a poetic journey through a group home
(this collection, self-published in 2005, is presented here in its entirety)
punching bag
i am like a five foot eleven inch
punching bag.
is it a drag
to be a five foot eleven inch
punching bag
for children that history has forgotten
to mention, all seven?
of course not.
for they are the bread
i desire to leaven
as they wait to enter some impossible heaven
free from hurt, scorn, and neglect.
some impossible heaven
where miniature balls of disconnect
can join hands and form bands that uplift
fallen lands.
i am like a five foot eleven inch
punching bag,
but they somehow understands
that in the limelight of their deepest wishes
i play the part of navigator,
therapeutic magellan
really trying hard to prevent:
future freebasing felon
imperial cannon fodder
chain-store whore for the global marketplace
social and economic refuse
of the human rat race.
i am like a five foot eleven inch
punching bag,
they can use me up like a rag
call me dick, bitch, or hag
knock me down like a rough game of tag.
but i can dodge all their punches
and cue into their hunches
because their hunches are just wide open plains
that emerge like earthworms
after it rains. their hunches contain
an epoch of pain without
much of any gain;
infancy was a blotchy stain
plus early childhood an exercise
in vain.
time got lost like careless spelunkers,
but we can recover it together
because i am like
a five foot eleven inch
punching bag
who truly understands
that they each have major plans.
stereotypes
our characters don't meld with low expectations.
they can say please with ease, play tag with care,
politely pass the peas, and sit up in their chair.
our cerebellums don't gel with half-assed preconceptions.
they can decipher quotations, spell a long word,
do math with great patience,
tell how fallen nations occurred.
we are, each, sugarcoated deities
in whose humble origins a passion
was stirred, to survive with dignity
those shadows and faces, coaldark places
perhaps even thrive
in the rosy glow
of humanity's navel.
our bodies can cope with an abundance of trials.
they can tumble down hills, wade through a river,
take sudden spills, and in cold storms not shiver.
our hearts can be much more than self-serving organs.
they can distribute a gift, call forth a hug,
heal a great rift, and save the life of a bug.
we are, each, sugarcoated deities
in whose humble origins a passion
was stirred, to survive with dignity
those secrets and forms, unforgivable norms
perhaps even thrive
in the vast dawn
of a world made decent.
picks
ten classic comic books, every one of them ripped.
some brand new cds, each of them skipped.
an empty faced doll, missing an ear.
large muscled commandos, conveying deep fear.
numerous handheld devices, all set to bleep.
a tractor, a sailboat, a buggy, a jeep.
these are all picks, from shelves steeped in dust.
buy them we must, to display them is vital.
and the kids make their picks, one at a time.
their vacillation is focused like a telescope.
haiku: for an old timer’s plea
burning out of light
and darkness while receiving
good karma paychecks.
file-gazing
i absorb his file over coffee and a cigarette.
his promise has not been born
yet, is my immediate conclusion.
he glares back at me through those beads of ink,
gives me papercuts with his artful dodges
as i reach out with a cascading embrace.
his mom sold crack out of bargain motel rooms,
as he lay supplicant, meditative, an abused buddha
feeling slap after slap from fleeting addicts.
not a second to nap, play games, or appreciate nature.
just a convict without parole, his childhood a toilet bowl
with no passion or soul.
medication is now the latest fashion: yet there is no pill
for empathy. a rug of cinnamon hair crowns a head
full of horrors. eyes rough as winter's night,
missing baby teeth as gaping as tiny canyons.
his stomach bulges out like a pontoon,
perhaps someday those awkward legs
will breed balance.
his file alludes to sadism, the infinite pleasures of revenge.
attachment disorder, but from what: the spoils of suburbia,
champagne banquets with illuminati body counts,
pullyaupbya bootstraps
kinda permitted success story?
he's nuthin
if not a four foot underclass.
it must be awful hard when your life
is like a scab that wants to linger.
it must be quite atrocious
when cradle to present
is just a colossal humdinger.
eternal answer to the question why?
as elusive as a typhoon's mercy.
his file stands out, for its peculiar damage.
i absorb it over coffee and a cigarette,
recalling that his promise has not been born
yet.
