Call me blue valentine,
But my parents barely made it past their first anniversary,
And twenty-one years later,
I can still hear my mother sobbing like the sound of her tears can’t pierce past the bedroom door.
I took sanctuary in the garden,
Watered her orchids to pass the time.
I drowned them accidentally.

From a young age, I kept people at a distance,
Until the smog cast a veil that smoothed out their features,
It’s funny how the farther things get, the prettier they appear.
I was a bird watcher with a rose tinted telescope,
But the only thing I discovered about cardinals were sins,
I learned to drink, fight, and fuck ‘cause I was living as fast as I was dying,
If a hummingbird stops beating its wings will it pass away?
I saw one once, perched on my windowsill,
It looked at me and flew,
I didn’t want to be the bad guy any more.

I played a redemption song,
If you listen closely you will hear that this record skipping in my chest is a stuttering songstress,
My bones like The Beatles,
Breaking apart to the Ballad of John and Yoko,
And I just want to get the band together,
This is my world reunion tour,
Because I’m still searching for this thing called love.
Where is it?
Went to the beach and only found wedding rings,
Groomed the matador’s cape and found nothing but fear,
Climbed beneath the banyan trees and found the ruins of something man once worshiped as god,
I did not find what I was looking for.

So I went back to where it all began.
Have you ever noticed that no one ever stares at the ceiling in Grand Central?
It’s the only place in the city where you can still see the stars,
But New Yorkers are too busy,
They always got a place to be,
My place was here,
I ran my fingers across the constellations like Braille,
They read me a poem,
Let me share it with you.

In some parallel universe,
I’m sure we were inseparable,
I would come after church on Sundays,
Dressed in clothes that made me look more like a small penguin than young Christian,
She would bake me apple pie,
Let me eat it before supper,
And never make me finish my broccoli,
While told tales of the old country,
Fables of the handsome prince I would’ve become,
And I would in kind recount these anecdotes to all my friends,
Because everyone loves a good grandma story of simpler times and glory days,

But that never happened,
I arrived here a life too late,
I used to pull the sheets over my head when I was afraid,
Now I’m terrified of what’s beneath them:
A scarecrow crucified on wooden bones and tattered skin,
Her breath sounds like crumpled paper
Two Bright red lanterns wrinkled beneath her breastplates.
She smiles…painfully,
Her lips clawing away from her teeth like soldiers retreating from a two front war, and they just want to smell a home cooked meal again,
Pops says she recognizes me,
He’s always been a clever liar,
She has Alzheimer’s and I haven’t seen her since I could still hold my age in my right and left hands,
Strawman she is,
Her brain is absent as I have been,
How do you cry for a stranger?
Visiting hours for friends and family,
This feels more like hospice care

Once upon a time,
My father dragged me to her convalescent home,
Where I played hide-and-seek with pale faced zombies,
Ravenous for human flesh and anything warm that would touch them,
A hand
A cup of coffee
Or her last memory of the sun,
Years ago the Great Wall of China ran up her spine,
Rumor has it you can see this wonder from the moon,
But that’s just an urban legend,
Trust me, I’ve watched from farther away
From the other side of a casket,
And the front seat of a rental car,
She laid to rest in Monterey,
I can’t say Steinbeck ever walked this cemetery,
But I felt guilty with every sin east of his Eden.

We had the ceremony in a church,
Because that’s what people are supposed to do, The service was me, my father, and a priest paid by the hour,
No procession,
No mass requiem,
No Ave Maria sung by a woman in the only little Black dress she’ll never to want wear again,
Just prayers read off paper sheets folded like fast food menus,
Hands pressed like mantis,
Eyes up,
Ears open,
Hadn’t heard her real name until the undertaker read it in Chinese off the tombstone.
A shotgun funeral,
Fitting for a life that ran from bullets.
Fled a communist revolution with nothing but a suitcase and a first born son,
She put her past behind only for me to forget her until she past.
It’s only now that I realize I should have loved her like the lotus she was,
A flower that blooms from the mud,
But remains unstained.

