Murica 2020: A Haiku

gun nation under
fraud with misery and in-
Justice Let It Fall.

Why

Are We the Ones

Who keep dying?

Expiring, forced retiring,

The last sweat perspiring.

Do we die

Because nobody we like

Or admire

Is hiring?

Attention: now firing.

When all the ice is melted,

And all the animals extinct,

Maybe

It still won’t be the bad guys

Relentless funeral pyring.

Me: still perspiring.

Dropping rivulets of fret sweat,

Never going to forget

The complicated psychedelic relics 

That you naturally beget,

Showing us that our best friend

Is a person whom we have not yet

Met.

I can picture you parading

Around some swirly nebula town

Wearing a retro frilly gown,

Most of the time, life

Is just a smile turned

Upside down, and we struggle

To wash all the bile down,

The stacks of small hatreds

And sharded frustrations,

Hesitant revolutions

And full throttle rebellions,

Our world now

Is truly only recognizable

To those who want to leave it. 

on xmas mourning

Anyburb, USA.

it was his fourth frown of the morning,
not just any mourning, a spoilt statue
islanded, surrounded by the scuffy hardwood surface
and its random archipelagos of Christmas wrapping,
ripped up and cast off, him feeling
cast away, feeling like the present
that is not present
is the only one worth celebrating:
entitled to nothing less
than always deserving of more.

Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.

it was his nineteenth frown of the morning,
just like any mourning, a stuck statue
bunched, surrounded by the glossy factory floor
and its stretched radii of nimble, kinetic fingers,
ripped off and cast apart, him feeling
cast away, feeling like the present
which is always present
is never one worth celebrating:
entitled to nothing less
than always deserving of more.

When a Year Dies on a Bed of Our Own Scripted Making

“It pains me to say this, today's humans only look human, but act like animals. They judge before they understand - they conclude before they realize - they proclaim before they recognize. They talk about harmony yet in their psyche they are more broken and conflicted than a broken glass. As a result, harmony has become yet another pompous ideology for them to take pride in, without sacrificing anything on their part.”

― Abhijit Naskar, Fabric of Humanity

Some years end with eulogies of joyful regret, some years

End with eulogies of mere, bitter expedience.

Today, on this last day of a most testing year, I made myself a nest

Out of plushy cushions and straddling blankets.

I observed the gentle, insistent dance of snowflakes descending

Like curtains of pale promise, through a toowide window

Fogged with the coldest vapor making unexpected shapes.

This year ends with mere, bitter expedience, and we can see

How the funeral ceremony for 2018

Actually perspires, dripping saddened sweat through

Overwhelmed, overworked pores, because

Those who knew the year well are not push n’ shove,

Taking reluctant, halfhearted turns at the podium, searching deep recesses

For nice things to say, honestly kind words that could cherish a legacy,

Something pleasant and hopeful to bury the deadness of lost months:

With some measure of grace and aplomb.  The crowd at this year’s funeral

Is as sparse as high points during a tsunami, as pitiful present

As endangered penguins huddled in frosted, desperate scrums,

And the speakers continue their litany of measured meanings,

And the eulogies build to a keynote crescendo as unintelligible

As a fortune teller paid to make up reassuring, poll-tested drivel,

And the meager crowd, festooned in penguin suited angst, starts to only

Anticipate the escapist orgy of the pending reception, to be held

In a fortified, way way underground bunker helpfully distant

From the wantonly destructive whims

Of Mama Nature in Full Resistance, as if

Holding a party for the hottest year on record (or close)

Would make sense on the surface, where

An unseeable rising sea or forgotten forest fire

Might eagerly predate, and then 
Completely devastate.

There will be none of that, no snatching of fake fun

From this maybe Endtime glee, as the orchestra plays on,

Playing the playlist from the post-iceberg Titanic,

Penguin-suited mirthful mourners rearranging tables and chairs,

To preserve their familiar cliques of ideologies both failed and active,

Making sure that the gold-plated elevator back up to the top

Only has room for the top .1 percent

Of committed survivor-strivers and sooncome despots.

Yet, suddenly, the broad bunker, with near perfect acoustics,

Begins to churn, through the walls of standing steel,

And a long-lasted, hyper-cooling, aggressive breeze captures the space,

And each and every head-scratching, half-drunken participant

Seeks solace in the hope of leaving self-selected groupings

And constricted, painstaking minglings behind, suddenly, most unpredictably,

Forming a geometrically perfect circle that discards 
Silly, sectarian secrecies and twisted, tribalistic tirades, 
Safe knowing only

That Evolution is the only solution.

