The end of the affair

The end then of this business of
looking deeper -
of making something of the blue pad of gum on the sidewalk
-the boy among cops who says
if I catch something with my good hand,
I keep it.
My hand around a twix bar.

Now I'll walk lightly
a little too so
seeing only the bouyant
that make it up to the surface.

The hearing trumpet

immovable like a post
the note held long
rubber bands holding the keys
in place
the sound is taut-
the first hangs in the air
til next pushes out
whole
the boy's ear hangs low
just one stop,
then go the other directions

starve happy

i blunder milligrams and micrograms
you stop me 
i expect a lash
you grasp my wrist
firm
gently make a point 
that it's not a major point
but enough to point
i advance millimeters and micrometers
to
blonde streaks swim in light brown
waves upon waves floating at the nape
masculine narrow blue eyes determination
feminine grasping hand educating encouraging
faint lines of age proving your worth and time 

i go outside
look at the usual fare
decide to starve
happy

Re: Naturally a Disaster

Naturally
This could be disasterous
Mixing fire with air
Is just asking for a massacre
Or it may be a masterpiece
Its all in perspective
What you choose to see
Like others look at my harmony as crazy
As if to be daring,
consistantly sharing the hidden pieces of me
is a definitive indication of my insanity.
Not her, she gets it.
Sees it as fulfilling the destiny
I was born into.
Perspective
Glass half full vs half empty
I wonder how many,
times she has given the same excuse in order to not be loved.
I wonder if i ran with arms wide open through her celestial rains to the eye of brewing storms
If she let me keep her safe from harm.
See my storm chasing as fearlessness in the face of resistance
I steadily keep the course charted by love
Direct from my spirit to hers,
i hope she knows my bag is always packed
in case of emergency all she need do is break the glass.
I will stand watch in day
and at night, keep vigil for her safe return to herself.
She says she is a disaster
So naturally this mixing of fire and air may be disasterous
Or maybe once perspective shifts it could just be a masterpiece
All depends on what you choose to see

Re: Naturally a Disaster

Love & Light,

C. Joi Sanchez
www.jsanschez.wordpress com

SAVE ME A PLACE

Is it fair or unfair

cruel, or not

sometimes instinct 

gets traded

for circumstance

If I was wild, in love

the sheets and dust and dishes

would not matter

I'd be shaking

I'd be myself

I'd be the tangerine neon

against the powder hue,

of a blue sky

winking

ALL MY FRIENDS

all my friends are poets

all my friends are geniuses 

of love

her sweatshirt smells like 

comfort, milk, and chlorine

he's made of hair and breath,

regret and coolant

all my friends are poets

all my friends are geniuses 

of love

A short history of a small place

A shift of the sun,
the heavy lock turned --
sober lines stretch on the radiator
and the orderly bun
rests at the nape of his neck.

Caribbean genesis

From up here you can't tell it's a funeral home-
only the bright blue roof is visible
and the cartoon clouds far off.

Street level she opens her ginger soda with her teeth
and turns away.

Her thick hands stretch across the table
to offer me a piece of gum.

The hundredth monkey

Her puffy jacket getting caught in the train car doors;
a weird, sad army marching out of step through the tunnel.

Untitled

Silver chrysalis of crystal swirls
where woman-child can grow

yet to be colorful butterfly wings
bust out in beautiful struggle

take flight in her own right
of passage / coming of age

prelude to the many
words before

her swan song
and stand against the wind

in what it is
to be a writer

to be heard
to be seen

to be her
true self

and not
be alone.

By Mariposa María Teresa Fernández

selfish

yesterday i finally talked to her in eight years maybe she's divorced now she
is a reenactor. I need to reenact some things, the sound of ice in water
rain on a pipe the sun on an omelette first thing in spring. I never met her husband I asked about her life, right to it, her body changed my body doesn't change because
my mind is always regenerating to see it fresh. I was always pirate king and she
princess like without her i would have been, thank god for her. Her father is
a writer i needed to ask about that her mother is too but it's
less of a problem for mothers. I had to talk to her i wish i could remember
what she said.

Chicken Ponarat

How it pained me to see my friend bend her cloth dolly's arms backward at the elbows
Breaking the joints, surely, if the doll was even a little bit real
My shivers of distaste egged Susy Husa to tie the arms behind the doll's back and hang
her from the post at the corner of her bed...now it was torture, and i was just watching
I left for the bathroom, and when i returned, the doll had been untied and placed
on the bed with her knees bent in opposition to human nature, Susy staring me down,
unsure if I'd gone to tattle. "She's my Chicken Ponarat. I can play with her how i want."
was the line that ended that friendship. I pulled the cord coming from the doll's cloth side.
"MY NAME IS CHICKEN PONARAT. I LOVE YOU." the doll's chest whirred.
I asked Susy, whose name i loved because it rhymed like a cheerleader's,
if she knew that babies are born without kneecaps.
"are not" she retorted. "that's right" i lawyered, " they ARE NOT born with kneecaps and that's
why Shrinking Violet (i showed her the nametag by the pull ring) isn't crying."

