In The Sheets

Lay my body down in sheets of white

Lined with blue stripes

Under covers of gray words

The likes of which no one has ever heard

And touch me                                                         

And let me touch you

But you can keep your hands to yourself, I’ll keep my hands by my side

Because hands can only touch the surface, and I’m tryna delve deep inside

Until I find your composition

Your words like apparitions, appear to be visions

Eyes closed and ears open

And in that moment

I’m too far to reach you, but I can grasp your concept

And to be honest

I’ve never felt so close to you

Like your miles away but the ghost of you

Is lips pressed against my ear whispering

Shhhh… are you listening?

It sounds like…. It sounds like poetry

It sounds like every word you’ve ever said to me

Echoing against my ear drums

It sounds like freedom

It sounds like a deep breath

Saying “give me poetry or give me death”

I swear before I ever spoke a word

I was destined to do spoken word

It’s the one thing that makes sense to me

It engulfs up all my sensory

And then there’s you… poetry in human form

A strong, raging beautiful storm

Kiss me, I want to find out if your words are contagious

I wanna write your story on these notebook pages

And if you should tell me your secrets

I’ll write them down and read them

Over and over until I know them by heart

And then tear that little piece of paper apart

So no one else will ever see

I t can just be you and me

Touch me with your thoughts

They say two cents is the cost

But yours are nothing short of priceless

If they think they’re a problem then you must be a crisis

My first vice is poetry, but you can be my next one

See, she’s my right hand, but you can be my left one

The one I hold the mic with

Hold it with a tight grip

And give it just a light kiss

To bless the audiences

Yes, we’ll make love in the sheets

Nah, ya’ll not listening… we’ll make love in the sheets

Conceiving ideas to be held in the womb of my brain

Fed food for thought and eventually developing into spoken words

You are now witnessing… birth

Her name will be something poetic

Something we haven’t quite thought of yet

Her life will tell a story

Of all the poets before me

And you, she will be written in my words and spoken through your voice

So that there will be no other choice

But to listen, and she will be beautiful

Her truth indisputable

She will be the reason I live

And the finished product of the last thing that I’ll ever give

Cause one day I’ll stop writing… yeah, one day I’ll write my last line

And that’ll be about two seconds before I flat line

School Spirit

It’s _:__ * P.M. Do you know where your kids are?

Well these days they never leave their rooms, but do you know where our kids are?

Stuck in between the channels, caught in a world wide web, living in an alternate reality

Have we taught them the value of family?

Do we value their humanity?

Are we teaching them?

No, I don’t mean spewing out lessons. I mean… are we reaching them?

They say the youth of today is lost. I say who gave them those directions?

Are we busy giving answers when we should be asking questions?

Do you know where our kids are? Can they learn from you?

When it all gets to be too much, can they turn to you?

…”But they’re just kids. What do they know about stress”?

Funny how quickly we can forget

What it’s like to be a kid

When you don’t fit in, but you don’t stand out

Just another face in the crowd

Just another seat in the class

Just another target of ridicule

Just another kid who isn’t cool, enough

At a time when being cool is everything

There’s a bully in every class

They wonder why you ain’t passing

You bastards making the school look bad

We need a quick fix, give him a quick fix

Just another kid diagnosed with A.D.D., so pay him no attention

You’re probably also bipolar, oh and did we forget to mention?

You’re most likely depressed, but don’t worry…there’s a pill for that

Sure there’s some side effects, but don’t worry… there’s a pill for that

You’ll experience a few headaches, don’t worry there’s a pill for that

You might get the shakes, but don’t worry there’s a pill for that

You’ll develop facial ticks, don’t worry there’s a pill for that

See, we don’t really give a shit…and I don’t think there’s a pill for that

But would you like a refill for that?

Remember kids, drug-free is the way to be

But it’s okay if you’re addicted to the prescription written by your physician

See your physician, he’s just addicted to business

Dedicated to keep you medicated instead of taking the time to just listen

Too bad there’s no pills you can pop to make you popular

But your Pop’s got something you can pop that’s guaranteed to make the bullies stop

Send a click to every clique that thought they were just too fucking cool

Bet your name will ring bells all over the school

A national catastrophe, how could this be?

All-American boy raised on American TV

Brought up with American views

Now his face is all over the American news

How’s that for a taste of fame?

How’s that for the American Dream?

It seems everyone’s looking for someone to blame

Was it movies? Music? Video games?

Parents? Peers? Teachers?

Or was he just a victim of an uncaring system?

It takes a village to raise a child

It takes a nation to destroy him

It takes a tragedy for us to notice

So go ahead and point your finger at the one with the gun pointed

Now all rise for a speech from the one with the bomb pointed

“So, what your point is?”

Nothing, just keep waging your war on drugs, war on bullying, war on violence in the media

And kick your feet up

I’m sure the results will kick in eventually

Generation Y, they ask us why

And we’ll say X marks the spot

But they don’t hear us

By Generation Z…Z…Z…

We’ll be too asleep to even see

Hey, did you watch the news today?

Aren’t you going to ask us what we learned in school today?

No? See, every day the bell rings…and everything’s the same

If we can’t see the problem then it’s never going to change

We watch and cry, then we recover

But never do we anticipate another

The victims and the shooter will never have a future

We can wipe away the blood, but there’s a cut that’s left un-sutured

These are your kids… don’t disown them now

That’s just their school spirit… aren’t you proud?

They never noticed, noticed you

They never noticed, now they do

But not until you brought your gun and your rage and you shot up the school

Now that school spirit haunts them… but aren’t you cool?

Sugar

Please don't call me Spanish, I'm asking nicely
Hispanic...Latina...Dominican...whatever you wanna call me. Just please don't call me Spanish
I am not from Spain
Though I do bear a Spanish surname
Nuñez... the name of some asshole, conqueror, oppressor
I want to hate it
I think to change it
But then I realize that it serves as a reminder
A reminder of where we came from and how we can take something so fucking ugly
And turn it into something beautiful — family
We are fifty shades of colonized
Our skin varies like our stories
We speak the language of our rapists
And pray to the God of our slave masters
...And so do you
Plantation... encomienda, what's the difference?
Sugar canes or cotton fields, but what's the difference?
I don't call you English
So please don't call me Spanish
I am not from Spain
Though I do bear a Spanish surname
Though we do speak the Spanish language
And worship the God of the Roman Catholics
Let us not forget... that we are the eyes and ears of the indigenous
We are the hands and hips of Africa
We are the sugar
White or brown
We are sugar
We take our bitter history and turn it into something sweet
We speak the dialects of the colonized and dance to the rhythms of the oppressed
Azucar
Please don't call me Spanish
Unless you're going to add AND Taina AND African
Please don't whitewash our history any more than it's already been
We are the original inhabitants of this continent
We are the prisoners brought here to build it up into what it is today
And we are the conquistadors who wrote the history books and took all the credit
We are the fruit of genocide
We are the crop of slavery
We are the offspring of rape
But don't be ashamed of who you are, because we can't change the past
Just never forget that we are standing on stolen land
This is a burial ground
The place they say Columbus found
But really, he's the reason we lost it
We lost our languages
We lost our idols
Our culture
Our traditions
But we are sugar
And you can still taste us
They tried to sugarcoat our past
But our past IS sugar-coated hardworking hands
We are sugar
Let us not forget that we are the nose and neck of the indigenous
We are the legs and lips of Africa
We are the sugar
White or brown
We are sugar
We take our bitter history and turn it into something sweet
We are sugar
So please don't call us Spanish