Open Letter on Immigration

Dear young ones,

For years
I've seen them come
over our borders,
like dirty water
over a dam
and they even don't try to fit in.

They have their strange language
their awful food,
and they don't seem afraid
of our laws.

One of them even made
improper sexual advances
on your aunt,
my wife.

They come over here
and use our resources,
the ones your father,
and my father,
and my father's father,
built
and they squander them,

but they don't care
they just want a better life for
themselves.

I want to tell them
to go back where they came from,
but I know that is not right
because this world belongs
to everyone.

So, let us open our land
and ourselves to them.
Perhaps all these things
that worry me
will not come to pass.

Do not fear the white man,
he will not hurt us.

your loving uncle,

Ignacio
February 1, 1848

The Promise

There is someone inside
or a small part of
someone
trying to break through

all the responsibilities
the selflessness
the duties
that have attempted
to smother him.

They don't know he's
in there,
and they probably don't care
but I do.

So I find the cracks
in the pavement
and I chip away at
them,

making them bigger
making it easier for
whoever is in there
to spring forth.

Maybe it's a demon
from Hell.

Maybe it's a rose.

Maybe it's just dirt and bugs
but if I don't do this
I'll never know.

And the world may not
be the better for it,

but I wasn’t sent
to save the entire
human race,

but maybe
just this one lost soul.

So,
hang tight
whoever you are,

I'm coming
for you.

Chicken Today, Feathers Tomorrow (for Grandma Irene)

I heard that song today
and I pictured you
in your floral print muu-muu
in your overstuffed chair
in that stuffy duplex
in San Fernando Valley.

Has your limp healed yet?
Are you finally at peace
and not worried
about your wayward children?

I can still hear your voice,
comforting and cautious
"Chicken today, feathers tomorrow."

Your gently acrid humor
would sure come in handy now.

There was so much
I could've learned from you,
but you died too early
and I became a parent too late

I hope they're playing
Englebert Humperdinck
in Heaven for you.

The Vasectomy

“you can’t unring a bell”

is what I thought 
when I woke up 
March 10, 1986,
the day
I was scheduled 
to have the vasectomy.

The abortion was 
by mutual consent,
but the vasectomy 
was a unilateral decision.

To ensure 
no more accidental
impregnations, 
I made the decision.

I was 22 and 
to default
to my partner’s 
birth control 
method of choice
seemed predictable
and unimaginative.

(Secretly,
I was deathly afraid
of getting the wrong woman 
pregnant
and being forever trapped
with a baby carriage
chained to my ankle.)

I arrived at the doctor’s,
and changed into
the paper gown.

As I lay down 
on the examining table, 
I looked up and 
started counting the holes 
in the ceiling tiles
out of nervousness.

Then someone came in,
and I didn’t even look 
as he announced 
he was administering
local anesthesia.

I tried not to think about it 
as he tore 
a small perfect square
from my paper gown
to isolate my genitals
for the treatment.

His self-assurance 
and precision 
put me at ease,
then
I saw the needle
and felt a rush of heat in my forehead
and then soft warm fingers
gently moved my penis
to the side
and before I could register 
the strangeness of the moment,
I felt the pinprick
on my right testicle.

My eyes widened,
I breathed deep,
and when he left 
I realized:
“this is really happening.”

I propped myself up
on my elbows 
and looked at my package,
laying there, 
groggy and limp 
surrounded by a 
white paper gown field.

“Look what we got ourselves into.”

I smiled 
there’s something about being 
the master of my own destiny,
no matter how small,
it was empowering
and calming.

Dr. Montgomery came in 
and he described everything 
he was doing, 

and then it was all over,
all my worrying 
all my guilt about the abortion. 

I ached for three days after 
but I took it in stride
because I had done the right thing, 

and because
getting a vasectomy
made me feel more like a man
than getting laid did.

Translation

Sugar is my kryptonite.
Anger is my pilot light.
Booze is my funhouse mirror.

Music is my fruit.
Time is my mockingbird.

Sex is my glue.
Writing is my revenge.
Groucho is my long lost uncle.

Silence is my prayer.
Desire is my serpent.
Jealousy is my jailer.
Gluttony is my downfall.

Television is my comfort.
Hope is my tomorrow.
Fear is my bully.

Memory is my curse.
Lenny is my prophet.

Forgiveness is my love.
Scars are my receipts.
Life is my material.

You are my mirror.

[Posted for OpenLinkNight #149 - go to http://dversepoets.com/2015/05/21/10429/ and link up!]

