Poetry Collection Fall 2014: IX. Taki Biha

I remember your eyes as a child:
Gray, hazy, a blindness that confused me.
But I knew, even though cloudy,
They saw me, your little baby girl.

I remember your face as a child:
Saggy, lazy, a wrinkly-ness that befuddled me .
But I knew, even though weathered,
There was a youth in your spirit, my biha.

Last year, I remember parts of you:
Insulin shots, soiled diapers, glucose tablets.
It all frustrated me, but I knew that all this
Is what you would do for me, my taki biha.

Last week, I remember all of you:
Your jaundice, empty eyes, breathless body.
I knew it was your time, even though we laughed minutes before,
But I was selfish and breathed life back into you for hours. 

Now, I see all of you, my old baby:
Your clammy skin, your closed eyes, your flat-line.
I sigh with you final exhale, and I am reassured
that you, my beautiful flower, are with Papa and your God again.

Poetry Collection Fall 2014: VIII. Mother's Eggs

She always loved eggs,
Intricate and unique.
Her most prized possessions,
In glass shrines,
Like four fragile pillars in the room.
They are crystal and ceramic;
Paper and plastic;
Wicker and wood.
My childhood favorite plays music,
a pink Edelweiss, an Austrian chime.
Among all the artisan eggs,
Treasures from Brazil to Russia,
Her favorite is a chicken egg,
Hollowed, brittle, and homely,
Scribbled with marker,
Bland beads and glitter glued:
The egg I made her
When I was six.

Poetry Collection Fall 2014: VII. Classy Slam

What is /classy/?
A term, synonymous to beauty,
But distinctly, a beauty defined by
/social location/
By the /money one earns/ and by the current /cultural weather/
One sports sport-jerseys for no other reason than /it symbolizes money/.
You deign to drive the Corvette of your dreams to make a statement,
But what statement are you driving at?
It’s because it makes you feel /upper class/.
So what do mean when you say /classy/?
It’s a cultural complication, one with no cultural homogeneity,
No common identity other than the colors
of the red, the white, and the blue.
We are a country that screams freedom, yet we continually
Find other means of oppression, this cultural oppression,
Which just so happens to be fueled, to be defined by
//Class division//
 Is what you emulate when you judge that car,
 looks /too common/; when you judge that girl
Wearing the tights and the tank top as trashy, trampy: /Lower class/Classless/
Because money defines all that we believe,
At our core, at the most primitive level in our modernized world,
Our /Rich American dream/
“Rich American dream”? 
More like poor American esteem.

Poetry Collection Fall 2014: VI. Old Poetry from a Thirteen-Year-Old

She is dressed in nothing but lace and icy stilettos.
 Aching, she awaits the onslaught of men craving for body. 
Unable to speak, she takes everything in, unwilling yet resigned.
She’ll bend over for a dollar more; she’ll touch him there, but at a cost;
he can pull her hair, call her a whore, abuse her for his pleasure;
All for the right money, dirty and worn, in her lingerie.
And when the sun rises, the light shines on her struggle for all to see, for all to cringe.
Life is a battlefield.  She is losing.

He is covered head to toe in dirt, sweat, and blood.
Helmet tight, gun to chest, he awaits the onslaught of men craving for bodies.
In a hail of gunfire, he must take life to preserve life.
 And when the sun rises, he presses his boot into the soil of his homeland;
The light shines on his heroism for all to see.
As his country salutes him, he only remembers
the long nights spent worrying his country forgot him;
if he’d make it through ‘til sunrise; or more hauntingly:
Have I widowed that wife?  Have I bastardized that son?
Both the man and woman lie awake that night,
Telling of life’s anomies.
Life is simply a battlefield that neither man nor woman can win.

Poetry Collection Fall 2014: V. Ella

She is my rosy cherub, my bubblegum girl.
I dream of her tiny sprouting wings,
A creamy carnation, delicate and dainty;
I foresee her cherry lips and her flowering dress,
The petit cherry blossom everyone desires:
A cover girl, my little blushing doll.

She is my orchid bud, my little lavender lady.
I adorn her in my favorite pale amethyst dress,
A blushing lilac tea frock, embellished for princesses;
But she is resigned, forlorn with her beauty,
Flustered by the freedom  flowing near her fanny:
My bubblegum girl, why aren’t you happy?

She is my bluing iris, a phlox in an ocean of hydrangeas.
My heart twinges as she fusses in her own cool-hued skin,
A color struggle between pink and sky blue;
But she is a thistle at heart, resilient and sharp,
Strongly braced by the garden dowel that is me:
 The security that will never let my little periwinkle droop.

Poetry Collection Fall 2014: IV. Rhythm

Bump-bump.  Bump bump.
This is our first sound in the morning.
Mother’s rhythm, the rumbling lava flow through her veins;
the pulse of our own little hearts before we rise;
The pace of all that exists, the cadence of life.

We forget that some forget to breathe;
Shelved away behind the daily minutia of mortality.
Yet it taps away, indefinitely:
Unto our skin, among our ears, before our eyes,
Making sense of the day.

For it is the wind through our hair,
Gusting and dying, gusting and dying;
In the subtle hushhh! of the brook that rumbles;
It is our feet on the long roads we traverse,
sauntering, shuffling, and scuttling in time.

It is the cool patter of droplets upon our faces,
even in the simmer of the summer;
Our rhythm remains resolute.
Even when our daytime falls to eve,
It is the quick flicker of our dying candle wick.

Poetry Collection Fall 2014: III. The Chocolatier

I dream of your syrupy lips, locking with mine,
As I struggle to taste every inch of you; 
I could smother myself with your essence.

I pine for your decadent body, a russet cream like nothing else,
An almondy joy under my callous hands,
I would gladly die in you.

I thirst for your sweet juices, like hot caramel from your opening,
Between your beautifully delicate crevices;
A feast fit only for me.

I lust for your smooth and luscious mounds,
They call forth desires from the recesses of my heart;
Oh, how I need you now.

I want your being, in all your forms and moods,
like hot ganache over my soul;
My own little praline.

And the way you tease, with your still resilience,

And the cacao of your skin, winking at me;

What confectionary perfection!