nine to five to home

working a nine to five 

one is well versed 

in the number of steps it takes 

to unwind all 480 of those minutes

from the deepest fibers of their being. 

the punching of the keys on the time clock card 

the walk through the alley past the trash cans

the shifting into gear 

the rush hour traffic on the 101 north 

the motorcycles roaring in between the lanes

the scanning of the radio 

the newest overplayed hit pop song

the sun raining in through the drivers side window

the homeless on the corner of the hollywood boulevard exit ramp

the only open parking spot on garfield place

the collecting of my things 

the sidewalk toward my building

the white gate with the inward swinging door

the climbing of the stairs

and the fumbling of my keys 

to the turning of the deadbolt 

home

is all one ever needed to be reminded who they are. 

prelude to 26

andrea fabbiani taught me how to roll cigarettes. rolling cigarettes amongst other things like - how to make bread - how to brew coffee on the stove and - by and large how to be a badass. he taught me how to wait for things. come to think of it, maybe it was the rolling of cigarettes that taught me that but - still i attribute all desire for patience in my daily routine to - his all around ability to make it look so goddam cool. 

we smoked lucky strikes, and would linger at the bus stop after the ride home from class, long enough to roll two or three good smokes to usher us into the prelude to sunset. 

since my twenty fourth birthday - i have called seven different places home; and a month before i turned twenty six, i was just a few days from leaving italy to move back to el salvador. i made a promise to andrea that for my birthday i would write and publish 26 poems. there was this desperate part of myself that needed to gather all the unattachedness of these years and bind it together into something with a spine. 

little did i know that two weeks later, on a back porch in south florida - i would meet a woman who made my heart swell. swell like an ocean - swell like a wave - swell like wave after wave - and day after day, in the years since then we have laughed and we have cried - and like incoming tides - we return, to that desperate part of ourselves that needs to bind it together into something with a spine. 

so call this my prelude - written through cigarette smoke and the fading los angeles daylight. to a promise made over a lucky strike - a promise to a good friend and the glowing mediterranean - a promise i still imagine myself making as i break the surface from these past years with 26 poems i can read out loud. i hope they sound as bright as you all have made me feel. 

saturday in the park, overlooking hollyhock

growing up, my dad was a general contractor. every saturday and during summers, he was notorious for making my brother and i tag along to his construction sites, where he'd give us odd jobs like pushing the wheel barrel to collect all the trash his workers had left laying around. that, or he'd make us load his trailer full of whatever large piles of crap, (tiles, shingles, smashed up concrete, etc.), were piled in the yard. 

when i was seventeen, my dad introduced me to paul simon, and simon has a song called 'so long, frank lloyd wright'. so, on a whim, for one of my dads birthdays, i bought him the biography of frank lloyd wright. it had a cool cover and i had the faintest recollection that wright was an architect, so i connected the dots, and wha-lah! 

but i started to feel guilty about gifting a book i hadn't read, plus my dad is rather conservative, so i was petrified that the book would contain some expletive, or even worse some kind of sexual reference. so the day before his birthday, i read the book - cover to cover. it was the first time i'd ever considered construction - architecture - and the like from a creative perspective. before, it was only piles of broken concrete and empty arizona iced tea cans. 

today my brother is setting off on his own road in design and construction, and he builds some impressive shit. he's always sending me photos of the things he's working on, and it makes me smile to know that even if he calls by a different name, kaiser construction inc. lives on. 

i don't design or build things for a living, but at some point growing up - nature versus nurture sparked a fire big enough to call it all fascinating; and on a cloudy day in northeast los angeles, that's excuse enough to spend all saturday in the park, overlooking hollyhock.

through skid row on a bicycle

i've always thought to myself - poverty smells much worse than it looks. were it the other way around, i imagine we'd be much more compelled to find a resolution to it all. 

we are often content to live with problems we can see, but seldom will we live with a problem we can smell, (at least not quietly anyway). 

everyone has seen poverty on some level or another, and yet there is very little urgency to do something about it. but find someone who can tell you what it really smells like, and i imagine they have a few things to to say on the matter...

loved.

i once said 

that love was never fifty fifty, 

but i was wrong 

to say it so absolutely.

half of love  

is arriving at the places 

where we grasp fully

(after all these years)

that i am not deserving.

the other half of love  

is the entire lifetime 

in proving

to another that they are.  

she draws flowers 

and i write about them 

we are seeds and earth

we are deep beneath the surface

we are gathering our strengths 

and arriving at the places 
where we are grasping fully
that the fracturing of our walls 
permits the roots within ourselves
to spring forth
we are springing forth
like slow motion underground explosions
we are resurrecting
we are taking it all in 
we are not there yet 
but we are the entire lifetime 
in proving 
to each other that we are, 
loved.