Urban poet – Diary of the Broken Ballerina

I AM STILL HERE

I just don't get it.
It -being defined as the objects of pandoras box.
It being defined as- 
the pain
the loss
the hurt 
The things that I should have gotten over-
but still hold me under. 
My soul 
feels like its drowning. 
I am trying to breaststroke in quicksand and
I don't know how to swim.
Ironically, 
I don't want to be saved. 
I want to survive using my own means. 
I need to learn how to trust my own capabilities. 
I need to learn how to believe in me. 
I am tired of looking into the mirror.
Who is she? 
Where is she?
No response. 
When my reflection smiles, 
she is mocking me. 
I am still not whole. 
I still have work to do.

My One Ton Life

Every day I disrobe the tangible elements of life and stand on the broken, unbalanced scale of society and stare in the mirror and weigh myself.

Some days I scrutinize each tear as they fall, imagining that they are shooting stars that could grant my wish of taking away the weight of some of these burdens.

Even when my tears filled forty gallon pails, I still weighed a ton.

Everyday I disrobe the tangible elements of life and stand on this broken, unbalanced scale of society and stare in the mirror and weigh myself.

This weight is too heavy for the farce called Reality TV.

No network is brave enough to share the real faces of you and me.

Fate hands us the most beautifully wrapped trials and tribulations as heavy and deadly as the atomic bomb, and lovingly lays them across our chest, forcing the air right out of our lungs but we still have to stand up straight and function as if this weight does not exist.

We still have to stand up straight and walk as if our body doesn’t ache from the pressure of depression compressing our soul.

I find myself unconsciously, robotically sucking in the extra weight so I can fit into the different molds of the personas the outside world befriends and society accepts.

The mother mold, the wife mold, the friend mold, the model employee mold- there is rarely anytime for me to wear my- just me mold.

I suck in the extra weight so I can fit into these molds that have no windows, so at times my creativity becomes stagnant and my soul begins to drown in the puddles of sweat formed by anxiety.

I suck in the extra weight, hoping it doesn’t show as I greet you with a warm hello, or hug or smile.

I discovered that there is no surgery that can cure this weight problem.

So I get my therapy from poetry.

Each poem encapsulates the burdens from my soul into verses that recycle them into something meaningful.

This poem is for you.

This is for the 280 million people in the world that suffer in silence on a daily basis.

This is for you.

I am you.

Everyday we disrobe the tangible elements of life.

Everyday we stand on the broken, unbalanced scale of society.

Everyday we stare in the mirror and weigh ourselves.

This poem is for you.

I see you.

I feel you.

I write these words with hope that they penetrate the manufactured molds of society and let you know that you can do this.

Manifesto

I was birthed in an altered dimension constructed by the hands of deferred dreamers’- souls bludgeoned by burdens until they turned into concrete slabs and bricks, which were used to construct cities of catacombs with exits that only put you right back at the beginning of a path of footprints that lead to self destruction.

Can you imagine being buried alive for over 30 years?

I was forced to draw the frames of a million windows on miles of stone walls using blood from the wounds of my wounds that had been standing one on top of another fighting to get some fresh air.

The toxic environment caused parts of my soul to slough off and evaporate into the stale atmosphere , which mocked me with precipitation that consisted of my innocence dispersed into rain drops which would form twelve feet deep lakes that would taunt me with the reflections of what was lost, taken by force, and I had no choice but to swim across and continue on my path to the surface.

It took me years to slither above the layer of sediment made from decaying past forms of me that I shed in order to lighten the load-

while I struggled to ascend mountains of spines, the remnants of skeletons in the closet, navigating across fractures caused by the weight of the world on weak shoulders demineralized by societies leaching tendencies which erode souls and strip the nutrients needed to produce creativity which in turn depletes the energy necessary for survival.

Now I sit here free.

Dictating this manifesto, unafraid to call out the wolves in human skin.

The life force behind the revolution is us!

We emerge from the swaps, we emerge from the sewers, we emerge from the slums of nightmares holding hands-tattooing your mind with diamonds from the abyss every chance we can get because this is the movement of the rebels.

This is the movement of the rebels.

This is the poet’s manifesto.