I take a pause, staring through a toowide window

Now completely obscured by winter’s damp deluge,

And come to recognize that the mystery of 2019

Could fast become a puzzle easily solved,

Its pieces forming solid, stable, ready-linked continents without much effort,

If only the Best of us would, or could, see the inclusive, expansive panorama

Instead of the intimate, narrow portrait.     

if Los Migrantes were (just) tortillas

i. 

if Los Migrantes were just tortillas,
nutritious maize frisbees instead
of hopeful husks of human striving,
then the border would open wide
like the desert sky that waistline bursts
to project countless, constellating star-chains.

if Los Migrantes were just tortillas,
discs of dietary staple instead
of kempt kernels of human struggling,
then every icestapo agent would cheer,
and exchange handcuffs for Cholula,
swap searchlights for cebollitas,
and trade patrol cars for al pastor.

if Los Migrantes were just tortillas,
mass-consumed raza rings instead
of sturdy stalks of human hoping,
then every menacing minuteman
would mission abort, every racist politician
would relent, every xenophobic citizen
would stop caring, and drive-through
taco bell with newfound purpose.

if Los Migrantes were just tortillas,
if the popular, perennial product
of the original corn people
were the People themselves, then
not a single pinche gringo would complain, in hysterical hypocrisy,
about tough jobs being stolen, a few criminals running rampant,
we would not need the presumed haven of sanctuary cities,
or have to hold vigils in front of mammoth detention centers.

what
if we could celebrate the hands,
the grape-gnarled, rake-rashed,
bleach-battered, quite sore hands
that hold tortillas before and after work,
and during,
have been eating them since long before
the first presumptuous norteamericano
ever tried a taco, tlayuda, or tostada?

what
if we could celebrate the mouths,
the chile-crammed, tequila-trammeled,
mole-mingled, quite eager mouths
that eat tortillas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
have been eating them since long before
the heirs of james polk
ever devoured a chalupa, chimichanga, or chilaquile?

what
if we could celebrate the feet,
the field-fraught, linoleum-lashed,
scaffold-scarred, quite tired feet
that rest only to eat tortillas on break,
have been eating them since long before
the earliest train of cancun spring breakers
ever enjoyed a fajita, frijolada, or flauta?

if Los Migrantes were just tortillas, if the offspring
of Chac, Kukulcan, and Ixtab
were as casually cherished as their 
culinary legacy, then NAFTA would stand
for Need Another Freakin Tortilla Already,
the border wall would finally fall
to scatter its toxic, turdistic rubble
like shards of crushed Tostitos,
and paths to citizenship would be freely invented
for every child, woman, and man
who dreams of embracing
the paining possibilities of el norte.

if Los Migrantes were just tortillas, if the descendants
of  Tlaloc, Quetzacoatl, and Tezcatlipoca 
were as finely feted as their
agricultural output, then every vulturous coyote would
become irrelevant, every conniving customs official
must find a new career, and any delusional voter
would require a fresh scapegoat.

because we need more high quality creative writing programs in elementary schools

i.
his face: a banged-up car, that insurance would not cover,
haloed by spaghetti-strings of dangling hair,
knowing too much more
than his environs allow.  and how.

his #1 #2 pencil situates
like some primed nuclear warhead
in the slot canyon between
earlobe and scalp,
nestled in his right hand
a dark purple bic
that scrawls fanciful hieroglyphs,
torrenting down a half-empty sheet
to tell a story that, like global warming,
is essential to fathom: yet much
easier ignored.

ii.

these corpulent, constant constellations
of well-watered flowers,
robust rows of picked, published blooms,
fertilized by an entitled essence
better than the other leading brand,
the one whose skull and crossboned label
simply says:
"don't you know you must wilt?"

random, refreshable rain
turns these gaunt garden paths
into runaway rivers,
yet, due to their special circumstance,
none of these cherished, cheery flowers
could, or would, ever drown.

maybe poetry is just good coffee

the poet-leader defined, without passion,
poetry thus:
"ideas and images filtered
through a voice."

I insta-magined, with passion,

the drip-drippy-drip
of pure, bittersweet language,
strained out of impure syllables,
the welcome trickling letter-kinds
made into frothing liquid lines,
ready to fill up
such eager collegiate cups
with new-brew hot thoughts.