primal scream echo
‘welcome to the jungle [babe]’
brought me to my knees

Arise, my Love!
            The night is young
with varied verses
            to be sung
in cobbled streets
            ‘neath starry climes,
away from eyes
            & darker times.

Arise, my Love!
            Throw wide the sash!
Our kin have fallen
            one and last.
No one’s awake
            to foil our flight.
The day has dimmed
            and we are night.

Arise, my Love!
            I bid thee rise
& shame the moon–
            though vaunted high–
for candles naught
            she holds to thee
but bends her beams
            to bow a knee.

Arise, my Love!
            & we will go
to watch the waves
            where out they flow
to leave the land
            til dawn returns
& stroke the sun
            when daylight burns.

Arise, my Love!
            from far off sleep;
true dreams know naught
            of counted sheep
nor distant worlds
            where Somnus stands
but press in pairs
            & knitted hands.

Arise, my Love!
            The hour’s nigh;
the night is brief
            & breath slips by.
But time is stilled
            where lovers meet,
to whisper hope
            with lips replete.

I ain’t laid eyes on a lightning bug,
not one all spring into summer.
I figured these hillsides way out here
would be lit up, glowing with the joy
and the squishy phosphorescent goo
my little brother and I used to smear
all over our pinchy pointers and chubby thumbs
when we’d hold on a little too hard.
We just wanted to catch and release,
but life’s too short for all that
when you’re a lightning bug.
Ain’t a jar been made
 could trap your  shine.

I wanna be sitting on a porch.

My porch, built with my hand.
A single wide ain’t a home without one.
I want my porch.
A peaceful place I can sip coffee
it’s way too late to be drinking
and stareup and into the perfect half light
of a perfect half moon.
And gaze down through a green glowing cloud
blinking out messages of hope in a holler,
 encouragement never meant
for my lowly human eyes
to comprehend. 

a pedestrian sonnet, after Kristi Maxwell

小心 ! the small hearted branches float heavy with a fruit of men. Another one stands at the crux, reaching out to shake the branch’s hand. The leaves make a mess of wigs on all the parked cars.

All the potted GRASSES on the balcony throw their hopeful babies out into the wind.

Custard yellow afternoon, good enough to eat. Earlier, I didn’t taste the lemon cake made by the dewy-faced and recently graduated.

The irony of  两个石狮 outside of a s-bucks isn’t lost on me. Roar! 我要一杯冰的拿铁! It’s boiling out.

A pile of rocks moves very slowly up the street. 21, 20, 19, 18, across the walk, the great grey eye watches us all.

What the hell is wrong with the mosquito? Massive wolf jawbone says, SHUSH, SHUSH.

It’s hard to wheel the baby in a wheeless baby carriage. I see her, lulled to sleep and invisibility by the rush of the overpass junction and road.

A nothing quote like, “The architectural bliss of a bank, a castle, and an office building cosplaying as a bird’s nest”.

Moss atrocity, an absolute massacre of fussy green. Don’t you know I, too, love a broom that looks like a bush.

An itch haunts for days, the ankle bone a stage for a warplay. Yet, the braggadocio of ivy on cement, and all the thwacking of a life lived by the hammer, straining to hear the present, distracted from birdsong.

Signs sometimes warn us in languages we don’t speak. The round headed white man looks like he’s dipping his toes in the electric river styx, next to a blue plastic boat that used to float.

The fifth national economic crisis, no, the fifth national economic census. A census is not a crisis, but a crisis is a sort of census.

The church is under construction, no kidding

Sometimes my heart feels like a motorized tricycle piled high with scraps of styrofoam, I have to move quickly, to get out of its way 

if I can’t wear a
collar during pride month then
when can I wear it?

The frolic of she and key— 
the key of Roma City,
because in Roma, a highway,
on a highway a house,

a house, bedchambers bedded 
down with the body
of a lady in love,
who seizes the key.

Who leaps, leaping from bed, 
from chamber, 
who leaves home,
walking meanest of streets,

who seizes sword, runs 
in the night,
who passerby 
kills, out go his lights.

Who is alley to avenue 
to home, house awaiting—
who clambers to chamber,
slips in the bed,

who gently tucks the key away,
buries the sword.
Who complains of Rome’s 
population blithely sauntering by,

without their deaths, 
without night,
without key, 
without lady.

Poet: Rafael Alberti
Translation: Manny Grimaldi

Ghetto park days,

Trash on the ground.

Sounds of yelling, cussing, laughter bounce from the courts to the playground.

Kids pushing and playing,

Fighting and saying,

“Who wanna to be it?”

Picnic table filled with aunties;

Gossiping as they sit.

Drug deals, bare feet,

No adult supervision, broken swings.

Dogs off leashes, broken glass pieces.

Spray paint tags, overfilled garbage bags.

Echoes of pool splash, creaky seesaw almost giving whiplash.

Baseball field’s worn diamonds,

People staying out the way like islands.

Despite the state of it all—

It’s still community.

It’s ours y’all.