What Happened the Morning I Left You - 2024

There was a thunderstorm last Christmas Eve—

the morning that I left you.

The streets shimmered red and green from all the trees in all the windows around the neighborhood

and I imagined it was good

for the children still asleep because it’d be the closest thing to snow they would ever wake up to— down here in the heat— in Southeast Louisiana.

After you went to sleep the night before, I stared up at your ceiling

which looked in that moment more yours than ever before— and fought against the feeling

that I was running out of ideas to make this thing work.

And stayed like that til lightning lit the morning sky in intervals outside your misty window

and thought about the dealing with by all the women around me,

and all of your men,

and all my grandmother’s ceramic houses that she’d fashion into a village around Christmastime— red and green with little trees atop her dining room table.

And all my reasons for weathering cruel storms.

All til it came time for me to leave.

So I got into my car that morning-- with mist still blanketing every window

and a small part of me, small enough to be a child size part of me that I tucked asleep into the backseat, knew

that I wouldn't be returning.

Sometime later, that child would cry for the things he'd left behind--

You, and his Tempurpedic king-sized pillow bought from the Target on clearview,

and the jar of premade sauce piquant

And I would have to be strong for the two of us, me and him

But not that morning.

That morning, it became clear-- my only tasks were to put the key into the ignition, start up the old engine, and drive away-- And so I did

All'a while the windshield wipers wiped a hole in the mist around the car that only allowed me to

look forward.

Cerbère - September 14, 2020

Cerbère and sea hum

I went there dreaming of baby peach linen bedsheets

And walking down dirt bikes to those hushed tourist streets from the cliffs

I was softer then

Alone and tanned easier at the limbs

And found camaraderie among some men of strange-tongues

Unhammered the wooden boards from the apartment window frame and painted

A vision that came from a previous summer

Running my fingers along the rod iron bars in the entrance

Decisive and calm

Bare feet cool on the tiled floor

Sure in my decision and in my dreaming more

But what is dreaming if not for yearning

You don’t always have to leave perhaps to keep the red hearth burning

The world is as large as you make it

The world is one of those great barges wading off that pebbled shore

See, this rabbit in the yard of my childhood home

Would let me rest in the grass and read,

And continue on, just yards away and eat,

Denying instinct, and denying fear

I dreamt that I could be like him

And dreamt of not returning

August 17, 2023

11:11

I made a wish for you

Between Heaven angelic and Pacific dark blue

Not to loan you or to own you

But to share some more of my little life

With you

Thai Curry Monologue - January 24, 2022

We bought dinner at a Thai restaurant

Two towns over, that wasn't really any better than

The spot I used to go back home

But the curry there was hot

And the night was not

I brought a book with me that would teach me

How to do the things I've already been doing.

Things I relied on my gut to teach me before.

I guess I just wanted some reassurance.

There are no rules.

That's a reassuring thought. One to remind myself of later.

I could put it in a song, or a script, or some sort of Thai curry monologue.

My gut aches, like it's been punched, looking out at the gulf

The beach is nice but I get lost on it

My feet don't leave prints in the sand where I tread, and the seagulls only flock in clusters

Overhead

And I don't have a little house with the lights left on to return to

Among the others on the shore

No. I am an orphan.

I've been thinking of looking for work on a river boat

Because the money's good, so I've heard, and it's the only way

I see myself getting back to the river

Plus it's an honest living and I may learn a thing or two

Or is that a thought crazy to consider?

