Dear Officer 958

Thank you for issuing me a ticket at 11:27am, today. Because of you, I have learned something very important about being a law abiding citizen and a responsible adult, though I don't quite know what it is.
Perhaps the lesson I learned upon seeing the yellow-green ticket flapping cleverly beneath my windshield wiper was that I am a flawed human being. Turning the curious paper envelope about in my hands, assaulted by the bold all-capital text: PARKING TICKET, I was struck with the stench of my own humanity and found myself face to face with 21 years of baggage. Instances of fault that I had refused to acknowledge, and anecdotes illuminating the ontologically wounded nature of my tattered-21st-century-soul, danced like pigmies before my less-than-20/20 vision. I swore. And then I wept. Oh God, I am not perfect. I am not even sort of perfect. I have joined leaugue with the millions and millions of Americans who have felt the tug of shock at the sight of an isued ticket and have cut their veins to satiate the law. I am one of the soiled, one of the careless, and most importantly—one of the ticketed. I see myself clearly, now, as you must have seen me through your cop eyes—dirty, like my oldsmobile, and absently blinking like the parking meter I left unfed. Damn my careless ways. Damn my failure to feed the slots with a couple of quarters. (They presently weigh heavy in the pit of my purse.) Oh that I had fed that metal throat and listened to its tinkering swallow!

I hope the inclosed check will assure you that your streets are now $10 safer—now that you have helped to correct a potential-parallel-parking-menace. Rest well, I am a new person. Reflecting on the matter, I suppose the lesson learned upon the ticket issuing at meter #6027 was no less than a spiritual experience. I hope you, officer 958, are inspired on some kind of level as well. I have only the warmest affection for you, so thusly I shall bid you a good day, and a prosperous career.

Yours Truly,
R.M. Pineiro (Grand Rapids Citizen)

Ancestors of Fish

It is a thin line between failure and success. Indeed, it is chalk-like, smudged, transient--much like the human condition. Human. Flawed-mortal-wounded-ugly-frightening-beautiful-feeling-living-breathing-Human. I am a member of the human race, capable of pity and empathy, thusly separating me from the animals and vegetation. If I weren't divinely created by a God, I would merely exist as a bundle of accidental nerves and fibers, which somehow mutated on its own to form...me. That. Is. Depressing. I cannot accept the idea that my friends' genetic material originated from freakish crawling fish and soullessly developed over millions of years to be the beautiful creatures they are today, demonstrative of complex emotion and contemplation. The light bulb did not invent itself on accident. Neither did human beings. You can recognize, easily, who values you as a unique, beautiful piece of creation, and who merely views you as specimen of inconvenient chance. I choose to utilize the former lens.

Folly and a chase after the wind

Shouting voices,
heckling laughter
peeling and clinking like pieces of metal.
My mind is full of breezing thoughts
and scents of poppies
and petals
stuck to my hot steering wheel
fried calously by the sun,
discolored, dehydrated
as wine seeping through
my fiberous body.
I am a song,
echhoing,
soundlessly,
winding in knots that
choke me dry--
beating cadences into the air
that stack as skeletal structures
sending me into the air--
high like popping petals...
I want to drink your lips for eloqence and transform into a princess.
I need to drink
--instead--
the challace--
blood-red wine to ink away
baligerance,
my humming interest,
and lull me safe to sleep.

Hope.

Hope may be a thing with wings,
but it is also a rusty dodge intrepid
that starts again
despite its empty tank.

Blowing a Kiss

It has been a while since I've written, and yet, it feels the same. Much like a worn glove remembers the contours of your hand and the ridges of your bones. I drove home from Grand Rapids tonight around midnight, and though it's been a stretch of two years since I was a commuter student, my body remembered the stretch of road with its every blinking light and curve. The night air felt soft on my face with the windows rolled down and the radio off. I like to drive in silence in the dark and to feel the glide of the tires over smooth pavement. The road home fit my senses like a glove, enveloping my hypnotized memory in nostalgia for the incipience of college, causing me to stretch my heart strings across the random spectrum of my Aquinas years. Ah, my youth! How it flits into the past...into the future...Let us--like Chekhov--dream of what life will be like in 200--300 years from now! I hope the night air is still soft and dreams, still fickle.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: regarding current events

Say Goodbye

Fingers touching
ringing
tasting of salt-sweat
and dust.
Fingers touch
and feel
this life is real;
this is the world.

A human chain
across the earth
extending beyond flesh--
the dirt on my feet--
that carries me over
deserts.
Walking on fire.
Walking over grassy fields
exposed
as massive graves.

Children lie below me
beautiful, black, babies,
innocent and trusting
reach to me with severed
limbs
buried under shallow dust--
shadows of rust--
like etches of eyes and faces
different races
racing to secure
something more
(machetes and gore).

I am helpless
beaten to the floor.
They step on my back
pull my arms
and bind me with
wire,
cutting like fire.
I
feel
wounded.


Words

These are some words
for the weeping fathers
and mothers
whose hearts have been
pierced.
Flesh of flesh
and blood of blood,
taken by harmful hands:
thirsty,
greedy,
blinded by scales,
blinded by rage,
blinded by affliction--
chemical and human.

These are some words
for those who
call on gravity
to pull their children
back from the grave of
captivity,
who cry to God to
make their daughters safe
from rape
and bitter beatings,
who cry to God to
keep their sons free
from mental manipulation
their eyes from devastation.

These are some words
for all who say
in the dead of night
"come home"
--through tears and
tortured dreams--
"come home"
--as morning pours
like streaming drops--
"come home"
as years choke by
like heaving sobs.

These are some words.


Stain

They say it's
magic oil
that they
slick into my skin:
across my heart
--to stop from feeling,
across my forehead
--to stop from thinking,
across my back
--to stop from resisting,
across my feet
--to stop from running.
Magic oil,
they say,
will make me forget
my family,
embrace abuse,
turn away and
kill or be killed.
This magic oil
will sooth me
into this life,
anoint me from the weakness of my
child's stomach.
This magic oil
didn't
work.
Because I wiped it straight off.

Riddle: What's my name and phone number?

Raindrops flitting from the cloud splotched sky
air
chilly breath from the earth
hundreds of icicles clinging
anticipating gravity's fall
everywhere still--
light lingers thoughtessly.

Pine needles break like tinkering glass
ice
nector of the season
enter into Demeter's bliss
inch the sun's rays, tilt the earth's axis
rake the earth clean
of everything frozen.