not a prose poem, sorry

Found an old folder filled to the brim with poems done when I was much younger; back when I rhymed. Debating with myself on whether I have enough guts to post them here. Can't help but laugh at how some of them are so innocent, and so unbelievably honest. Nostalgia is kicking in and I feel like I'll spend tonight wondering how far true I was to myself when I was younger, feeling bad about how much I've changed.

Untitled #3

I looked up to him in my seat – a monoblock

As he relates my transformation, in a tone almost stone

In stoicism, from submission to a possession of voice

Of authority; wherein a voice could’ve sufficed

I had leapt over a border and left myself beyond

When in a form of a prose, I wrote

A set of instructions to forgetting

Akin to commands of boxing memories

And wrapping them with packaging tape

In countless rounds

I have written that remark in cursive

Tattooed in a box labeled nostalgia

A compliment - granted by a man

I looked up to like a god

But in the view of twilight, I am masked

With shame

For I have lost that voice at the touch

Of a diploma on my hand, replaced

By a docile “yes sir, yes ma’am”

On a usual office set up

How the real halts the dreams of innocence

Not by the looming rejections or failures

Or by the gift of disillusionment

But by the natural instinct to survive

Before to live

I am now writing a set of instructions

To the generations yet to come

On how to live by emptying out the box

Wrapped with packaging tape

In countless rounds

But between paper works and paying

Bills I couldn’t find the time

Nor the voice that in my sleep has once

Possessed me alive

As I Watch You Bury Yourself Alive

Allow me

to stalk the penitence of your wayward

soul gyrating on a bed of blood and petals

leading you to the death of all your sins

and to the beginning of new ones

Allow me

as you fumble through your vows

the delight of mockery at the tear that dives

flat faced on the soil that bore you

incapable of weeping

Allow me

to untangle the stalks of santan that wraps itself

austerely ‘round your finger, so I can raise

my middle finger on you in a form

of a champagne glass for a toast

Allow me

the burning of my feverish bitterness

as I sat in the back pew, uninvited

to this eager celebration of deceit

beginning at full tilt with “I do”

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I search for you in the hollow echoes

Of whispers fleeing;

Of moans from souls wandering aimlessly

Across me in the stillness of the hour

Every hour til I search for you

And find you in the damp and chill

Of winter’s bone, alive

But not quite

Breathing as fiercely

As to fight off muerte for vida;

Almost as if in great surrender

You yield in

To the lack of warmth

In empty spaces of vacancy

Where in the stillness of the hour

I had once watch you dreamt

untitled #1

you tear the skin of her phalanges, if only to feel

the cold tip of the bones of her long,

winding, fingers. you trace the cold,

if only to arrive at the warmth of her palm: a cushion

of red and wine. and you lie there;

a fetus bound by the cord to her placenta. a lover

bound by the heart to her hands.

She cradles you, and you learn to feign slumber

halfway through her lullaby. eyes close, mouth open.

gaping to suck on a thumb or a nipple; hard

Llke the rubber end of a mongol. the color of carnation

and rust. slowly, you drift farther

and farther away. smaller and smaller like a dot

of dust ‘derneath her nails.

when the warmth chills you,

you pull up her skin like a blanket. skin to skin

like steamy nights in Santa Fe, when all you had

was her skin to warm your cold, cold heart. and you dream,

you dream of tearing her skin so you can keep it

tied around your wrist like a slash; like a badge

to parade around town.

when you awake, she is gone. and you tread

the length of her arms to find her again. only to get lost

in her veins; to get drowned in the flow

of her streaming, angry, streaming blood. she is lost,

and you close your eyes to recall the image

of undressing her off of her white skin. 

Alzheimer

It always starts simple

A title of a song, an ingredient

of bulalo, a name of an old friend,

an important event, a birthday -

yours.

When it gets serious, they touch

Your hands and you ask

How is Mrs. ______? And they stare

pitifully into your eyes.

They haven’t been in elementary

for years and you smile

You stare at the mirror for hours

Foreign wrinkles on your forehead

each line for passed decade

you recognize nothing small

remember not even the monumental.

You live like death

Awaiting death.

On your deathbed

The flashback of history begins

Events you don’t remember

At all. Faces whose names are lost.

And without even knowing

you start ending.

The way ghosts never find out they’re dead. 

To The Aegean Sea

It was difficult to mourn for your passing. Just as it was more difficult to kill the terror in the labyrinth, than to be killed. To be killed cold blooded, among virgin youths and maidens. I would have none the face to show you in heaven. Not when I have sworn you victory. And freedom.

I haven’t the time to explain. When I reached shore expecting a banquet for my, our triumph. You welcomed me. Your body lying lifeless on the shore. And I wept. I wept for the departed body, the lost soul. For the life that sought end for me. For the triumph and misfortune I brought home to Athens.

I defeated Pasiphae’s bastard and escaped through a ball of thread to the sea. It was the love of a princess that saved me. Yes, the daughter of the enemy, just like Medea to Jason. Her name was Ariadne. I watched her all the way to Naxos. Her wood locks wafting in the wind. Her cheeks burning in the cold. If you were alive to allow me, I would have made her princess of all Athens.

But the way back home was a terrible one. I lost her. How it would’ve been easier to bear if I lost her to the sea, or to a disease. But I lost her because Dionysus saw her through my eyes, and longed to possess her. And Mnesemony left me with no memory. Not until I’ve reached shore and found you there. Not until then did I remember. How the night before she melted like wax under the sun between my hands. I failed to turn the sail white and you killed yourself. And I wept. For Ariadne, beautiful Ariadne whom I left asleep in Naxos when I had sworn her queen of land.