Experiments in Form & Survival

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Long Form Poems

Themes: Apocalypse // Gaming Series // Survival // Political // American Dream

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El Mundo Oscuro

In the rainforests of Borinkén,
vendrán las lluvias largas, suaves
con el dolor de la tierra.

And parrots glide silently at night,
their wings emerald in rain.
Y el coquí, en un chiste,
sueña y canta en los ríos del Yunque.

Las palmas y el mango existen
in a golden, eternal state—
borrowed joy, ripe for taking,
heavy with rain.

Las aves wrap our rainforests in feathers,
as if memory could sing,
mimicking songs
they no longer own.

We were once told to be free
like our regal birds—

to spread our wings as fires spread across the sky.

We are untouchables among
historias escondidas.

We do not see past the mold,
in the ruins of home—
our backyards where we grew

nuestros cultivos:
aguacates, guineos niños, y azúcar—
names that echo
like small, sweet children singing—
a melody stolen mid-breath,
a form of taking, a bite of the forbidden.

Oh, Porto Rico—
this paradise dressed in betrayal,
where strangers take
never returning sweet wonders.

Dark smoke, burnt oil—
they fill our lungs,
forcing us to forget how fumes bleed
like poison from a wound.

To imagine more
is to meet their gaze again, trust again,
look them in the eyes and die—
hurry up and die.

No one else will tell us what to carry.

We dream of ancient remedies,
cantando con los pájaros
near Old Sabana Grande.

And at the base of our valleys,
our forests always remember
what we have forgotten.

No one else will know
when the mountains catch fire—
we will not know who to call.

And still, rivers will run.
And still, rain will fall.

A nadie le importará en este paraíso infernal—
ni a los pájaros, ni a los peces en los ríos,
ni a las palmas que beben la lluvia.

And if slavery still existed
in this industrial apocalypse,
a nadie le importará—
ni por nuestros muertos,
ni por las cenizas.

Ni siquiera nos verá
nuestra madre naturaleza.

El sol regresará
como una sentencia.

At dawn, she will never know—
ni siquiera nos verá, ni extrañará
que alguna vez estuvimos aquí,
que alguna vez vivimos—

that we were
gone.

---

psalm of ash and bone

i pray
for the strength to unlearn
the hunger at the throat—
 
the rope line i cut
stays in the ground,
at the mouth of the valley,
an open wound.
 
i

am

ruin
 
wholeness was promised
and worth carved from things:
shirts sewn in silence,
weights stacked like promises,
an engagement ring
still in sleep.
 
mother—
you break your back for your children,
hands cracked dry from years of scrubbing,
labor pressed into the bones
of fortunes never touched.
 
learned from you this

how a body disappears into work
how it becomes guilt passed down

and now, the rivers swallow apologies.
 
let this song be sung, oh god,
until it fails and breaks
 
take this body,
place hands in the soil,
teach survival
not alone
 
hear the brokenhearted,
the skinned open,
the lives spent building
a world taught to consume
in fire
 
because fear has always
passed for love

---

Song for Soft Things in a Hard Country

 a question for the American flag

What does a flag know
of breath breaking factory heat—


After midnight, my mother’s feet split open
inside boots bigger than her head.

My brothers come home with metal in their lungs,
iron raw on their tongues.

The flag carries no weight of witness.
Does not feel how we climb toward
a city on a hill that never opens.

I will die again beneath rusted gears,
soil dark with sweat, machines coughing 
like animals. 

To labor is to bleed slowly.
To kill a god is to ask who made the blade.

Where is god in this taken land?
Where is he when the body bends?

There is no savior here, only mouths consuming
landscapes not ours.

Now I walk the prairies and touch the desert stone,
the same dust in my throat as native generations before me.

I am not chaos. I am a body ordered

to hurry up and die beneath this flag.

This is the anthem in our bones,

a night song for soft things in a hard country.

My mother’s footsteps.
My brothers’ backs bent like question marks.

Soles worn through bones.
Pennies before promises.

I press my ear to the ground
and hear machines scheming.

Do they hear my footsteps falter?

Amazon factories, assembly lines of faces
learning to disappear. 

Factories taller than prayer.
Twelve hours swallowed by the body.

Metal singing its godless hymns.
Where is the joke? Who broke the yoke?

The flag covers the royal dead,
chokes the broken, feeds on the broke who break.

And we pay in bodies
until our voices disappear.

I cannot take another casualty.