festering
the van wouldn't start, because their whining
was a clogged up muffler. the door wouldn't open,
because their bickering was a crooked key.
the television would fade in and out,
because their tears were a technical failure.
the house doesn't taste like a lollipop,
battered minds and bodies enter it
and wipe unreadable mud on the doormat.
this morning's meltdown was a crossword puzzle,
harsh verbs and gruesome nouns
flung all across and down,
it seems that nobody else in our town
can recognize the stench
of their festering isolation.
a refugee, in residence
the squalor of trench lines, belligerent cousins
darting and dodging
the odds of land mines.
the morning fog paces over sarajevo,
as casualties surge in apartment blocks.
force just shoots without reason,
spots a needed victim in the smallest baby.
genocide greets high noon in srebenica,
these are all scenes made for cnn.
mass consumption pretending to really care
who you are, and where you came from.
now, you embrace the newness of amerika
like it was half the universe.
no more evacuations to rehearse, father's midnite curse
as feet pack bags and board economy class
coming to these fruited plains means
finishing last.
you showed up at our program one day
with a bone to pick, a chip on your shoulder
the size of a boulder. your handshake was reluctant,
colder, like you did not want us to meet your world.
you ranted on the phone in your native tongue,
cried tears that shook like a pager.
father is a tyrant, who beats with a belt
that has a silver buckle, mother gets battered
and cannot complain. sisters huddle in unseen corners,
the neighbors just cover it all up
because they know the scene too well.
you swear that the neighbor's children
bang on your window, then flit away.
you hide piss-riddled garments in your toy-box.
you made a working catapult
out of some random logs and branches.
your three point shot is enough to arouse suspicion
that you're really from a playground in harlem.
nowadays, you embrace the newness
of at least half the universe
filling our house
with delectable mystery.
disarray, in depth
very deep is the abyss that onetime
was a mind, free to blossom.
anxiety: a galling tape that won't rewind,
it oozes out of pores in nail-biting spores.
those canker sores of history, as leaves roll by,
blistery, blustery, our window is a present tense.
those canker sores fester and pop,
then sizzle like a treacherous omelet.
his present tense is a quiet room sojourn,
deep is the faith that we reserve
for lilliputian stress balls.
morning freefalls and behaves like a car
that suddenly stalls. it bawls in balls of unreturned calls
and letters that nobody even has time to open,
let alone decipher. his expression is like a worm
dangling from a fishhook, wondering how
he was ever given an original purpose, dangling
above the floor's ocean. chins get scratched,
syllables ponder the notion of locomotion.
her fingernail is smashed, by a chairleg's naked wrath.
videos can lead down a dangerous path; fractions of snacks
and the water jug looks like a plastic iv bag.
caffeine shakes as the whole room quakes of salvation.
jubilation recreation no intimate relation permitted
and the girl's face morphs into a cure for cancer.
summer flashdancer grooving to an imperious beat,
that's her lips making karaoke sandwiches
as the leaves roll, blistery, blustery,
the canker sores of history
making this present tense.
disarray, in depth, and all around:
the evidence? lost, then found
or perhaps planted here
by certain mischievous malcontents
who want to prove their lives are worse.
he upchucks waffles onto the middle of the carpet,
the carpet is a pile of burning rocks.
we try to sit, in chaotic hand-holding bursts,
meditate rather than ruminate hoping to illuminate
but meditation is not the passage of a thought.
we want to escape this carpet of burning rocks
and sit back in chairs harder than blackboards
take for granted that the disarray we display
will never try
to go away.
nightwatching
you comb cramped hallways for lice,
with a size sixteen gaze.
you spend early days and later nights
vacuuming giant heights
and patching sudden leaks. foulfaced pipsqueaks
with venom in their vocabulary
recognize that you are very stable and actually
merry. on the contrary, were you to be scary
then those hours would be hari carry
us through another preteen crisis
doing disco dances by volcanic laundry piles
all smiles which one is the nicest or meanest?
from new england ta venus your name is inscribed
on all kindsa good vibes.
you have little use for sleep.
you have no need for a pajama.
you are always nightwatching, the scarecrow guarding
an orchard of trauma.
pushin: a.m., p.m.
