Cuando you...

Cuando you break my heart, you break my heart
Cuando you leave my broken heart and my broken heart refuses to sit still
Cuando you don’t think too good and you think you don’t need my broken heart
Cuando you realize that broken hearts no se dejan and love again
Cuando broken hearts don’t remember they loved you
Cuando broken hearts find great amores en other hearts that have also been broken
Cuando 2 broken hearts tell each other, “Que chingen a 20” let’s make it, me and you
Cuando your Corazon dejado points out the felicidad of the hearts you have broken
Cuando your Corazon dejado sends I love you texts and betrays you
Cuando las canciones de tu Corazon dejado no longer skirt broken hearts
Cuando your Corazon dejado gets lonely in blue houses
Cuando las viejas mas flacas y mas bonitas are nothing like broken hearts
Cuando your Corazon dejado can’t ride its motorcycle away from memory
Cuando eventually it happens and you miss the poemas and cariñitos of broken hearts

This is when you write a song
This is when you write a poem
Por que para eso de amores viejos
You must remember
Cuando you break my heart
You break
my heart

Why Pinta Vatos Write Poems about Hood

Why do barrio streets only have cholos and ancianos?
Why are barrio streets caked with brown skin, trabajos and pobrisitos?
Why do vatos in the pinta only paint poems with the aesthetics of their hood?

Is it cause everything a vato knows in the pinta he learned from his hood?
Is it cause the pinta vato never read too good, never dug on Milton & Hemingway?
Is it that poetic terms can not be blog linked to him so he can find his fancy voice?
Is it really just a list, lacking complex metaphors,
when to the pinta vato building bridges between memories
reconstructs a textual him he’s never known?
Is it really just a haphazardly thrown together pile of clichés,
when the pinta vato from within prison walls can reconstruct home?

To the pinta vato there is no such thing as language economy
No such thing as too long, too angry, too much,
No such thing as not smart enough, not read enough
There is no such thing as language economy,
when your whole life no one has ever let you speak

Puro Pinche Language Poetry

Lady Mariposa

Sun, breezy
Humid, breezy
fucking hot
breezy
breezy
breezy
not easy
breezy
hot
breezy
hot
hot
hot
hot breeze
hot
breeze
breeze the hot
breeze
Few showers
breeze
few showers
with no breeze
Few storms
with breeze
breeze
the few storms
in the hot
sun
in showers that
breeze hot
like
few storms
that never come
and the humidity
not fun
like the breeze
hot
and it breeze
hot
hot sun
hot breeze
hot
hot
it ain't a breeze
to breeze
hot
when to breeze means
hot
hot
Valle sun

I'm ok. Easter Sunday 2009

I sit alone and listen to Louie Armstrong
on head phones connected to the I-pod
tucked in my blue jean pocket.
I sit alone with no make up on
in my “Where the Wild Things Are” T-shit,
eating Chinese food
at an all you can eat buffet
on Easter Sunday.

Louie Armstong & Velma Medelton
are singing “Don’t Fence Me In,”
as I take Polo’s call on my cell phone that vibrates
on the fake granite countertop table.
He tells me about the amazing night he had with another man,
his voice playful against Louie responding to Velma
“Give me lands lots of lands need the starry skies above,
Don’t fence me in.
Let me ride thru the wide
open country that I love,
Don’t fence me in.”

Polo promises mama poeta me
that he is being safe,
and that he will tell someone where this other man lives.
I close my cell phone warmed by
his youthful excitement and optimism.

As Louie goes into “C Jam Blues”
I smile at the little boy in his Sunday’s best,
who runs from his father towards my booth,
face covered in sugar and laughing.

Que Bonito es este Domingo,
sola
ok without baskets
my own babies
or beautiful Sunday dress.

Puro Pinche Langauge Poetry!

Ok, for this project, this is what I think Language poetry is.
In context it means forgetting the system (the English language)
in which these symbols (letters) function,
and instead utilizing these symbols in an
unpolluted environment (Syntax & structure),
or using these symbols in their purest form.

Language poetry forces the reader out of the expected formula,
one where stories and picture are painted for them by poetic images and formulaic narrative,
Instead the Reader with Language poetry is forced to see writing diverged from these expectations.
The Reader of Language Poetry finds that these poems or prose pieces are cloudy and ambiguous like the reality of life itself

Language Poetry is
Playing with raw symbols
To produce an aesthetic
Unlike traditional or untraditional writing
Langue poetry forces the reader
To listen
To conceptualize the meaning of the poem within themselves,
rather than have the poem conceptualize it for them.

Puro Pinche Primal Poetry!

The sticker off my journal

On your chest I stab
an impossible claim
por que este pochito
no es libro abierto

I feel you in my hand under
the label that fails to stick on your
sharp, creased shirt

I know you do not lie
when you smile and say
I will be the journal you
can write on

Bad Love Notes

If I wanted to be unoriginal
I would write a one shot poem
Fill it with poetic clichés
& repeat
a thousand times