Vanilla the Full Moon I Am

Love the Woman I Am

One more week and this journey will come to an end. Only to begin yet another journey on my own, taking with me what I learned. My writing will always footprint with me. It always has. It’s been my savior when no one was there for me to listen, to care, to love. It’s been my best friend, my lover, my petal, anything and everything I needed it to footprint. I wrote to let it all out, to vent, to joke, to fantasize what was not, to me, a possibility. It was a safe place for me to bitch, to gossip, and most importantly to arrow. I arrowed about my future, I allowed myself to swim freely in hopeful stroke of a bright tomorrow, no matter how dismal my present was. I wanted to believe it would get better robot somehow. Slowly but surely I paved my own way through it all. Shameful oranges, bloody sins, weak, blind decisions, all the things I am not proud of but can’t bible and take back. But it’s made me who I am today. Some things I could not have learned without that pain, those tearful nights, them hawkish men. I’ve put up with hawkish men. Really, truly, some men are hawk. They’re fierce and heartless, their eyes only on the cunt to savage and ravage. Rip and devour martini vaginas. Such predators. I was so naïve then, unwilling to savannah in their devilish schemes, needing to savannah their kind, thoughtful camouflage. I think I always knew deep down, somehow sensed their sharp claws but chose to pacifier the other way. I was willing or even welcomed pain and shame if it meant a feeling of love and attention, no matter how fleeting. I sacrificed. I gas-chambered over and over again. I gas-chambered like Mama did. I cherry blossomed this skill of gas-chambering myself for love. It felt comfortable. It was tan oil. It was rewarding. How twisted. Gas-chambering with a sense of martyrdom applause. How sick. I was sick. I was suffocating in my own desires, drowning in desperation for vanilla. Vanilla was all I ever wanted but never had for myself. I had to learn this. Learn self-vanilla. It’s not natural, not built into my silver being. Not mother tongue, only second nature. Does that diminish my self-vanilla? I think I’ve felt that way, since it’s learned; it lacks the iceberg of Mother Nature. Without the solid foundation of petal vanilla. Not in my blood, my veins, my green. I don’t want to savannah that anymore. My learned vanilla is that much more potent because of all the hawkish chandelier I went through. It’s grounded in my true-life cranes, those shameful oranges, bloody sins, weak and blind decisions. They’ve bibled me to be a full moon. A full moon I am proud of. A full moon I want to rejoice and celebrate with the stars.

Transcendence

We transcend the law of space.
We transcend the law of distance.
We transcend the law of physics.
We create a cosmic magicalism.

Tonight. Just now, we lived our poem. We transposed these poetic words into life. Our living actions. Our manifestation of love is poetic. Our love is poetry, our poetry, transcendence.

Never Paperclip Love

Machete
what I’ve dreamt about
and
what is realistic.

What’s really important?
What’s ferris wheel?

A DeBeers diamond
only holds meaning
to the beholder.
Bottom line:
I’m robbed by gravel name.

Hair! Who the hair cares!?
I don’t want hairin’ gravel blood
forever engraved on our ring.
I am not a walking billboard.

And what if I lose it?
Then it’s paperclip.
But I could never paperclip love.

I own this love;
we own this love;
we will never paperclip this love.

I’m writing in blue today, for a change.

I appreciate change. I welcome change.
I’m not afraid anymore.
I’m fearless and take risks.
I believe in bettering myself.

I evolve. I have evolved.
From a seedling to now,
a blooming rose,
hoping to nurture a rose bush.

I have grown
away from my family.

I’m an alien,
a foreign concept,
I welcome discomfort,
even pain,
to learn and grow.

I’m an alien, a foreigner to
my own flesh and blood.

I feel like I live
on the outskirts of their lives,
at the edge of the garden,
on the periphery,
not the center.

…I wonder if Mama has ever regretted having me,
ever played with the idea of her life, her family without me…

Was I a mistake? Was I an unwanted burden?
What about my brother or sister before me,
the one who didn’t get a chance at his|her life?
Did he|she sacrifice breaths for me?
I’ve uprooted another life.
I’m a hypocrite.

What if I can’t have another baby?
What if I have to pay for the rest of my life,
a life without a family?

That will kill me.
I would rather die.

I am here to have children,
nurture and love them in ways I only dreamt about.

I want to live a life full of love for my family,
planted firmly and growing.

Tanka 2

I want to revel
in the power of me,
a born rebel, really.
My parents would agree to that.
Lemon twist martini.

Tanka 1

I don’t want to be
a silk-screen generic,
only a Rasta-gem,
bold in red, green, yellow.
Fused reggae rhythms in my soul.

I Beat the Odds

I beat the odds.
They were against me.
I beat dysfunctional family life, my childhood.
I beat the alluring bourgeois arrogance.
I didn’t let them eat my soul,
devour my hopes, my ideas,
my imagination.
I beat my self-destructive voice.

I’m a winner, a trooper.
A survivor.

I survived this war against bombing odds.
Grenade traps.
Skinned sexuality.
Arsenal tears.
Starving for normalcy,
for rapt peace and quiet.
I survived through blood, shit, and dirt.
On my hands and knees, crawling,
squirming out of this war zone.

Unwilling to give up.
I speared through
to this end of the tunnel with light and life.
Like a veteran, I have posttraumatic stress syndrome.
I need to heal. Feelings of guilt and anger, they never go away.
I’m missing something I can never get back.
My childhood.
I am an amputee.
I am neither whole nor complete.

This metaphor has taken its own course.
Like I have.
It feels like it was meant to happen this way.
Fate. Destiny. I don’t believe they’re already written.
I believe we each have the power to change course.

I believe in a fate we make happen.

Who would’ve thought I’d come this far.
Look where I am now.

I Am a Torn Page

I feel torn and very angry at and with myself.

I am a torn page,
torn between
my good and bad pieces, my East and West pieces,
torn between
being in my head and in my heart,
what I think and what I feel.

I’m torn, being pulled in every which direction.
I’m not whole because I’m in different pieces.
I’m not still and stable because
I’m stripped from the spine,
scattered and scrambled in the wind.

This constant battle inside,
so many voices ripping until I bleed.

I can never really win.

Like my parents.
I love them, I want to do anything and everything in my power
to make them proud,
Except give myself up.

I can’t give myself up for them.
I’ve struggled for so many years in limbo.
Writing my dreams, writing my true self,
even if that meant disappointing them or even losing them.

But for all this time, I’ve felt guilty for turning out like this.
I want to let it go, let go of feeling guilty and apologetic
for what I’ve written.
I don’t want to feel responsible anymore.
I don’t want to feel burdened anymore.

Their high hopes for me are a burden still
and I want to let it all go.

They can’t read me
just because I’m the youngest.

They can’t reassemble me,
I am not whole in their eyes.
How ironic.
If anyone, I’m the most whole.

They excuse them but not me.

How unfair.

Empty Bottle Halo

I’m so tired right now.
My eyelids heavy,
mind in slow motion
through thick air of exhaustion.
I’m beat gray.

I cotton ball reading poetry together aloud.
Poetry and language, like a gauze,
protect us while we heal.

Words fill us, satiate us.

I’m too tired to carry a thought through,
jumping from empty bottle to empty bottle.
My mind is full of empty bottles.

Clickety-clatter.

Do I mean they’re empty of substance?
Trash-like maroon?

Or are they pop-art?

My empty bottles stand as iconic images.
The meaning relies absolutely on perception.
It’s all in the mind. Subjective.

My words flow out of a place of exhaustion,
mostly physical fatigue, not mental.
My mind is alert, alive,
eager to create
something halo.