KALEIDOSCOPE: 

when i get old, i will grow my hair long. 
 I will let it turn to grey, and then to white, 
to remind me that we are not so different from leaves.  

I take great comfort in empty warehouses, slowly rotting.
 Concrete corners crumpling like roses, exposing iron bones,
 as if to say that nothing we build with our hands will ever stay standing. 

It's 4 days from the fourth of July, and
 I'm crying watching the seaside explosions:
 Something about everyone frozen 
 has me waxing poetic.

 The sky bursts with technicolor marigolds blooming in a bed of black. 
Every bang-blast is a revelation, reminds me that 
though life is not so unlike a fireworks show, 
rarely do we pause in reverence.
 
But tonight, at Schuylkill's edge, we pause.
 Because in some shadow of our souls we all know
 we're made of stardust. And though we fight it, 
we're all just a breath away from supernova.
 
There are days I wish I was a vertebrae,  
so that for every time I crack I'll only feel release, and there are days I think the only difference between depression and total bliss
 is what shoes I'm wearing.

 Some days I think, if I ever get married, I'll live to be 80, and hire a skydiving minister to renew my vows mid-air, 
and I'll make the news.
 And some days I know there is beauty everywhere, because 
no matter how many times you trim a hedge, it grows back at the exact same rate.

 I've been thinking about death since I started thinking about space, 
which was in third grade when I did a project on Neptune,
 And I've been in love with the world since conception, so.
 By now I'm fairly certain the human experience is a kaleidoscope.

 You press your eye to the lens, you turn the dials,
 and you try to make sense of the beautiful chaos at the end of the tunnel, 
sometimes forgetting that 
it's only glass. But tonight, it's raining comets. They're kissing the horizon. And everyone is silent, in awe of the flashboom sermon. And I believe in holding hands, in hot dog stands and standing still for a moment, if only to give thanks for what is fading.
 
Because with every breath I'm turning dials, 
and with every step I'm growing more into a warehouse,
 and my bones are starting to show through the concrete. 
 Which is why 
 when I die, I want my ashes packed in a firework, 
so my insides might splatter the sky with color. So for a moment, I will breathe fire, and 
someone might tilt their head back like an hourglass, and maybe, 
for a moment, their dials will turn. 

And a thousand shards of glass will line-up in perfection for fraction of a second, 
and they'll see the beauty in the chaos.

Them dirt roads can turn dangerous when your lonely. Like my father, swaying like a pendulum in his rocking chair outside our shotgun house fingertips smelling of moonshine and bibles. She remind me of bibles and moonlight on the nights the air smell of moonlight and unemployment. We use to walk them dirt roads. The terrain nestled the gaps in our toes. We were comfortable. The first time our eyes crossed paths I was no younger then the lies I told mama ya see the girl, she sworn up and down, was the devil she said it's not good to kiss trouble with you eyes closed or hold hands just a streetlight pass curfew. but I ain't tell mama how I use to hide behind old man willie's bush You know! get down real low like we were mocking the sunset. The first time we kissed the us flag still had 48 stars. when jumping the broom was a thin line between head offer heels and bedsheets. Do you see that room back there? Them walls witnesses one thirty am and the hush game. Locked doors and creaking floor boards. They know how to hold a secret. Mama! I's like you you to meet dangerous. OH I KNOW HER ALL TO WELL! YOU OUT HERE MESSIN WITH THEM FAST GIRLS? GIRLS THAT JUST WHAT TO TALK AT THE MOUTH. GIRLS THAT SAY I LOVE YOU, BUT DON'T KNOW WHICH SET OF LIPS IT'S COMING FROM. Nah, Mama. Mama she different now. DIFFERENT HOW? TO HER, YOU JUST A LOW DOWN COUNTRY SIDE NIGGA. CAN'T RUN A COMB THROUGH YOUR HEAD WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT. AIN'T NEVER READ THE BIBLE BUT SAY SHE WORSHIP THE SAME GOD. Now, now. Mama don't you talk about her like that. She make me feel good. I'M TELLING YOU BOY. SHE'S DANGEROUS. HALF BLACK, HALF MASSA. THAT GIRL'S SKIN COLOR 'S CONFUSED. Now mama, we all the same color when the lights is off. NOW SON, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR NO MORE A THIS. THAT GIRL DON'T WANT NO MORE THEN SIX FEET CLOSER TO THE HELL SHE'S FROM! I ran out of that house so fast I almost bumped into my own shadow. But I caught up to her on that dirt road and the moon couldn't have been no brighter. I said would you marry me and well she said yes. Uh huh and that she would wait for me on that road. I's finally caught up to you! Mama was right, you sure is fast. Look I just wanted to tell you that I's gonna fight in the war But before I's go I's just wanted to marry you. You know have us some kids, some little peanut shells laying around. We could have th…. You can't wait. What you mean you can't wait. But no girl, you're mine. Oh now hush up. I don't ask you for much. Just hold my heart 'till I get back now! Girl I's coming back! I swear I's coming back! and now I have to get back. She has my heart! I know she there! That damn girl I know she has my heart! I've been gone for too long. What if she can't breathe! What if i put to much dirt in that hole. That could be dangerous. That girl I know she there. I I heard these walls! These damn walls be talking! Always talking about those damn roads! Those damn roads they make you forget. They make you forget these damn roads where you been. These damn roads.

