You look French today

Ashen hazelnut hair and matching eyes
I walk with a gait that is not mine
but one I haven't even borrowed from anyone
it is loose enough for my footsteps

bag to the left shoulder, clenched-
a beret covers half my head
hair falling to the sides like cotton
from the sky

push plush boots out into the rain
that doesn't melt over my head
or the skirt that covers enough to show
things I am not comfortable revealing

I have been called so many names that are not mine,
mami,  ya helu, pizza-face, cuban hips
all the names that tell
of the countries I have never lived

all the lives lapsed into a nutshell based on my face
the way I ate fromage, twist my Rs in French
there would not be a way to maintain one
solid life that is completely mine

do not judge, we say
do not  allow yourself the opportunity of the doubt
we stress over and over again, yet I have been told I look
a nationality or the other and today it was French

No one told me I look Arab, at any given point
because there are no desert camels behind my eyes, no olive skin
nothing too eager with the zest of the furious mares
in the way I hold up my hair to the sunshine

but there is something ever present, seas, foreign waters
there's a lot of wind whitening my face, a lot of spaghetti genes
I guess what I am and what I become is and will always be
two different things to the public eye.

the fall from the sky

The sky is blue today
no clouds, when you look above you

you can practically see angels
of all sizes and colors, donned whiter than white clouds

floating
do all angels live up in the sky?

isn't this a naive question
a two year old might pose

the sky is blue today
on the balcony I do not look for angels

rather think of the nemesis
so alive inside of me- the devil

of how he fell, the damage to his
waxed wings, cracking across the clouds

why, why would someone so blessed
reject freedom by joy, death to life by mistakes

maybe the answer would not
be in the belly of the question

maybe it was a problem of big and small;
put it like this, a bigger angel pushes a smaller one
from the sky, because it lacked space
and then, the revolution starts.

Scrap-booking for winter

Pile up the crumpets of papers

you collected from here and there 

a little sand in the pocket

a little stone from the poet's garden- 

twice cleaned up, the rose a loved one gave you for a special occassion 

lay them onto the table, double glossed

time, laughter and little things

all compiled between two pages.  

Chiseling in air

too hard was the effort put
to waste, the assurance of the need
to confront this statue she wants to make and blend
forgetting that sometimes this love she had
one for another person of flesh and blood is
like chiseling in air, a castle
stone by stone

foggy

After Sandburg

Our fog comes
like a wave of a cast out ocean

it floods the city's walls and old houses
leaves behind
washed away bird nests
dragged fish bones and hollowed rods.

Christmas in another name

No snow, just heavy bouts of rain
a wind that shakes the baubles, sprinkles the glitter
shaking up everything, the arrival of the same Son
on two different dates.

Song of an origin

Mine is a song of an origin,
that is not bound by a city, a national anthem
nor composed by attention demanded by the others
for time, for a smile, for things done without purpose

this is my song , emanating from a depth
further than routine, larger than an idea
that floats elsewhere, doling on a hope for
love, among other things-

this is not a loveless song, it is an origin story
once far by the formations of jazz notes
in a sickly faint weather, foul by wind
a birth of an origin

the tones will start by a humming
for an idle childhood that was cut
to chase by the gun shaped wooden pallet
to guard, to hold at bay; enemies

the whistle of a bird carries itself forward
to years of struggles, for acceptance,
to belong in a place that is removed from time
but still tied to the human initiative to grow

wise, not just older
bolder, jumping ropes with hell burning under
riding a roller-coaster in mid-winter
or just plain prayer linked with tears

this is the chorus, that repeats itself
every few seconds, a haul across continents
dancing with a stranger on your chest,
then forming an epitaph for what's jotted in a black notepad;

roots, veins, cell-formation
desires, ideas we craft for ourselves to say
we came from here, point (A)
going there, if ever arriving- point (B)
this is a story of origin, not of movement
one that carries a sediment of all those who move.