Poem Baby

I said I wouldn’t eat sugar. Or ego, or light switches.
I wanted you to be healthy. Nourished from the curly,
fallopian straw of good language. For a while, I ate
only organic. Now I take whatever I’m craving.

Poppy rhymes. Clunky couplets. Half- strung synapses.
I wash down salty, abuse stories with crème soda love verse.
It’s amazing how many people rub my belly for good luck.
They can tell what you mean by the way I carry you.

My fist feels lighter when you leave me. Lonely really.
Open and bent from the duplication of cells, I don’t
pretend to know the divinity that goes into this process.
Just a happy vehicle. The names I give can’t contain you.

My kids are jealous. I don’t make you get your juice
by yourself. I’m happy to pull your pants up, kiss booboos
and talk syrupy to you. I prepare you for the day, send you
off and catch glimpses of your ancestors as you wave goodbye.



Note: I took this Poem a Day Challenge for April, thinking it would
end up a bunch of fragments and haikus. I was surprised at how much I was able to pull out and how many forms took shape that I never considered before. Writing without regard to performance was really fun. I loved especially reading the poems of other people who were taking the challenge and trying like hell to stay on par.
Now I have a little stash of poems I can go back and play with for National Editing Month! If you are looking for some great stimulation to get you writing. I suggest the Poetic Asides website: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/

Sending: Bitter

We keep busy.
We hopscotch
emotion chalked
sidewalks. We’ve
skipped the honest
box for so long,
we’ve forgotten
the object of the game.

We keep friendly.
First base is screen name.
LOL down your pants,
Smiley face your shame.
It's so easy.
We’re so witty,
when we have a minute
to think between sentences.
Voices are just too intimate.

I’m unimpressed with sex.
Now I just crave connection.
I want you to tell me something
you wouldn’t have time to text.

One, two, three, four
I declare a thumb war,
used to be our hands laughing
palm to palm at our foolishness
Now it’s just our sarcastic
battle of messages.

We keep buzzing.
At the table, in the car
Reply as I steer.
Scene fades as I wait for
your return.
You are always in my pocket.
But you are never here.

Sorting Session

It's very important to understand that everything that exists—the whole universe, including each and every one of us, is a manifest or material expression of that which does not exist. From nothing came something. The unmanifest became the manifest. From emptiness, from the void, this whole material universe, which eventually gave rise to life, emerged. – Andrew Cohen, What is Enlightenment Magazine



It could be a big glowing ball. With tentacles.
A circus inside a baby’s ribcage. The flaming
string section of a Kosmic Goddess. It could
be cytoplasm and quantum particles and all
of those really gooey scientific things we like
to dissect. It could be thrones and right hands.
It could be tired of our probing eye.

See, me? I always go with The Nothing.
I can always get back to that. I can take a long
warm sip of You, taste the Galaxy in my hiccups
and lie back , full of Nothing. I can look around
at the chaos, the audiences, the news reports and
see that emptiness that holds every molecule.
The colors sometimes get brighter. At times,
there is some peace but it’s not always comfortable.

Awareness is not soft clouds and rainbows. My
guru, who sings bluegrass and wears western shirts,
told me, sometimes it’s like sitting in someone’s farts.
If you are stuck in a car, you just have to accept what
you are perceiving. Have allowance for all of Life.
Its not as easy when you are smelling burning flesh
and oppression. Choose not to cut off your nose.

It could be the moment you spring to action. It could
be two breaths fogging hope on the windshield. It
could be choices. The space before the choice or
the sigh after the choice. It’s all just choices man.
It could be You explaining that big ol’ ball throbbing
at the earth’s core, the tentacles and everything. It could
be me laughing and the quick small silence just before
You move onto the next idea.

Friend with Benefits

It was a day when I felt unqualified to be human.
Ramen noodles all over the floor, my tribal children
running around in underwear and sharpie tattoos.
There was a furious pit of missing him bubbling
from my gut, but my mouth was sewn shut,
I didn’t dare say it.

Instead I got real floppy. Caught in the undertow.
The laundry rolled up over my head. The smells
leaked from the sink, the kitty flew through the air
with that You are so pathetic look on her face.
This does not mean I need a husband.

Eventually we crashed. A spent sea of simple sugars.
One harshly lit lamp, a mile further than my Gadget arms
would reach. Driftwood bones, a pillow of white flags.
If he was here, the piles would just stink like ridicule.
I need to get up and do something.