those first pills get popped around the same time
that their eyelids expand to greet a fresh day,
when the sun is still a relative stranger pushing
through a crowd of darkness. i tally the meds,
my seminal act: .5 depakote 25 milligrams adderall
76 pieces of seroquel 91,000 shakes and 49 shivers
vomiting into his cup
would you please
clean that mess up?
we're legalized pushers, easygoing middlepersons
for invisible shareholders with names like smith and jones,
and they don't even extend us the courtesy
of a few stocks and bonds. not that we should covet
their lucre, as filthy as an elephant's backside.
we dispense pathologically pathetic products
whose side effects include our dutiful complicity
in the making of artificial human beings.
but hey,
we all know how that one gets without his pm dose?
can't sleep a wink storms through his room
like a fleshbone tsunami claiming to have visions
of his longdead mommy...
role model, part uno
the moment i crack, you take a step back.
take a step back, and hit me
with those poker eyes that feign surprise.
my whole facade can tumble, my sentences stumble,
my faint wimpish mumble
intentions quite a jumble
as you flail like a fish on the deck,
begging for the lukewarm vise of a restraint.
wanted, from me, it sure ain't:
but duty calls me to straddle you, pin you to carpet
like some greco-roman crisis manager.
i embody your lust for security,
role model the previously unfelt notion
that not every adult in the universe
wants to scavenge
from the morsels of your soul.
running away
i pull you back by the shirttail,
as you writhe in some contortion
phrased in the form of a question.
a question with no answer to expect:
could it be your sudden flight that angered me,
your chapped nose thumbed vertically,
smiling like a demented cherub,
as if you could really escape
yourself?
or is it
your unwanted birth, seven years
of leaving dinosaur tracks across the local earth,
muting whispers that speak of unsolved crimes,
desperate times when spare change
could only buy moldy leftovers
at near extinct five and dimes?
your mom probably thought an abortion would hurt
too much, but don't think for a second
that she didn't rule it out.
and out you came, with all your parts
in the correct places, presumably,
an infant martini, shaken, stirred,
swallowed by mom for the previous nine months.
i caught you there on the staircase, running away
from yourself, and it does anger me
that you were allowed to exist.
for what?
to be another savage welfare cut,
some dead villain's reincarnated karmic destiny,
a shell of a person
that not a soul would dare envy?
it's not fair, the flickers of your heartbeat,
the essence of your gait, the high notes of your dreams.
for you, i could cry cascades of tears
that form a chain of seven years.
for you, i twist myself into a heartbroken pretzel
because i do not accept the things
i cannot change. i don't like to believe in miracles
because it's so miraculous when they happen.
but it so happens
that you do exist
and i must come to terms with this fact.
i must somehow believe that you were sent here
to achieve noble ends, redeem, inspire,
lift someone other than yourself
above the widening mire.
i must somehow believe, that lurking inside
some covered up kernel, you
are capable of sainthood, martyrdom maybe
for a cause that you come to embody
all by yourself.
i might delight myself in an orgy of these fantasies,
yet, your existence is still a complex mystery
a mystery that really does frighten me.
looking glass
gnarled voices tattle. mousey feet tiptoe
and then rattle. breakfast choice: the usual battle.
banshee screams often pierce as desperate knocks
addle. the ride can be very bumpy
like being on a steed with no saddle
but we don't float adrift, without a paddle
on those sisyphus mornings
constricted as a coffin.
evenings: anticlimactic, when house restriction is no fiction,
poisonous predilection.
society's biggest affliction is that we all get up each day
pretending that the future is automatic possibility,
the past a blank slate
swabbed by the brush of inevitability.
we forget, quite easily, that the past could be the future.
at times, this seems to be a surety.
looking out past the looking glass,
we take-carers know a single thing:
that we have real job security.
staff meetings
we think great and do less, measure our success
in grains of sand. years of abuse and neglect,
we can't hope to correct in a month or two
or four.
time's passing glance is ignored; we start late
and end early today, because nothing much has changed.
maybe, nothing much ever does, or can.
agenda items: a new seating arrangement for the van,
one child's pending ascent into foster home purgatory,
what about the ceiling's incurable leak,
and how is it possible
to finish up the week?
we debate, discuss, believe there is trust.
