Sets & Counting

Boggle my skin with numbers

I am counting the spaces between here

and my bed.

A single fret made to be out of space,

dimensions in a frame. 

Realms like {P1, P4, P19, P22} 

This language does not belong,

But box springs still level me 

cramming to embrace connections,

connections that may only be seen by satellites.

I'm closer to dandelions 

7 floors up near the skyline,

letting Lord & Taylor kiss my eyes. 

Horizontal

Compressed 

Blessed,

I am folding my knees.

Fluorescent energy through thermal detecting goggles,

my burning eyelids makes my pupils a sauna,

and sweating pores release scandalous details of my dreams. 

It is still early.

A scolding glue gun plasters my mouth shut.

Shut me up.

shut me up.

Build my Jenga blocks up to the ceiling,

then knock me down.

The carpet will carry me-- 

Drifting, drifting,

I do not feel subtraction signs,

this desk is more like a backdrop of grapefruits impersonating skies.

Self-division spares me while I travel but do not deliver.

Hamlet's conclusion smacks me,

Finally-my hand is raised.

Open up my Jackbox,

Now fill it with sound. 

2-in-1, The You in Me.

I sleep in my day clothes sometimes. Because my body needs to collapse, and I absolutely love when my body talks to me, tells me what it needs. I sit on the throne for hours every night, letting out my stomach, but also letting words fly out my mind. Behind a locked door, whether in silence or with Lana Del Rey, Buddhist beats, or Arabian symphonies playing, I love staring. Sometimes I stare at myself and try to examine what I can fix tomorrow, but tomorrow is already here. My colors will change, I am only just a young brown girl committing myself to Beatles' version of love, an ideal life, and wishful thinking over top a thin page. Like I said, tomorrow is here. You are here. I love sleeping naked with you because I could never share with someone how much I love my own skin, and being in it. I'm comfortable to be a confident that was taken from me when I was a child. I spend hours each day reflecting on how I can infuse all that was lost into my brother. He is worthy. Above all, we are worthy. Although I don't have the courage to raise the phone to my ear and listen to his voice, I pray he feels me sending him all the energy I am trying to collect for myself, and for the people around who enjoy my light. I feel the pressure weighing down at my knee caps each time I see someone suffer, and it is all too often. There are too many broken hearts and half-invested spirits. If it ever seems like I am too "open", it's because I want to be everyone's bridge and dab of holy water. I want to sprinkle a little bit of my heart everywhere I go to ensure everyone I come across gets all the love I never received myself. My father told me the same thing after sharing a story of how he was beaten in Salvador by his blood, explaining the dead bodies he saw walking to school, 8 years old. War. Destruction. Holes in his blujeans and space for his toes to creep outside of his shoes. He had nothing. We own nothing. Entitlement means nothing. The cliche phrase "you cannot change the world until you, first, change yourself" sits on the throne with me, which is why I am clay. I easily sacrifice and adapt to shifting myself for other people. Of course, I am strong. If I don't feel like a shift needs to be made in me, I won't put effort into doing so. I am my own project building, an in-sterile complex. Sometimes I piss on my walls and throw cigarette buds on the sandpaper floor of my elevators. I spray paint the hallways of my heart so all the dark edges can share some pastels. Mema always told me those colors look best on me anyway, why not inside of me? You reward me by helping me recognize all of this. And even though I speak faulty spanglish, love to pick my boogers, panic at the sight of darkness, and let my eyes leak for wilting flowers...you love the inches of me. I cannot be filled up with anymore humility. I am bowing at my knees, I face the floor in constant child's pose. I won't stop until I can look up in sivassana and cry blood pumped from my arteries. This is my stomach coiling for you, tonight.

"I am going to get a water, do you want anything?"
You.

Rinse, Repeat (2/24/12)

Recycled words tend to mean something when they don’t mean a thing
Recycled words like trash rolled down the highway
Used up and shriveled over like the ones you threw my way
Recycled words slapped through the next one’s skull
Improper navigation, no way to find the sweet origin and squeeze each letter from above.
Adornment, luxury, desire, frustration
All representing the structure of our previous relation.
Outraged and defeated, I retreated to my hole
Wondering how I could ever think my words would bring you home.
So each distasteful memory
shed out ancient disposal as opposed to the joyous scripture your partner read
It was worthless, a fretted incident.
Recycled words like recycled dreams,
Upsetting the stomach of anticipated things.
Like meeting the future and greeting it with a smile
Freeing my inner perceptions and aiming them in your direction,
Without another vile human to mislead either side.
But why would I? “Too far ahead,” says consultants and friends,
Nevertheless you still hold the lease to rent the space in my head.
Recycled words never felt so raw, a dead bird with the face cut off.
The face and fixture of what once was and could be,
Ripped apart and torn to pieces, shriveled up paper with a messed up thesis.
Emotional curse, dark clouds all around
Drown…drown…drown.

"Now" In July (2012)

Visualizations of a woman making it on her own
Ownership of self, self-delusional expectations of betterment
Better sweat, always perspired with joyous flings set on different strings
Another tone among other things.
Watching other people’s oxy levels increase and bubbles of magic never decease
doesn’t allow my own space to be free in your love.
I want to condense myself into a gas that inflates my own mind with growth
Choking the ideas and aggravating assumptions of lustful eyes and family ties.
Size me up and break down my skeleton to the core of its destruction
A human suffering under the pressure points, pushing her own buttons.
We don’t need to be a tragedy
I want to see squares and triangles stay with me or let me be
No in betweens, these accumulating treasures are measured in the grief that will be when I set them free
I want to break down the paradigms and paradoxes of freedom in shackles
I want to examine the universe at all angles and entangle myself within your intestinal bangles
My stomach is forever a place for you to throw your misinterpreted mold
Mildew green and stuck on the walls of myself, I trail off track looking for a spot to dispose of your ungracious grace and pasteurized slack.

Insecurity- Unfinished

There was a girl with a droopy nose, covering her lips like a flamingo
Pink and white as ever made
Yoga retreat, the quiet made her day complete
In autumn leaves, brown and green
The lemons of life don’t grow on her trees
There was a girl with a droopy nose, covering her lips like a flamingo
Her insecurity secured by tightly criss-crossed fists
The crowd thought it was merely politeness
Her feet faced forward because somehow she knew where she was headed in moments of crisis
There was a girl with a droopy nose, covering her lips like a flamingo
Her moldy brown Puma bag covered her chest,
carrying all her false passions and pretentious radioactive presets
The peace deal Reality made with her just couldn’t cut the sleaze loose
X ray vision deem her inadequate of hiding what’s under her sleeves
But her eyes won’t give a truce
There was a girl with a droopy nose, covering her lips like a flamingo
Her white K-Swiss looking misfits smuggled themselves out the double doors of train wreckage
Onto the street, she’s making the bed wet with tears of momma’s opening
She came from heat, the dog’s natural instinct, “love-child”. Love, child. To child, with love.