The text read: Booty Call. You game? Really, it was
a spring board. In 30 minutes, the house was picked up.
The stale was washed from my skin. Incense smoke
and grown-up music tip-toed through the air like prayers.
This is exactly what I needed.

We both knew it wasn’t a booty call. But it makes us
laugh to call it that. It was decadent clove cigarettes.
A post coital-glow, without the coital. It was the
Be Good Tanyas and mandatory naked time. It was
a reminder of ourselves.

The words Love Life, inked across his back, shone
like the flashing curser of our next sentence. We
wrote the ending of the day and worked our way
back. We told the stories of our most awake moments.
And felt qualified to be human.

Must Be Unstable to Enter

I.
You are such peace.
All moth wings and
plastic bags.
Lift, float.
You land on the elbow
of this tight-lipped day
and make it smile.


I imagine your brain
is like sea waves
and pasture hips.
What do you call
the colors?
Cerulean? Larva?

Something as fluid
as birth and tide.
Let me see in there.

II.

You are so sweet to see
the blank stare on my face
and think I am tranquility.
My brain is a disco.
With strobe lights and people
dancing in clothes they have
no business wearing.
There is a poorly written
chorus that repeats over and over.
The beat is catchy but a bad
imitation of sex,
Thrust, pull back.
and if you hang out long enough
you'll start to think it's all so profound.
Best just pick a booth,
sip on your drink,
and remember that none of it
is to be taken seriously.

III.

He's learned to skip tracks.
He likes the one with the
bed sheet piano and synthetic
ocean sounds, a woman's voice
falling like kisses.
I like it too. But I can only hear it
so many times before I crave
the survival anthem, or the industrial
bass beat that everyone thinks
is so hard to dance to.

© lauren zuniga

The Tao of Us (from The Separation Series)

When my mother called us yin and yang
I always thought I was the yin.

You, of course, are the smooth, damp
blackness. Sweet, ripened plantain skin.

I am shades of peach and kumquat.
Trying like hell to keep the sun's yellow.

(It makes the edges of somber poems glow.
It makes people think I'm shiny.)But really,

You are the glaring one. An imposition on
absence. The exhale that makes the night give in.

A clanging chorus when everyone was sleeping.
I quit singing when I met you. Hummed resentment

like a soldiers cadence under drill sergeant's
hot breath. You didn't make me quit singing

anymore than I made you quit writing, but we
all hold excuses like injury. "We are fallen"

you always said. We must restore the natural
order. You the Subject, Me the Object. This is

not meant to be a hierarchy. Just a balance. The
way God intended things to be. You believe in

funny things. Here's where I get real Yin.
I smile like a cervix and say,
Interesting point of view.
but I'm not a fan of duality.

I leave that space for you though. Because
no one can be 100% wrong. See, me and the

moon see you when you sleep. When you don't
believe in separation. When sin is just a recycle bin

that needs to be emptied. When we are curled up.
Spirits threaded, head to hip, breast to back bone.

Give and Take. Black and White. Man and Woman
When we don't know whose who. I believe in us then.


© lauren zuniga

Hey Blanket Head,

Lets get under the covers
and eat marshmallows.
This reality milk is stained
pink but not sweet,
I will tip the bowl for you.
Wipe the drips from your chin.
You are a better breakfast
than I've had in a long time.
Sustainable. Hearty. Ball of butter
melting on pancakes.

You do key play so well,
but let's breathe fragments under here.
...these will be useless.
Silence will suffice or....breathe.
rms instead of (parenthesis)
winks instead of ;)
Eye to eye %. Wrap @round me.
Hair in mouths instead of commas.
"Wait, almost got it, there."

I won't worry about my belly
or my funky eyebrow.
You don't worry about losing desire.
You never had it anyway.
Desire just means lack
and you lack nothing, Shining Spoon.

So let's be everything.
Make shadow pictures on white walls.
The beginning was always useless until
someone gave it a name. Someone drew a
picture and saw that it was good.
Begin again with me. There is no purpose
to search for.We lost our purpose on the
floor somewhere.In the quilts and laundry
and sunbeams. It floatslike dust particles,
sings like flukes.
Mistake with me. Ignore with me.

We don't need no stinkin' reasons.
I promise when we've Capitalized each other,
and we've shift/ed all our tendencies,
{the loathing and the doubt mostly}
I will take you outside.
We will roll in the grass, like mammals do.
A summer of awakening, a curly str@w of marvel.
Sip with me. Believe with me.
This could be your greatest purpose ever.

Love,
Cotton Mouth





© lauren zuniga

Post It Notes (from the Separation Couplets)

I wish I had kept the Post It notes.

