Irony? Or....

While driving the other day
I hit a boy on a bicycle and killed him.
He was an organ donor, and his liver
saved my grandfather's life.

National Security Agency Meeting #34 - Operation Foxhound

"We're gonna give kids this videogame, see,
and they will think they are just shootin' bad guys, right?
But they'll really be shooting living illegal aliens, yea?
They'll be controlling robots that are actually out there, man,
and stopping these people from infesting in to our country.
Immoral? Let me tell you about morals. Hard-working Americans
who's jobs are being stolen by illegal aliens is immoral.
Huh? The homeless? Bums? Whatever man...
the kids won't know any better anyways."

Words like "nigger"

Georgia high schools have rednecks
that have no qualms about saying
words like "nigger."

They don't think about it,
about what it means to say it,
they just want to look cool.

At lunch it might be
"Look at that nigger,"
or "There's another nigger."

Sometimes they say it with hate,
but it's usually just with ignorance.

My friend - he had it coming.
At a job interview with a black manager
he said "Yes sir" and "No sir."

"Sir?", I asked.
What happened to nigger?

Science kind of scares me.
A friend said that some guy,
I think from Princeton,
did some study or paper
explaining how love is a chemical.
How when we fall in love,
a chemical is released,
and makes us feel good.
Then after a while
the chemical wears off,
and we don't feel it
to be as special as it was.

So being me, I stop to think,
about how science kind of scares me.
Could how I love someone,
be affected by... chemicals?
Are my feelings, emotions, all of that,
simply the result of a love drug?
Well, he did say it was from Princeton...
Damn Yankees.

Flying Westward

There's two pilots up front
and several thousand-pound
engines humming on either side,
suspended on wings underneath
the blue and red Delta symbol.
There's lots of reasons
that this plane is in the air.
But I'd like to think
that it's my heart's high spirits,
that keep it floating,
like a dream.

This poem is for all the kids
who pretended they could fly.
For all those who drummed
with carrot sticks at lunch time,
and smoked a large fat pretzel
as if it were a Cuban cigar.
It reaches out those special few
that always had a joke if you asked,
and also those that recognize the air guitar
as an actual instrument of play.
This poem is for the brothers and sisters
that played hangman with hotel pens
on the programs of the Church
on early Sunday mornings.
It's for all those that turned a playroom
in to American Gladiators,
and a vacant basement
in to Legends of the Hidden Temple.
This is for all those kids
who acted like they were actually dead
after being shot with a nerf gun
or Super Soaker Nine Thousand.
This is for all of those carefree kids,
and the adults that still act like them.
This poem is in dedication to those that realize
that life is too short to cry,
so we should laugh, play, and imagine
that anything is possible, especially happiness.

Imagine there's an island
shrouded in a dense forest,
and a castle in the middle
that is hidden and ancient.

A beautiful system of ramparts
that cries of solitude and
with trees that seem to grow
out of the Will of the earth.

You have to row to get there,
trek on horseback up the steep inclines,
and walk on foot through miles of trees,
but the sight of the drawbridge is amazing.

And inside there are not jesters,
or kings, or even jealous serfs.
Only you and I exist in this castle
and while some may call it prison,
shut off from normalized society,
you and I live in pure spirits
knowing heaven couldn't possibly be better.

At one time she loved them,
those little black Oreos.
When I was only five or six
and was done chopping wood,
she'd show me how to dip
them in a glass of milk.
Now I sit next to her bed,
with my son besides me,
holding a package of Oreos,
and wonder if today she knows who I am.

"Oh you two fine men there", she begins,
(Guess it's a bad day again...)
"Are those Oreos you have there?
Let me show you how to dunk them in milk,
I once knew a charming young boy
that I taught the same thing."

---

Proving you can make poems from everyday conversation (one person will know what I'm talking about).

Maybe Tomorrow

Gentle darkness gives me strength
while I fall asleep, to escape
the world that holds me captive.
I close my heart and my emotions,
and sleep a little while
until the dawn awakens my problems.
I'm a little afraid of tomorrow
since I've lost so much from trust,
but I can pray my dreams are of love,
and I'll start living, maybe tomorrow.

Let us go on a midnight walk
and you can teach me French phrases
like "Let us kiss deeply"
and "We have time left before the morning".
We can go back to my place
and I can roleplay as a French,
aristocratic teenager named Franz.
You can be my arranged wife
(the girl I'm told to marry)
and we can pretend all night long
that we're enjoying making love.

My dorm room looks exactly the same
this semester as it did last year.
I can still see the anguish
in the spots I stared at while lying,
on my back, defeated, in my bed.
The desk hasn't changed -
and neither has the spot I'd rest
my forehead against while thinking
of another depressing rhyme to write.
But something this year is different,
whether it's the chairs that lean back,
or that I've simply accepted who I am.
My room this year is no longer painful,
and while memories sometimes haunt me
of the sobs I at one time let out,
they are all easily healed
when you say you love me,
and to have sweet dreams.

