Speak

“The pen is the tongue of the mind.” -Miguel de Cervantes


Smooth and universal not
racist against cultural hands rough
at times lacking ink, depth and
powerful resignation of one’s
penmanship. An instrument to document
history, no matter the ample truths or
extravagant lies.


I can call you Vic, like my Guatemalan
mother calls him Dabid, Her
nationality you would not comment
on due to your unobtrusive, non-judging
intrinsic quality.

You are like my tongue, engaging
in poetic discourse with paper about
my mind’s habitual condemnation of self


worth, everlasting
scholarship, and the adoption of embracing
uncertain success

With you what lies within can exist
upon earth. Cohesive, raw and
misunderstood. My sweaty grip on
you does not falter, as talent breaking
your ballpoint barrier, and through your
channel of navy blue sustainability, finds epic
sound in requests of literary genius
igniting writer’s block. Personified language
lays upon the sheets of paper you
call home. I am home

and this is how I speak.

You Deserve A Pulitzer Too

I woke to thirteen raging voice messages, twenty-
seven abandoned calls on my part. You just called to tell
me you loved me, thinking you were Wonder with
a voice like no other. You’ve neglected to welcome your
dose of Lithium once again.

I’ve studied Sylvia and Anne, beyond
the grave. I’ve studied you in the flesh, in my dreams, and
in bottles of medication flushed down grandma’s
toilet, Circa 1993. You spoke to god that day. I watched from the
sidelines in my Barbie nightgown and miss-angled
bangs as the freckled paramedic, emulating your Happy Days
crush Richie Cunningham, took you away. Note to self: Never allow
Khaleh Rachel inches near you with scissors in tow.

It was half past ten, waiting in the lobby sleepy-eyed, I laid upright
wrapped in Khaleh Farideh’s warmth. I looked up as she stroked
my curly black hair, a saintly vision in white struck my sight.
I ran to you, your hospital gown smelling of your peculiar
psychosis, your I.V dripping morphine to bore stiff the emotions of
a widowed mind, twenty-one years and counting. You gave me
a bag of rainbow-sprinkled cookies, a pencil topped with a heart
eraser, and a hug. You leaned in and whispered, I‘ll never die. These
voices won’t allow me to.

Lay vibrant and positive upon a garden of selfish
flowers, I say. Warm and youthful nostalgia, life before
becoming the esteemed doctor who fell a casualty to
domestic abuse. Though it still runs through your blood,
the dictator of your marital incarceration is gone. Those
around you arbitrate, knowing nothing. You know
everything. You know the truth, imaginary or not. Fault rests
in their futile judgments, not in your rapturous years.
Memories of you are bullet-proof, calling to my comprehension
your accomplishments, vaccinated from any assassination,
not your illness, despite the anti-mediocre thoughts it inspired.

Women

Of the Iranian confinement, run deficient
on charm, like nearing empty the gas
gauge of a 1987 diesel-powered
Mercedes.

Freedom never flourishes as their aesthetics do, fashionably
too late. They lack formal education, incarcerating
their own precious wills, taken delicate care of
by their prosperous men.

Coco Chanel is the only demure glory that their ignorance,
due to their innate compliance, allows them to abide by; she sparkles
rich dictation. These women, in desire, acquire only
diluted selflessness.

Women of the Iranian confinement carry what they believe
is their god-given prerogative, cheerless to the naked
American eye. In assimilating, bronzer caked on cheeks, number five
dabbed behind the ears; all reminiscent of a rich
housewife belonging to Atlanta.

Freedom is defined by their husband’s platinum checks
on no account necessitating equilibrium.
Stature defines twenty-four karats of gold,
not fourteen and plated.
Warmth is a mink coat, not a husband’s
cheap love.

Women of the Iranian confinement, run
unfilled on civilized emotions,
like the narrow piece of silver on the synthetic
license that defines them, unresponsive
after countless swipes at the local department store.

They live unscathed and naïve as rough creatures
of habit as I sit, resembling one only by
features, writing this poem.

