Life Goes In Circles

Explore the human condition through the expression of language.  Below you will find a sample from each of the wordsmiths contributing to the “Life Goes In Circles” project.

Lizz Straight

Timber – Live @ The 2006 National Poetry Slam

Origami

You know one of the women told me

Why don’t you take up a hobby like origami

Cause when you fold the shapes they take on spirits and you can name them

And all I could think about was where do the spirits of dead babies go

Probably to that place that their mother’s keep trying find by folding themselves

Inside of themselves

Until their stability wears down to paper thin

Right corner down

Left corner down

Right side over left side

Bottom up – top down

Right corner down

Left corner down

Right side over left side

Until it becomes impossible to make your world any smaller and it is then

When people begin noticing your suffering

And how dare you burden others with all of your emotional dribble

That’s just like a woman

How dare you put a damper on their water cooler conversations

That’s just like a woman

How dare you let your reality show during their uneventful weekday nights at home watching reality shows

How dare you interrupt glances in to their children’s eyes

Cause well…

You know…

God forbid you mention it

God forbid you replay the images of your gut wrenching sadness over and over again

Finding yourself daynightmaring but that’s not even a word

Day dreaming is so much further from absurd but that’s usually the case that there are no words in existence to describe how it feels to be living

And dying

In chorus

In synchronization

At least you’re doing something right

And that gentleman on the street thinks that he’s so polite when he says

Baby girl

Why you look so sad?

A pretty lady like you would look so much better smiling

You better turn up the corners of your mouth and be quick to dismiss the thought of responding with brotha

You could never know this sorrow that I carry around with me

Maternity clothes riddled with moth holes

Womb empty

Arms empty

Demons tempting to invade me and persuade me to lock the door

Run the water

And pray that suicide is not the only unforgivable sin

Oh god I just want to get there

Be there

Stay there

Where no one can bother me

Or slobber on me with their words of encouragement

Or vomit on me with so called understanding

Or stab me through the heart with condescending gazes

Or suggest a replacement for the motherhood I was planning

They try and turn my pages

And rush me out of this grieving chapter of my life

And force me in to the light when

I know that my third eye’s sight is not developed enough to bask in the brightness of

Yesterday’s transformation in to today

But I keep seeing visions of tiny fingers and toes in my head

No sugarplums here

No sugar coating this

And no this is not the remix

It’s the raw uncut version

It’s the stuff you don’t hear on the radio

It’s the b side

It’s the truth that even a few good men couldn’t handle

It’s the scandal whispered throughout wooden church pews by gaudy hat wearing gossips

confused bout their own Christian b.s.

Do unto your neighbor as you would have him do to your hypocritical ass

That’s why I put in this poem whenever the collection plate is passed

Cause I want the amalgamation of this congregation to hear me scream out loud

But in my support group they tell us to practice screaming without making a sound

In a room full of white people who could not fathom the nothingness left

When another black man is forced to take his last breath

Even if he was just two hours old I still began to fold

Right corner down

Left corner down

Right side over left side…

Elizabeth R. Straight (c) 2004

Joaquin Zihuatenejo

19 Mexicans

Once while walking with Jesús Santos,
Vato loco with the holiest name on record,
Pilfering through alleys with nothing on our minds but trouble
He said to me—
Joaquín mira,
Look at that clump of sunflowers
In the middle of all this filth,
Their petals outstretched like the arms of Nahuatl pole dancers
Constantly reaching out for their sun god.
He said this to me,
He was the first poet I had ever known—

That night, I read him “Mending Wall” by Frost,
And after I read the last line
He looked up into the early evening sky above us
At the Virgin’s horned moon,
And he said something to me I’ll never forget
He said,
Sometimes I feel like putting my fist through every wall in the world

And that’s how I feel today,

I want to put my fist through every wall in the world
Every line in the dirt
Every border
Every boundary
Because I’m tired
Of locking people out,
And I’m tired
Of locking myself in,

Report on news station says,
19 die in semitrailer

19 illegals die of asphyxiation and dehydration
And everything in the news story is there
The who, the what, the when, and the where
But the one thing that’s missing—
Is the why
And that’s all I really want to know,
Why did this atrocity have to happen?
Because of a border that wasn’t even there a thousand years ago—
And when I look at pictures of survivors
In my mind’s eye I can see the dead.
And they are all olive skin, high cheek bones, dark wild hair
They are my mother.
They are my daughters.
They are me.
I am them.
I am in that trailer clawing through insulation and tin
With fingernails for air holes
I am holding the viejito in my arms,
As he dies whispering the Act of Contrition over and over and over again,
Oh my God, I am sorry for all my sins because they displease Thee, Lord,
Who art all good and deserving…
I am that woman holding her lifeless child,
I am that woman screaming mi niño, mi niño, mi niño,
And I am that boy in her arms,
That terrible child of nowhere.
I am all those people who died,
I am those six unidentified males,
I am José Felicito, age 92
I am José M. Tejada, age 34
I am Serafin Rivera Gámez, age 33
I am Roberto Rivera Gámez, age 30
I am Felicito Figueroa, age unknown
I am Oscar González Guerrero, age unknown
I am Ricardo González Mata, age 24
I am Edgar Gabriel Hernández Zuniga, age 17
I am Jose Antonio Villaseñor Leon, age 31
And I am Marco
Antoñio
Villaseñor
Acuna, age 5
And I died,
In a dark trailer—
In the middle of a Texas summer,
Amidst screams and wails,
Begging God
For water,
Begging God
For air,
Begging God
For just the smallest chance
At freedom

