Poetry

  As September comes- I remember you telling me, How Jesus Christ is the King, and those who know Him will never die. I was sitting on your knee, maybe I was six or seven- we were sitting in the kitchen looking out the glass doors into our backyard In Spotswood. I couldn’t stop my questions, running out of my mouth in rivers as curious children can be. I asked: “Will He forgive people who are evil, those who will wait until the last possible second of life for forgiveness?” You answered: “Only God knows a heart, so only He will know if a person  really asks for forgiveness, and means it.” I remember you- a silhouette in the sun  wearing a straw hat, God knows where you got it- to protect your head and light skin while vacuuming the pool, or re-filling the chlorine. I remember smelling the chlorine, and knowing you were out there making our pool ready for a family swim. I knew, as I ran to my bedroom window looking out to the side of our house. That’s where I  dreamed...

I look at my reflection as if it were one of someone else. Brown eyes, indigenous Puerto Rican eyes dance still with youth at 54 years young. Almond-shaped, neither too close together, nor too far apart, Serious lips part almost in awe of its own image. Created to be held in a vessel much too young-on its nine month journey. A nose reshaped by a surgeon’s hand at age 16,  Nostrils tapered straight, to purposely not look like Malibu Barbie. That’s all I will say about my “after” nose,   You don’t want to know what it looked like “before.” Ears that stick out a little, whom once listened to Guns -n-Roses. My deadpan demeanor of both light sarcasm and bold satire. Like, “Why are you laughing? I really don’t mean to be funny.” Quick wit probably came naturally to me, like it followed me out of the birth canal.  That’s probably where my writing gifts came- wrapped with me in my amniotic sac. People often ask me how I became so gifted. I tell them it’s probably because of ...

I hear you  as you speak. While you hold my hand, you are trying to hide your frustration that I cannot or will not converse with you. You chat away about the outside world as I sleep within a shell of my inside world. I breathe, but no more than that. Heart beating as others do awake. You don’t truly know what goes on in here, Whether I am dreaming of jet skiing or mountain climbing. Unless you were trapped somewhere inside my mind, to experience everything first-hand. My nostrils flare, and for a moment you stop your bantering monologue. You think there is something to this-you pause for a fraction of a second. Then you pass it off as a fluke, as I continue simply breathing, as if I were temporarily distracted from doing so. You otherwise have no awareness that I can hear you. So you go on with your one-sided conversation, happy with yourself. As if this were normal! You chatter away on and on, slightly tilting your head as if waiting for my reaction,  or for some kind of si...

I Dream of Purple Skies The Transition I enter the Dark Tunnel, but the coming Light is not a question; fear is a language I have already begun to forget. The darkness is merely a pause, shattered by pinnacles of brilliance— first in flashes, then in steady pulses of hope. I crawled through the decay of the last world, but here, I walk. I have no voice for the "in-between," that sacred transit where the soul is unmade and remade, focused only on the Forward. I see my hand, yet it is not the hand I knew. I am being guided Home, anchored by a trust that has finally outgrown the borders of my imagination. The Un-Night The "un-night" recedes as the flashes quicken. I move without feeling my way, for I am no longer walking; I am led. The Unknown has lost its teeth; Faith has fulfilled its promise. In this tunnel, transition is the ultimate freedom. I have waited a natural lifetime for these final steps, aware of a body that is no longer a burden, but a garment of light. ...

  The fallen chair, how has it fallen? Askew as if kicked out from under, yet unbroken by whatever invisible force. Tide of evil? Or simply rotten choices- or choices left unsaid, are still choices made. The floor is now its security net, where beggars kneel-where beggars lie. Where the desperate ask only for a cold drop of water, after the folly of wrong decisions,  Not to be written  in permanent ink as others have already cast a Scarlet Letter in non washable paint. I observe the chair’s desperation by the way it was knocked over, Its safety on the floor where it dare not risk being stood up again, or to be stood upon. The floor being its new Egypt that’s better than risk. Safe. The fallen chair askew a still of posterity for all others not to bother, Neither reaching, nor wanting to be pulled up to try again. Like a fearful possum playing dead, to live just enough-yet not little. Oh, how I pity it at times!  In all its fears like the shadow of a chalk tracing, le...