Pyramid There's a pyramid where my mind use to be. And in this pyramid there is a revolution waiting to be. And in this revolution there are hieroglyphs breaking free from the skin of that olden papyrus revealing ultra iets and hymns carried within the hands of divine clothes blind folds with celestial speech and blind folds that mask eyes of refined gold and they exist beyond the moons eclipse where time folds the mind it knows not except the pardox where pandora's box may have been left ajar and just afar there is a body of men preparing to ascend and conquer upon a land where the peaceful reside and prosper watch them watch them watch them watch men. Men that watch god watch them and his men that forgot god. God thought god forgot them cause them to forget themselves and even men who forget themselves watch men. And most men busy themselves in sin and forget god has inscribed angels to watch them to watch for the time when Jesus will decend chanting ohms and hymns watch them screaming joy students when the anti-christ is divided like when David slated the giant. Rocks sling shots into the iris of Goliath watch them screaming joy. Stridence singing: Oppress the tyrants! Violence the bias! Beast feast. Sleep until the idus. Feel my heartbeat everywhere, and everyone and everything beats everyone and everything into a love submission but in the distance my sixth sense senses the innocent being sentenced to death noose dangling from necks beneath the breast of the sycamore tree they are sick of more me. Want to make sure we are recommended like the mended Martin and Malcolm and Mumia and the rest of the subjugated masses and if not blast us and at least they'll cast us in a prime of prisons. Where -isms persist, where religion is myth, and truth never did exist. What paradox paradigm is this? we ask. And at last the revolution has come. the revolution has come. the revolution has come. succumb to the tongue of a poet come poet come return them honor. Burn the turmoil into Tonkas. A columbomb for every comma May every hosanna turn tundra to summer in Osana. May what I spit summon Osama times a thousand dolly lamas with loaded lamas. Spark to match. A mattress full of matches. A myriad militia of monsters that master mantra. A Mansa Musa meta-conscious and a ganda of like-minded men. If the eye only sees what the mind can comprehend then there's a pyramid where my mind use to be. I say there's a pyramid where my mind use to be. And in this pyramid there's a dwelling where the mynas use to be. where time use to sleep. where the mimes use to speak. and the revolution speaks the serene soul of daniel where the lions use to feast and finally there is peace and finally there is peace and the revolution sleeps with one eye open.