Without a care in the world
He stood on the mountains overlooking the beach
Staring out as far as there was to see

Songs in our heads

Each time I see him I hear the same song in my head
It gets stuck there
He lays around making up nonsensical lyrics
Singing to himself
And maybe me
All I can hear is smoke on the water

Upholstering Class

stomach-sense always the pre-dusk crash.
Alone, the smells are too much, dry.
Sometime in the last year the sitting room my mom
designed she told the church ladies how they loved to sit
in it.

bucket-crunch cat fears the couch demon stops me.
I want to help but thighs, eh, liquefy my gel-self stays.
The sitting room my mom made all the church ladies loved it.
She always says "church ladies" I think, for me.

to make me laugh sometimes i never drink enough
water i hate the trick of tasting nothing I think my
brain is changing through dehydration I have
nothing to say my mom changed the sitting room
a year ago or two the church ladies came over

Just because the things I say are the things I say
doesn't mean it's anything in there my
grandmother did all the upholstery herself for some
reason my grandmother learned to upholster she
was supposed to be a German teacher but the War she
knows Old English, knew, she also is dead.

My mother made a sitting room with all of this
upholstery she calls it "your furniture" to me to
the church ladies I don't know. My cat is drinking
a lot of water the sleep demons stop me I want to
help but eh, my thighs, I'm so dehydrated

Upholstering is a hobby that sounds appealing but also
I would never do it like any hobby that has
an end goal I hate the way that nothing tastes the pre-
dusk sense of oh well. It's dry. I smell.

IN MEMORY OF BUTCH/ THE THIRD SOUND

No song is ever really good enough for love - I didn't really know the man,  but I know the marks he's made. Small pencil onto paper, small dash into the air, thumb print deep into the hearts of men and women who make sound. 

My father's friends are insects of business crossing New York City crosswalks, meeting on New York City corners, waiting in cafes. My father is a boy, bashful at the keys - no one will ever know that secret as I do - he is crying alone in some garage for everything that is beautiful.

You bring in the drums, you bring in the bells, you shake the metal, you set out foods across the table, the horns talk like birds, every metaphor is culled, again, this is the language - 

We un-ceremonial people who choose to make movements, who choose to pause, for peace, and honor, and misery, all larger than we think, all larger than we are built to bear. Every angel-person a composite of their tastes, mistakes, the moments they were captured.

You bring in the thumping, and then the wailing saw, and then the shakes, and then the voice, the looping bass, like a reminder. The little carrots, the dip, the pickles, and samosas.

Like my father I sometimes cry when alone and making things, not always believing in the things I make - but it is my way of shaking out the nectar, spreading out the pollen - this world needs beauty, beauty and sound - for there is knowledge in a sound that builds over time, ushering in whimpers, a veil that teases the room, skimming the linoleum, and all the dustball planks. 

All you birds darting through the crawl space - teach me how to make that racket. This is my love letter to an itching need to call back, and back, to bark, wade through myself, the little girl in braids, rolling in the travel quilt, swallowing in time, dark beneath piano-shade.

It is a painful ignorance, to hold in all the sound. One day I will burst, am bursting - could they ever know the volume of my bursting - it will waver like loons on the lake night, it will find your hospital room, it will join the buzz of the machines, shake against that other wave, and make a sound, a third. 

This poem is about winter

This poem is about a guy you definitely met before but you can't remember his name.

This poem is about being just young enough to not be able to complain.

This poem is about some good joke you recently heard.

This poem is about feeling gassy.

This poem is about winter.

Just saying,
you don't know me
perfectly

though you know me pretty well.

SENTENCES FOR MOVING ON

Eventually you will have it 

The palm-sized kernel 

of closure and proof

for we can overcome, and do

as violent-impossible 

as it may seem

that nose, those eyes 

that hypnotized

from blink to blank, 

they let go 

their victims, drop them 

from suspension, 

lift out from 

tidal turbulence 

and back into 

a life

far outside the context 

of skin and scent and secret

there is hurt - 

and disappointment, too

for the rush just dwindles

to a  stain 

of what was once

a spill

diggity

dig dig digg keep digging 
endless shit

Whiskeysoda

Do you nut unnerstand?
What are you wirth?
Pennies? Pickles? Pity?
Whut did you want frum me all along?
Promises? Pertinence? Impertinence?

Well, I'm surry you've left me here.
I'm surry you're niver on time.
I'm attracted to pipple who think this is an okay way to operaite.

I'll drink my watur and yur whiskey soda.
If you don't appeer, I'll leave.

I'ma not a dumb kid anymore,
and I niver thought I was when I was.

So, I've got that going for me.

Thas a hangdog awshucks pickup line.
It works, sumetimes, in the early morning.

Wat can you do but drink whiskey and read?
Do you haf any "useful" skills?
Do we haf any good reason to hire you?