Sangre

Yesterday I drove through a thick, blinding fog.
I hoped it would lead me into a portal that would take me to the places that I visit in my dreams.
The places where unfamiliar faces greet me with familiar smiles and hugs.
Here they remind me that eternity is a real place.
This fog caused me to levitate in memories, and before I knew it –
There I stood.
Lost in my mental Labyrinth, which shape shifts with my emotions-
filled with dark alleyways lined with street lamps with flickering bulbs that hold the pieces of the souls that still continue to guide me with the light of their memory and love.
I soon found myself in a house of mirrors.
As I walked down the forgotten corridors- I started to break every mirror because I didn’t want to see the reflections of me-
Images of my past – the puppet that I used to be.
The wooden girl without a cricket for a conscious- who just wanted to be free.
I painfully stepped on every fractured piece of me – as I remembered that I was
a shattered girl living in a shadow world, trying to hunt for the sun- barefoot on hot city concrete, standing in line waiting to get baptized in the river of illegally open fire hydrants- which was the only time I felt relief.
I always watched where the water went as it trickled down the grates into the belly of the beast.
Wondering if it all ends up in the same place that the blood went when it spilled onto the city streets?
I was the forgotten Tarzan, a child raised by sewer rats, swinging through life’s jungle holding on for dear life to the lines from discarded children’s bibles and National Geographic magazines that I saved from trash piles and used them to build paper houses for me to hide in, while I treated my wounds alone.
Lifes lessons built a warrior like no other.
I am a walking, talking enigma.
My soul is grotesquely disfigured with scars and missing parts, but the one thing that was never touched was my heart.
My blood type is the rarest of them all, not A , not B, Not AB, not O-
It is light, it is heat, it is energy, it is unapologetically me.
When I get hit by the fists of life, this rare emulsion flows freely from my busted lip and bleeding nose onto paper – and dries into fragments that form love notes from my soul reminding you and I that anything can be conquered with love.

Oh, The Webs She Weaves

My mind is a jungle of words suspended on vines.
My thoughts crowd every corner.
In order to make sense of it all, my subconscious mutates into millions of spiders-
They collect my thoughts onto a spindle and weave a network of webs made of gold.
Sometimes they craft dreamcatchers that are able to recycle my nightmares-
Turning them into fabric that I use to dress scarecrows who protect my field of dreams from destructive thoughts that inhibit my growth.
Destructive thoughts that still sneak in from time to time and blow out the flames in my eyes, which darken my mind and mutes my voice.
When this happens I can’t see my poems.
So I have to walk with my hands stretched out in front of me- desperately searching my mind-
Feeling for my words suspended on vines.
My thoughts crowd every corner of my mind.
In order to make sense of it all, my subconscious mutates into millions of spiders-
That catches and records the passing conversations of my soul transcribing them into a network of webs made of silver.
I like to sit in the center of my mind and watch my desires, my fears, my pain, my love, my passions, my daydreams, my infatuations, my memories all coexist in this vast web of silver and gold.
I inhale deep – and
I inhale deep -and
I inhale deep-
and with pursed lips I exhale slow-
With just enough force to release the breath from my soul and the webs of silver and gold become windchimes playing the melodies that you hear in my poems.
These vines in my mind are my lifeline.
These vines help the world make sense to me.
These vines suspended in my mind, lined with words, binds me to my network of enigma-
My own secret garden.
My safe place and many days I don’t want to return.

First I Tried to Walk in the Footsteps of My Father (Part One)

I had to ingest a few extra ibuprofen, with hopes that my words would be less inflammatory-

then my spirit whispered go ahead and chase them down with that leftover coquito mixed with your cup of coffee.

My tortured soul knew that when the liquid truth is caffeinated- it would help me feel warmer in this cold realm, speak clearer and see better –

because this journey is perilous but necessary to help me find myself and for me to understand you and for you to understand others.

So, I walked and walked – backwards down my timeline until I started to smell smoke, and my instinct told me that I would soon find the path of my parents.

I had to stop when I saw the five-year-old version of me screaming at the side of the road.

The forest is on fire!

The forest is on fire and it’s destroying all of our family trees!

These strange flames burn from the roots up.

Some of our culture was born from slash and burn agriculture, which is supposed to cultivate the land for planting trees with strong roots instead it proliferated fields and fields of deferred dreams which sprouted an invasive species of long-double stemmed plants.

I am the direct descendent of weeds that flowered like dandelions, and when the winds of fate pursed her lips together and blew –

their cotton ball seeds became windborne and settled between concrete slabs and eventually they germinated me.

I continued on until I came upon a forked path.

