I would like to be married to a poem

What I would like is to be married
to a poem, one that's easy to understand. Of course,
there would be nothing to blame
but love at first sight, the ripple of words
settling on my artless tongue. I would not be able to shake off
the taste of it because its make is much like mine: ash so sullied
that it no longer knows what's safe to contain. A poem is easy
to love because it's not convinced about how complicated
it really is. So unlike its writer, who is beside himself with
grief over his own mystery. You can hold
hands with a poem at night and it won't wonder at
your sudden affection. If you take it to the movies
it will laugh at your favorite parts and will try to mimic
how Woody Allen talks during emptier times. It likes
long walks and dates at the beach because it knows nothing
of cliches. Oh wouldn't it be nice, to be married like that, to
a masterpiece so finite and complete in itself, something that
says, even at your worst days, how much you are loved.

the pickpocket

In my dreams, it is always summer
and the boy in those dreams is always picking pockets. He
never tells me why. My mother, she
does not know this boy
but he looks a lot like her. I am waiting for him to step
up to me and say On my watch, you're never
going to die. And I dread that day but in my dreams,
everything is still in place so I try not to be too afraid. The dreams
aren't always about the boy. Some of
them are about how the wind
makes the red kite fly. The kite is a miracle
making zigzag patterns on a sky
that is overcast with sadness.
I think I've never seen anything lovelier than that,
except maybe for
the boy's hands, how small and
insignificant they look. I'm sorry,
I could've sworn that the dreams were not all
about him but they were.
Strangely, he moves me. The kite never has, honestly. Like
many things, it acts as a disinterested constant,
floating around and
doing nothing spectacular. But the boy was fast
and careful, always
making someone's load less heavy. In today's dream,
I see him lifting the sun out of someone's
beach bag. For a moment, he
makes believe he is stealing from God.
But I know he is not; I know he knows the truth for
God is not here. He is in someone
else's summer dream,
picking someone else's pockets with
bright, small hands.

Parting Season

This is the season for giving up -- cold and
impersonal; rainwater slinking off the alley like some

anonymous drunk. Somebody invented the first broken
heart to match the color of rain. My grandfather used to tell

me that you would never really know,
wouldn't be able to pinpoint, the exact time

when you are let go by a person you love. Was it on that
specific moment when he was doing something as ordinary

as washing last night's dishes or staring at the green sock on his
left foot when he thought of you as something lost,

as if he received word that you have died yesterday in a collage
of car crashes, mounted secretly in his mind. Or was it

on that very second when he looked at you from across
your small, round dinner table as you said "Pass the green peas, please."

If you had decided to look long enough, you would've noticed
a decision in his glance,forming into a shape of an open door.

Tell me, should there be a number of times, a
repetitive quandry of events before one learns that

to let go is the best course; that it is best to get your body away
before this season ends and translates into sunnier, more forgiving days.

Then, it would be harder, would be inappropriate, even.
It would be as if everything lost rises, as if the world were a place

the people you used to love have never seen; and it was enough

If the way I think about you

If
the way I think about you would amount to anything, the red moon
would quit its job for a night. It would slide down as a woman to
the pub you usually frequent. It will be wearing a dress,
red and appropriate, with
one leg exposed to the resting world. After ordering a drink,
it would look around and see you
alone this time, a rare occurence. It would think of you lonely
for someone, maybe me. then the moon
would be lost in its own reveries, as if it were human, as if it also
has suffered a loss as seemingly insignificant as we have.

For the new year

Some things have changed. Now, I tie my shoelaces

slowly, as if the bus I would be riding on is my own bus

and the other people are merely dream segments, rushing to

and from one another. I also read poetry with my mouth open

which is, of course,a sort of knee-jerk reaction,

a kick in the shin. When I walk I notice

that it is no longer skip skip skip but trot skip clump clump.

when I talk to family members I do not like, I say, please pass the onions.

One night, I was staring at a city light and it looked so finite and sad,

with nightglow all around it, feasting on its one good eye. From that

time on, I kept watching out for those lights, guarding them.

When I eat breakfast, its not just

bacon and eggs but it could be anything! Anything at all -- ice cream,

cold spaghetti, hard pink candy that never melts. I know

now the difference between an empty bench and a lone soldier,

the difference that lies between

the spaces you left behind, what I keep on filling.

to the lover

There are days when you are cucumber.
I sharpen my knife
before I peel your skin off, pretending it is flesh on bones.
Inside you, there is nothing but pulp--
fiction lying in wait for the
next lover to immortalize you in poetry.

I slice you into thin pieces
until you are almost opaque, as transparent
as a memory. Sometimes, I make stars out of you,
or rabbits, depending on where he slept
the night before or if he came home early.

At times, you are fresh meat.
I keep you under running water for
more minutes than isnecessary. This is because
I don't want your blood on my hands.The
meat looks wrinkled after this prolonged
exposure to water, as if it is hurt by my
insecurity.I wear gloves
to keep my knuckles clean. At times, I
make like a god andpound at you with my newly bought pestle
until you are as malleable as my heart.It makes me believe
you are human and can be subject to
impermanence.

In this kitchen, I try to find an end to you. All around me are
the bricks that built my life,that define who I am.
Here, I am free to reinvent you.
Outside, he may consider you a kingdom,
a harbor,a masterpiece. But within these walls,you are in
bits and pieces,wrapped up in foil or sometimes
stowed away for future use.You are reduced to elements,
to momentary necessities. But you never go away.
You live here-- sleeping on our bed, peeping through jars,
rotting gracefully on the wooden shelves. You take
the shape of steam rising from noonday kettles.
Your message is darkness and silence.

We love a love

that puts its head on someone else's reliable shoulder,
that hides between
the experienced thighs of women.
We love a love that belongs
to the sky and sometimes, even the kind that is usually stuck under
the next stranger's left boot.We love a love that
is found between some lines, in the solemn folding and
unfolding of hands. We love a love
that would give us a good fuck, sheets useless and tumbled on the floor
where we were standing, uncertain, minutes ago.
But most of the time,
we love a love that burns and burns in the waiting eye of
several memories tacked together
to form something safe, like a lifetime, or,
a show of paired hands
entwined on a canvas to help others believe that
nothing stops,not even the kind of liquid I have
turned into -- something that keeps on breaking on your open palm.