Brazilian Quarantine Boyfriend

Impulsive and brazen 
Brazilian quarantine boyfriend, 
You catch all my letters in the traveling north wind
[Caw-yaw-chee] you named me so that’s how I signed them
With a boa noite at 3 am
I’ve been thinking, dear, we ought to make the best of this apocalypse
However tragic or frightening. Inside me tonight the heavens hold lightning 
Warm and bold like you
The days don’t seem quite as hopeless 
And the bedroom as stifling 
With you
Neither does the ocean seem quite as massive
That little pond spans the length of my finger on this globe

O, quiet-quarantine Brazilian,
My long distance longing lover,
I’ve begun to think of distance differently 
Stopped measuring time by the length of my hair
And hit total reset
Inspired a bit, by the way you carry the air around you
Moving to Bethânia and Costa like a flying saucer moves across the Natal sky
Those parts of you remind me of me, 
but in other parts you remind me of the young people in my country
Impulsive and brazen 
And maybe a bit too idealistic for times like these
But laced with good intention, for sure
You silly, silly man, 
You mix your politics with your love
Life, I wanted to tell you Love,
Life is only worth the love you pour out of it
You come from the tropics— 
You know more than anyone 
How hard paradise is to fix when it's broken

My Brazilian, quarantined to no end,
This is sex without touching
Is this what our Björk meant? Our birch tree
Distante pra agora, amanhã é pra você 
Mantenho a minha janela aberta pra você, meu bem
Quando você chegar, dá-me um toque
Vou mantê-lo doce até lá, beijos, seu Coyote

Untitled - August 6, 2019

Sometime in May I decided 
I would start writing the way that I paint 
However lawless or measured pleasing
Both in order and disorder to tread real tracks
And keep track of time
Thinking in the same fashion
That I did at seventeen 
Eleven keen-peachie days, give or take, into sag szn
Or was it twelve 
Rising

See, on the wall above my closet door I pinned a map of the heavens
Off it, I'd pray
And group constellations in sevens, just in my head til I fell asleep 
And Pluto really never seemed that far away then...............

Voice

At seventy I want to say
Everything I ever did 
I did with intention
And invention with voice
My voice, will be enough
I guess I never heard it before
I only saw it

I. The Visitor + II. The Island - 2019

I.

Island people

Live island lives

How many times does the boat go to and from the shore

My dad built his house

In the back yard of his mother,

In her image,

And then built a fence between them

In America, everything is spread out

Roads become homes

We measure distance on the back of the hand

It can be quite meditative but

I am Restless

The man who drove me

To school as a child was given

60 dollars for 60 miles a day

Over bridges

To and from the south

Shore

I am lost

I thought I could be a philosopher

But a painter as well

I thought I could be a lover

But not by myself

I've become a visitor

How will I find my home

In a land of immigrants

II.

The oceans are getting warmer

And larger

Or that’s what the scientists say

The spirit is forgotten

The water isn’t thanked

The trees aren’t asked

Before they're cut out from the forest

How could a species become so lost

The bird and caiman don’t disturb the earth

The fish know

That they are fish and therefore

Swim

Man don’t know the day after today

I don’t know the name of my neighbor

Who makes a wall of his front doorway

What do the fishes think of this?

I’ve always thought

That living in Louisiana is like

Living on a million little islands

All connected by bridges , and constantly threatened

By the murky and surrounding water

Karmic Retribution

I was born between circling fishes

In the darkest part of a river with no current or a name

From out of there I came, beating and

Screaming out a love song

In an older life

I was eaten by my father and his brother

This is how I died

I was at a parade, paradise in flames,

And returned late at night to a house made of lead

The only light was from a lamp next door

I was creeping to my bedroom

And there they were waiting beneath the floorboards

I screamed but I couldn’t see their faces

I

Was

Delicious

Now those men are strangers

I can feel a change in me

A mixture of impatience and blood

To mold up such a hurricane

Took twenty years

I hold up a dagger now and

Keep throwing up mud

Where is the source

I can’t seem get it all out

from dirt to dirt and the time in between

I was born from the dirt and as dirt I will return
But who would have known, that in the time in between, 
This dirt would have such emotions

Stranger in a Cafe - December 19, 2016

Machismo and everything that is man. Shade. Dress that lacks light. The man was born from woman and loves woman and finds woman in him. Hair. The ornamented blind. Legs folded, legs drawn out. The legs that carry carry across the floor. He moves through tables with secret, beautiful eyes, hunting something unknown to him and me.