but trust is a topic that we all take for granted
a topic that is barely discussed.
sometimes
sometimes, it would be a relief
if our smiles were as genuine as our grief.
wary noses and clenched eyebrows,
plus teeth ready to strike and ears pricked like pit bulls.
sometimes, it would be a boon
if we could find something positive amidst the gloom.
a cluster of hearts sold out by the murk of future,
legs paralyzed by a legacy of letdowns
that accumulate like cancer cells in a smoked out lung.
arms that flail for a passing rescue vessel
that turns out to be a cheap rendition of salvation.
sometimes, innocence lost should be felt, and missed.
no times in the sandbox without rubbing bruises,
no sled rides down hillsides sans a spanking yell.
not even a hint of affection as a toddler,
left to wallow in a thrift store crib
staring at a parent whose gaze bears down
like an executioner who faces his victim.
sometimes, we show good manners
just to please the probing pencil pushers
who wander our residence like lost tourists,
pretend our collective fates are in the hands
of people paid enough to care.
got to go
she makes defecation into murals, plastered poop
creating nubile forms and bizarre fantasies.
fossilized fecal frustration found
behind her heating vent, splotchy underwear
carefully hid amidst a tangle of sheets.
with her, we go through more pull-ups
than an army boot camp
yet, what she does with excrement
is really not our problem.
“i've got to go,” she never says,
preferring to use her rectum
to keep everyone at bay.
our society would rather flush
what she makes into a statement.
her room, anally decorated,
the lone window could never save it.
poverty's crinkled misery
plus her own emotions disconnected
from anything that we can clean up.
safari of the mind
they sit in a circle, arms raised in perfect unison.
they have just seen a geographic special.
how to bridge such a vast geocultural gap:
the masai build houses made of shit, serve cow's blood
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, have jeweled necks
that extend like giraffes, dance to the pulse
of original sunsets.
“why are they so black?” ponders one resident,
surveying his peers for the slightest hint of melanin.
“do they like to watch pokemon?” queries another, imagining
a village full of larger than life television sets.
but the staff is like an elephant who never forgets,
merciful, quaking at such prefabricated racism
and cultural superiority, but wondering why
they should feel this way.
why they?
in the bowels of their gut, it is obvious
they feed off the bottom, get thrown the scraps
of a rapidly decaying process.
maybe, they want to be masai,
maybe, they want to take a safari of the mind,
if they could ever leave their realities behind.
mistaken identity
you stated, in a tone as soft as dewdrops,
that i reminded you of somebody.
somebody bad. monstrous, perhaps.
some sort of earnest xwily chromosomer
with those same cuts of jade for eyes,
weathered hair that refuses to part or weave,
a single serpentine eyebrow
that moves across the forehead
like a slow river’s meander.
perhaps, you want to believe
that i'm capable of the same evil.
perhaps, that would make you feel safer.
and i do think bad thoughts, sometimes-
like drawing and quartering tyrants
who are bought with my taxes,
slashing the tires of random scummers,
spiking the punch at wall street cocktail parties
with lighter fluid. still, the question remains:
would the world be a better place
without their cult of sinister personality?
no, because they have the exact same plans for us.
tit for tat: still not where it's at.
still, i do think bad thoughts, but never of you.
in light of your personal pillage, i only wish to be
a gated village, the kind of place
that could vaporize those memories
that constantly flog you,
and follow you with stiletto glares.
sometimes, i think your life is a high speed car chase
but it's your car that must crash into the median.
truth be revealed, you really don't have to like me
but please do me this one small favor-
separate my proven historical facts from the wraith
of a demented past.
can i have a hug?
his body speaks of needing warmth, but
he must petition first. a point could be lost
for an ambushing embrace, the look on her face
wants a dad and a mom, someone to be real with,
natural, like the wind that blows
to push away what is not needed.
he clings to my waist like a holster,
what is not needed
but essential at the same time
is the berlin wall that i must construct
to keep you from actually
loving me.
role model, part deux
you look at me to model
the life you would choose, or so i've been told
through a billion random clues.
indeed: i must act, speak, think, for many more than me.
it's not something archaic nothing formulaic or algebraic
about being this kind of role model.
