theory

i have a theory about you
your ears are the window to your soul
you used to get ear infections, two, three a month
until they diagnosed the problem right
i have a theory about you
your heart is the palpitating melody
harmonizing with itself
melodious and high above this ground

my baby sister

remember how you used to stick your belly out?
Just tsanding around
Like a balloon i watch you expand and contract
you breathe loundly, little one.
remember that time i came to visit you in your first apartment?
the first night you spent over the toilet
a bad falafel
and i take you to the clinic
where they don't speak english
and fight for you in a foreign tongue
didn't do you much good so we went to the hospital
more fighting, this time i fight my own tears
as the IV is stuck in your arm
remember this morning?
you wrote me a text message
told me you were on your way to the ER
i told you that you better tell me the next time you were sick
because the last time was my big gig and you hid it
so i wouldn't worry
but this time you tell me promptly
and i want to speak to the doctors
tell them that this is my baby sister they're treating
i want to hold your hand
it would be cold
long nails, painted a deep red i imagine

Tribute to Andre 3000

Thank you for letting me study you closely
For allowing me to follow your lovely logic
As you lustfully twist your words
Into tantalizing metaphor
And you help me to describe a night
When my tanqueray tunneled vision
Has got me on a one way mission
To convert my sober mind
With every splash of tonic
And it's ironic
That I really am seeing circles like some Audi,
Yet in all the confusion
I'm still the queen of this court
So play your part
Cuz these girls are smart,
These girls are smart.
Cue to Continue conducting imitated interaction
And in Andre Fashion
I'll walk it out the door
With failed attempts at reason with mild-mannered men
So in my mind i flirt with treason as I look too long at the female friend
Cuz these men will use all three wishes
Just for some kisses
Just for a five-fingered, manicured hand
Digging deep into their backs
In the backseat of a 2009 make and model
But in the words of 3000,
I could give a dam 'bout your car
But then I would be
If it was considered a classic
Before the drastic change in production
When cars were meal,
Instead of plastic

Genesis

A seven Day reality
The Genesis of my five fingered bible
The new, newer old Testament
Testament to my self-titled irony
the embryonic start of me
Is just the beginning of a Week'

Of every week I feel weak
In my knees and kneel down to pray.
In theory, because I fear Thee
In reality, I just freak myself out.

Day One:
It's hard to dissect the core of me
When seeds and flesh fall somewhere behind me
Leaving pieces one by one and two by two
And Yea, I built the ark-
With the hole on the bottom
So one by one and two by two
I drowned.
Drowned but rescued as I shine my light
And I will let there be light:
Day One.

Day Two:
Cameras roll and I'm frozen in place
trying to believe in a human race
That gives me more than these things I use
Man's gift of substance abuse
Yea, it's my choice, so I accept the gift
and When these mics are muted I can't speak my piece
So I'll forever hold my piece
Until an angel came down from heaven to batlle this beast
and whispers to me
"Spaek up my child, the angels are here my dear"
Let there be heaven:
Day Two

Day Three:
Gets harder to remember the First tImes
The First time I took a bus to school,
Too cool to cry
So a Waterproof mask I'll paint,
Fits like a glove to my face
Wear it like my own skin
Until the day I find it shattered into Six Million pieces of ashed ancestry
Picking up the pieces as my salt water sea runs behind me.
Day Three.

Day Four:
With three days passed
I'm left unprotected, unarmed
For the night you said goodbye
And did this heart much harm.
A stinging prick pumps his drug directly through my veins
And his exit wound burns deeper than his grand entry.
Overdose on love and you leave me in withdrawal
I'm ageless and only able to crawl
Followng the horizon with my eyes on
You.
But instead of you I was greeted by the sun,
Two greater stars lit up my night sky:
Day Four.

Day Five:
The day I'm left to listen to my own absence
And I'd rather drink a bottle of Absinthe
Then watch the world forget me.
So instead I fly on the wings of an angel,
Wishing it were a dove.
But jealosy is a dangerous love,
Because the same music that soothes us,
Also makes us cry.
My tears fro him, yours for me.
Birds of a feather, unrecognizable to one another.
Day Five.

Day six:
The day I welcomed the rules and brake them
Before the night fell upon my guilt ridden soul
An yea, I broke that cardinal rule more than once
Every time I neglect
To check
If the dead animal on my plate was killed proper-ly
Kosher-ly.
Day Six.

Day Seven:
I'm resting in revered mimicry.
Sleeping under the bright lights of my computer screen
Only wishing for a happy dream.
Guess I'm too late
When I wake
From a sleepeless night
And it's begun again, Day One.

I don't want to leave DC!

but if you ask my friends about the garden of eden...
they'll tell you a story
of two people
the way love should be
but what if things weren't the right way
and there were three
or even more
like five or four?
how would the world divide our love
when i love him and you love me and he loves her and she loves you
it would be a shame to wash upon the shores of eden
not knowing what to expect, as if your mind had gone and beaten
you to the border
and you order
one love
but get two with you meal
and honestly you do feel
for both
and the world didn't like the new divisions
blurry in their visions
no one knew who to belong to
and where to rest their weary minds
in these tribulating times
nostalgia calls and wants the time back
there were two
made of one body, the bones of a feather flock together
and three's company and a crowd
this party of three gets al too loud
for the truth seeking realities
of just two celestial bodies
two stars shine bright
and three clouds the black night
and when we're lying in bed its too bright
so ill ask him to turn off the light and he'll ask her to ask me to keep it on.
the bottom line of this song
is my plea for my pair
two pieces of a puzzle that fit only with each other
and love only one another.

I dreamt you got a buzz cut
then crawled into my bed
wrapped your arm around me
and i rested on your head
i tasted your skin with mere anticipation
we never got to kiss
and in real life
i'll miss that dream
but even more our unrequited kiss.