We are man made out of stick and stone lego block and G.I Joe Daddy loved us winter cold beat us 'till the blisters showed. Taught us how to hide it though. Sissies let there feelings show. Get us high off his ego. Crying make us unequal. Raise us violent like pitbull. Silence by the golden rule. Never ever trust a soul. Like the mouth the mind is closed. Let the systems pick our clothes. Baggy jeans and plain polos. Color scheme is for homos and you ain't mad if you ain't no. Man made out of brick and scabs. Trade in brain for muscle mass. Worthless lets me shuffle pass. Supervisors serve us wrath. No we don't deserve it. Toss the boss a nervous laugh. Bite the lip to be a man. Graduate to working class. Do the best we can to pull the future from the past. Finds a wife that understands. Type of life that we demand. When she starts to loath it. Serve her notice with an open hand. Harmless little reprimand. Fells the ship in our command. Child lock her hip and treat her heart like its a garbage can. Man made. Out of pride and blame. We resemble daddy's pain. We assemble all the same frame, a penis and a name Dough becomes our crack, our cain. Stack it to distract the shame. Slaving for a freedom. Chasing kingdoms that have never came. Standards have been raised again. Scramble to upgrade again. Praying that our children grow into a breed of braver men. Day too late to savor them. Love we daned has angered them. Tomorrow turns the tables as the cradle slow ly la bels them be man made out of train and truck. paper plane and hockey puck. Competition drive him drunk. Core religion: Praise the buck. Work until the callous bust. Slowly stained in arrogance. Craving to obtain a name but it is our inheritance. When we know our knowledges we are sociologists. Tally up our worth is not the credit from our colleges. But this truth escapes from us as the man keeps raping us. Killing us with plastic life. Breaking while man making us.

Lost Boy I lost my son fall of 2006. He was five but there was no funeral there was no casket, no hollowed out in the autumn receiving what use to be him no flowers, no cards, no covered dishes, no I'm sorry for your loss. Just the unending obituary of a boy that keeps moving and breathing and growing without me. I never changed his room. It remains a shade of blue too dark to be covered by layers of white paint contrasted with eerily inappropriate cartoon characters to jovial to inhabit this, home turned bachelor pad turned shrine turned solitary chamber of excess. I don't need this yard anymore. There is no one to run here. I don't need this third bedroom. So I'll just walk by it everyday as if it's not inhabited by the ghost of a boy whose not dead. I wanted to fight for him. I would have fought for him. But according to the law biology is the only proof of paternity. In legal terms labeled a nobody, who changed his diaper when he was nine years old and potty changed him at two. A stranger who cradled him in my arms when the crash of thunder awoke him. Every night-night story. Every prayer kiss and check under the bed for monsters. Every good night sleep tight. Every daddy loves you all examples of fatherhood inadmissible to the court for lack of DNA evidence. But though we are not blood related, make no mistake I would bleed for him. Every last drop. I would lay down my life like any good father because the word step was never in my vocabulary. When I married his mother, it was a package deal. We stood hand and hand, the three of us before God Vowing to be a family. Things didn't work out between his mom and me but divorce decrease can't divide the link between father and son. Five years later, I see him on occasion but it's different now. Time heals all wounds but severed limps don't grow back. He's ten now. Fourth grade. Five feet tall. He likes science and robots and star wars. He's still afraid of needles. The other day, he almost called me dad. His lips forming a forgotten phrase I want to tell him it's ok but like him I somehow know it's now inappropriate. Out of frustration he asks me who I am. With all the love within me I answer I don't know but I use to be your father.

