomination is born

Opportunists ready to kill
In the name of religious freedom
Only for themselves

Wolves dressed like sheep
With Blanket warfare
Spreading 

A White Man’s disease

Their English flags still blowing
Red White and Blue

Redesigned with stripes
And stars

They say the sun
Never Sets
On the British Empire

And it may be true.
#ambiguoussunrise

 Unrequited 
            Love 
    Left her 

Cursed
       To soar 
     The morning skies 

While a hawk’s wolf wails
       Close
               Divine 
                      And Distant

Waiting for a 
               Day 
          Without 
A night        A night 
          Without 
             A day 

   Their Fates
             Hanging on
       Cathedral  
                Bells

           In the ambush of
       An ambiguous 
Sunrise
       #ambiguoussunrise

The elderly Asian lady 
Walking on Market street
Did not quite anticipate 
The man she was about to meet 
And the gravity of his hate 
Which threw her off her feet

With a flying fist in her eye 
She was taken aback 
But with a paddle nearby 
She threw back an attack
Her heart skipped a beat 
As she gave him a whack 
 
At the end of this journey 
I must remember to add 
The man left in a gurney 
Bloody, handcuffed, and sad
#anticipation

He was a man who felt cheated
Deprived and defeated
Anticipation
No longer
His friend
Abandoned by hope
His neck met the rope
Anticipation
Returned in
The end
#anticipation


He drops down a vine
like one descends a tomb

After dying in his lovers womb
Time and time again 

The lark screams for
Sorrow

While the nightingale pushes off
Tomorrow 

Today is their expiration date
The stars hang crossed

Against their fate 
Jilted and jealous of the moon

Their only escape is running 
Into an unhappily ever after-life 

Dressed and destined 
For their doom 

As Death steals yet another wife 
And also takes the groom 
#TomorrowToday

Tomorrow today 
Will be yesterday
Somewhere in Time

Unless you’re Peggy Sue and
You just got married

Or Bill and Ted looking for another 
Excellent Adventure

Or Time Bandits
Taking a Quantum Leap
Back to the Future

Or a Russian doll
Making History
In the Land of the Lost

As long as you’re not 
The Terminator
Reckoning for a Doomsday

I’m ok Just as long as
Tomorrow Comes.
#tomorrowtoday

Sit down, Mr. Nelson!
Sounds like you’re selling life insurance
On a dead man’s life

You keep Preaching
And overreaching
Examining the examiners
As we examine you

With all your hype 
And hypotheticals

You say to look at the
Totality of circumstances
While you break it down
On the prone position

Comparing lying on concrete
With a face smashed into the ground
To one lying by a pool

Who do you think you’re trying to fool?

Trying to shake the unshakable
Experts on the stand
On words you don’t comprehend

Planting flowers
Of unreasonable doubt
Dancing around the jury as you pout

Saying it was fentanyl
Who went in for the kill
Mingled with meth
And bystanders who shout

Next thing you know
You’ll be putting oxygen on the stand
In this theater of forensic pathos

His manner of death was
Cardiopulmonary arrest
complicating law enforcement
subdual, restraint, and neck compression

Let the defense rest!
Stop, already, with  the 
fractious circumlocution
Complicating complications

Quit on the acquittal, Mr. Nelson!

But I get it,
It’s your job.
#fractiouscircumlocution



I met him on my first day of work
At the National Dispatch Center
When pagers were popular
Before things were smart

And we would end up quitting together
Playing Magic the Gathering in his room
Blowing out puffs of smoke
Like it was Eric’s basement
From the 70s show

In one session I recall
Looking up from my Sliver deck,
Unbeatable then

A solitary spider
In rack focus
Hanging
On a thread

Our eyes met in trepidation
As other spiders
Came into frame

Like Charlotte’s children
On a popcorn ceiling
Begrudgingly we became 

Aware of Our existence
His room,
A box of spiders.
#boxofspiders


In my twenties life was gay
Before non-binary
Was a thing

Clueless then
Hanging with my
Homies 

Homo
Sexuals
Dancing at Club Rich’s 

Next door
To the Bookstore 
Euphoria 

‘Till 2 AM
In the after party 
We roll out

Making our rounds
Into other bookstores 
The unconventional kind 

With dirty pictures
Where a party of gestures 
Hide within booths 

Not the kind you confess in 
But where dirty old men
Wait for young boys 

To 
Cum
In
#partyofgestures

Sometimes
Some can’t separate
Myths from Beasts.

Quite disappointing
It’s sad to say
The least.

Sometimes
Things can
Get out of hand

Like Q Anon
Conspiracies
In demand.

Their Truth
Becomes Unicorns
Untamable too

Like Stray cats
Gone feral
And Lost

Like Q.

Don’t let that be U.

Don’t let that  be You.
#unicornsandstraycats

First world problems like
Telling your therapist your secrets
To gain absolution

Don’t exist for those suffocating in
Genocide cities left in
Smoke

Where massacres are just 
A part of
Every day

Lungs and other luxuries
Are reserved for the 
Living

Not in the third world where
Cigarettes are making a killing
Joke

And cancer is the gift that
Keeps on 
Giving

To those 
Poor enough
To pay
#lungsandotherluxuries

She skipped the line again
Because she had no money
For school lunches
Which doesn’t usually phase her much
Except that day was hot on her head
And the sun was hard on her face
While she smiled for photographs
In her ROTC uniform
Standing in attention out on a field
With her locked knees trying not to buckle
As the sounds morphed into mud
But someone’s hand on her back
Brought her back
Her senses waking
To the cold sweat on her neck
And her shirt soaked
#coldsweat

“Mama,” he cries
Beneath the sun
Before he closes his eyes
Never again to see the night
As angels plead for his life
And a knee digs in
Sharper than any knife
And in a flash
A flashlight lights
And is out
Again
Like the stain
Of sin
The pigs rolled in
But now it’s all out there
In plain sight
Filmed in ambient light
For all to see
For all to fight
Filmed in ambient light
#ambientlight

A random triangle
Primes itself for probability
Placing arbitrary points on a plane
Three angles in conjunction
Whoever came up with such a name?
Radom triangle with three dimensions
Both a puzzle and a pain.
#randomtriangle

Three kittens cried in our yard
As it rained
Waiting for their mother
Who never came
That was last spring
Before we all locked ourselves in
Waiting for the vaccine
Children waiting to get back to school
Parents waiting on childcare
The laid off waiting for work
Workers waiting to be unionized
Restaurants waiting for customers
Waiters not waiting on tables
Women waiting to March 
Freedom fighters waiting for justice 
Citizens waiting for relief
Bakers waiting for their bread
And hospitals still waiting on the dead
#waiting


Six pups born still
So I proceeded to bury them
Inanimate as they were until
I saw one flinch
And quickly I scooped it up
From the cold ground in our side yard
And I blew
Stopping only after
It had a breath of its own
#inanimateabsencebeforeandafter