Grandma I am so sorry,
If I ever have the chance to make it right,
Find myself in the Human province of the Chinese countryside,
I will craft this poem into a fleet of origami boats,
Place a candle in each,
Sail my one-man navy of flames, down the Yangtze river until the ghosts know that my Grandmother’s face launched a thousand ships,
And I intend to bring her back,
This is an Illiad penned on the inside of a paper lantern,
May it illuminate her story into the night,
Amen.

You’re not as warm as you used to be,
And I chose a crowded restaurant where everyone knows me,
So I won’t make a scene this time ‘round.
Whether on a stage or a familiar place,
I’m always best when people are watching,
But there’s only been one person,
I’ve never been afraid to see me for who I am, naked,
And it’s been far too long,
How many times can I drive you home,
Watch the front door close stoplight red,
And wonder would you let me run it if no one’s around,

When I got home, I went to play basketball,
Because it’s the only thing I’m worse at than you,
And I need to feel good about us again,

It snowed on the walk back,
And I swore the sky was trying to romance me,
Sierra Leone mine diamonds from the stratosphere,
Have you ever tried to catch a dying star on your tongue,
It tastes nothing like forever,
More like innocence,
The dust of the February wind dancing halos under each lonely lamp post,
Until the earth is a blank slate again,

But I know now we can’t start over,
Because we don’t stick right anymore,
Love is not always white as wedding gowns,
Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty,
Like New Orleans jazz and the hurricane season,
The grit of brass band parades when the muck is up to your knees
Believe we can rebuild a home out of anything,
Take me back to Dixieland, I’m cold.

It’s been two years,
And I promised myself every anniversary I’d write you a poem,
To guarantee your memory lasted longer than the trendiness of a pink wristband,
But this year,
I’ve decided to write one for your mother,
Whose melancholy calls like the lonely songs of ravens dressed upon her shoulder blades,
She wears black these days and I don’t blame her,
Her constant tears run like blood from virgin toes freshly en pointe,
And her eyes have cried out so much of their color,
When I gaze into those pale blue pupils,
They look more like binoculars staring at your first Nutcracker Ballet burned into a stage Across the back of her skull,

What do you say to a Mother who woke up one morning to find her little ballerina taking That last pirouette between a tree branch and the dance floor,
Graceful as ever 19 years kicking legs through the air,
A canon of limbs spinning in motion to Billie Holiday’s first commodore album,
Caught by her throat in time like a daughter’s last gasp of breath before defying gravity at A dance recital,
Those photos still line the walls of your home,
Every last one of them now a gorgeous face on a headstone,
And I wish your mother would bury those acrylic obituaries already,
Because she doesn’t need to be reminded of what your body looks like hanging there.

They say dancing is all about the line,
A choreographed path of righteousness
Ending at the crossroads between Heaven and damnation,
Your mother was always a good Christian,
But there’s a special place in hell for you,
So when she found you,
I heard she hesitated to let the paramedics cut you down,
Too afraid that that rope around your neck was the only thing holding you up in that audition with St. Peter we call judgement day,
Like a soul bungee jumping into Hades.

Maybe one day,
I will grow the courage to tell your mother
That these hands where the last to embrace your waist and slow dance to the rocking motion of a two step.
Tell me, whats more blasphemous:
To blame myself,
Or God almighty for making life a gift so precious,
That suicide was reserved for Jesus Christ,
And all those willing to be crucified,

But I’m still on my knees every night,
Palms to the sky,
Praying that someone up there bends the rules just this once,
If only so I can see you one more time.

But this poem isn’t about you,
It’s for your mother,
So that the next time I see her,
I have something more to give than an apology,
Because she has enough of those already.

So here it goes:
Brenda,
The world is not a stage fit for ballet,
But an endless waltz between life, death, and eternity,
Liz is a teen-angel,
Hugging the walls of heaven on prom night,
Waiting for her mother to give her that tap on her wings,
And offer her the first dance.