Are you happy to drink alone?

took the dog for a walk
in the wisconsin fog
cars could have hit me
i kind of wished they would
i need therapy
and to not have a uterus anymore

Bad writer

Agonize over the perfect phrase

Take on more diction

Remember all the novels and plays

Scrutinize all fiction

Convolute the initial thought

Make it complicated

Use all the rules that you've been taught

Egos fully inflated

The Stickyness of Honey

The old me would have started drama.
Would have directed attention to the situation
as to make it the "attack" you've made it in your mind.
The younger, less evolved,
more self involved,
version of me would have gathered all our mutual friends for a viewing of your hypocricies. Popped popcorn,
served refreshments,
and really have made you the center of attention.
The young me,
scared of her power,
would have cowered in your presence,
crumbled to her knees begging for the opportunity
to be back in your good graces. But this me,
the one who sees too clearly her future's reflection,
refuses to re-align her position
to anything less then erect and direct.
I no longer hide behind masks or kiss anyone's ass
when in any given sitiuation.
Even one involving a previous infatuation
will not make me faulter in my resolve.
I prayed for a solution,
came to you with arms wide open and you made the choice to not evolve.
Like so many before you,
you got lost,
in the memory of anothers violation,
putting on me a sanction that is undeserved.
Calling me names as if I came at you wild crazy when
Even in my anger I was humble, still showed you respect.
I put my feelings down
but to no names was it directed. Its okay,
i now understand
i can't force you to be a woman, you must choose to be.
You must up yourself to a higher level of existing
before we could ever actually be friends.
Since this is where our journey ends,
i wish you a safe and swift path of peace and enlightenment.
Until we meet again.

husbandry

Did you walk a thousand miles?
If I could forgive you
if I took you in my arms,
we could learn everything

Absolutely I am in love with you
Absolutely I lose all sense of proportion at your side-
but-
you know when to walk away
to leave me to my treasure chests and towels
give me boots and a push at the traffic light

I will laugh with you, have a blast with you
Our wedding wine will pour over the ground
The cat will climb into the ducts
We will remake everything
build it up more beautiful this time,
anoint the process with tears and wonder

You are the kindest man I've ever met
and that means you know when to walk away
And when to squeeze, when I display bright feathers
eat a pie, make love to you like a wife

I could lay myself down, a bear skin, get fucked

Also your tiger, your monster,
your incomplete soldier, your working woman

I will nurse you, I will succumb to you
I know your spells, your secrets surprise me
I am madly compelled to serve you
and soberly clean the kitchen

This is life, braided together in leather thongs
I offer you everything, more than a blown kiss,
beyond longing. I have for myself, I give even so
to you, give til we are overwarm and deep bed acuddle
Love is too large to encapsulate.

Nagoya

Slick in the pits,

two month old cough,

shame on the Shinkansen,

slick on the back.

Bow for the bathroom,

lumber in the lobby,

rubber for the neck,

needing tricks like an uncle.

"Be nice",

Behave,

"Be keen".

Freelance

The work is not enough.

Chased by a blind swordswoman,

red hair, scarred face, mad

for some reason



for some reason I make noise

to taunt her

the work is not enough.


she pursues what she hears

I can't stop yelling

it feels so wonderful

to bellow


She really is fast. Man.


Not enough, and the time between

at home, my computer, the minutes elapse


this monster she must have suffered

to have such wrath and passing her


on the street why


did I taunt her?


The minutes pass, the work, so little

my own fault, bellowing

my head is so


cut off

Galloping Blindly, Bridle Disappointingly Descriptive

so, in the dream i am galloping blindly through a warehouse
i seem to SEE stacked with electrical gadgets
though i can't really see them, and i have been here before
without having retained any memory of a floor plan,
which is a painfully recurring analogy to much of my life,
so obvious, even within the dream, that i dig my nails into the horse,
the poor, panicked horse, with me as a rider, the un-horsey girl.
This dream is preferable to the one with the warehouse of restrooms
all with doors missing or doors too low to shelter,
another floor plan i remember without ability to navigate,
and waves of embarrassment so repetitive as to resemble the irritation
of the radio playing the same 130 songs in rotation, in every store or office or constructed
space
you
must
enter.
You must listen because you must be there.
These dreams must frustrate and torment because it is needed.
I try to tell the store/office/anyplace workers that their soundtrack is like a mental rack.
I try to tell my dream to get out of the warehouse,
to argue with the pissers and shitters that they could leave this labyrinth,
to loosen the halter and traces for the racing creature so it will slow down,
learn to walk, even to talk and read,
even to discuss what this whole horse and rider schtick is about,
that it could be fun to think about symbols
to consider every word that brushed up against its thick and sweating coat,
like, "Hold, hold steady," and "here's your oats"
and maybe the horse would adopt language, my language,
and say that "bridle" is disappointingly descriptive.

mitts up put

mylids draping brocade heavy
myachin' wingbones pinch
conscience kinking up
legs re-corked
arm gripped
fight gone
a breath
another
shake it out
crack neck
steady
mitts
up
put

LIGHT MAGNET

you ambled over

and turned off

my light.

through a crowd,

through a dark empty room,

jagged flight of a moth

towards the light –

you came towards me.

hat and hairslick,

invisible sweater

like relics of a cocoon.

you arrived,

nocturnal creature,

with soft silent wings

and the light went off.

I thought I saw you

smiling through the dark.

I thought I wanted to see

you bathed in light.