On the left, I saw a younger version of my father opening up a pack of Marlboros and he didn’t recognize me as his daughter.

He said, “Hey you look like someone I should know.” and he asked me for a light.

We both laughed at his joke, as we were surrounded by fire, and he lit the cigarette from glowing embers in the atmosphere.

I could tell that’s where my humor and sarcasm came from.

I asked, “Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and accompany me on this walk?”

He walked to the rhythm of salsa music and I loved hearing him talk.

My father’s family migrated to New York from Puerto Rico.

My father never knew his father and my father’s mother was his grandmother because his mother was a young woman who was still trying to figure out life with 5 kids and counting before the age of 29.

And when his grandmother passed, my father said life became a blur of different city skylines visualized from the seat of L train rides as he traveled from a Brooklyn sofa to Brooklyn couch using a plastic bag from the bodega as his luggage carrier on a week-to-week basis- never knowing what to expect next.

I saw him beginning to fade and I grabbed his arm and I asked him, “If you had a daughter what would you name her?”

He took one last, long drag from his cigarette and flicked the butt to the ground-

and the smile that spread across his face infiltrated my heart and the parts that were stone started to soften-

He said,” I will name her Mariana. Mariana Soto- Mari for Mother Mary-Mother of Souls and Ana for the name of the women that I loved and whose heart I broke.”

And he faded away, lost in the burning forest of addiction for 20 years.

“Ana” is not the name of my mother and I am okay with that.

He named me after the true desire in his heart and when he looked at me, he saw the purity that he lost.

In the quest to understand me, I had to understand where I came from.

So, first I tried to walk in the footsteps of my father.

The Opening of My Unfinished Thesis

If science is defined as the study of behavior of the physical and natural world through observation -and
If science is defined as experimentation and testing of theories against evidence obtained-
Then I will argue that poetry is science –
And that would make all poets scientists.
Our inquisitive minds evolved from a single cell in Africa-mitochondrial Eve and the metaphysical teachings of life molded us into these unique beings.
The wiring of our minds is an intricate web of neurotransmitters sending signals via delicate, silk threads, synapses fueled by passions for the spoken word- which propagate hypothesis about humanity in subliminal waves.
We are theorists who proudly write our thesis on the back of napkins and crumpled CVS receipts because these observations of human exchange must be captured, documented and told, before they are forgotten.
You see we poets- are experts in qualitative research- as we are always studying the nature of phenomena and not just the number of occurrences.
Phenomena – defined as a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen- and a poets scripture captures that better that any lens.
We use metaphors the same way scientist work with cells and atoms.
With our words we construct models of the way the world should be and we make replicas of the destruction caused by man for the world to see.
And like a mad scientist- I discovered how to make inanimate objects like the bathroom walls talk as I recite my poems the walls echo my thoughts and reminds me that I am still alive.
So again, If science is defined as the study of behavior of the physical and natural world through observation-and
If science is defined as experimentation and testing of theories against evidence obtained-
Then my hypothesis is true- Poetry is science and us poets are all scientists.

A Glitch in the Matrix

Disconnect.
Eject.
Reject this system.
Unplug yourself from man’s manufactured mainframe.
Their reality and our reality are not the same.
They say we are free-
But we are still tethered by so many things.
Look at us on display!
We are just mangled up robotic marionettes, intertwined by corporate wirings that send signals for us to drown ourselves while trying to catch the big fish in polluted data streams-
and we are so distracted as we flip through the mindless memes – that we make meals of their toxic crops and feed it to our family.
It wasn’t until my power surged that I was able to override the system- I began to think without interference.
I think, therefore I am
I am
I am
I am a glitch in their matrix.
She is offline.
She is offline.
Yes- I am a rebel.
I see the reality of the world and I hack into the system to tell the truth to the people.
Are you listening?
The sky isn’t blue.
In my universe the sky is the warm brown hue of your eyes.
Your smile is the crescent moon that shines its light on me in the dark.
You never have to tell me you love me.
Your touch is enough.
The way you hold my face, and run your finger along my lips and chin.
You remind me that I exist.
The sky isn’t blue.
Air is not light.
Dreams, imagination, wishes and prayers are trapped in the clouds.
The air is weighed down by screams of fear.
Whispers of hate.
Secrets.
Secrets.
Secrets.
The air gets so heavy it can’t fill the lungs of a grieving woman who lost her soul mate.
The air is so heavy that a starving child can’t get comfort in their last breaths.
The atmosphere is so heavy, when she hears the words ,”It spread.”
For some- it is easier to forget and not think about it.
So they choose to stay tethered to the mainframe because manufactured peace of mind, provides instant relief and can be programmed for eternity.
Join me.
So we can all be the glitch in their system and we can think together and find ways to break the silos-
And become one entity, one mind, one movement and we will hack the system and chant
We think therefore, We are.
We are.
We are.
We are a glitch in their matrix.