I have six dreadlocks, saved from the pile.
You cut off the cause. Kept the vanity.

I have the songs you wrote in my notebooks
when you couldn't find yours. No love songs.

I have two microphones and a speaker, a box
of unsold CDs and your tip jar. I wish I had

your voice. I could make a living with
your leftovers. I hope I told you enough

how beautiful you are. And that I always
was a sucker for your word play. But mostly,

I wish I had kept the post it notes.
The scrawled messages and kisses.

Baby, I need 20 dollars for diapers.
Leave it on the table by the door.

Baby, there's two sandwiches in the fridge.
I left the tomatoes off this time.

Baby, I'm sorry about last night.
I was so tired. I'll make it up to you.

The swing set of days and limp lettuce
exchanges is what I miss the most.

The stageless promise that you
would read the notes in the morning

and you would walk through
the door with a kiss at night.


© lauren zuniga

Glory

Gospel songs mumble

glory under her desk.

She sings along.

Quiet praise,

stiff jerky elbows.

Her work is a stingy

offering. "Only he knows,

only he knows."


She has a scripture for everyone.

She stars and highlights, writes

their name in the margin.

She copy/pastes her conversations

from the bible and gossip columns.

Complaints in red print.

Good news in black.


I want to show her

that the most beautiful part

of her favorite book is the

humble, empty space that holds

every word.

The Blank

that receives without judgment.

The Nothing

that existed before humans added

shoulds to make sense of it all.


So, I stay at my desk.

I click keys and hum along

with the gospel songs that

mumble from under her desk

"only he knows,

only he knows."



© lauren zuniga

The State Capitol

(prompt: write about a place)

Everyday there is free food here. They set up little tables with cardboard presentations, like a science fair. Someone stands next to the table with a big cheesy smile and a pamphlet or a little rubber bracelet with something you should pay more attention to written on it. “When I first started working here, I gained 30 lbs.” the Senator told me as we went searching for the barbecue on the third floor. “Now I take some for now and wrap up some for dinner.” As I load up my plate, I wonder how many votes have been changed by good barbeque or a pamphlet. I wonder how much money is spent feeding all the capitol employees when there are people starving just a block away. I wonder how any of these legislators can call themselves Representatives, when it seems they don’t represent any of the people I know. Then I go back to my office and enjoy my free lunch.

submissive

All day long, I expend.
I hold together, I lift up
I give out.
I pour light for our food supply.
I irrigate crops with my mouth.
It’s a rare occasion
when I just
take in.

So when he asked me if I
was a Dom or a Sub,
I didn’t know what he meant
but I knew I wanted to be the
opposite of him so we could fit.
and just so you know,
I would have settled for kissing his wrist.

(I’m a liberated woman,
My ex-husband could tell you
that you will never find SUBMIT
written on my palms, but they are
always face up and open
ready to give.
According to Cosmo,
Men want you to take control,
So I’ve memorized the erogenous zones,
the placement of my tongue for the
desired response, and I know
how to make a man’s microphone sing songs.
But the hardest thing
in the world for me
is to lay back and receive.)

He held me.
Like the edge of the building holds the feet of the fed up.
The way the sky holds the surrender of a falling body.
He maneuvered me.
Like a canoe in crashing rapids, my hips the stern
his hand the pivoting blade under the water.
He said, relax.
I don’t want you to do anything.
This is a move I don’t know.
The move to nothing.
To be completely open and empty
without effort, to take in pleasure
with no strategy or counter.
He placed my hands over my head.
He pulled and pressed and bit
like I was the last piece of fruit on earth
and his survival depended on it.
He consumed every inch of skin, every drop of juice.
I didn’t notice any pain just the joy of proper use.
There was a fret board between my legs
and a sound box in my mouth, there were chords
that didn’t exist until he pulled them out.
There were no chains or whips
But I could have called him Master
Not because I felt less than him
But because it was like he knew things
about my body that I didn’t
Like he had been learning it for 1000 years
and he deserved a fucking certificate.
Like I was the prayer mat and the eastern sky
and he was the man who had just conquered
the last inch of mind.
He said, how do you feel?
I said Alive.