The green book

Pairs of girls and women.

The woman at the table

with an egomaniac ex-husband

and her daughter that will not get on the train

to ditmas park anymore because 

the girlfriend's always there.

I eat a hot dog and my
mom talks on and on about Denise-
she is jealous
and can't stand that daddy's little girl stuff.

What else could I feel
 when my dad wouldn't give me a ride to the mall
and wouldn't answer which one of us
he loved more?

Brick

the sheet breathes out bit by bit
falling into peaks and valleys
only once a landscape.

the snow hissing
and the big blue man
gloaming in the window.

POWER BONES

In the bakery 

there are lots 

of tiny girls 

and today

at the park 

it was boys 

on pedal-less bikes 

scuffing the ground 

to go and go 

last night was the party 

we had all been 

talking about

I stood in my blazer 

for seven hours

but can't remember 

a thing I said

some people walk fast 
when they leave their jobs

I take hours, melting 

into the barstools

but I don't believe in 
broken people

I know there is 

a lot of power 

in every type 

of bone

Push!

Compress!

Push,
Push
Push.

It will be over soon.
The task will be done.
Your eyes will open
breath will happen.
Color returns.

Push again,
again
again!

I hope.
Pray even,
for the moment to end,
and life to commence.

Taking a Leap

One step off the cliff
and the falling.

A rush of air,
knocks out all breath.

Heart beats too fast, tears collect at the edge of your eyes.

You felt the edge
the wobble in your knees and the
D
I
P

You took the leap,
then I did.

Hands like a fist.
Teeth clenched.

The fall is fast
It hurts
But it is over.

squint

humbled am i by sight
and twice sunk
sat to sidewalk
surged surprised tears
and cant be more moved
but to music
laughed me more tears
and fear
overcome with it
and sweet tit
come over baby
come twice
saved today
they say I look like Audrey Hepburn
and I will pay more mind
to sunglasses

the usual

with all the grapes and objects
the act, and then again, and now examined

the thing we do, and then again, and then again
the grapes and objects, wine, the same

again examined, objects here, the grapes
again and again, relief, the act, we do

the grapes, my voice, my real true self
acting, again, the thing we do, examined

I didn't do my homework. I'm sorry.

The wine. The wine again, relief
the wine, again and again, the objects.

Examined, the thing we do, with all the grapes
i didn't do the act, again, my

velcro skies

misaligned interests
you and i 
west coast
east coast
no coast 
in sight
a future in the air
velcro skies
stay in place i want
and wont
my feathers yanked
small wounds 
coalesce
to make me whole

royal rumble

He has the heart of a child
with posters on the wall
of the strongest heroes
He looks to them for guidance
but they only know of fighting
and steroids
When he becomes a man
he will lose his posters
of the men he once thought of so highly
because they could never offer any answers
to the many questions he had asked

ON YOUR OWN

I am following you at a distance through the fields, I am giving you a distance, my gift to you, as you traverse and I find time to fill. Time is the largest thing that looms between, but you nod as I twirl the grass and let it fall back into the dirt, you say you’d never swim here, it’s just a big frog pond, and I tell you about swimming this afternoon where the muck swallowed my knees, and one funny guy said he felt a skull with his foot, and so we all tried to skim the surface and evade the silt.

You are much more reasonable with distance than I predicted, you are none of my suspicions. You are your mother’s jeep, you are half empty iced tea bottles bobbing along in the back seat, those bottles could be linked by a cord and hung like lights, we could decorate a world in all the debris, look I would say, as if I’d shown you the trick of beauty, the girl-touch of making it all into something lovely, but no I would know, you had all the materials on your own, proud I would feel, though that is a cheap thing too.

long long wavy mane with grey,

my sometimes inner landscape is like, a sunny day on the sidewalk

in a small city in massachusetts that i've never been to.


misplaced resistance to sentimentality, for example over cheap objects

i collect rather than interactions or 

interpreting chronic longing as for the wrong thing.


growth is not symbolic, the richness of what you really like,

holding up a finger into a mouth a long time ago, quiet shining, 

where are the people i'm most vulnerable to

and safe with, still and big and changed already into my fingers.

TUMBLR

Please excuse the associations, my brother showed some teenage blogs to me, culled photos of shoulder blades and twilight fashions, all the right things retro – emo collages, frozen features, waifs twisted in the sheets – 

See I’ve arranged the desk, messy and just so, daffodils and some pictures of my family, silver scissors, select papers

I'm so good at this type of curation, I've been doing it
forever

The Essence

You wanna stop the violence
Then you need to break the silence
Cause thats the real killer
Shallow and fickle
she leads you to believe everything is better then what it seems
She's the carrot leading our stallions to live in trap games and pipe dreams
Keeping young women slaves
and turns young men into feinds