“Abuela’s Dance” I creep into your room, Abuela. Like an 8-year old on Christmas morning up 3 hours too early, but it’s 1pm and you’re still sleeping. I decide to wake you. Call me selfish, but there’s something left in you that I need hold before you’re gone. As your eyes open, I wait your face, trying to make sense of mine, trying to translate me into something you’ve spoken before And I know it only takes about 22 seconds, but I swear, it’s long enough for me to fall in love again. “Abuela, yo soy tu nieta. Recuerda?” And there your eyes widen like football fields, as you reach for me in your back pocket, like a crumpled dollar bill you forgot you had, showing me that I have always been worth holding onto. After we exchange short Spanish greetings, I try to keep the conversation going, but I’m not fluent, this language, your language was always bumpy road. So I turn the radio on to fill the pot holes in my tongue and we dance. Let Celia Cruz lay the clues that stitch you back to me the lyrics pulling themselves over the gaps in your seams like a jacket covering the puddles in your memory lapses, synapses snapping, and though your mind is a retired dancer with two left feet, your spirit is a 22 year old woman, with legs that could wrap Christmas presents for days and hips that could make God want a lap dance. Every chorus a question I ask like: “Abuela, how did you feel when it was illegal to wave your own flag?” Every melody, a moment to capture your history like: “Abuela, did you really walk 3 miles to school everyday?” Every riff, a chance to end those sleepless nights once and for all: “Abuela, did you ever figure out how to stay in love? I promise I won’t tell a soul I know.” See when we dance, we make corpses wanna boogie. You in bed, moving your arms conducting the skeleton of my body like a symphony my hips, rocking back and forth, with a dip and a twist, kissing the accents in your favorite song's lips, reaching for the dimple's in your memory for me to take a picture with. I can make you feel like when she was 22, growing up in a poor Puerto Rican town too high up to place on the map. Abuela, do you remember you yet? And I know this just amuses you, but the truth is this was never just dancing. You represent of part of me that people said I could never claim. You give me the language to speak my identity fluently, for the first time this was never just dancing. And maybe it’s because I’m the only one that can get to you, the 22 year old in you, the joy, the smile that forgets to show itself on most days. Abuela, you make me feel useful. You make me feel like I come from someplace, so who needs maps any way, I have you. So go ahead Abuela, sleep – just not forever. Because you and I have a lot more dancing left to do.

I’m spinning but I’m not dizzy To some Dizzy spun over a house beat That means I’m dancing to Gillespie On a dance floor on the Chesapeake Speakers vibrating Speaking that chest speak Yes two left feet they’re gonna get free On the next break beat I two-step with the best of them Steps 3 and four? I don’t mess with them My salsa would not impress a Mexican But Jewish girls love it when I’m spinning them If I said my style is spicy, I’m sinning Since Words I don’t mince I’ll tell you I’m chained to the two step Can I cut loose, feel good? Hell yes! You want to look good? You can forget me. You want to feel good? Come get me. On the dance floor I’m wayne gretyzky I’d probably look better on ice But for a kid who grew up doing the macerena I’m nice I’ll slow dance with your grandma at the weeding Electric slide with the boys at the bar mitzvah Be a ballerina at the block party with your little sister In the club with a wall flower as friends take pictures I’m not sayin that when I’m doin what I’d doin that I’m doing it hot I’m just sayin I do what I do a lot you may ask me what’s my purpose to tour my two step like the circus named the left one barnom the right one bailey im not claiming to be a paily alven aliey but I can teach you my two two-steps like the number of deuce staley the front one and the back the left one and the right one whether it’s day time with bright sun or night time with lights on I can give you a nice one I’m a white guy with rhythm You want moves?!?!? Leave me a lone I’ve got two Back and forth The human metronome You might have met or known someone who has to get drunk to get into the dancing zone me? I dance to get drunk hip hop, soul, funk afro beat with the fem star front seat of your friends car grocery store isle where the eggs are I’ll lose control Wherever I are Even if I only have control of where my legs are.

DAYTRIPS AND DAYDREAMS: Once there was a cold thick strip of ancient concrete and ashy calloused toes stumbling light like tips of flame on matches lit for nothing. And doing nothing was a job description once. With plump fingers we plucked concrete and grasped brass coins between our toes. Our socks where either lost or didn’t match. And on the N-Judah, this girl named Sarah was brilliantly lit. More kids where stuffed in that bus then white fits in a lightbulb and I could see nothing because I can still remember that there was nothing like school days outside of school (for once) And Sarah told me nothing was concrete She said the best part of the trip was tracing the shadow of the boat’s tow 'till black ropes and dark sea perfectly match And I sat perfectly unmatched because to a child ideas are still giant-sized lightbulbs so I say nothing. Because Jesus was five year once cutting wood with his father. And at 10, I helped dad mix troughs of concrete and I almost forgot the feel of lime between my toes but Sarah didn’t! And I couldn’t hear the frantic beat that wiggled her toes if I tried. If only the vibration of Sarah could be matched. If only the filament of flame atop us relit Because for now, I see nothing And we where all five years old once And Sarah crystal eyes are the color of the new concrete. Because who says that concrete Is man made rock the resting place forever for our toes When we walked in shoes that didn’t match And we lit Piles of driftwood and paper on beaches for nothing and maybe we all plucked through solid earth once. And sometimes at night I dream that Sarah tows me through oceans of concrete To tall island mountains of light and I’m trying to match her strokes Because once upon a time there was no age and all we needed was nothing.