Even now we dare dream.
Even now we wait.

But I will not live
inside a white-fence lie,
a 1950s fever dream,
with no inheritance to show. 
No home or land to call mine,
only hands to hold.

We are stitched into this country.
The American fabric a wound pretending to heal.

What other promise do we owe
ourselves but breath to live completely. 

I am the shadow at its edge.

The sun going down, remnant in the wind.

In this wreckage

I carry their grief in my marrow,

ash in my lungs,

dreams heavy as falling mountains.

If I fall, will you dream with me?

I still want softness.
I still want hope and finer things.

Not the secrets we swallow deep
into the night.

Still, I am ruin,
the kind that rocks itself to sleep,

and longs
for so long
to sing with you.

---

Alterations

I.
when the mirror watches back.
a self is an affliction.
a list of broken promises:
china broken
marriage broken
pieces broken
man broke past
break.
broken.
missed.

II.
let me be more.
worked to the edge of wanting
so gone i imagine the speeding SUV,
blood on navy.
my ex behind the wheel.
there are worse ways to go.
i’ve imagined many endings by now.

III.
there’s always Dunkin at the corner.
Starbucks too fancy. too corporate.
i don’t know coffee names like that.
i accuse everything of being white.
refuse to be typecast. one day i woke up
with permanent dark circles.
some things beyond repair.
coffee beside painkillers.
sleep pretending tomorrow won’t come faster.
i crown myself in tar and smoke,
a kingdom ruled by body to the bone.

IV.
read me my terms and conditions.
let me associate with disassociation as my new dream.
i don’t want to understand anymore.
eyelashes lit with early sunlight,
warm how love feels at the end of the world.
when i burn
i am not.
i am free.

V.
you held my face like a prayer,
hands that sear my skin.
and still do.
time speeding on wind.
i wonder if love can overcome grief,
as hope forgets to warn us how to leave.

VI.
if i destroy what’s left of smoldering memory—
what’s left of love—
i destroy what’s left of me.
so much depends
on how love has burned us.
hidden destructions distracting us from being.
how do i make do without escape.
would it be so bad
if the world stopped asking
for one more time.

---

ggs [patch 1.0: notesfromhell]

diablos. we on again—
clocked in for sin, back on bullshit.
bitingthebulletandnotthedust.
hop on the mic, voice broke like rent past due.
you’re past your credit card points again,
past saving.

mic’s still hot. here we go again.
this is not a lobby, it’s confession.
a question simmers—
this queue’s been cooking far too long.

where’s the devil? always preloaded.

god?	got. got.	glitched.

i’m taking the scraps.

do you hear me calling?
shots fired. go ahead, bleed out.

ggs to the gods who ghosted.
i want to kill some gods.

gg to the devil, biting the next bullet
like it’s communion.

we are corpses in the machine.
the sun is angry at us again.

my new bedtime?
somewhere between	REM & rage.

you’re doing the most in this escape,
this rigged apocalypse, this amazing race
on a map that never ends.

are you seeing red?
you lagging? good.

don’t let it show,
don’t sleep on me now.

if you lose focus,
you’ll cost us			the game and die.

don’t glitch on me now.
we got things to do		we got places to be.

in this chaos,
don’t go dying quietly—

not with the code still loading,
not while the world stalls—

an unfinished disaster.
there’s no shortage of things	that’ll kill us.

we’re already halfway gone.
eyes, bloodshot.

rage fails like everything else.

death can be beautiful.
wanna see?

dying takes time to get right.

i want to savor it in my mouth—  
let it bleed
like art often does:

slow.
exacting.

ready player one.
prayed. waited.
and still		got got.

you there	take over, squad leader.
i’ve done what i could.

if you’ve got a trigger finger,
you’ll use it		to kill. to will.

god knows what.	my soldiers rage.

let’s go!
clock the fuck in	locked and loaded.

let’s be devils—
look at us		dancing devils!

grinning and spinning through the axis,
or die standing.

spectate the slaughter until earth falls.

in this perfect game—
a most dangerous kind.		good guys are first to die.

we are not livestock.	we are human.
the bullet and the trigger.

my brother		die like it matters.

i’m calling it.
go ahead, repent.	your call.

this next round’s on you.

hurry up and die.	hurry up and die.
hur——		(signal lost.)

and maybe—
i’ll catch you,
pull the trigger		for all of us who died.

when it's game over.		it’s over.

because we’re all fools in the end.	[till next time.]