You wanna stop the violence,
then stop the silence,
its the silence that wills us
strength to endure grating words and stifle screams
Leaves mother huddled in puddled corners
while fixated eyes of her youth decipher false truths of what a man should be
Equates abuses into lovers way
See silence taught mother it had to be this way
That he only "beats me because he loves me, just in his own way"
It is in the silence that mother taught  daughter to believe
she should never be heard and always only seen
So daughter shifts her focus to that cash money,
her entire world is c.r.e.a.m
Fuck niggas, get money,
So by age 14,
she had lost her virginity 
Misplacing values like the keys for her shiny new mercedes
Daughter is now the next video hoe-fessional on a small screens
Trading in her platinum for a little bling bling
You say stop the violence but its the silence that is killing us
Made older brother have to hit the block
Two time felon he can't get a job
So he goes with what he got
That semi-auto, or maybe the glock
That late night,
distracted by his scheming,
got knocked by the cops,
3rd time's the charm,
he decides to flee.
Now big brother resides in gangstas paradise,
watching down over me

You wanna stop the violence
then stop this silence,
the pretending,
that you're knowledge is unending because you can read.
Not sharing our knowledge,
asking no questions
repeating all lies
Patronize and antagonize each other
then be willing to pop a pill to get by
instead of building community
not networks,
I'm talking organic unity
What happens when we think of a we and not just a you or me
Where we lift our voices loud and declare we are her
e and we will not continue to live in a state of dispair.

Its in the silence  when we fail to comprehend
that nothing is what it seems
and that bitch known as pride
only leads to a fall so steep,
you may never land.
And no one will hear you scream.

Love & Light,

C. Joi Sanchez
www.jsanschez.wordpress com

what is love

its not just holding
its not just hugging
its not just kissing
its not just fucking

its not just together
its not just family
its not just friends
its not just sharing

its not just seeing
its not just tasting
its not just swallowing
its not just believing

its not just talking
its not just breathing
its not just embracing
its not just falling

its you

That's me, in the corner!!!!!

I.

The day I officially lost my faith in God
was an early July morning.
I was up for almost 24 hrs
I was bartending late,
I had got up early that morning to go to the farmer's market downtown.
Anyway the customers were nice but they stayed till 2am
I never even got to eat dinner!
Anyway I went to bed
but couldn't sleep
Tossing violently
Sighing loudly
My brain was so wired!
Around 5am I was so desperate I took the picnic blanket from the trunk
And curled up on the grass
I wept
I beat my temples with my fists till my head rang,
wishing I had the guts to punch myself in the face to knock myself out,
I beat my thighs and my belly:
There is no god,
GOD would let me sleep
What a fucking cock-sucking dick-fuck!


II.

The day I decided there was no God I didn't sleep, I put the blanket back, came back inside. My eyes closed for about an hour. I got up and rode my bike, listening to Sufjan Stevens, wishing he'd written an album for me, for Wisconsin, but Michigan is close enough; I saw 1. A deer 2. A bunny 3. A fox on their way back from drinking from the lake. The tigerlilies were still closed. Discs of golden spiderwebs shone between reeds and bushes. There was still condensation in the cars' back windows.


I am done with Winters' Poems
I long for Summer's mornings--

Art forms in nature

she will fossil you
her teeth chipped
and shoulders raised
like the 7th grade boy
who wrote on a flashcard
someone kicked
in my personal
spot and it doesn't 
hurt but something 
is coming 
out
the shape of it a crystal
or stalagmite.

choke

yamaha speakers flying
wires tangle swinging
underappreciated equipment for 
an underappreciated female

high pitched shrieking prerequisite for 
choking this bitch
i watch and laugh not in her shoes
i watch and listen swinging my shoes

amidst irrationality there is sense

i stop and hold her
she tells me to get lost
i tell her she cannot change him
i tell her she is my number one

she is limp in my arms
i squeeze and her shoulders move
she is now quiet
i choke her successful

grim! grim! grim!
why don't you learn
to dip a cactus and make it bloom.

to whittle away the hours in a closed
box.

too timid to bundle or unwrap
I keep guessing,
but not for money at all.

Cryptic?

I step outside to see the moon
strung up on the telephone wire
like a single pearl
And is seems an appropriate beauty
Is the one
Who said the poem was cryptic
Was right
As wrong and circumstance
Was right
And crippling encodeded
Cryptic coupling kissed
Metaphores tease wits
Spat and coo and cope
With imperfection
Crudely
Like a singel pearl 
Still waging wire
Sometimes nights fair better
left unsaid

once upon a time

Queen, when you crowned me
and gave me a remarkable dub,
I blushed and hid.

Now I, emerged,
watch you slip between
dark trees of internet.
You shrug me off cosmically.
You battle yawns when I clunk up to ask for you.

I cannot like you evenly.
O queen, your highness told me once who I am
and without you I am wandering.

Homesick Restaurant

The waiter brought a mason jar of oily persimmon cubes and soft white cheese.
And a little tin pot of fresh breadsticks, still breathing oven.
And a pretentious glass carafe of water.
And two glasses, two plates, and two quick questions.
Later, the wrong soup, the right salad, sharp with lemon.
A helpful box.
A little sneer for our leftovers.
We tipped the waiter, as if he were a cow,
and he bawled on the floor, wedged between the tables.
And Temple Grandin couldn't save him, she couldn't make him yar.

BHL

Embarrassed ghosts of the night -
back home, they are losers,
so I have lost.