THE FUTURE: All right class please open your physics books to whatever chapter looks interesting and start drawing in the margins. Matter is just a mosh pit of protons neutrons electrons groupies and hanger-ons too busy bumping into each other to let you push your way to the front row of the concert, so think of the pencil scrawlings and textbook print both as venue wallflowers that sense the strobe lights but never become the bulb incandescent. Matter of fact, take my book, pass it around, autograph some random chapter. Professors never get yearbooks, a yearbook is a flat umbilicus we breathe the past's air in scented like sweet museum rot. It is documented proof that every history class isn't happening at once. Let me explain. Today's material is in there somewhere past the limits of what the light can see. Time Travel Is possible. Is governed by the relativistic equations. Relativistic Time T Prime equals T naught multiplied by the square root of the quantity One minus the quantity V squared over C squared Where V is your absolute velocity, i.e. when the cop asks you do you know how fast you were going and you lie and he knows you're lying and he already knows how fast you were going. You were speeding and the universe is the cop C is of course the speed of light equal to three times ten to the eigth meters per second. This factor is called Gamma Length L equals L naught divided by the same factor Gamma. So as a body approaches the speed of light, time/slows/down for it, and it /shrinks/ to near nothing, donates its space to the slow and dull and large like polite boys do at family picnics while they're speeding around the backyard playing. So being luminous and humble are a poor man's version of living forever. Time and Space in the universe around it stretches gone as evolving Darwin birds' one way migratory flights and if you can somehow fill your maximum energy potential E=mc squared and then break the universe's speed limit V greater than C. Looking at Gamma you're then multiplying by the square root of a negative number which is the imaginary number "i" the square root of negative one times some constant, and then you can turn left (or right three times) suddenly like I did and you wind up in your own bedroom circa 1982. The carpet looks more terrible than you remember. It's 3 years before the first Back to the Future movies came out. You're visiting your 9 year old self laying in that small bed under the window drifting between mononucleosis fever dreams and bloodshot insomnia draped in moonlight which still to this day travels at 3 times ten to the eighth meters per second. Let me explain. I was obliged to go back and do this having already remembered it. Met the wound too tight clockwork headed boy I was. Told myself rest easy, the Russians don't nuke anybody. Stop being the best little Atlas you could build with a soul made of hand me down Lego bricks. Wielding triple checked math homework like Merlin's spellbooks. The greatest thing you will learn at school is how to fight while playing. Dear boy, your gunpowder packed skull goes off in the middle of the week sometimes. Let the sudden blinding flashes come. The frantic dreams are Eureka stories you haven't learned to exorcise with pens yet. They will live as black ink, black is a pigment that soaks up everything that's turned to light. When it is shiny black it is donating light backwards. The letters live on a page that again only appears solid because your eyes aren't small and luminous enough to see that this whole world's hands are shaking nervous. The nightmares are evidence that what happened to you in the shed isn't something you are old enough to digest yet. Don't let the past loom like gargoyle symphonies on endless repeat. In the beginning there was darkness but the future fixes that on its own outside of church. Let me explain. Michael Joseph O'Hara You are one of the children who invent Time Travel in 2028. As you rank life achievements it falls far behind forgiving the few who covered over so much in your own blood and telling your father you love him not despite but because you are both failures in some degree. You are going to love the future like a schoolboy loves the Summer he's earned. In the future Music is free, sort of, kind of legal to steal like it's legal to go five miles an hour over the speed limit. Computers are smaller than phones. Phones are smaller than ever. No flying cars because gas prices always always suck. We just got a letter last week from the 85 year old death bed version of myself. He says the tyranny of money is close to obselete. That Time Travel is getting easier but more people enjoy where they are, when they can. The older you get the faster you travel the more you turn into light often you loop back like shiny black ink reflection. You are becoming luminous an incandescent bulb almost bursting on the imaginary numbers of things you dreamt of as a schoolboy in the Summer. The mononucleosis sweats out of you. In the future everything is shrinking. It's getting closer and closer to everything happening at once. People talk so fast their mouths begin to shine and then they speak backwards theories. For now it is enough to sleep, you are already a time traveler moving so slowly ever forward. There is a thing called progress. It is proof humanity has faith in itself. Like a God you can touch in the light of the day. When you are fifty five years old you will work through missed meals and two apologies, tighten down the last glitches, on the machine you nicknamed the flux capacitor out of nostalgia for the past Back when you watched stories be told in flickering light over your head in a dark theater. On a Tuesday at 8:35AM when you disappear in a flash of light - your life's work zenith colleagues will whisper "We did it" like a conspiracy theory note passed by schoolboys in class. We will shake off the ankle chains of history Graffiti the timelines and write letters to loved ones, strangers and yourself across the ages. This strange and theoretically impossible form of love is the only real calm a person can know. When you stop being stuck in a world of matter that keeps vibrating itself to pieces in place. Until that day own the minutes that are keeping you bound for now And class, that's about all we have time for

