Interweaved
I scratch my arms to shed your roots,
The roots that I embraced blind.
Our lineage delves beyond my skin,
Growing, just as yours did, generations twined.
Gnashes choke me like unruly weeds.
I feel my mother's mosaic of ailments,
A reflection etched onto her, I mirror.
Our roots stitched in her skin,
Bleeding a blood akin to mine,
A little girl, once and always.
Grandfather's malice sewn into my heart,
His benevolence, a boy's fleeting art.
Roots entwine like rope around my neck,
Squeezing, as his parents did to him,
As he did to my father, a cycle grim.
Grandma's voice quivers in worry,
I see her in my doubts,
A garden overgrown with weeds,
Sewing my lips with hesitation,
Silencing me, stifling my breath,
Our girlhoods asphyxiated by blind hands.
In the quiet communion of familial toil,
This garden whispers of a deeper soil.
An ivy lingers at the foot of forever,
Binding mother, brother, sister in tether.
Maladies intertwine, a dense thicket of emotion,
Livelihoods woven by an unrelenting thread.
I may sever each strand with bloodied hands,
But these roots are endless, forever they spread.
Beef
I order my beef at the counter
as one does, these days
without a mask or any conflicting
spiritual beliefs about meat
someone once told me
that if what they were eating
could at one point "smile"
then they refuse to eat it
which I think lacks imagination
as yesterday on Facebook
I saw someone post a smiling onion
little eyes and a face appearing naturally
after being diced into oblivion
I order my beef at the counter
and thank the butcher
perhaps we are what we eat
in which case, I'll be smiling
from ear to ear, for the
foreseeable future
Data
THE INCOME
Data comes in
From vibrations abroad
Are filtered from the din
Of the builders of fraud
I
Wafts of biochemistry and alchemy inhaled
Race the first avenues of traffic en route
And pass on the right against vehicles exhaled
And make order of what we smell and goes out
II
The lights and the darks of premonition interweave
Through the chambers of the mind's crystal ball
Followed by hues, striking, as what we believe
Are the colors of the beliefs we install
III, IV, VI
Pursuit of attention moves those in their orbits
Looking left and right, up close and beyond
To focus on the truth and duly absorb it
Such that volitional reaches can truly respond
V
Things good to know, good or bad on the face
Stroke the fine cells innervating therefrom
To feel the slings and arrows of the grand human race
And how we fit in the life-changing outcome
VII
We respond, in kind, striking the pose of the facies
With muscular expression of how we taste life
We invite or reject with smiles or frowns that one sees
With decisions rendered of our own device
VIII
Waves sinusoidal are rhythmic and frenetic
Beat groove patterns, tympanic, on the drum of my ear
And are sent so specifically, time-signatured balletic
To make sense from manic noise as the music I hear
IX
Giving and taking the world that we navigate
Requires swallowing many things found distasteful
Yet sweets we stomach — sour, not — but graduate
And discriminate the things away, newfound wasteful
X
The things in the background that wax and wane vaguely
Keep the insides on point while the outside takes action
The breathing and heart-beating that tax and reign vagally
Handle upsides and downsides when lost in abstraction
THE WISDOM
Three pounds of matter that, indeed, do matter
The gray and the white that rule what we see
Hogs get slaughtered, but pigs get fatter
When we magistrate correctly, data actuary
THE OUTCOME
Waves ebbed and flowed, electromagnetic or kinetic
Received loud and clear, felt cosmically and then some
Are awareness bestowed, chronologic or alphabetic
While busily dodging bullets, walking and chewing gum