Here even, I am at home.
Off-key, slipping on the rocks,
I am lost.

THE NEAR DEATH OF CAPTAIN COOK/REALITY VERBATIM/JULY 6, 2012

You go to dead people’s houses every Friday looking for Eames chairs.

Oh, my ex-girlfriend was a chair specialist, the top scholar in her field. 

We start off trying to make mojitos - but then I’m just drinking - jack and lemonade, under a yellow moon. 
Then all my skin is warm. 
My neighbor is a perfect swimmer, missing her much younger boyfriend, 
more and more each day. 

Then I think I’ve passed some critical point. 

How many bug bites can a body of my dimensions reasonably hold? 

How many conversation like this - 

I’d like to rewrite the arrangement. From now on my job is mostly about sunbathing. 

From now on,  we only agree to see each other so long as we’re really cracking up.

Okay?

My dad sits in the back alone. The magic girl puts her hand on his chest to thank a compliment.

Next door there are grunts and growls. 
Tomorrow is the auction. 
My life is writhing like water, chained and contained by the old beach rope.  

joan

she comes in tomorrow

i asked her to settle things with me
for ten days
five days
ten days

does the morning work for you
like it works for me

don't ask
just assume

the boys will be there
do you want to see the boys
father and son

daughter talks
but no attributable sound

feel
feel
sad

heart beats
live

mindless numb

is a moment
when pain sets in

here on my own
no
but the choice
 is mine?

took it
a-way

struggle
find
words

itallfitonthepage

ON THE ROOF

The man yawned on the 2 train 

and I tried to thread back 

whatever it was 

you were - 

crammed together friends theory

it kept us in heated shelves, 

and we paid good money 

to be there, to show our teeth 

to the night

on the roof, you confessed

no I did not learn anything, but - 

that's when and where we are similar

big bright joyous naiveté 

in the face of changes

quivering grins prompted by a candy secret

the sky got pink, a heavy trick

pink like it only does/can 

in this city

of so much

the floodlights of tasteless love 

techno is made by aliens

and computers are our alien hearts

we flirt through data, learning to love 

or remember, at least

another, another world

and then we talked of something actual

you put your head against your eyes

people have died 

and are dying

but everyone has this

I walked away 

towards the train

each stride asking the next 

never to forget

fix-it

Don't do something "interesting'
to avoid the intense vibration
of your first choice.

I went down impartial and flying low, 

I saw how pea-ish dust convenes

in cloud layers, and how green light is

made of waving glassine 

in rot 

I learned against perpetual movement 

with scattered lens caps making no sense, 

my seatbelt talons resting on the desk. 

I incurred a beautiful nautilus

in the shape of a dog bone.

Rested the bone in places where no halogen memory
makes a sooty specter.

Showed up in a lopsided cat ear,
and in an unremarkable garage.

Holla back

[**please note: this is a call and response poem, written for performance]

When i raise my hands i want you to say poet [**]

Get it?
   Got it?
       Good!
Lets try one time..

I am a ** (poet)

Damn right i am
And a dope one at that
From my first time at bat
I been doing my thing
Cause i am a ** (poet)

A person of enlightenment
Telling truths to teach you something
But will you listen as i shine in the light.of my soul's glow?
Or will you continue to speak without listening
Regurgitating all the shit you don't know
About me?
I am a ** (poet)

A potentially over-enthusiastic talent passing time in a race amongst rats
Roaring queen of the jungle but i refuse to eat scraps
i go the route of starving artist
Giving energy to the grind
So my hustle is nourishing to the body, soul, and mind
I am a **(poet)

A preview of every thing to come
The past, present, and future wrapped into one
i share my gift wih you,
the worthy,
The nerdy,
The strong and the hurting,
those in need of healing,
Those who share my feelings that when the madness ends
someone will need to step in and lead us.
Trust my words
the world will always need us, to serve up more then the bullshit they feed us
I am a** (poet)

I know the revolution will not be televised
because we never believed when they told us lies,
whitewashed our history to damn near extinction,
replaced our crowns and treasures with cautionary measures, 
putting on full display their fears of us
I am a **(poet)

I know our power lies
in the soul we lay on lines
and not online,
cause we live our lives in real time not virual reality.
Its no wonder these busters don't  have a grasp on reality,
cause its too harsh for their "delicate sensabilities"
and if it were up to me
they'd all get a bullet to their medulla abongatta
Some shit thats spoken makes me channel the  honeymooners
["why i aughtta"|
But i don't cause
I'm a ** (poet)

I know the power i hold comes from a souce greater then me.
I'm plugged in to the outlet of the universe,
violence is so unnecessary.
I'm a ** (poet)

A person of enlightenment telling truths to teach you something about peace,
about harmony,
and about being.
I'm not always lyrically inclined to complexities in my word play cause i want everyone  to understand what i am saying.
This is not an attack on those who are
just my way of relaying my deep admiration.
So deep in fact
i don't dare immitate them.
So you know its real.
That there is a message here. 
for you.
Love jesanschez the **(poet)

Love & Light,

C. Joi Sanchez
www.jsanschez.wordpress com

Nightsleeping

when I go to sleep at night
I like to hear the sound of a flickering fire
to remind me of those nights
I spent camping
it helps me fall into dreams faster
clear my head
and sleep sounder

when I go to sleep at night
I like to be in complete darkness
that I was once so scared of
that I would hide under my sheets
so that the monsters could never find me

when I go to sleep at night
I like to feel a body next to me
just barely pressing up against me
to make me feel safe
and loved

Snow falls on the sidewalk
we search for food
coldness everywhere
boots are soaked through
socks drying on the heater
bodies hiding under blankets
winter is here

Twitchy Curtain

Holding yourself in position,
staying up there, god willing,
the day you may become the right amount of yourself.

