soft.boy.

sometimes i have to remind myself that i have a right to feel this way.

jealous.
insecure..
un -satisfied.

i am so rarely any of the above
but when i'm feeling it
i'm feeling it.

where are you JJ?

i want pictures
i want proof?

i want to know that you are together with her
so i have no room to wonder
and wander
and call.

you were one of the few
who entered
but did not leave.

sweaty and
racing
and wayward
we were.

i remember the wet spot in my bed where you lay-
so foreign to me.
it had only happened once before with him.

we were young and i knew better than him
but this time
you knew better than me.

where are you?

i search for you
and your girlfriend's page shows no sign of you.

a break up?
a heart break?

you so wanted a relationship.
an everlasting.
to share with your family.

we were close.

minus the boy and girl part.

i loved you
but was confused
and scared of the parts that made us different.

you were softer
than anything i've touched before.

confused by your gender
you told me your secrets of bending the norm
and i loved it.

but when it came to either you or her
i chose her.

and didn't really give you a chance.

i regret that.

because what we shared

was immense

and littered
by your lack of attention
and ability to focus.

it was the weed.
it was the pollution between us.

your cock
to my
cunt.


too different
to take.

i still think of you,
boy i almost loved.

and miss you...

girls in bars..and driveways...

from the top you can see the distance
and if you punch a little more
maybe you will see more weakness than you bargained for

i can recognize the feelings of awkwardness and i'm not sure how to bridge the distance of familiar
and digging a little deeper..

i recognize, in the echo that some may ask,
now whose gonna come find you?

there's a theme to the questions i ask.
that is my stamp.
my quest
and repeat plead.

it's times like these that i remember the people in my past and i think of the lightness that they now hold in my eyes
and i recognize the everlasting love i have for them..


my silver town girl (heather c)
who i confessed that i was in love with without looking her in the eye.

i wanted so much to touch her tear drops
as she meandered her way through lost faith
and broken promises.

i wanted so much for her to look me in they eye
but she was bound to turn away
so i didn't even try to tell her my truth that way..

tell me heather,

did you ever listen to the song?

angel falling in the skyline?

i tried to remind you that you were bound to come around..

your silence tells me that you have.
and i am happy for you..
may the days of shiek visiting the bar we frequented be laid to rest...




part two.


why should i stay here?
why should i stay.

i'd be crazy to not follow
follow where you lead.

yeah you-
those (irish) eyes
they tell me.

they tell me
we have been in better places.

the air around us reminds me
that things change
for the better

you started to notice

when once you could not see.

i see you now,
standing there in your resolve and defeat

and bitterness

convincing yourself to move on.

to prove to yourself

that better things existed
despite you being heel deep in the shit that makes
mud look pretty.

you spoke
and somehow were heard by these deafened ears.

i heard you
and i responded
and today we are in love
a year and a half later.

i will never forget witnessing your ephiphany in your driveway-
cars parked in the garage..

you said.
'yeah i will call you'
we are gonna do this!
yeah, we are gonna do this!'

and you were only talking about a dog walk..

but somehow i think you had me fooled.
a dog walk it seemed

but a life was more of what you were convinced of.

baby, despite who's right or wrong
you found your way to me
and that's all i care about.

i've got mad love for you
the unrelentless kind, too.

you won't go far without me.
this i know...

...

i want you to read this...

i want you to see this
my words
my truth

set abound for the eyes of the familiar
and unfamiliar

i've displayed myself
like a dish
something to be observed
judged,
and taken in

consumed

with a flavor-
too salty
too bland

too mismatched
and unrefined.

i am

all of the above

and i want you
to read this

these words.

yes,

you.

i want.

we can shine

even if the light is not upon us.

and we can beg the light to find us
and
even if it goes out
and we can still reach
for the warmth
when it's gone

and asleep.

i am perpetually in the state of searching
and seeking.

though at times
i am content being found..
more often than not.

i write
and i don't care.
what
you

think.

of me
and my

place...



i am used to being judged
for who i am
and who i am not

was not
could not-

ever could be.

and in those miserable and fleetingly free moments

i love what i am.

and what i am not.

i have a thousand examples of who i never want to be..

married to him

or her


or the idea of it


i am shaking free

of the caste system

where my eyes

and skin

and body

dictate who i can be

and who i will never be..

i won't lie that i think about it often

and look for an out.

thank god for my straight tongue in the language

and my lack of willingness to take on my native tongue.

i am so often asked if i want to return home,

to Colombia..

and the answer is always the same..

No.

i say.

