the president of peace

his advisers advise: war is mighty unpopular,
people get squeamish when we bomb children
and play god with governments and of course
their disgust evolves to outrage once they learn
that they're the ones footing the bill.

so he promised peace
lifting the people onto his shoulders
showing them that the horizon line
isn't so far as we'd believed

and the people believed in peace
and the people argued for peace
and the people voted for peace

so the president of peace wins
and is sworn in
and the warmth of peace
perceived fills the body politic
like a soothing serum

then the president goes through
those doors, the doors which
all presidents have passed through,
into the enclave of maps and missions,
where the globe in the center of the room
spins furiously, never stopping,
and the president of peace pausing,
absorbing all, advice and threats receiving,
sees the intelligence gathering,
hears the masses whispering,
on his tongue the taste of bombing,
in his head the sweep of mourning,

yet when the president emerges from the room
you can see in his eyes
that what was promised is slipping,
that our war is perpetually continuing

A Mother's Burden

Here is something I want you to hear, white people.
You... are free. But we... are loose.

These are the words of a mother,
whose daughter crossed the sea
to lay down her life
for a wretch like me.

And she's conflicted.

Conflicted that we print the
swim times of the kid who
raped an unconscious girl
behind a dumpster,
but when a black man
is shot for owning a gun
and uhh... well, he looks
a lot like our suspect,
with that wide nose,
we print his record
and mine his lifetime
for proof of his errors
to justify state-sanctioned
execution.

Which is another way to say,
we comb for clues to their humanity
so that we may fully dehumanize
the dead.

So yes, she is conflicted.

She puts her life second
below the nebulous crib of country
and risks for
all names, sorts, types, tracks,
all religions and notions, occupations,
all strata, all shades, all distortions.
Though they call the same place home,
she comes home conflicted.

Majored in psychology,
been serving overseas,
and still I can feel that 
they hate me.

And in the supermarkets they follow me.
And in their homes they chastise me.
And at traffic stops they are allowed
to kill me.

That confliction, I cannot grasp,
laying your life down for folks
who can't look past your skin,
while somehow still refusing to see it.

I have not wrung this out
to counter guilt, or feel better about it,
though I'm not convinced that
writing is ever anything else.

I am sharing a story of a woman whose name I missed,
who spoke with the strength I know comes from
living and battling a life that I could never measure,
about her selfless daughter who could someday
die for us conflicted.

and some, i assume, are good players

A racist has entered the game
and there is no counter-play

except to tilt, tilt, tilt
the screen from your humanity.

The bastard plasters obscenities
and loathes Peru in particular.

[insert furiously typed diatribe]
[a copy-pasted hate sermon]

Dude, what did Peru do to you?
Did it steal your determination?

Did it ruin your white life?
Ah, we will never play again,

but it comforts me to think
of you in the brooding dark,

brow contorted, slick fingers
flying over the keys,

squinting through the fog
of war, counting your enemies.

You make nine of them each game.
Your world is getting smaller.

And wouldn't it be nice, you think,
if the river was ten feet taller.

emptyhead

walking barefoot carefully
avoiding what's left of the ant war

counting up my days remaining
calculating what it's all for

caving in to what gets me through
wishing this empty felt more like levity

hoping you guess at what I mean
from all the way across the sea

binge-watching that show you love
with your ghost audibly sighing

letting every good one go
though not for lack of trying

this again

oh I feel again
the great nervous
shakedown of my
arms extended
outward

snapping
in the winds
of change

keep your windows open

birdsong
seeps into the vents

the present massive
tense atmosphere
requires a balloon

to make use
of the many
subtleties at large

omni-passing
particles

entrench
themselves
through the tracks

the birdsong's gone

but it's sure
to come back

i'm from saturn and i'm here to help

picture a night-sky
pastoral

the fingernails
of the planets
stream past

a procession
of flaked
potential

a ring of dust

a stucco'd mobile

keeping the
whirling cosmos
in its cradle

magnifying the
small distance
between us

proving to me
that we are much closer
than you believe

You're Gonna Learn Someday

It's tough,
no doubt about it,
to walk straight
when all you
do is stare
at the cracks
in the cement.

If I never
opened my mouth,
or committed
words to a page,
I would never
again be tried
for a false or hurtful
statement.

I clog my ears
with gossip,
I stuff my shoes
with the rocks
I have thrown.
I rub my eyes
down to nubs,
trying to erase
all the trouble
I have caused.

I fall
through the holes
formed from
when I busted
my body open,
hoping to find
the piece of me
that I lost.

It's gonna take some time
to give back the time
in the best way I know how.

I'm gonna figure out how
to quit missing what I gave up,
quit missing this moment now.

One day
I'm gonna learn,
when push
comes to shove,
what it really means
to love.

hoo ra

memories are cheap
so it's no wonder I sit around remembering
like a prince i passed judgment
on the pastimes crumpled like a wad
of would-you-be-mine
and if it were the time for celebrating
I'd raise an empty glass and chuck it
across the tracks 'cause I see no cause
for calamity except the contradictions
constricting me, signing my name
on the kiss-crossed line
in hopes that I will be released
from my daily contract

well don't you love me
mirror mirror quit stalling
I am taking out a policy on you
expecting a splinter so deep
to puncture my nosebone
making a modern Flinstone outta me
dude I wish I was that punk
man I wish that this funk
was only temporary but it seems
more likely that it's just something
I'm gonna haffta graft to myself
and make it an accessory,
a feature length memory

c'mon up you shady nasties
I got a pretty, a pretty, a pretty
noose for you
doesn't matter what you are
if you've got the feel
of a night-terror then I'm sure
you're terrible and that
is reason enough to celebrate
seeing you sway like a curtain
of beads in the doorway
get outta my way

just a partridge
in the patriarchy
trynna evolve into an animal
worth feeding

Collision

my throat is in ribbons
from the dozen cigarettes
saving me daily

one throat for a lifeboat
I'd say that's fair trade
I'd say I've got it made

now I watch the burning
bridge jump back
from the water

now the grass
begins to show

these days I draft up
my dark blueprints
with the stubbornness
of the sea

thinking maybe I should
have been an architect

these days have been
like a cigarette— feels good,
and killing me