:: SOME NOTES ON BEING HUMAN ::
The dead
are everywhere
The mouse
rotting away inside my walls
The rat in
the basement trap
& just
yesterday, my Dominican cab driver
ran over a
pigeon on the corner of 145th and St. Nick
I am use
to that
It’s the
dead people I can’t handle
So many & I fear we all have our hands
in it
How
dishonest love has become
How
devastatingly unlovely
That it is
no wonder hate seems
the better
option
& can
I mention circles?
How the
universe is made up of them
Yet we
behave so linear, as if life weren’t
a round
mouth full of reverie, as if stirring
the pot or
our morning bustelo wasn’t a
circular
action
Everything
is a spiral, as improbable as a galaxy
as
destructive as a hurricane
& this
is just to say that there are more solar systems
than there
are us
and we
still haven’t learned to live
as stars
Couldn’t
they teach us about going out
in a
dazzling light?
Couldn’t
they teach us about the mystery
of it all?
We seem to
be so concerned with good & evil
When isn’t
the daily grind the struggle between
joy &
sorrow?
&
while we are on the subject of living
Is this
all there is too it?
To be born
To become
enraged
To break
ourselves against an indestructible
machine
To lose
sight of desire
To let
desire become only theory
To think
theory is being
But what
about being a
blinding
beautiful and incorruptible thing?
&
speaking of corruption
have I
mentioned Colonization?
Being
imposed a foster parent without
arms to
hold you only teeth & spit
& did
I mention Africa
Or does
that require another poem?
I once had
a lover that told me:
You’re
sooooooo black
I took it
as a compliment
He meant
it as
Goodbye
Every
Sunday I call my abuela
& we
go over all the week’s tragedies
She is
brown & woman
Trauma is
the only way she stays tethered
to the
earth.
She tells
me ponte las pilas
& for
hours I search my body for slots
where
batteries might fit
Because I
imagine the only way to save humanity
is to be a
little less human
:: MUSE FOUND IN A COLONIZED BODY
::
There
is no greater love than the love a wolf feels
for the
lamb it doesn’t eat – Helene Cisoux
They say
when the Spanish came we thought them
Gods. They
came with sincere eyes, but insincere
mouths and
cocks they knew something about the
universe
& we only knew about the earth, not
about the
stars unless being guided by them is
a kind of
knowing, but no, in those days the stars
knew us
more than we them. & that might be the
difference
between the wolf & the lamb, our
relationship
to the universe and its bounty. I think
what I
want to say here is that to the wolf go
the spoils
& yet there is something about being a lamb
the
danger, the never knowing when the wolf will be
hungry
enough. How do you not love yourself when you
constantly
survive your undoing just by being precious?
I don’t
like coyness, if I love you I will take your mouth
first
because that is where the breathe lives, does that
make me a
wolf, or does this: when I am near you
I shackle
my intentions & feasts with my eyes, I won’t
dare eat
of your flesh. How could I? It would be like
the snake
that eats itself from the tail, eventually it
chokes on
everything, it’s rough scales, it’s heart all
colonized
& tender, the whole world becomes its
body half
eaten & dragging in the dirt—