I know it I know it I know it

It’s ok guys I’m putting it away

In and out like the wind my tongue flickers through words faster than my brain can process them, jumping ahead leaping over boulders 

my words transcend become one

Eat crow again and again to no end to the viciousness of innocent crimes committed time and again daily 

idly imbibing sand fills my mouth escalating escape envisions fantasy visions bleep counting sheep once more it ends begins no end time begins ends

Tomorrow is mother’s day I get my way automatically it is whatever I say it is - honor my motherhood day

I know it I know it I know it

I can show you how to do it,

I know it

Listen to the words the beat shows I know it

Reverberations dance in my eyes and visions hide

no one but me can see

Illicit Romanic Encounter

Meet me outside clandestinely

Kiss me passionately

No one else has to know

I promise not to tell

Agree to meet at Starbucks on
Second Avenue at 80th Street

where hopefully, no one knows us.

I reckon you’ll be late but you
beckon me from the corner

On rare occasions when we meet and you think
no one else sees, you pull me to you fiercely

Playfully and forcefully, always by surprise

Press your lips down hard push

your tongue between my lips

enter without consent

Your hand holds my neck firmly,

your other hand applies pressure to my face

Suddenly, like an unexpected summer storm
Flashes of lightning and downpour on a sunny day,
quickly disappears, the sun
brighter than before the storm

you’re gone in less than ten seconds

Maybe when we’re 80 we can finally get together

again you’ll whisper sweet nothings, stare in my eyes

but then you won’t turn and leave me
We’ll have a few years together before I die

I can always dream
Maybe I'll be a size four when I'm eighty

Then you'll want me forever
You like little slim girls
Not a big girl like me size eleven or twelve

I want to be smaller but that’s not what it is

You just like her more than me she’s trimmer has more muscle

She is artistic just like me

Besides you love her, not me

So why do you insist every time we meet

When I least expect it you act like you’re only being friendly

Suddenly you grab me and my dreams are reawakened
in an unbridled sunrise explosion

Maybe when I’m eighty you'll finally be all alone
Maybe then it will be different

Spill the Beans, A Drug Dealer Poem

Scat it verbally

Rift through a blind alley

I stumble through a valley of words

I am not forsaken

I do not deny the allegations swimming in my head

My tone-deaf ears betray my frustration as I try to work through them

Deny the valley of death, I stumble ahead

A new gestation of wandering words joins the tribe

wondering where to go before I die

I digest the contents

Of a symphony, words define my lust

betrays and defines my trust

Ignore the shallow depths, I forge ahead.

Follow a new design

Wallow in just and fine deserts,

dust my mind free of desert sand

Trust in salvation

Like a fruit fly,

I follow light breathlessly without focus

jealousy becomes wounds inside out

from way back in the day,

Lucky to have survived till today.

So many chances and choices - should’ve beens and could’ve beens

never evolving to more than a memory of a dream

Live to survive

Reminisce on what could’ve been; still not dead

An angel stands between me and death

Consumed by an urge for vanilla fudge ice cream

Trapped in the midst of a drug heist

I live to tell how the story went down that night

My son asleep in his bed by the window

they climbed down the fire escape from the roof to enter his room

Stoned cold criminals, killers seeking drugs we survive to tell the allegory.

Our son slept beneath an open window the moon gazing in

My husband went to the window, screaming

Grabbed our son from our one-bedroom flat where he rested on his mat

on the floor and handed our son to the retired old couple from Spain next door

took our son from Felix’s arms.

Later they watched Felix through their peephole.

He held a wooden kitchen chair by its leg and went in the hallway, swinging it.

Cowardly and afraid, the criminals ran away.

My husband took my baby son to my sister’s that night

Caught between enemies on all sides, the law and so-called friends are enemies

No one on my side, and me a mother, woes multiply

The world reversed her orbit tonight I swore it was over

One way or another I had to start another life - survive

Wounds of a life lived so hard there’s no escape

I take root in another fight to be won delight in moonlight

A miracle to survive a story to be told

Yes, I had someone to be and someplace to go go go go go

Peace be upon you

I think of what could be if my sisters, me,

And my brothers were really tight

All the hate dissipated to make the world right

Choose to see with different sight

Please beg for peace, no more fights

Emit brain signals

Send the waves out of mind

Soon will be out of time

Like legions of artists behind

My voice treads on their graves

Pays tribute to wishes for peace

Vibration moves inside lives changed a joint trance

Formulations for peace, throw out illusion

Breathe, eat and sing peace

moves through my hair in my eyes

Feast on peace

Visions move no skin tones, colors

no place alone

peace oceans and sand

breathe peace explore peace

Barish, Béke, Damai, Friður, La Paz, Iri'ni, Laule‘a,

Nanna Ayya, Pingan,

Pokój, Rahu, Shalom, Salaam Alaikum,

Shîte, Wolakota, Udo, Assalmu Alaikum,

Emit the pulse, Om shanti

Om Mani Padme Hum

Peace be upon you

Peace radiating out into the universe

_________________________________________

*Peace in several languages:

Barish, Turkish

Béke, Hungarian

Damai, Indonesian

Friður, Icelandic

Iri'ni, Greek

La Paz, Spanish

Nanna Ayya Chickasaw

Laule‘a  Hawaiian -Peaceful, happy

Pingan, Chinese

Pokój , Polish, Slovak

Rahu, Estonian

Shîte, Tibetan

Udo, Igbo

Wolakota, Lakhota

Life is a story waiting to be told

At night, my life’s energy burns through my skin. I try to sleep but keep waking up, kicking off the covers until the moisture dries and cools me with tranquility.

Growing more isolated, observing puppets in the grander scheme of events; aspiring, trying and expiring.

Out of sight out of mind.

He told me I had bedroom eyes. 

I said, “What does that mean?”

“They’re very sexy,” he said haltingly.

“How lame!” I exclaim, “at least you could comment on the color or say something about how the blue green color is unusual.”

The days pass in a whirl of appointments looking through strange windows.

Stringing along, smiling and singing a song; a pawn trying to escape with no superpowers or magic cape.

The moons gone astray and my minds lost all day. No one’s home minding the store. I stay to finish day after day between four walls closed in yet so far away.