No.

i don't have anything to go back to
but judgement
and a tongue that
is not my own.

i have become a hybrid

between similarity

and nothingness.

i cannot be claimed

nor designated
as a player for any team..


sure,
i have tendencies

but no one knows what my heart is saying

or what my language is
when i'm silent.

i agreed long ago
to be misunderstood

and i'd say i've done a good job perpetuating that vote.

i've been lonely at times

but still no one can label me

as anything but me.


and my lover-

she has limits too.

her skin prohibits her

and her past to enter.

but she -
she is aware
and is not ashamed.

as far as i'll ever know.


maybe i ought to listen to her

and learn from her..

as complex

and improbable as that may be...

the only road i've been down...

i have guilt over the honesty i share

i am not sure if it's about taking care to not offend or dishevel anyone's feelings that have stood stagnant to reality for decades
or if it's the latent rule to be seen and not heard

regardless
i blow regard
and quite frankly
care
to the wind
while i spit my truth
to the world
who had no problem in
displacing and
somehow overlooking
my reality..

so here you are, mother fuckers
here is my truth...

let it gag you the way
your cock has gagged me
in my innocence
and eagerness to please.

here are my words uncensored
and honest...

i let the words cleanse my mind

and in them i sing-
despite the fact that no one is singing to me, now...

black car talk...

i am fucking happy
i can't complain about a thing.

my life has the mis- direction it always has had.

i love the simplicity of the nothingness
that i love to chase
and embrace
and keep at the base of my being.

if i didn't have new beginnings to wake up to
each day
and the absence of corrected memory that most people are born with
i would be miserable.


she says, after i ask her-
i worry about and wonder if you are as driven as i am-
and then
i realize
that you are driven but by different things as i am..

i look at her, after i've asked the million dollar question and say..
i am in love with simplicity-
my ego needs no competition
i have nothing to prove, as you do.

i am content in the every day.
i am content in the sinister
and regularity of the 24 hour cessation of our lives.

i clock and lock the moments
and sing the words of others to a tune
and i remember, without remembering,
every
word of their life at the moment they recorded the song of their life...
ok so it was all in the 80's..

we all have to have a talent of some sort
and from some sort of era....

the air you breathe...

he fooled me
when he played the rugged
and congested chords

i had never heard such beauty
conflicted
and concealed behind the thick strings

that had to surpass his stoned mind
and thick fingers

he made that bass
dance the way my mind
thinks
when cloudy
and clear at the same time..

fucking brilliant-
i say to him

how recited- he says back..
that was from the album i just downloaded...

ugh,
how boys play with my feelings

time and time again....

the list...

i won't pretend that i'm the best lover

i don't think i've ever justified that sort of excuse to stop growing.
i reminded myself and her tonight
that i've promptly forgotten everyone before her.

i don't recall any other skin
or taste
or love
other than hers,
here
right now.

she seems oddly placated by this startling truth of mine-
but she somehow doesn't seem to buy it.

how, of all the truth's i've confessed, true this is.
it's trumps any memory
or imagined ego.

i recall that i've had many experiences
but they did nothing but prepare me for her-
her storm
and
her fury...

get up now...

so what if i only come back to you with drink on my tongue
and wayward sighs, coughs and hiccups.

even if the stars have made us blind
we are so clearly unblind in this love

we trace, draw and dictate what and who did us wrong in the past
and we compare the scars of those lessons learned
and wake up no different to anyone.

today you are still stumbling and grappling with your past
and everything is weighing on you and your sense of gravity.

the winter snow is melting around us
and the water's are less than silver pools

and you are trudging through to the other side

miles away from where you started.
with a new love
and new perspective on life
with hopes dashed and let go on the wayside.

she represents the ugly side of love
and i keep telling you to quit looking for the same outcome that you would provide-

in her letting go
she is not graceful nor
delicate in her dance
you must learn this lesson with a stilted wedge as your guide

i witness this part of your life
and even in my lonlliest moments
i could never justify this sort of disregard.

you make up
i make up
for the loss
of something we gave up on years ago

yet still
we hold on to some sort of fairy tale ending
that never happens in these sort of corners.

i wake up each day to a new story
and try not to become jaded in a experience i'm only witnessing vicariously-
i never asked for this
and you never asked for this

and i tell my story and command that it will be different
and that little comfrey bird tells me-
never
say
never

that i will or would put myself in the exact same place.

i won't pretend for a minute that i wouldn't give in easily to this same place
with you.

i'd be your fool
i would be your mat
and place to rest
devoid of my own feelings
oblivious of your greed

out of my love
out of love
for you

i'd be your fool my lover
a hundred times through

and in the words that ring off your tongue i'd also ask

could you be loved....

and answer in the same breath-

yes!

yes.

yes.....

yup..

