some thoughts

I wish I could wrap my thoughts around how I feel. But whichever way they turn, they return to the issue of love. What is it? Who receives it and who creates it? What happens when it goes away? Why does it go away? Then, if it does, was it love in the first place?

So is love an ephemeral thing?
Is it that capricious?

Perhaps.

But is it love?

Perhaps.

But love changes a person.

True love does anyway --

So maybe love is not that thing that flies away, frightened upon the slightest movement from the wind.

I want to say to the world

I love you
I want to hug you
I want to open my rib cage
rip my heart out
and put you there
I want to cradle you
protect you
I want you to breathe
my breath
when you breathe
I breathe
as my heart beats
I want you to feel
my heart
and be in bliss
to know it
caress it
and realize that
your heart beats

The world has become smaller
a heart in my hand
beating

My Response to "Poem Tied to a Chair"

So I wrote a poem a few days ago. It was inspired by that horrible teacher who teaches poems by beating them and tying them to chairs.

POEM TIED TO A CHAIR

dear poem tied to a chair
why are you a poem
you are brittle bones and hair
masquerading as a poem
the chair squirms beneath you
the rope strangling
the poem you once were

dear poem tied to a chair
why are you a poem
tied to a chair

sad and lonely
you want to tether other poems
down

suffocate and kill them
just like you

dear poem tied to a chair
why are you a poem

you should be a verb
you should be preposition
you should be a noun
but not a poem

other words around you
commit suicide
because they do not want
to be like you

a poem tied to a chair

Introduction to Poetry

So one of my friends e-mailed me this poem because she's in a poetry class that is horrible. She said that the teacher is not teaching but screaming, "tying it to a chair." It's such so appropos.


Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

the poem that didn't make it

I was going to include this in the course packet for the composition course. But I had to cut it. So I'll just post it here for future reference...

Immigrants in Our Own Land

BY JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA


We are born with dreams in our hearts,
looking for better days ahead.
At the gates we are given new papers,
our old clothes are taken
and we are given overalls like mechanics wear.
We are given shots and doctors ask questions.
Then we gather in another room
where counselors orient us to the new land
we will now live in. We take tests.
Some of us were craftsmen in the old world,
good with our hands and proud of our work.
Others were good with their heads.
They used common sense like scholars
use glasses and books to reach the world.
But most of us didn’t finish high school.

The old men who have lived here stare at us,
from deep disturbed eyes, sulking, retreated.
We pass them as they stand around idle,
leaning on shovels and rakes or against walls.
Our expectations are high: in the old world,
they talked about rehabilitation,
about being able to finish school,
and learning an extra good trade.
But right away we are sent to work as dishwashers,
to work in fields for three cents an hour.
The administration says this is temporary
So we go about our business, blacks with blacks,
poor whites with poor whites,
chicanos and indians by themselves.
The administration says this is right,
no mixing of cultures, let them stay apart,
like in the old neighborhoods we came from.

We came here to get away from false promises,
from dictators in our neighborhoods,
who wore blue suits and broke our doors down
when they wanted, arrested us when they felt like,
swinging clubs and shooting guns as they pleased.
But it’s no different here. It’s all concentrated.
The doctors don’t care, our bodies decay,
our minds deteriorate, we learn nothing of value.
Our lives don’t get better, we go down quick.

My cell is crisscrossed with laundry lines,
my T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks and pants are drying.
Just like it used to be in my neighborhood:
from all the tenements laundry hung window to window.
Across the way Joey is sticking his hands
through the bars to hand Felip� a cigarette,
men are hollering back and forth cell to cell,
saying their sinks don’t work,
or somebody downstairs hollers angrily
about a toilet overflowing,
or that the heaters don’t work.

I ask Coyote next door to shoot me over
a little more soap to finish my laundry.
I look down and see new immigrants coming in,
mattresses rolled up and on their shoulders,
new haircuts and brogan boots,
looking around, each with a dream in their heart,
thinking they’ll get a chance to change their lives.

But in the end, some will just sit around
talking about how good the old world was.
Some of the younger ones will become gangsters.
Some will die and others will go on living
without a soul, a future, or a reason to live.
Some will make it out of here with hate in their eyes,
but so very few make it out of here as human
as they came in, they leave wondering what good they are now
as they look at their hands so long away from their tools,
as they look at themselves, so long gone from their families,
so long gone from life itself, so many things have changed.