The Dawn

When night surrenders its cover of darkness
And heavy grey clouds stretch and spread
Leaving thinly veined traces in their stead

...My voice will call you out one last time.

The damp and chilly air will fog before me;

A syllable for each puff like a token of departure-

Natures embodiment of my resignation

Signed by a final goodbye whispered into the glowing horizon.

The Sun will slowly inch up

To greet the dark hues of blue

Setting the sky aflame

And muting the twinkling dots into day.

And just like the night surrendering its final hour,

So too will I set aside my fear and remorse;

Having laid down my weapons, allowing wisdom to take its course.

An Editor's Excuse

Because I knew words in different ways,
Could mold,
Roll and
Fold them between ideas like clay,
He asked for my help in writing down-
Into poignant, poetic, free-verse lines-
The oppressive and suffocating stigma attached
To being a male in a women's studies class.

So I sat in front of my laptop and,
With my fingertips at the ready,
Pushed at the buttons
That formed the lines
That echoed the words
That marched from his mouth.

I listened intently,
Hiding away my mental quill
Hushing the inner editor
And stifling the synonyms parading through my mind.

All the ideas came rushing as I struggled to focus on the right key:
The precise moment to strike space
And keep myself from the instinctive pinky finger reach to
Comma and period.

I lapsed here and there,
Tap-tap-tapping at the arrow that swallowed the wrong letters into emptiness,
Flustered
And making a mental note to keep this line in mind,
To remember the cluster of words that jumped into my thoughts
As my tongue recited the last thing he said
Throwing the short-term memory verse onto the screen.

And as he continued to dictate,
Occasionally stopping and furrowing his brow,
It was obvious that his thoughts passed into memory-
Reaching back into the constricting aura
Of what their constructive criticism would do to him;
Recalling the verbal attacks,
The jargon and feminist political SCUM-inspired mini-manifestos,
Vagina Monologue orations,
Blended and confused tirades preserved and labelled in little Bell Jars
Shooting at him
Though aiming at the Shadow of the Man who hurt them long ago.

To them,
It was bad enough to have a guy in this sort of class
Who obviously knew nothing
About the stifling restrictions
Of being seen as nothing more than
A weaker sex.

...So when he asked me,
At the end of the poem,
To edit and change and re-arrange according to my preferences,
(Though the temptation was there)
I held back.

Because I knew words in different ways,
I knew that if I were to strike away
At countless lines,
Change the word order every now and again,
Replace this with that
Break the sentence off here
Instead of there,
I would be chipping away at
The voice of the man
Who dared to speak his own thoughts and beliefs
Amongst open-minded students
Who saw only through their own eyes
The black and white extremes
Of what it feels like for a girl.

Los Conquistadores

Outside, the day is pushing time

Flooding colour into countless hours

Watching the seconds struggle against the walls of hungry centuries,

Searching the wild jungles of the past

As the night points to paths of bodies;

Each corpse rushing to hide within the breeze of memory

Only to disappear into the terrifying agelessness of reason-

Unraveling that which has been erased

Into the murderous blur of doubt and faith.

Borrow, break and fuse the gold,

The religion,

And the bones.

Carve out the heart for God to see

Toss out the native tongues

And carry the golden cross with metal armour:

The sacrifice has been made.

The Ceiling

I draw up these words and place them on my shelf
Stuck between that thought and this.
I sit and wait, breathing in the seconds
Passing away into centuries,
Letting the words collect dust
Letting them mould with age...
Then retrieve them 
And
Passing a wiser, more wrinkled hand over the thick layer of times ashes--
All that grey matter sticking to my palms and fingertips--
I cut up the old creation into separate patterns:
Piecing them together this way and that
Into a quilt of words,
Sewing patches of mismatched fabric
(Those juvenile ideas betrayed,
Manipulated by experience and my calloused hands).
I throw the cover over the bulbs of light
Watching the tears print themselves onto the walls.
Cuts and holes plaster above and around as light is carried within them;
Isolating the pomp and circumstance of darkness
Like a starry night.
Each constellation connected and hidden in folds of myth
An illusionist's maze of tragic figures,
Monstrous creatures,
Gods and demi-gods long since past
Streaming overhead:
Defeating the eyeless portrait in the mirror.

History Books

Through bitter, frantic language
Time manipulates truth-
Rusting in sleep with repulsive sadness.
Swimming in eternity,
The shadow of a thousand winters
Crawl beneath worship,
Fall behind faith,
Fail the dead
And trap the living.