Listening to a new kind of music
The kind that makes me feel different
A little stranger than the day before
Fighting the mundane
Is giving me a migraine
And i'm grinding
My teeth at night
The new music is giving me a fright
And i just might
Stick my velcro pieces together
And go back to the day before
I felt Strange

Its hard to remember the first day of the creation
When all of my “firsts” transpired prior to the unscripted start
Of me.
A bit easier to remember that start.
A night tattooed in my senses
When my “priors” were crimes against all things innocent.
This start of me
might be
a night back in 2004
two decades post day 1
With a fresh id, wrong name, right birthdate
Born a year too late in 2004
a street corner on the lower east side
Christie and Delancey.
Street Names with friendlier dispositions
Than the friends who by that time were testing inappropriate positions
Entangled in Men with names like Johnnie walker and Jamison
Black label never did much for me
Were walking fast by now,
Until we pass Five men on that east side corner and I stop
Ten hands on flipped tin garbage
Hit, struck by the mood
Beats and rhythm call me in,
Call me name
As they call to me
Asking for a line
A rhyme
And im shy
them a few
and know this is the beginnig of a great fiendship
On this night of the Start of me.

December 26th 1985

On the west side highway
Driving home
first night of life and all its stimulations
tired and confused at age 24 hours
in the backseat in the family’s blue, 1984 Volkswagen
one year my senior, it knows how to rock me to sleep
humming a lullaby with its engine, rocking
I fight heavy, fluttering eyelids all the way across the George Washington’s Bridge
Carrying me to all my firsts I come to know in 23 years.

how do i

how do i capture a thought
on a bus
in the shower
how do i tame the urge to take a drastic measure
when i'm nervous
when i'm looking at a picture of a girl who's more successful, alot skinnier
like that means something
how do i make it not mean something
but it does for some reason
how do i measure happiness
they tried to, in the 50's
and out of it made a perfume commercial
about love
about two people in black and white riding a horse
a flowing dress and a six pack
how do i forget that
when i want you
you back away
a pendulum on which we forever swing on opposite sides

the other night a close girlfriend of mine claimed that part of the reason for some perpetuating ways of this man's world we live in comes from the 'innate' differneces in how women overcome obstacles or reach a goal. She went on to say that when a woman has a goal in mind it is often more difficult to reach this goal than let's say, her male counterpart, because she is multitasking even in her mental thought processes in scoping the future terrain/course of action. For example, in my case, getting a job after college might be clouded with worries and thoughts about juggling other responsibilities of mine instead of being 100% focused on the major goal ahead. Not to imply that men aren't capable of mulit-thinking/tasking... Actually, I wasn't implying a thing, since this wasn't my theory to begin with...
Just a thought.
A thought that came back to me as I hear creaking floorboards above me, my (female) roommate tiptoes above, in the wee hours.At least I'm not alone. There's three of us under this roof. I'm here, 'in bed' with a screen shining bright, instead of perhaps the shining stars that are gleaming through my (male) roommates silent bedroom.

in my last two weeks in dc
ive been calling everyone i know
just to request a face to face
maybe an hour of talking...
sometimes im afraid that i talk only for my own sake, for gaining some kind of validation
because im scared mostly, of my bold decisions
not that im all that bold
it's relative really.
i can call myself a coward but then the part of me that doesn't believe that is called to the front of my brain to defend the rest of me, and here i am, perpetuating the stamp of approval to which i've grown addicted...
i was talking to miriam, a friend of a friend
and i was telling her that i don't know exactly why im going to spain
she asked me to hold the line while she searched for a quote she recently came across that fit my situation-
something like 'something calls you, a creative request for your presence, and you follow it, blindly perhaps. and a while later you can appreciate your decision, but only a longer while after that can you really understand why you were pulled in that direction to begin with.' and that's true for so many things.

i love it
hate
it
and i can't stop scratching
and it won't stop itching
nails dig deeper
and it's ruining me
will ruin me
will rain on me
won't you rain on me?
me. camouflaged under this red bulb,
blend with red patches
of allergy
an allergic reaction to bad habits.
after a good day?
i spit in my own face.

sleeping with you, bright light
screen of plenty
i feel empty
though.
i'll watch a movie,
re-run-
and think how
we ran
in different directions
now, stagnant
this night, i know you
wide eyed in non-waking hours
red venom crawls under my skin
and i lay
white as an apple's flesh
i pray this night finally bites
pierce the skin
or i'll peel it off myself

apology

to the one who's shadow i traced,
across the horizon
as the sun
your silhouette chased:
forgive me.

to the one who gave the cues,
at dinner.
and with the little one you glued
us together.
when family suddenly meant 3+1+1,
instead of the whole number we thought as ours.

to the one who's arm caressed my back
and collected the tears
when at thriteen i thought i wouldnt stop
crying.

to the one who's laugh
is wholehearted and
to the one whose heart is whole

thank you for being my oder sister.

i've bled.
i cut open and left a trail of blood for you
to follow
but you got lost
in a corner office

a song plays on repeat
so you can't recognize the beginning from the end
and you got lost

and woke
two years later
listening to that same note.

i smell like baby's skin
for some reason

for some reason
someone shed their scent

and now i'm made of particles of others
in this body

its been three months since weve spoken and i thught maybe his feeling would have subsided by now
but no. im listening to lauren hill 'nothing even matters' on repeat. crying in the dark like i used to,
once they were tears in your arms.
but its been so long
maybe im just still in love with the idea of you, who's to say that i even know you anymore.
that i would even recognize you.
but i dont believe that. at all.
i want to cry enough tears to make a river straight to mexico. i would build a rafter and float to you.
'cuz nothing even matters...
im afraid that im going to be running until im back in your arms.