Window veil nose bag,
flick your head, the curtain twitches.
Peer, what appears?
What appears to happen
as the carriage clock
slowly sinks into the mantle?
What are your peers?

Could you ever know,
architect,
father,
of the coup of  
the cul-de-sac,
blind in the brine.

Through a window

spread over the neck of the elephant
with the love connection falling flat
nursing sore legs at the coconut bar
the bleeting aussies in search
of magic milkshakes
ebbs in the shoreline
and in the assurity of the other halves

The lives of girls and women

the girls spreading their blankets
again and again
homemakers already
tucking themselves in
and taking care to make it straight
then later tending to the careful
balance
of playing
which we have long since lost
the muscle for
only in fits and spurts of courage
do we say
may I join?

I'm Dead

I have too often considered
than on October 23, 2004
zooming down a pitch black
one lane
Dutchess county back road
in Lilah's grandmother's green Subaru
with Brendan sitting shotgun
and recounting the plot of War and Peace
while Lilah giggled in annoyance
and I leaned forward, unbelted
between their seats to hear
that when Lilah ran through
a
3
second
stale
red light
at the only intersection for 15 miles
just as an RV
came barreling through on the left
-- it is entirely possible
that as I screamed
and Lilah jammed on the accelerator
that we may not have passed
mere inches ahead of the 7 ton behemoth
but may have, in fact,
been smashed, imploded,
burst in a puddle of blood and fibers,
shot through with metal shards and glass
and quickly breathed out our last breaths
--and that every second since then
every dance class, every park walk
every breakfast, babe, snack, steps,
this cloudy morning, your sweet new glasses
every birthday balloon, shampoo rinse and condition,
dirty feet and waterfall underhikes
--have all been my death-dream
my sweet hereafter, Shangri-la
I have been dead since I was 19 years old.

time capsule

Raspberries in January in Portland
Where did you come from, juicy little jewels?
You're so sweetly out of place
Confused in fact,
A little shadowy
UNSURE OF THE WHOLE SITUATION??

like a cryogenic time traveler!
waking up on the same street
to find his wife an old woman
his children cosmonauts
his house
a floating bubble

a haiku for yous in lower case:

winter in new york
all the urine is frozen
i am a snow-man

Writing

Writing and writing and writing

We
Write
Everyday
Mindlessly
In our heads
And outside our bodies.

Tomorrow I will write too
From my head, to the ground, in the air.
And erase it all.

The Waiting Game

Everyday we wait for something.

Tapping out fingers
Blowing hair out of our faces.

Pacing and pacing in circles.

We wait, but for what?

Childrens' Story

A man's friend living in the bed-crease
for age from age no tenderness remembered

Queen affectless and virtuous, to sleep they went a war-band
strangers, brothers, no love beyond the nightfall

Where is my affable queen, funny damsel, lily pond
while I a creeper in the cabinet, an hour in the bathroom

Two decades talking in the mirror
memorize my face, the mouth, the way to win a way

There's grass in the toilet, the tub is a world
a knight turned from a lover in the wadding of a towel

The mirror today had nothing to say.
No interest in the humming of the usual words.

The thrumming of my tongue against my jagged yellow teeth
The en's and em's fall softly in the hair-infested sink

A lover with his face against the eggshell plaster wall
for nothing said can shiver him, can make his shoulder shake

feast

there's red beans on the stove again, and
i will always eat your red beans.
even when i say i'm going to go
vegan for a week or so or
even when i think i've got to
quit loving you for a moment now.

cold squish hip like

the floor or whatever when i could sleep on the floor 

joyful sensation of normalcy in a freaky body

Untitled [for you]

She is to me
everything that life should be
Warm,
inviting,
courteous,
kind
With an unparalled inner strength 
voracious spirit
& curious mind
i wish she could be apart of my life
But i am mearly a pauper
Unworthy of such royalty
Her favor is divine
I remain silent in her presence
as if my development was arrested by her enticing manipulation
of language and prose
I fail to possess the vocabulary that is necessary to gain her attention
So secretly
I write love poems
declaring my hidden affections until the day
I am equipped with more then just good intentions
Because
She is to me
Everything that life could be
sultry,
sometimes sour
but mostly sweet
With a
a sunrise in her smiling eyes
i long to get lost in the recesses of her mind
Let her
lyrical voice caress parts
former lovers previously left for dead
Reviving them/me
to a hightened state of being
as she retells stories of triumps and former strifes
i wish we were more then friends in this life/ in time
Maybe in the next go round
Her soul will seek me out
pick up on the sound of my bleeding heart
And we'll dance into moonlight under cloaks of stars
She will let me wrap her in my arms
Become willing victim to my awkward charms
Because to me
She is everything
i want life to be
Dedicated to self yet her giving knows no bounds
She is majestic like the silver lining on dark clouds
or the the eyes of a black panther
Striking in her gaze
Strong in her stance
Patient in her word,
healing in her hand,
sensitive in her spirit,
Protected in a prayer
Wrapped up in the perfection
& beauty of love
If only she could see what I see
She would know
that to me
She is everything life would be
If only she would have me.