Picture Perfect She swims in her own sugar Takes one look at a photo that reflects an ugly they do not describe Then begins frantically drowning in a pool of salt She is the most beautiful ugly you will ever meet Picture snap shots from a stranger compliments are custom popular by the command of God Beautiful is a common word perfect She is not Nicki Minaj or Lil' Kim nor Beyonce not made out of puzzle parts, just puzzled partly Dark skin Hair short & kinky atop a slim frame like an overused dirty mop cleaning up the fragments of anti-barbie characteristics They do not light the flame in her insecurities She is a proud nappy with knowledge that beauty cannot be found in the measurements of your hips but when you barely depart your lips to expose a sea-sawed self esteem Confidence can be lost in the jungle gym of your smile and facades can be knotted up in the roots of little black girls who cling on to your reflected image walking on the strings of your swag as if swag was ever tight rope in the first place Picture She protects her polaroids between clenched teeth Swallowing whole a tarnished tainted circused excuse for a bottom lip It will perform tricks for you Spit the most passionate poem and make you believe that this rusted engine is actually something admirable I possess a cool hat for every hair out of place the stereotype of a poet & smoker for this tint of red eye for every blackened crescent of my lips A poem for each chip or twisted tooth My flaws come equipped with walking sticks & pimp coats Fans call me humble I have fans and they call me humble Maybe because I only acquire enough confidence for 2 word sentences like "Thank you" and "Too kind" and I smile wide with a mouth sealed shut like Ciley for this reason everyone thought Ciley was sweet and too kind I wonder what would've happened if you gave her a hip hair-do and a microphone but I have kissed more gilrs than Sugh Avery has seduced men! and have possibly chased away past lovers all at the same time Do you know what it is like to feel well fastened in and insecure all at the same time? So my stage presence is compacted with a lot of pain and I can spit poems about my ugliest things until the audience gets sucked into my story like a second skin Tap your wrist Do you feel my pulse beating? This is the rhythm of a woman out of tune with her own touch a woman out of touch with the image encapsulated in a photographic lens piece of plastic online snap shot The photographer be my homeboy and be my bully Hit me with your hardest punch! I wanna get knocked out of this feeling this in-completion This in-satisfaction with Gods creation Do not shun me God I do not blame you only me for once pretending to be the bad girl the villain to hide my insecurities in my hometown of Camden , NJ aka the city of Gotham and even though my fight isn't comparable to the Jokers his drive of insecurities ain't have nothing on me but as you recall I left my make-up and costume back in that land of bad habits so The next time I'm passed a mirror a thickset piece of glass may it only be for one purpose to slit the wrist of every insecure character I've once played For the purpose of feeling that much more whole in my imperfections Besides ain't nothing cooler than when your flaws actually walk with a limp.