I Want To Be an Old Man with You

I want to be an old man with you

to weave a lifetime tapestry

and repaint bedrooms,

plant more Korean box woods

and take more pictures

of the kids as they dress up

and become adults.

I want to be an old man with you

and feel the warm,

reassuring grip of your hand

as we stroll through Decembers

and sit on our bench

on the warm July nights

beneath a blanket of ancient stars.

I want to be an old man with you

and remember all the ways we changed

and inwardly smile because

we never were in doubt,

not for a second.

I want to be an old man with you

and hear you laugh a million-fold

to dry your tears, both happy and sad

and feel your heartbeat

when in your embrace,

and to wonder

who said “I love you” first,

and to revel

in its infinite echo.

Blankety-Blank

All night I worshipped her blankety-blank
without a single thankety-thank.

So I called her a middle-aged blankety-blank
(just to give her collar a yankety-yank).

Then I pinched her on the blankety-blank
(it was really just a prankety-prank).

She hissed "don't you touch my blankety-blank!"
(I was hoping she'd give me a spankety-spank),

but she just covered up her blankety-blank
and asked how much I drankety-drank,

and then my heart just sankety-sank
when, in a tone too frankety-frank,

she said "never again, Mr. Blankety-Blank,
will you blankety-blank my blankety-blank!"

Comrades (for Anita)

Rising from the battlefield,
bloodied but unvanquished
she still radiates.

I know the struggle.
I nurse her wounds.
I am her partner.

There is nobility
in her rising
and fixing her vision
on the next horizon.

At times like these
she appears to me
exactly as she did
at our beginning:
valiant, heroic,
and beautiful.

The contour of her
smoke-smudged profile
and the jewelry of her tears
inspires me
as I gird my armature.

We embrace
silently taking any
hope and strength we can
from one another
and declare again
our allegiance
and commitment
to victory
under the maxim:
“I love you, baby.”

Facing forward
side by side
we march onward again
onto the battlefield
of our daughter’s
mental illness.

[Originally written 2006, in the early stages of our daughter's depression.]

Bad Boy and Family Man

I'm the guy you used to want.

I'm the one who snuck you
out the window of your
parent's house
and took you on my Harley
and we drank and rode all night
falling asleep in the wet grass
after fornicating behind the church
both of us knowing
you had an algebra test the next morning.

I'm the one who didn't take
any shit from anyone and though it
cost me a couple lousy jobs and
a high school diploma
you still acquiesced to
my fearless desire
because something in your soul
was lit when you were under
my alpha male charm.

There was no fight too small,
my fists leapt at every opportunity,
while I did heroic lines of coke
and stole what I didn't have
and I didn't care about tomorrow
and when marriage number one crashed and burned
I blamed her for it
and I did all these things
because that's what got me laid
and it felt right.

Now time has slowed me
and I have seen error of those ways.
I found a family
and maybe it was the kids that
finally softened me,

but most likely it was
my wife's love all along.

Now I wake up every morning
shave and put on a clean shirt
and I say "yes, sir" to a lot of guys
that I might have bitch-slapped
back in the day,
and I call home before I leave work
to ask if she needs anything
from the store
even if it's tampons.

I take out the trash,
help one daughter with her algebra,
pick up my son and his friend
and take them to the bowling alley,
and sit through another re-run
of "Full House" with my littlest one,

and sometimes,
in my quietest moments
both Bad Boy and Family Man
will appear to me
at the same time
asking the same question:

who are you?

[Posted for #OpenLinkNight - at www.dversepoets.com - come along and find your new favorite poet.  BTW, this is a re-posting of a poem I wrote in 2006. Everyday I'm posting autobiographical poems to commemorate my turning 50 years old later this week. ]

"Do You Have a Dark Side?"

There is a fire
that never goes out,
never forgets
the list of injustices.

I tend this fire
and stoke it with
bitter memories,
afraid to forgive
lest I might forget.

This fire has kept
the pencil in my hand,
the guitar in my embrace,
the piano in my service.

"Why didn't you call?"
"Why didn't you write?"
"Why'd you do me like that?"

The passion
will never die
because there's always
something
to enrage my soul.

I will not
go gentle into that good
night.

I may look and act
like I've mellowed
but that's just a
strategy for disarming you,

because even if I am
a nearly invisible
84 year old
toothless man,

I'll still remember
what you did,

and I'll sidle up beside you
(you won't even recognize me)
and when no one's looking
I'll plunge my blade
into your side
and drag it up
and finally out,

and then I'll quietly
shuffle away.

Do I have a dark side?

Of course, I do.
It's just inside.