Courtyard

Everything was still. There was no proof of action for me to be witness, but I could tell it was a home, a home within and without. 
The first floor had a porch-- a narrow strip of wooden planks jetting towards me at the entrance, leading down a small stairwell of probably ten steps to my feet. A gate of floral design stood between us, granting or not permission before entry. Today not. It was black and cast of iron and had the look of gates that are kept up and greased often. The entrance was framed with scraped together wood, exposed to element, and probably meant to mimic the homes that were here in 1798. Or maybe it was, and this house was the last on the block to survive what history heaved upon it. Either way, houses like these were the farthest north you could go and still bare the weight Saint Domingue. 
Spanish, or what was left over of the Spanish, was the iron work, built to keep you from the courtyard, the heart. Black iron fruit vines were fixed by design on a larger gate down the left side sidewalk. But there were no fruit, not even leaves, on a tree grown over from the other side of the wall. This allowed a stranger like me to look upon the long stretch of second story porch within the compound. Like a ghost in late May, the boy who lived up there could bathe in the day's light, without fear of capture or expulsion. He’d float behind that scrim of foliage then, but now, in December, the tree is dead and the thin air doesn't allow for ghosts to lay out on porches. So from the sidewalk, I saw the porch was empty. There were three or four narrow, white doors to match the railing and complement the blue-gray floorboards. Each of the doors had a window and a brown, metal lantern hanging on a chain from the ceiling directly in front of it. Down below, in the clay pot that sat in the left corner of the yard, were hydrangeas from last fall. A northern flower, but with a little love, they're fine for the winter down here. Spherical and explosive in shape and size, they had me thinking of fireworks, pondering the colors and how they rise from the dirt to burst in midair. I wanted the flowers and still do. But I am outside. So I try to admire instead the cement walls on my side, painted ochre and chalked with dust from passing cars in the street.

Under the Crucifix

Blessed Francis Seelos Parrish glowed a little in the rising light, making her stand out from the houses on the street. I waited, stretching my head toward the sky, having to, to take in the vastness. The beauty of the embellishments on the stone wall and upwards towards the roof. Under the crucifix was a red dome which capped the top tier of the bell tower, the tallest part of the structure. Downwards, the clocks, which were on each side of the cubic pillar, faced each cardinal direction. From the street, the building as a whole took the shape of an dissected pentagon, the tower intersecting the middle. But this was faux, the roof wasn't as tall, nor as steep an incline. So the front was a wall. The red brick, laid ever so tightly and carefully a century and a half ago, imitated Greek or Roman columns at the corners. The bricks sprawled vertically around the top of the stain glass windows like a rainbow. Sizable and rectangular, like a brick warehouse, the building cut deep into the city block. Even in winter, green gardens lined the sides of the chapel, into the courtyard.
This is the catholic structure. Always tall, marking sanctuary like a beacon. Lamp illuminated, stained glass green, doors open as always. Doors made of cyprus or Russian olive, a lighter wood. Doors that welcome lost travelers. This is the Catholic structure.

Quarter Afternoon - July 25, 2016

Spanish. And what was left over of the Spanish. French. Pollen, tongue, structure, both building and society, the use of language. A secret, a window above every door. A culture, a courtyard, sharing. My porch swing, your dances. Back and forth back and forth. The home, within and without. Heat, shade lies, sugar water and lemon, all smothering. All Bitter. 
Sunburn, touch, sweat, stomach, muscle, legs folded and tan, hair.  A sharing of the mind, a sharing of the body. Banana tree leaves. Mimosa flowers. Palms on the knees caress and curve north. The farthest North he can go and still taste the soil of Saint Domingue. History. One cries out, the other sings, Oh yes, the farthest North.