you can admit, sometimes i let you down
like rapunzel's hair, a story you enjoy
at night before bed. those tuck-ins
are always fraught with dismay,
the angst seeps like mildew.
she knows, from the arch of her forehead
to the temple of her toes,
that i'm quite the role model.
i don't fancy the wine bottle much.
i consume three perfectly square organic meals per day
do yoga stretches as the falling sun catches.
i read radical politics with an eye for evolution
debate with a choir of progressives
the best possible solution.
she may or may not know those things,
would prefer that my private life
become a magazine to be glanced over
in the waiting room
to self-empowerment.
she's a role model for a walking ablution,
thrown to reaganomic wolves
quite frothy with greed.
ninety eight pounds of sacrifice,
indeed.
without all the fanfare, thank you letters to the editor,
or yellow ribbons. that's right, no yellow ribbons
made in patriotic chinese sweatshops
to honor this subtle soldier, dodging mines
scattered profusely across a landscape
where fear is choleric.
how could we ever forget that she is a warrior,
shadowboxing with laws and biases,
legacies and ideologies
that conspire to dominate?
wait.
her life could be a good deed
because inside her desire to please
is the primeval seed
that we desperately need.
lemongrass nights
this awkward facade of fitting-in,
mistaken for a normal teenager
complete with forced freak-show
pant cuttings and punk rock hair strands,
looking back to a dead era
when being original was way more appealing
than the temptation to carbon copy.
a saffron savior plucked you up, sobbing,
from the banks of the chao praya.
the scent of lemongrass worn by soup pots,
a tangle of scooters jousting for pavement,
overgrown banyans and undersized prostitutes.
flash-forward, fourteen years later,
eons of trashed memories plus
oodles of switched identities.
the wealth of a chattering ski town,
your house is much bigger
than the gold-crusted temple
where the monks once took you in.
from nothing to something
without appreciating
what nothing was.
your record trails tears down your street.
you wanted to carve up your adopted mom
like a crazed benihana, while listening
to the wrong songs
by madonna.
reactive attachment disorder, is what the phd’s call it,
but you never reacted badly
to our attachment.
one night, you asked me to explain thailand.
i envisioned naked robes flowing with cell phones,
the wind of fish sauce and mangoes, teeming paddies,
roving troops of german backpackers
getting directions from elegant dancers
whose gyrations sold cultural pride
to the highest bidder.
we cooked a dinner to help you remember.
the first taste of lemongrass,
flirting with flecks of basil
your durian skin
twinkling on high.
the other kids mostly tossed
their tom kar gai
but you savored it
like a famished slave
to the grind,
realizing that what you are now
is everything that you have left
behind.
therapeutic wreck
a.
i am the ball that gets passed around, lost,
then found, sometimes silent, at other moments
making quite a loud sound.
i never know what person
will choose to hold me, but can be certain
that i will be passed along
before too long.
sometimes, i am dropped, rolled, kicked,
even left behind for other youngsters and grownups
who don't really know me
or care
to drop, roll, and kick.
i am the ball that gets passed around, lost,
then found, sometimes flat, at other moments
bouncing high across the ground.
i cannot predict what adults
will want to do with me, but can be sure
that i will be used to fill some void, meet a deeper need.
sometimes, i am spotlit, ignored, highlighted, glossed over,
even left behind for other youngsters and grownups
who don't really know me
or care
to drop, roll, and kick:
think i get due respect?
the very fact of my being: a therapeutic wreck.
b.
the very fact of my being:
permanent wear and tear mind wandering off
over here and there
murderous glare and beaten-up hair.
i am:
a muted symphony of despair
a castaway trumpet that won’t blare
a godless prayer.
perhaps, my yin and my yang will never mate
and form a pair.
i don't view adults as my friends, and other children
exploit me for their own narrow ends.
for me, time just suspends, life's a hanging bridge
between two worlds
that won't make amends.
i am:
a tree that lacks branches
a sea without waves
i don't get enough chances
to astonish or amaze.
nevertheless, tiny blossoms of hope somehow spring
from the soil of my breast
because i could pass any test
despite feeling constantly distressed
and utterly depressed.
month and years go by, without any rest
and still
i'm yet to show the cosmos
my very best.