C. Joi Sanchez
www.jsanschez.wordpress com

CLUES

attempting to offset darkness

with a little thing we call light

why’d you wear the white coat

if you didn’t want to fall in love?

I ask by day not knowing when

the shadow took me

surely none of the nights

on memory never enough

moon for shadows

weaving protection

in the attic with threads

sleep without curtains

on the south-facing window

to rise up easier

HUMMING

if the poison made me

more like a hummingbird

maybe it wasn't poison

after all

heart fluttering

sustained by glucose water

tongue making friction

on my brain every

time I speak or breath

Wednesday night

I hope you didn't feel rejected
I just wasn't in a sexual mood
and I really wanted to watch the Lion King
and my vagina just feels really weird right now
I guess you wouldn't know what that's like, huh?

Be a child

When I was young I was told every day to
be a child, be young forever.
Hold on to youth and being small.

I always wanted to be tall, older than my age.

As I get older now,
bearing the weight of life
with bills, insurance, and accidents that do not
fix themselves.

There are no parents to call
no rooms to run to
and no blame to pass.

To be an adult is to want the child life.
Those moments when things were to far to reach
but it was okay.

My Town

I had expectations.
A city filled with neighborhoods that felt like
small towns with smiling faces
and people who knew my name.

That was the expectation and the want.
Now all I know is litter
and gun shots
and every kind of hope to be ignored
invisible, and left alone.

That is my town now.
Not a dream in my head or an idea.
But a hard
cold
place.

A show on the Theme

We've really been coming to terms with this whole
mortality thing
this year

Last year I nursed a woman through her death
And read her entire life story
as told in her letters and diaries.
2000 pages.
I read it in 6 weeks.
70 years. 6 weeks.
And then I read it again.
Zzzziiiiiiipppp!
You're picking berries, then falling in love, then your husband gets cancer four or five times and continues working at a grocery store because of his health, he dies, your child has a child, then several more, your child jumps off a bridge, then you're dying for 15 years and then you're dead.

Beauty, terribleness
You only get this one life
How exquisitely, inspiringly wretched.

But for now let's also consider
that for now, it's not actually ending

Nothing is over yet
We still talking, still dancing, still waking up, still shitting in the morning
Still rescuing drowning yellowjackets out of orange juice

No need to understand the big picture
No need to write the perfect closing line
We're just continuing to work

We humble
We solo
We do that thing
Mess up that girl's schedule
Forget to return her key
oopsa
We do better next time
There are more chances.
It's not over
not
not
not
not
over

not yet.

Saturn Returns

She's getting married again,
the second time in 6 months,
this time to a boat builder from Utah.

I have an awful feeling about it.
They want me to knit her a sparkling white wedding shawl.
I can't do it.
I don't even knit.

Receipt Please

Death of an age,
flatulent men poking at peanuts.
Tannery mornings,
a lost burp here or there.
No reading, no real ideas,
nice spa pictures.
Powerpoint nitwits,
no real feelings,
for the death of the age of 
clipart.

dream come true

there comes a time
when the things you've been waiting for
finally appear

and it makes
the rest of this
fearful day
seem like a walk in the park

i won't stay in a world without love

friday night

date night

Stumptown

Deliberate Portland
pea-coated, Irish sweatered
How long can you survive on the sale of hand shredded leather earrings
and self-published graphic novels?
What about your student loans
and restored hardwood floors?
Is the entire city population on allowance
from their parents
who worked from graduation onward
as dentists, geneticists, plastics engineers,
40 hours a week for 40 years
avoiding the draft
missing family dinners and school plays
so their children could sip tea
from a custom handmade mug
stare out the window at gray skies
and write copy for the local brewery's new
beer tasting menu?

wxyzab

Carla has crumbs in her pocket
David's a ditz with a secret
Eleanor loves to touch everybody
Frank didn't pay full fare
Giggity ramble, Gaston
Have you seen Hank?
I'm intensely irritated
Just jump already, Joe
Karla cracked up in June
Listilen to lovely Lilily's lililt
Murder Michael's misplaced moping
Nobody knows the nubble I've seen
Or ostriched as have I
Punks
Queers
Retards
Suck it up, stay sober
Trans man on the train to Toronto
Ugly thoughts undercut
Victoria's vivacious charm
What a weird world
Exiled in extant space
You can only do your best
Zap weeds where they sprout
After all, assholes are anchors
and the best bits of us beg to be free.