Final Iteration of "Carry You"

“Carry You”

We are a strong family, a closely knit constellation strung together by our bloodlines
We wanted you to be the banner of our floating ship
A spectacle among the cosmos and believe me,
Your parents, they shot for the stars when they dreamed of making you
But they missed the carriage, and I’m forever sorry

You were an embryonic ball of stardust channeling light years into bone-marrow
That either ran a few smiles short of keeping you lit
Or maybe the halos tracing ventricles didn’t spin fast enough
But even though your mother was the only world you knew
Never forget that you come from the stars

I see you look lost among this interstellar mall
I will take you by your bright little hand
And we’ll have the Milky Way’s customer service desk announce your name via megaphone,
God’s vocal chords,
And we will stand there forever if we have to
I will not leave you until the galaxy’s lights shut down
And the lowering cages leave us nowhere else to go
But back to our mother’s womb
But at least we lived in heaven once
Mother has a piece of heaven living inside of her
And it’s about this big

I know you lived there and remember the songs she sang you
And how she fed you spoonfuls of lullabies
Bedtime prayers
And birthday with photographs
That sink into your exposed heart like promises
All for the first time
And everything tastes so sweet

Mother adored your little body before your limbs
Could develop enough to grasp this concept of love
So no one can ever label you as “doesn’t belong” or “never was”

I even wrote directions to home for you
‘starts on the top of these eyelids
Where you will find a herd of peacocks
Show them the complexion of your shadow
And they will fly you down to the tip of my nose
And I’ll breathe you in like a spore
Feel the touch of the everglades as you make your way
To the back of my throat
Climb down the rungs of my windpipe very gentle like
So as not to wake me up
Crawl under the redwood brow of my collar bone
And you will find a cellar unlike any other cellar
This one has five chambers
With an extra one storing our bloodlines in glass bottles

I will awaken you from your stillborn slumber
I will plant you through the soil of my flesh
My veins will pour needlepoint memoirs in your pupils
My lungs will whistle 3000 proverbs through you nostrils
And when your voice sprouts
Your first birth cries
A harmony of 2 sapling seeds
One sibling body
I will carry you home

Enclothed in the ivy that hemorrhages from these bones I will carry you
The way horizons carry daybreak
I will carry you with arms spread
And we will shine brighter than a Mercury zenith
Our shadows drowning in the glare of their own rebirth
We are invisible again

I will carry you the same way our father carries his last name
In his sleep, in his wake, a signature of veins lies written across his chest
When I find you I will carry you the way you always wanted to be carried
And don’t be afraid to show yourself
So I can reach into your formlessness
Find your face
Lift up your chin
And show you your name:

Julian,
When you finally come home
You can share my birthmarks
If it helps you feel that much more alive

My Message to the World.

Lift your shadows from the concrete.

Fireworks

Does she ever wonder
if I will abandon this smell of sulfur after being
blown inside out?
Or does she enjoy seeing through these crispy holes?
I wonder.
Wonder if we can still transfix light into foliage
the way we did.
Does she normally adhere to the soundbites
of visionary evenfalls
or does she pick them from an expanse
like grapes in a vineyard?
Tonight I have sought to discover

as into the tides of the night's chasm,
I vertically toss this message in a bottlerocket
written with a language of burst and crumble
to a gypsy of fluorescent gambits
with a shape as timeless as her name:

To My Beloved Ultraviolet,

The alchemists and the stargazers never knew you were a woman,
much less- single. Not until last night, early July, when I dared
call you down from your star spangled balcony. I cunningly wished to
join the people in their jubilation of hazard. Little did I know that
you humbly dared answer back from your lofty heavens. You are a
beam of celebrity, an adorner of skin tone, and you accompanied
me at the expense of countless galaxies.

We danced in our own chromatic edifice that
we built with fire and thorns. I twirled you with rocketing thistles,
the ghosts of manmade missiles, and you answered back
with a doubledutch wavelength grin. The taste of your cherrybomb
lips left me deaf and shrouded in smoke. If my buddies ever knew
that I have fallen for Ultraviolet's rays they would laugh
in my face, say you are too good for me. I don't need to be
reminded. But if the silence from your balcony is to be taken
for regret and wariness, then what is to make of the fiery shells
we have broken or the sizzling rose petals?
Our affection a cursive matrix of amorous distortions.

Let us recollect avenues of woodwind atmosphere. The glowing
serpents hissing cyclonically down streets. Let us erupt together,
leaving dead galaxies behind us as we guide ourselves with
nothing but Roman candle light.
For by dawn we are white clouds and diamond gleam, by noon we are
blue lips and circumzenith smiles, by night we are thunderclaps
and fireworks and why do we love fireworks so much? A poet named
Langston Hughes knew why. Fireworks are just dreams in reverse:
first they explode and then they defer! I dream of making fireworks
with you very soon. Be the fuse of my forevers, Ultraviolet.

Signed,

Your Favorite Shattered Twilight of Twilights

This Dream is Real

By the time you read this
We'll have already danced on the sky
And bent space-time with our heels
And you'll find that this dream is real.

Leaking

I didn't know until it rained last night that when it rains on the softest part of your head you never feel it because it falls through you. And that we can always smell water when it's nearby because the very tips of our noses have little dousing rods inside them.

My Island

Back home my family wakes up to the smell
of coffeebeans and the jolt of birdsongs.
I know they're safe because God is within arm's reach
like the coconuts and oranges.
To those who ask, I can say I've been before, whether rich or poor,
puerto rican, early morning seeking folks, feel the open
seas in flow the trees and coated leaves that breeze in homes
because my island only has two seasons: hot and steamy.

My island's ancestors can be heard in the tropical midnight croaks,
their marrow fills the webbings of amphibian feet.
My island shimmers like rich portals
with strips of mango spilling from the shockwaves in its iris.
My island's dancers have curves that sweep the coastal currents,
they move with tree trunk legs
that shapeshift into rainforests when they dance slow enough to be seen.
My island's women have lips that kiss softer than citrus fruit,
food that nourishes souls and supply the moisture in our hair,
because the best bananas in the world are not yellow.
My island's people go to plazas and pray,
letting the blessings fall from their open palms like loose change.

Our waters steady the burn of our pulse with its rumbling Atlantic blue.
Drop the white star of Bethelehem in the middle and call it our national flag.

I sing of the contours of paradise that pride themselves on
the haloes that light our earth-toned shoulders,
like angels posting treetop vigils with their machetes at their sides
next to hefty bottles of sunscreen.

We hear the songs of celebration a thousand miles away
in the streets of Manhattan, with tumbling voices that all shout the same anthem
"Our population may be small but our genes always dominate."

My island's kings resurrect every year to testify
the camelback gospels in the crowded villages.
My island's natives live in the clamor of our bones,
they rise from our bloodstreams and beat the earth with their fists
just to show the world how loud and alive they still are.

When our ears savor the cracks of rocketing baseballs
from stadiums residing at every other street corner
our mouths roar like the lions painted on our walls
it is the sound of an army of mountains
holding a grudge match against the tsunamis,
it is the sound of generations being born
when we hear it we parade the streets and shake the bleechers with our feet.

Come feel the sun breaking from his coyness
to gently hold you by your chin
on this sanctuary of reinita bird feathers and relampago waters,
this solar meridian oasis of the ages.

I come from a harvest of blooming faces
and rooftops that color the hills with their sugar milk walls
my family, we envelope with love for this world and all its people
like the last days of the elderly
and it is so strong, that the waves fight amongst themselves
for a chance to grasp the hibiscus-colored gems of our sandy throne.