But I was just a boy,
Caught playing hookie in one too many science classes
when you were already three grades ahead,
And I was just too good at fakin’ it with the advanced curriculum.

So I never learned that even the sun will burnout sometime,
No longer able to kiss two protons into one helium smile,
She too will die,
A collapsed star,
I never liked how black holes sucked all the light from everything,
I said I’d rather not go out like that,
I think there’s more energy in parting,
It’s best if we go our separate ways,
And you said gladly,
Just give me what’s left of my love back,

But I never realized that breaking hearts is like splitting atoms,
How chain reactions fill chest until it weighs critical mass,
Until ribcage becomes radioactive chamber,
And my heart, a nuclear reactor,
Erupting into the three mile island of my sternum,
This is the stuff bombs are made of,
This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
This is Doomsday,
Screaming “My God what have done” from the Enola Gay, with mushroom clouds in our eyes,
This is fallout:
When the nuclear winter blocks out the sun,
With the ashes of everyone,
because everyone is dead.
Reminds me of times I wondered if you would be with me if I were the last boy left alive.

And it’s a curse to survive,
Radiation’s fried my immune system,
So I’m left defenseless,
To rot in my skin,
The napalm of my bones burning me from the inside,
Only I will know what pain is,
The horror of amputated limbs,
After my family tree returns from war,
And fate hacks off all the branches of our future children,
My genetics feel more like genocide,
And I’m not quite human anymore.

So lets start over,
Bring me back to the Stone Age,
And show me my basic instincts,
Whether cavemen throw rocks at storm clouds to pierce nimbus for sunlight,
Like shooting through fog for the moon,
Like cigarette burns in Brooklyn back alley ways,
Like rockets blossoming in the sky at midnight,
as if we could replant our love with explosives,
Remind me what fire feels like,
Because I’ve forgotten how to glow,

And I’m the only living boy in New York,
And you were more than just another “F” on a science test,
But even Einstein flunked out of chemistry,
And look what he gave us,
Limitless energy and a nuclear holocaust,
So I don’t know what about this project scared me more,
The possibility of success or the chance for failure,
But I’m willing to accept the consequences now,

I know you’re not here tonight,
And I know it’s my fault,

But when all seems lost in this experiment,
Lay by my bed and teach me,
That even uranium, rapidly decaying in half-lives not lived,
Does not die,
It just grows old together.

He liked to keep track of girls
Track them into songs,
So that he trace their curves like amplitudes of sound waves into coke bottle figures,
Track them and arrange their names into playlists,
Like the contact lists of his cellphone,
So whenever he got a song stuck in his “little” head
He knew where to go to play his booty calls,

He kept track of girls,
Put them on shuffle like the greek letters that scaled the walls of the frats he cruised to pick up on girls.
And, with cheap liquor as his instrumental,
He laced his tracks with beats he produced on the sound board of his mattress in a private studio beneath his sheets.

He kept track of girls,
Never owned a complete album in his life because he was only interested in singles
he could turn into one hit wonders,
And, even though there may have been a time when he dug oldschool,
He shunned a relationship with vinyl,
Because he didn’t wanna commit to a girl from start to finish once he laid his needle to Her skin.
In fact,
He’d rather go out and buy his songs on the corner.

So he kept track of girls,
Wasn’t even afraid to pimp smack a girl,
Didn’t trip if he left scars and bruises upon her body
Cause scratches upon his mix CD’s only meant it was time for him to skip to the next track.

He kept track of girls,
He said “I love you’s” like curse words on the hottest rap singles,
Uncensored audio accents spoken into her ears in the privacy of stereo headphones
But blipped and blanked out in the public sound waves of broadcast radio,
yet, how could he possibly love some one else when he didn’t even love himself,
So kept track of girls
sometimes just to listen to their bodies breathe by his side while he slept,
Like a subliminal self-help tape that gave him the confidence to say he was “the man”
He kept track
So that someone would listen to the soundtrack for life.

Well, if music be the food of love,
Play on.