The New Lost World

Sometimes it’s hard to walk forward.

All it takes is for one storm to transform our paved road into a dense jungle.

Surroundings nurture man and woman alike, with dismal desires in a Jurassic dystopia.

A place where brachiosaurus evolved into projects-for-us and they will never go extinct because they have an unlimited supply of souls to eat.

Necks made of bricks towering high in the sky-

With hundreds of eyes on each side

Look up – see the trapped children on tippy- toes looking outside.

Wave hi.

Innocent smiles behind bars-

At night you can see their little hands reaching out trying to catch stars that seem so close-

Yet we know they are so far.

We are surrounded by all these mysterious creatures.

Some have miles of tentacles constructed of men in corporate suits who lash out and destroy the stable bridges we tried to create for our youth.

They build glass ceilings that are damn near impenetrable.

They think we are primitive and laugh as they hand us a rock and a chisel.

Tyrannosaurus Rex evolved into tyrants who owned farms of men, women and children-that were used as cattle – branded with poverty and only allowed to graze on a few grains of rice daily, purposely starved for pleasure, purposely worked to death, mazes of mass graves and history repeats itself over-

And over

From Cambodia’s killing fields, the Holocaust, Rwanda, indigenous Natives systematically slaughtered throughout the Caribbean even in the sunny state of California-

Oh this great American nation- a place where people are allowed to fly flags of treason so proudly- where the branches of trees are forever bent from the weight of hanging bodies- the list is infinite because it is still going on.

Chernobyl’s radioactivity combined with China’s pollution has nothing on the levels of hate within the earth’s atmosphere today- surely it is the hate that will end us all.

I want to laugh when they say dinosaurs are extinct.

I say No- They just evolved and lost their feathers and beaks.

Now they have skin, just like you and me.

Predators of man in plain sight-plotting their next siege.

Long Time No See

The ink in my pen ran out a long time ago.

Now I transcribe each noun, adjective and verb with my own blood.

The paper soaks up my pain and transforms it into riddles of similes and metaphors-

A confusion of emotions.

Confusion is what creates chaos, and you need chaos to invoke a revolution- and revolution is the never ending fight for the survival of our identity.

Sometimes I am afraid to write, because when my creative ports open, the unstoppable flood gates spills truths that drown others and I become an accessory to murder.

Turbulent waves- rip tides of secrets and painful memories seep into the fibers of lined paper and feed hidden seeds that sprout the language of the soul- a poem.

I stopped writing for a long time because when I do- I can feel my poorly healed scars start to dehisce and the pain taunts me as it bangs against the bars of my caged heart and the fallen angel that lives within me starts screaming to speak.

Mute.

You can only press the button but so many times before it breaks and your only choice is to listen and turn the volume up.

What is your soul saying?

I used to wear my heart on my sleeve but it kept getting impaled by flying debris from the tornados of fate-

But still I moved forward-

And when the barbed wire from the fences of life kept nicking my skin-

I still fought to progress-

and I had to jump so damn high to surmount the hurdles of trials and tribulations, hurdles which at times bruised my shins- over and over again

-but I still staggered on.

Wading through various cesspools of shitty circumstances, trying to stop and smell the roses proved to be challenging- yet still possible.

People just don’t understand that when home becomes hell the streets become heaven.

I’m sure that I’ve shared a drink and ate dinner with the devil many times.

I gambled it all away to the point where the only thing I had left was half a mustard seed in my back left pocket.

And in a swamp of decay- I was able to use it to grow faith.

And from that small patch of faith I was able to replant hope.

I had to stand tall and blow away the clouds of shame that hung over me in order to let the sun break through.

And man did my forest bloom.

My brain sprouted vines and carried me back to civilization where I continue to strive.

I allowed my face to be smothered with a pillow held by childhood trauma for way too long.

And you know what- it feels good to hear my voice again.

It feels good to be back.

Hello, It’s been a while.