So I guess I’m a Sub.
I guess this independent woman likes to be dominated.
But like race, when it comes to sex
there is never a box for the whole truth.
Sexuality and gender are piles
of images and words clipped from magazines
waiting to be glued into place on our vision boards.
And that’s how it should be.
Because the way they were originally assembled
no longer makes sense. We are not definable.
We are prisms of light, shades of feminine
and masculine looking for someone to bounce life off of.
Looking for someone to give when we need to receive,
receive when we need to give and when it’s done right,
both get done at the same time.
Sometimes its rough like bone to bone, lick-your-insides-clean love
Sometimes its candle wax on torsos, feathers on ankles,
moonbeams on eyelashes. Sometimes it is just body to body,
Being to Being, here let me hold that for you, your soul has been
swimming in labels so long, it’s grown tired of survival
here’s a moment of bliss, a moment of aliveness.
All day long I expend. I hold together. I lift up. I give out
I pour light on our food supply. Irrigate crops with my mouth.
And sometimes I just take in.

like religions

They just came down
from the cervix in the sky.
Traveled the familiar path
of child birth and lighting.
Where all changes come from.
Openings.

We expected ten.
But the first was just to pierce
the thin cloud hymen.
The other nine made it to flesh.
Hardly a flinch.

We were warm blooded
and breathing once.
Good mammals.
Now we are caught.
Always in need of saving.

questions from kavi

Questions from Kavi

Why does it hurt when I push on my face like this?
Why am I brown but Briam is white like you?
How come I always know where I am,
like I can always see out my eyes and feel my bones,
and I know where I am?
You have only had this body for 5 years.
You are still trying to figure it all out.
Trying to make sense of the hard parts and squishy parts
and why there are as many colors of skin as lunch boxes.
At night, just before bed is the only time quiet enough to ask these questions.
And so they flow out like rainbow colored oil streams in parking lots.
I try not to answer them. Just let you walk down the yellow lines
of existence and point at the magic of it all.
Sunrises amaze me too.
I don’t know, How do the shingles get on roofs?
Well, how do you think the people get on our TVs?
Your answers are always better than mine anyway.

Okay so, they eat a lot of sugar and then they get really hyper
and bounce through this pipe that mashes you up into colors
and then they get splattered behind the TV so we can see them…

It is hard to contain the bass beat of HELL YES,
that pounds through my chest when you discover the wonder of aliveness,
but I don’t want you to get freaked out so I say, ummm. that could be.
You are so easy to quench.
You will buy whatever the grown-ups tell you just to keep them happy.
Once when you were nervous about me leaving,
I put ten kisses in my hands and stuck them against your tiny chest and said,
Here. I put enough kisses in your heart for you to pull them out whenever you need them.
And you perked up with a smile and said, Okay, here’s ten for you too,
So you don’t get scared without me.
Now neither one of us can leave with out a handful of kisses.
So lately as the questions have been getting harder,
like Why do people get married?,
Why did you choose daddy if you don’t like him?
When Jadan touches my hair it makes me feel funny. Should I marry him?
I feel ill-equipped to respond.
You told me once that people need to clean out their junky brains
and now I am wishing I had listened, I rifle through old issues and reactions
like neon green Hard Rock shirts and big ol’ grey Nintendo boxes;
everything seems obsolete and useless.
I need to be new for you.
I need to be solid for you.
The questions aren’t getting any easier.
What happens to our bodies when we die?
And are bodies buried deep enough that tornadoes can’t get them?
And if I die will grandma take down all the pictures of me in her house?

I… just…
tell you not to worry.
And you say I can’t help but worry. I worry about everything.
My world blackens at the thought of your little body feeling anything but safe.
I say Kavi, give me your worry.
I will put it in my pocket and worry
about all these things for you so you can get some
sleep and in the morning, if you want, I’ll give it back.
Mom, you tell me, you can’t just put worry in a pocket.
My brain will still be thinking about these things.
And I watch as your innocence flutters away
on moth wings too delicate to catch.
I just say,
Baby, you chose a planet where there are no promises.
No permanence in form and no safety.
We are all wading our spoons through the milk
of this reality looking for marshmallows.
But see, worry is like is guilt and like tequila and like aspirin,
a little is helpful but a whole bottle can kill you.
It’s like taking a picture of something that never happened…
and then mashing yourself up in that color pipe and splattering
yourself inside the picture….and when you get back home you
can’t quite put yourself together the same.
Does that make sense?
And see, bodies are just the cars we are driving right now,
it’s good to take care of it and get dual side airbags if you can,
but you are either gonna crash or get too many miles
and have to trade it in for a new on anyway.
Luckily, the Universe has way better vehicles for you later.
But the good news about this earth is:
you can count on beauty way more than you can count on ugly.
Every single day that sun will rise and it will shout those
lavenders and tangerines at you until you wake up.
Everyday you will hear hip hop shaking car doors from two blocks away.
Everyday, shingles will be nailed on roofs, juice will be poured in cups,
people will touch your hair and make you feel funny,
you will raise your hand in class and have the right answer
and every night, it will get quiet.
The world will shrink down to you and me
and you will ask me questions.
You can count on joy, way more than a tornadoes pulling caskets from the ground.
But yes, some day a long, long time from now you will die.
Like 20 hundred?
Ummmm… yeah like 20 hundred.
Okay. Mom, stop talking and go to sleep.
I stroke the hair behind your ear like my mother did for me.
Each brush is a prayer
to the Silence that holds the sound of your breath,
so alive and so wise.