And all I want to know is

why

_______________

Buddy Wakefield

Human the Death Dance

_____________

WE WERE EMERGENCIES

A poet
can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.
But tonight let us not become tragedies.
We are not funeral homes
with propane tanks in our windows
lookin’ like cemeteries.
Cemeteries are just the Earth’s way of not letting go.
Let go.
Tonight, Poets, let’s turn our wrists so far backwards
the razor blades in our pencil tips
can’t get a good angle on all that beauty inside.
Step into this
with your airplane parts
and repeat after me with your heart:
I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hate myself.
Make love to me
like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.
Go slow.
I’m new to this
but I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop without jumping.
I have realized the moon did not have to be full for us to love it.
We are not tragedies
stranded here beneath it.

If my heart really broke every time I fell from love
I’d be able to offer you confetti by now
but hearts don’t break, y’all,
they bruise and get better.
We were never tragedies.
We were emergencies.
You call 9 – 1 – 1.
Tell them I’m havin’ a fantastic time.

_____________________________________________________

Francisco Luis White

Observation of Ghetto Life

Cameraman zoom in, get in close
around here we wear our jeans loose and low
typically low credit and usually low scholastic aptitude scores in the ghetto
peach phillie blunts we roll, we smoke,
play spades, we laugh, we joke
the corner store conveniently sells menthol cigarettes and a forty ounce
to a black mother’s now grown fatherless child, who is unsure of how to make life worthwhile
meanwhile, our women do hairdos on concrete stoops
cornrows on front porches, doobies in their living rooms
slaves to Section 8, light bills in the babies’ names
in every hood, in every city this scene is the same
from Compton to Bedford-Stuyvesant
constant struggle, my people hustle
when streetlights come on, there will be trouble
mamas call the kids inside
hard times
tears cried
police always come late, they leave chalk body outlines

ice cream truck, in gloomy urban daylight
drives by some old men playing dominoes
while they listen to The Temptations, discussing reparations.
little girls hopscotch, double-dutch, pattycake,
while little boys watch the dealers on the block,
impressed by the money they make.
ice cream truck stops
its song melodic, hypnotic
mama can I have two dollars please, a little one pleads.
white soft serve on cones is sold, young customers buy eagerly.
just yards away, dealers make their sales
older customers buy eagerly
the brick apartment buildings of this block are filled with families
barely making it,
rent is always due too soon, five people share one bedroom.
but the ice cream truck song plays
and for the neighborhood children these are carefree days
in summer heat, water from a hydrant sprays.

_____________________________________________________

Robert Gibbons

Recount
(tribute to historic Florida)

At the end of the archipelago there is an expressway
where the heat is so hot you better find yourself a
shade tree, plant yourself, then maybe a cool breeze
will pass by. Where saw grass still grows and you better
stop if a family of ducks are crossing the street. The
whole state is fish bowl and we recount those days.

We recount those days while yet in the third grade, the
first time we saw snow, it was historic, wet, bleached,
sand-stoned colored snowflakes fell from the sky.

We recount those days when yachts would dock near Old Port
Cove, when mobile homes crowded Singer Island, eroded
beaches allowed an invasion of lemon sharks, propeller-
marked manatees, and an explosion of mangoes. Wallace’s
ideas are stranded in the Bahamas, lot in the triangle and
Hemmingway’s cats are on a hot tin roof.

We recount those days when discovery was a real as Ponce De Leon.
He discovered me as I discovered myself and conquered my coming of age.
Spanish grandmother would hold her children close, wouldn’t let go.
She named her Florida. Only exotic Cuban plants and red peppers grew.
The smoke is still rising from the Wacissa swamp. No one knew its origin.

We recount those days when bean pickers and corn packers shucked,
shelled, and jived way into the night. Even, Zora went walking up
dust tracked roads. Sugar would drip from the cob of corn. We
settled black muck. It grew everything. Hurricanes and tornadoes would
make their annuals visits blowing Tallahassee roofs and drowning cypress
swamps.

We recount those days when Northern birds migrated,
bubble gum pink flamingos sat proud atop lime green art deco buildings.
Blue herons would wade up Palm Beach Lakes.
Now snow birds just leave their droppings-their snow.

We want to recount all the dead, and the past,
all the graveyards and plots built above ground.
The ones lost at sea when the hurricane and Great Flood came.

We want a recount for Belle Glade, Palm Glade, Palm City, and every palm tree
with a coconut and every nut that fell from grace and made an impact on the ground’s floor.

We want a recount foe FEMA city, Little Havana, Little Haiti, Turtle Key,
and very topless woman, muscle boy, Lancôme babe that struts, strolls, and cruises Ocean Drive.
For Ocala, Tallahassee, Wakulla, Sarasota, Pahokee, and every Native that ran into the swamp
and hid from Andrew Jackson during the Battle of Orleans.

Finally, a recount for the disheveled, dismembered, disbarred, disenfranchised,
and dissed who wash car window for a living carrying big red paint buckets beneath a Miami bridge, only eating a grapefruit and an avocado, drying their sweat-drenched bodies in the coolness of the night. For the drifter, the drifted, the beach bum, the hum drum, the ones who fell overboard, drunk from pain, lost at sea, the sea anemone, the sea spray is only temporary. The sun is the light.
The dolphins will sing and the sea will be green again.