Pop's Little Girl (Revised)

“Hey little girl is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone?”
I’m On Fire -Bruce Springsteen


Little girl, don’t you forget his face.
Close father’s hazel-suffused skylights and lie
still. Split seconds perpetuate aches, somewhere
under flower-hindering soil, not over any battered
indigo rainbows, resilient
from terror.

Spun out for certainty; children books lay upon egg yolk
wooden shelves, lacking in sustenance. Emotional
distress is no fodder for offspring. Peanut butter and jelly,
ceaselessly floating above you. Thunder’s tears water
your not guilty plea of sorrow, to
grow without due consideration.

Tap, on the sunflower seed road to past strawberry
milk wishes, Dorothy’s broken slippers. Slipping,
these moments collapse innocence,
like those fallen to their death after a frightening,
terrorist sparked-reign.
Little girl, he will never define
release. Releasing you from drenched nightmares, home
to his short-lived love,
lost.


Blemished, inevitably you will recoil
time and time again,
into lukewarm thoughts prior to the burning of your bare flesh
before home is recovered, in memory.

Little girl, someday when time arrives in cold
death,
he will find you, well.
Essential wellness, father’s resistance and daughter’s love neither parting,
emerging.

December 23, 2002 (Revised)

There is no dying this
time for you,
mother.

Echoing, my childish existence plunges
en route to a cuttingly saccharine downfall.
Cooking your holiday feast
met its end. My fiasco disrupting senses
of calm on more than one
occasion, though never this savory, enough
for me.

A glistening potion, administered
to fill a life without him. You pushed
and kneaded him, I needed him like
dreidel cookie batter kneads soft
to the touch. Reminiscence aids the ivy, green
with poison. A clear channel of subtle
healing, flowing through plasma releases my
wild, endorphine-inhabiting pleasures.
Yours melted by the smooth gelt
dampened under the weight of no
medical insurance. An indemnity towards health
was not promised as a parting gift, from him
to you. Your child supported less.

A metaphorical death so deep into
its grave, the sting of Miss Morphine
lent my corpse the sole decision
of accepting. A ride upon a halfheartedly
lit miasma, entering the world
of otherworldly itches—unrushed
to any interruption.

A moment murdering this subdued
twinge. Like a vulture possessing candor, she
caressed my aches never remissive towards
my fears.

No clear or crystal chance for parole, not for you or him.

Harsh Remembrances Breed Goodbyes (Unconditional Time 2009 Revision)

Mother gave birth to me, no crib
in sight. Fatherless you, during your birth, and I,
both immersed in doubt. On the verge of twenty-
five, still I wonder where you ended, and
why I began.

Your sly charisma spotted her at In-N-Out,
a tart, cranberry autumn in 1981.
Her Middle Eastern eyebrows arched
so high, she resembled, though subtly darker
and glistening, the Fawcett you fancied on
the crumbling wall of your Israeli barracks.
(You knew you wished she were yours.)
A Toman for your thoughts, a diamond
in your rough Netanya edifice, open to condemning
insults and the ill praise of the overseas brute.
Mother never knew subservience,
until you.

Your free spirit left into the luminous lake
of midnight on March 25, 2002.
Your dollars freed from caged child support—null
and void, you liberated, daughterless brute you.
Simply a sperm donor; poor in possessing any
fervor for love, positively absorbed by
lack of innate fatherly accomplishments.

Your absence ticks, dead and bolted
to the wall; its exhausted influx beats compelling
anger into me, no more living beneath shadows
of a brute's corpse, retaliating in remembrance of what
was never had. What was never had, breeds
along with time; along a deep watchtower I
remain, buoyant in scraps of DNA shallowness.
Shallow respirations that lie unconditionally, producing wounds
of rare healing in abundance.

These bitter remnants of a battered self-awareness wait
for you to bandage them no more. Laying around like the best
crimson crayon, worn down to the nub yet
never destined to see its demise; these replayed,
fragile, onyx emotions find their final stop
at a hault.

I casually breathe in existence,
re-affirmed and harshly exhale your false
stature, as it crumbles beneath
my chest.