Drifter

DON'T open that window!
Hours searching for the right words
for my mental show & tell--and it's here!
A THOUGHT hit my mind--now it's mine.

DON'T open that window!
The in utero snapshots of my seed
will burst OUT of my soul,
leave the room,
crawl out the window,
seep back into the world.

Windows closed, my pen drifts, to find
peace in the dreams I crochet with paper.

There's me--drifting
drifting under a cumulus sky,
Interstate flooded with my stepping-stone trucks.

I play hopscotch on the freight trucks
with catlike surreptitiousness;
I claim my nighttime alley roof
in broad daylight.

I drift as I dunk the spectators' thoughts
into the ice water of my imagination.
I feel. The scorching heat
heat of the day adheres to my skin,
kissed away by the healing wind.
My cured feet, naked, they wander
above the star-studded asphalt.

Fin

You may open the window now.

~
Cheers,
Char

Engl 348 (Iambic Pentameter)

I like the way our Teacher looked like drapes.
Her shoulders--wrapped by floral prints and leaves--
they seemed to me, were rods that held up yards
of flowers that cascaded to her feet.

Last Ballet Class (Iambic Pentameter)

And I remember when Poseidon died--
a day before my grandpa killed himself--
as I was twirling on the tip of my
new Sanshas. Fall from a passé, I cried.

Walmart Poesy

Recently, our Engl 131-Intro to Poetry Writing class had to go to Walmart for an odd assignment. We had to name and write down as many products as we could... Bread, artichoke, frying pan, trash can, brassieres--everything. Needless to say, we ended up with hundreds of words. Then, the professor asked us to write a couple of verses in iambic pentameter using words from one section of the store at a time. Our professor often gives us odd assignments like this one, but they all have a valuable purpose. He said we had to learn to weave words together without having to worry about meaning or depth, at least not yet. Baby steps. I expect to be writing some mad free verse by the end of this semester.

Examples:

Clothes
pajamas, nightgown, collar, button, sleeve

Tools
compressor, hammer, level, pulley, screw

Kitchen
fork, skillet, ladle, saucer, baster, spoon


Cheers,
Charmonsta'

La negrita blanca (The little white Black girl)

La negrita blanca, or The little white Black girl

This poem tries to explain how the n-word is widely used in Puerto Rican society, often free from negative connotations, and the shock I received when I learned things were different here. You have been warned.

~

La negrita blanca

I don’t really like your enthusiasm for colored walls.

I now live in a land where I can’t even say nigger,

even though that’s who I’ve always been.

Torn like flesh from bone from a country

where black still reigns in even the lightest-skinned ones like me.

I see black in my people, in the food I eat,

in the air I breathe, in the soil I used to play with as a

child. The music that moves my bare feet to the beat of that drum,

played by hands of many shades of mother land.

Nigger, not demeaning, but endearing.

Nigger, not disrespectful, but full of love.

Take it as you will, I’m a nigger among niggers—centuries all

mixed up, our blood, our sweat, our tears, millions of fears,

Niggers—we are all.

I stepped into this foreign land where niggers there are none,

because it’s wrong, head-turning, battered, tarnished meaning,

meaning all gone.

And here I lay, broken-hearted in culture shock.

My pet name lies unmentionable, unintentionally oppressive on my lips.

My heart lays shattered in splintered pieces of

honey, sweetie, angel, nigger.

Don’t worry, grandpa. I’ll always be your little nigger.

(Just not when my feet are stomping on this country’s blessed earth.)

~

Cheers,

Char