Poems by “E” (a.k.a. EROBOS

TO DESIRE

To desire a better life, yet lacking the tools to do so…To desire to have children, yet lacking the motivation…like pets, it is a full-time job…To desire helping others, yet too busy saving myself… To desire balance, yet lingering too long on one side of the scale…To desire a solution, not realizing that I already exist in one…To desire is not a strategy, like twin sister “Hope,” yet to desire…whatever, doesn’t need a reason, or a rationale, because we will desire anyway…Like the way rain falls… even though it is not needed…it will fall anyway…Like the way beautiful women paint their nails and war-paint their faces; because overkill is the way of vanity…better to have too much than just right…Desire is a worm sleeping in a warm body, content and complacent, knowing that its time will come…It is a 71, which is a 69, with two fingers in the ass…69…70, 71…Behold and Beware of the ones who try to run away from themselves…All sorts of illness, diseased outbursts, and reactionary emotions come from those who are not willing and being useless, derelict, all without evidence, are the varied fates that inescapably await us…We are obligated to accept this…and in turn, we become what is expected of us…it is the science of becoming a pet, Alex Jones’ Prison Planet…It is difficult to the extreme to make a better life for oneself when you are told at a most vulnerable age, when choice does not exist, “You ain’t shit…your daddy ain’t shit…and you ain’t gonna be shit either!!!”….We become the things we hate…The oppressed become the oppressors… Our pets are the self-fulfilling prophecy…We full & fill ourselves up with toxic, self-denying, horrific ideas and beliefs, even when we learn better and even when we know there is a better way…Look into the eyes of your pet and let them know how much you love them and how important to you they are…Because, you are trapped in the cage of your choice…your wage slavery is complete… Your pets have accepted the responsibility of saving your life….

“MY HEART” (AFTER NGUYEN CHI THIEN) My Heart is a palace of fore-closured promises, escapist angst, and inherited pain, my mother’s feelings are sewn into my gut…my genetics are the accumulated weakness of both my forbearers…a life unasked for…a liability unwanted… I must have got bored of Hell and found an escape route… The harrowing journey from there to here created my Heart…My Heart is always a lesser of two evils…A demon possessed by its own ineptitude… I was born suspicious of the world…But the world got the last laugh…because the world is well seasoned in the more refined arts of betrayal…People are products of the world in which I live…Deceit is part and parcel of their forte…What am I to make of that? …What explanation would suffice that would satisfy my Heart?…My Heart is phenomena…My Heart is the universe trying to interpret and comprehend an experiment called “Life”…My Heart tries to do good; but every so often, I must say “no,” as my Heart still wouldn’t accept that there are ways to adjust and accept their desires…like the side effects of medication…these are not side effects, but rather a matter of course…Desire is the primary effect…Desire is the cup that runneth over… it is the urge that is insatiable…it is contrary to common sense, it is the smoker, the drunk, the addict, the wifebeater…common sense is not that common….it beats the Heart with a force and energy that is not human…indifferent to what we think or what we feel…I desire to be free…Do I really mean it…?

Poems by “E” (a.k.a. EROBOS)

MY MOTHER (AFTER ROSSANA ROSADO) She is a hard woman…a woman of few words and many convictions…her priorities were outside of the house…her political positions could be considered radical…She knows herbs, and making a full meal out of thin air…My mother had enough time for the whole world, but not for what was under her own roof…Meeting her was always a new experience…It was like being introduced to somebody you should already know…She is a “do as I say, not as I do” type of woman…To hit her is like hitting a bucket of nails…There will be blood everywhere…Her breast milk was vinegar…I never tasted it…Her stare was more than a thousand yards….Her eyes were black coals that dared you to do something…They dared you to even say something….There is no peace in the valley when you break hers…We learn bullying from an early age… In retrospect, I can see that this was how she was made to learn…Her presence demanded that you pay attention, even as she paid tribute to her tribe(s) as Queen Mother…Her head, wrapped in the tradition of a Rasta woman, yet with too much pride to have a man lord it over her…She smoked weed, originally, for religious reasons, then for feel good reasons… then, just because. She is both past and present tense…She is a mystery, even unto me…Her skirt was made of a fabric called, “Do not touch me.”…As much as I push, fight, and struggle, I cannot be anybody else….

AFTER LOVE (AFTER DEREK WALCOTT) The greatest Love of all comes after ashes…comes after the tragic influence of attempting to be a carbon-copy of others’ beliefs…Harvest the results of an accumulation of defeats…My face is the reply to all the “love” that has been given to me…By the moment I can figure out the difference of what Love is, and what Love was; I am asking for the license-plate of that energy that has left me vulnerable, in pain, and askance…becoming more leery, cynical, and suspect…I have become an artful dodger… to be loved in New York City in the year 2013 is another way of saying, “What do you want from me?” Love is like getting shot with a vaccine…You don’t really know what it is, or what it’s going to do to you…you’re just going to have to take their word for it…The burden of existence is that Love is stalking me…resistance equals push-back in the form of Love being pissed off…Love knows its opposite…it knows how to manifest spite, enmity, and hatred…Love is a child that has the power to manipulate life itself…It will do what it wants, or else…like god…Love is guilty of using heavy-handed tactics…like god, it wants no other before it…like god, god is Love…to be merciful is supposed to be an act of Love…To be cruel, in order to be kind, is the greatest Love of all…Love is a toothache that will need an expert to be properly dealt with…Love hurts, because we try to make it our own…Love pities the fool, because fools in Love provide entertainment…My Love is stagnant, because it knows no bounds…After Love, there’s no love to be found….