Taco Tuesday

Taco Tuesday 


How did it come to this, a staple food 
belittling the tiny, sacred space? 
We have a strange way to show the good, 
by making light to show a funny face; 
we’ve popped the cherries of their fragrant skin   
we’ve sewn our oats as horses clattered 
it is so much fun, to finally let them in? 
Perhaps, that’s all that’s ever mattered? 
A taco stand on Tuesday in Me’hico: 
Catholic girls go join the boys indoors 
and learn to tease by dance when mother’s sew 
their dresses to show enough, (not like whores) 
and they all dance in moves that will mirror 
sacredness that Tuesday night shows clearer. 


r. 

Here’s a Tip

Here’s a Tip


So here’s a tip: repeat a form, and rip
It off: rehashing what we rightly write;
A chance is had and taken as you strip
The words, now something’s amiss, and not right:
The timing’s off, the beats forgot to match
The count’s is lost, (was broken with a wrench
You threw in); breaking up thoughts; so watch
And learn, we might undo this stream and drench
Our readers in flows unfamiliar;
I get it– you still want to drum and tap
I’m not about to sound similar—
You go away and add this to my rap
Sheet of verses; I have broke off the tip,
forgot the point was to shoot from my hip.


r.

Stages Of Deception

Stages of Deception


When the eyes sweep the stage, here he lies
Showing his sleeves and watching their eyes.
He’s in charge: boys and girls, come of age;
Blank, as they stare at his hands, were they still?
They Smoothened out in performance until
Ropes were pulled, seats were emptied, a doors get
Shut. You might catch him then: a pocket
Turned out, his pills are falling behind stage,
His shuffling gate, smoothed by a name he will find,
As children go home with magic left behind.

When I go

When I Go


I have never had such palpable hurt
Hearts will not dare run away from the blame;
Teaching the hardest lessons pulled from dirt,
A chisel has given the stone a name.
Though years are removed like a leaf
That quivers on a branch, absently—
There is nothing yet replacing grief—
You were laid to rest beneath an olive tree.
What have we here, a strength, a harder seed;
A small monument to soften the fall?
Memories won’t weather away just like a weed
Won’t brown with grass, and is greener than all.
You, my love will be buried and rested—
And when I go my heart will be arrested.

A wash

Along the wash, rum was worn by the naive
who clanged their cups as they soiled their breath.
As poets cut and snapped the threads they weave
pulling apart ties till just frays were left
and passed it all through their poetic sieve...

Oh, mere mortals: exchange your silly schemes  -- 

but poets will laugh and drink to your dreams. 

If I had a voice

If I made a sound, with a slow stroke of tongue

I would make it wade with the storm – 

and catch a basic
fish, calling it a carp; and furthermore, if I slipped into the bay
i'd say, “to the sea…
roll rough, roll on!”; I would learn to ride
just past the tide of younger thoughts,
we generally spoke below the roar
…I’d let it rage!

I learned to list and right myself,
I leaned both left and right,
I carried, yet, bigger thoughts
like loud passengers and then waited
For them to sleep at night.
Though, they are night fellows:
that gamble in the dark, and tear at my decking when drunk:
that ripped at loose boards
and hollered at the seascape about them
until opened sides let in the sea-wash
as seaward I leaned…

My words fed like owls perched aboard a ship;
unusually, it seemed, but spread like ghost.
They carried their weight as on sea mist, light yet heavy;
they raised with sails in the anguish of the beat of their wings, as
I labored at the masthead.

My hand dipped in the swells as
the water made webs between fingers,
Ghost owls wisely leave their perch as
the stiff breakers began to hit in rhythm:
the owl’s flight was muffled by the surf.

They didn't quite leave, though they flew
above the drifting currents
that blew the sails and set my ship further off course.
I paced the deck above the depths,
I drank like a soul burning from life.
If the sea could raise a carpenter to fix this listing ship,
and right this course; where all maps pinch
along the fold.

Eat your ego chips

Eat your ego chips that fall from off your shoulders, chipped beef smothered in self-love.