The truth is rarely pure and never simple- Oscar Wilde

brothers and men....

in a new york minute
everything can change
and everything can get a little strange-
he says..
and boy have i witnessed that upon the vows that have afforded you new wives
and children, consequently.

my spelling errors to your love errors.
we stand face to face
you, republican, me liberal

facing the same fate
despite misguided steps along the way.

brother(s),
your passage has been littered with addiction
mine, doubt.
but in the end we fight the same fight.

i have shared a mother with you,
emergency and guilt ridden
as the wolf has been waiting at the door.

we shared a dad who was not always a father
mostly to you
and less to me.

time and time again we have been reminded of the reality that
one day our loved ones are here
and the next day they are gone
but somehow
we have missed-
missed the mark
of connection
without drink
or drug
or misunderstanding

but today we are reminded and forced to look at the
one
who succumbed-
who gave into
the empty deliveries
of false gods and wives and lovers.

he who has been called out,
by death and those still with us
to change his ways..

i wonder what you will do with this, brother,
what will you do with this calling
that is so obviously yours..

i stand, silent in my corner of psuedo support, and i wonder if you, the wonderous boy, will come out alive

and think, in anger,
what a silly pile you would be if you had lived in my boots...

Dear Mama's..

there is light
in the darkness
despite the cliche- ness of the fact.

i spoke
and am hopefully understood.

she says, " that forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past" (lily tomlin)
my god how ricocheted our past is.

bullet wounds
scars
and ugly marks
we've left

out of love.

oh how i've never loved another like you
you were what i lost
and what i found
out of desperado
and incognito

i didn't know who you loved
and you didn't know how not to love
what you seemingly possessed-

how wrong we were,
mother,
our love,
misguided and way ward

did we even have a chance to truely love?

mother i will find you
as the book says, "if you seek you will find"...
but really
in peripheral
and in love
i have looked
for so long!
and i have not found you.

i imagine you to be something that is not familiar
a face, dark but light just the same
a tongue, different and the same alike.
a loving,
more fierce and unforgiving woman.

how could i search for you
or want you
when i have someone in your place?

the guilt i feel over this
is huge
but still i wonder
what Mother
looks like me?
what Mother fed me?

what Mother dreams of me every night just the same as the one that chose me?

I will feel accounted for upon my death,
for there will be two souls that
search for me
in order to complete themselves.

haunted and un-haunted i will be
until that day....

Comfrey...

light and swaying-
the trumpet
i long to close to my lips upon,
plays
notes i may never know---
spit, running from the brass of it's slender back
down to the meaningful place that it plays.

our meeting was a fleeting image
you and your coy self
and me,
feeling i could conquer you
effortlessly.

how wrong i was
trying to be more than i was to you
physcially and mentally.

i recall a day when you brought me new perspective-
i come back
to that
and think your lesson
is still pertinent.
Woman,
whose name i will not speak.

you get more than enough recognition
and praise
and love
for who you are-

needless to say
i realize how my approach to you was out of learning-
a need to connect.

i saw what could be and i wanted to emulate that.
only my connectedness with another made it messy and
not seemingly platonic.
you were confused-
i was hurt
and rejected.

your dismissiveness seemed careless
my eagerness seemed aggressive-



it did not work
and i will work again to make it matter to you this time...

untitled...

i need something to bring this out
lure it from my bones
the music that resides in the in between spaces
that occupies nothing and
no one
but me
and this.

jazz.
oh how i hated the dance of you
but love the music of you.
such disconnect.

i dream of many lives
with music to go with it.
and i wonder how
pushing the delicate lines could make us closer
and more compatible..

two tambourines and a microphone...

playing the drums for me is like sex-
or fucking
to be exact-
it's hard
and unplanned-
and calculated, practiced
and sloppy just the same.
sometimes you have an audience
and sometimes you don't.

sometimes the only audience is your expectations
and blind hands searching for meaning.

but when i hear the music that's inside of me
or around me
it can make me MOVE
not just a little shake or
sway
but it can MOVE me!

give me air
and life
and some sloppy, silly excuse to sway
and act as if i have a purpose that isn't related to the mundane, practicality of everyday life.

i think
and worry
and feel this movement
that moves through me
and my fingers as i type
and i beg for it's appearance on the skins of my trap set.

trap.
it doesn't do justice.
there is no trap to speak of..
but there is
a mic.
and a spirit that moves.
and records.

erratic and
non-sensical.
i beg to deliver the message of my mis- understood soul.

the music is and can be understood
if you get it
and me.
it makes perfect sense
the in-between's and missed notes
of predictability.

if you dig deep and think
it makes perfect sense.

i am not a cryptic person
i put what is on the table on the table.

you can choose to engage me
acknowledge me or not...

however-
the music inside of me
doesn't lie
it is what it is
and what it (i'm not) isn't....

warm night conversation.....

i am a woman in particular-
with a lift bridge as a crutch to get me to a moment
or discovery.
i retract
and refrain
and walk away
from you-
my ever elusive claimed "wife."

what did it make you feel
to hear those words
sloppy from another's tongue?

but i digress
i am not that woman anymore
and perhaps your taste is more refined
than for me

i wait
guiltily
but curious just the same...