Tag Archives: Poetry

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If God was real

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If god was here; He would leave.

……..………

If god was here, he would notice the stabbing pain that shoots through my ankles and shins.

Who knew I needed this many failing joints to stand up straight?

……………

If god was here he would burn for the 15 new martyrs buried under our silence and the desert sand.

………………

He would tell you every time my daughter did not come home.

He would watch the unmarked desert graves burn the edges of every soul in this colony, like paper.

He would wonder why none of us have moved to stop this.

…………………

He would rage.

He would scream.

They would put him in a 72hr hold.

…………………

He would grieve for a million eternities, at how little any of this guilt can fix.

……………

There is no god here.

No community. No solidarity. No people.

What will you say when you meet him?

What of our souls will remain?

…….…

What will you say when you meet him?

What of our souls will remain?

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My mothers son

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Sitting on the balcony of a mega complex;

Looking down at the houses still holding out.

I think my father missed prison.

I miss you with every shattered, lonely atom in my body.

How could you?

How could you break me into a shape you have no use for?

In the eye of an empire,

With traumas as vast and varied

As it’s violences;

I will my body to accept change as the only constant

I will myself not to become a martyr

to the despair and hedonia

that materializes out of the shadows and concrete of this place.

I will myself not to internalize the way the allostatic load splinters my elbows.

I will myself to believe people

When they tell me who they are

My father missed prison more than he loved my mother.

I will this new body not to be his son.

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I remember you.

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An invocation. A declaration. A curse;
I remember you.

I summon you. I bind you. I name you my past.
Stand. Feet planted at the center of the nearest fault line, ley line, or graph line and make peace with these charges;
I remember you.

I remember you as you were;
Counterfeit, tired, and cruel.

I remember you as you promised;
A garden. A refuge. A forest.

I remember myself as you never were;
Liminal, transcendent, home.

I call my desperation and anger. I bind them. I name them reckoning.
Stand at the doors of their temples and burn.

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in another life you were better

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Rod Serling haunts me;

The way my father intended.






You leave copies of bell hooks out when we fight;





While your boyfriend calls me a pussy. 





In another life you were better;





In another life we were better.










I owe the people $128.





You owe some broken girl-child from the mountains everything.










You of all people were supposed to understand me.





You gave me every book about myself that you have never read 










I watch the tendrils of apathy and capital coil;





You could not hold the pain of a widow if she payed you 






			

	
	


				
					



	

		
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Labor Shortage in Omelas


				

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I will myself to hold the taste of this failure in my mouth.
Just one more flavor my white parents did not know how to cook with.





I smother the bitterness of asparagus and your contempt in garlic and white wine.





if god where my dinner guest;

He would ask me which brown woman we owed for tonight’s spice blend;
He would remind me that none of us have ever lived anywhere but Omelas;
He would remember how the acid of the lemon juice cut through the grease and your vitriol.





There is no violence or abuse
This sous chef pretending to be a line cook; did not teach me how to plate.





Salt. Fat. Acid. 
I have always held my own magic.






			

	
	


				
					



	

		
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Jesus and My Feet


				

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There's a space that begs for poems
But I have no blood to write in
And I'm too young to choke to death on broken dreams

And I'm drowning in these memories
But I have no blood to fight them
So I think that I should probably go to sleep

But I'll sit here in the space you've made
From poetry and rhythm
And I'll try not to feel the weight between these notes

And on Sunday they will talk about
How Jesus healed the broken
But they'll never stop to ask who crushed my feet