late for work

I’m sorry I was late for work this morning
but let me explain
No, there were no accidents
or traffic jams, my alarm went off just fine…
But as the clock sang songs about buttercups
and the sun brushed
my hair back like mama’s love, I rolled over to find two poems
stretched out in my bed, their bodies not yet tuned to time.
And I watched them breath.
For ten whole minutes,
I watched the universe expand and collapse
inside a cage I can fit between two palms
and I felt like God and I now had an inside joke
(humans think the Universe was created in
seven days but we both know that is was created just…
Now and Now and Now,
with each breath and each moment
it is created again and again)
and I watched as those bodies,
warm and pliable as lumps of clay,
began to take the shape of Beings whose edges
I could no longer locate.
I wish I could’ve gathered the smell of this morning for you,
flying through daffodil fields and leap frog clouds,
I would have brought it back here to this fluorescent- lit tower
of all things grown up, to remind you of
what is like to dream past 7 am.
I know you think what goes on here is important,
the big marble columns and the faces of old white men,
sure make it seem like it is…
and I know that you think that inside these walls,
these enormous walls built by brown hands,
painted three times a year by inmates,
adorned with the giant tributes to oil fields and stolen lands,
is where the world gets changed
but see enormous walls don’t make the world change…
out there is where the world gets changed.
Because on my street, six blocks away,
there is a baby drinking marijuana smoke
and fatigue for breakfast, whose diaper’s
needed changing for two days.
On the corner, a store owner is changing his family tree
by selling addictions to Americans.
Under the bridge, there is man babbling
about freedom under his breath, he clenches
his bottle for forgiveness as his fingers still
grasp for the trigger. The change in his cup
means more to him then any law you will make in committee today.
There is an ocean of progress between you and them
but you are too scared to get your hair wet.
I’m not saying you’re not useful, or darn right stunning in your suits,
but I’m just saying that none of this would be necessary if we had our priorities as straight and pointy as your boots.
I’m saying it would be more cost effective
to send a thousand memos a second
to remind each other of our divinity
than to continually pass laws that make hard working people into criminals
and maybe we could have little less brunches
and less luncheons and more meetings with the dawn.
We could borrow its colors of redemption to repaint
our history with moving on.
And then maybe we could add a clause to the law
just for single moms that makes you excused
if you are late to work because you had more important shit to do
like stopping your daughter just before she walks into school
and reminding her that even on her worst day,
when she has spiderman underwear on, no socks
and a knotted jungle of curls on her head,
that she is spectacular and then taking the time
to explain exactly what spectacular means.
This is the important shit ya’ll.
Like when I was 20 years old and pregnant
And my mother said, “but you had so much potential”
and “you were going to do so much…” and I told her
that if I never accomplish another goddamn thing
in my life I’ll be more important to this child than Gandhi
and that’s enough for me.
So… sorry I was late today. I was busy…
changing the world.

come on in, i will grow you

All bone meal and
stomach insides,
I am soil.
Soaked with womb water
and coffee grounds
black as creation.
Plunge your hands in,
feel for the seed that will become you.
There’s dreams in there.
Half opened, barely sprouting.
Leave them alone.

I think you know
I will hold you.
You could smell that
from the other side of the bar.
I think you could find the word Mother
written in the grid of my freckles.
It shares a T with the word Gift.
I have a soft spot for Beings who
do not know their own worth.
So, come on in.

I don’t care about headlines,
the things they say about women like me.
I don’t care if you have agendas,
I don’t dig deep enough to uncover motive.
I just see when love is needed and offer
whatever I have in exchange.
The sun will be up soon.
Let’s hide here,
under the covers.

I will place my
ear to your belly button and
listen for birth. Your stories
are the nametag piercing through
your chest. Let’s take that off now.
We know who You are.
Just breathe out.
You are broken bits of carbon
and belief systems,
The world needs that to survive
Even after you forget me
I will still grow you.