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