Oh to be one of the people of Woodstock,
probably high as a kite
(not metaphorically, mind you, it was the weed)
and carefree, surrounded by love.
Looking back now of course
we give hippies negative connotations,
but not too long ago it was "hip" and "in"
to be one of those tree-hugging potheads.
Woodstock, where everything was free -
most importantly the music,
although the sex probably wasn't bad either.
You could take a hit of acid, LSD,
whatever your choosing really,
and taste colors and see smells.

I don't ask questions
about what people think of me.
I rely on encounters
and first-hand experience.
I use both faith,
and what I already know.
I generally could care less,
if no one liked me at all.
So long as I was loved,
by one.

Family of De La Cruz

I scrub toilets and clean floors all day,
just so my kids can go to school,
and my family has food to eat.
My hiring manager told me
no one else wanted the job.

I come home and smell like chemicals
so I take a shower to get the smell off,
but I'll never get it off my clothes.
I re-heat the meal my wife made my kids,
and then go to their rooms where they sleep,
and kiss each of them on the head.
If it's still only Monday, I'll have to wait
several days until the weekend to be with them.

I go out late to buy some milk,
so the kids can eat their cereal in the morning.
A man tests my 20 dollar bill at the register,
to make sure it isn't counterfeit,
and on the way out the cart attendent calls me a 'Spic.

7:45 in a musty old building.
In Room 20-something,
I learned about jazz.

I don't think I quite understood it,
quite as well as
some.
The syncopation made no sense,
and it all kinda
seemed
like noise.

But the black girl in the front,
who closed her eyes when he put on Coltrane,
and swayed back and forth,
hitting her hand on the desk,
I'm pretty sure it made sense to her.

And that goofy guy
who did modern swing dancing.
We all laughed really hard
when he demonstrated one day.
You could see him after class,
shuffling the boogie back on home.

Even though I didn't get it,
I did manage to smile once or twice.
Usually it was when the professor said:
"If there's any errors on the test,
it's because I made it when I was drunk."

I've only been drawn once before,
(in the nude that is).
It was on a sofa in an airy villa
overlooking the salty shores.
The fan circulated the scent of ocean
and I lay on my side, posing.
She held her drawing utensil loftily
and her eyes screamed with intent.
Several minutes in I saw her smile
and so I asked her what was up.
"Nothing", she proclaimed,
"It's just you aren't quite the same
as when I started."

Are they telling you to turn back?
Waving you down with red flags?
Maybe they know someone better,
or atleast surely better than me.
Who is it that I'm fighting against,
with both politeness and courtesy?
Who's trust is it I have to gain,
if not only yours.

Seize Life

If a moth tries to warm by a flame,
it catches fire and dies.
Another creature within the game,
falling short of its prize.
And man will fall short of his dreams,
but there's always some hope that's left.
And it matters not your team,
for we're all awarded a trophy called death.
Some argue about truths, perhaps who is right,
even wage wars in the name of their views.
However fight too hard and like the moth, you'll ignite,
in to flames you cannot refuse.
So seize the day, or the night, but just do so with care.
For some day we'll all pass on, to a place, or perhaps, nowhere.

Litany

You are the last leaf of Fall to drop,
and the child that picks it up.
You are the yellow glow of streetlamps,
washing the tunnels of roads.

You are both the first and last drops of rain,
but never ever the lightning.
You are opposite of the Siren,
beautiful but rarely heard.

I am all the paths you ignore in a maze,
the obvious circles and dead-ends.
I am a Japanese cookbook,
stuck in a stack of German philosophy.

I am an anonymous donation to St. Jude’s,
but not the cure for cancer.
I am a hidden nuclear silo,
but decrepit and of no use.

You are all the miracles of God,
extending a hand towards me.
You are my start and my end,
the last line of all poetry.

On my computer...

Archived and classified
in a specified,
and glorified,
named folder.

Ranging somewhere from fifty
to sixty. And even though
I've not counted in a while,
I bet you still owe me.

On my computer screen,
beauty and you
dance together,
meant-to-be.

Christmas Without You

The luminaries guide me along
the roads back to my house.
They cannot lead where I wish,
there's simply not enough people.

The needles of the tree
smell a little weaker to me.
I don't even stop my dog
from drinking out of the stand.

And neither hot cocoa nor Christmas carols
can warm me from the cold icy grip
that this Christmas reluctantly holds me in,
like a mother holding a letter from the Army.

My Mouse Named Mister Keats

My friend called me up
to watch his pet boa
devour an innocent mouse
he bought from the store.

I watched it claw the glass
and thought it tragic
to die so soon.
So young and undeserving.

When he got his camera,
I stowed it in my pocket.
He was dismayed when I said,
"He already ate it".