There are times when you want poems to stop it all
(a Fabiola)
 
There are times when you want poems to stop it all
when you want the haranguing wanting of it to go away
there are times when you have to define it because
It's too big, it wears many masks changes smiles breathes different air
has a new heartbeat for every situation
you can possibly imagine.
 
when the juggernaut of biological impetus
clouds all your bulletproof adolescence
and forces you into that corner
the one you'd swore you'd never retreat into.
 
but then when you see her, and she's just there and
she's just walking towards you and all you can do is
dream about her and write her love letters
that she'll never read on  slips of paper stuffed in
every crevice of your eggshell humanity-your dashboard
your desk at home, your courier bag, in your shirt pocket
carefully laid out and chronologically arranged in the hopes
in the hopes that
the hopes that something
some day
will..
 
when all you can do is tell your mother about her
through nervous bites of cake and cookies
and the second her name touches the air between you and your mother
you second guess even mentioning it you feel lame and childish
you know there are pacts that only blood and verandas
and wills and wedding vows will seal.
 
you know this but shy away from all of it with apprehension
and you rehearse the words you probably won't use
to tell her all of this and confess the poems,
the stolen glances the slight and gentle tug
on your unused heart  and all that it might mean
for God and the life you've yet to have with her
the words you've yet to bask in
 
the music of your conversations yet unheard
by angels not yet born in heavens not yet
made by the beautiful hands you've only dreamt
of touching, caressing, and hiding inside of
 
you just want poems to staunch the flow of blood
you want memories to mop up the maw
you want so many things and you feel guilty for wanting them
you feel pocho and ineffective
you want her to read all of this
you want to feel her sighing into your chest
you want the world to fall away as silk cortinas
under an unsuspecting spring wind
 
you want the flicker of the candles
to spell her name
you want everything she wants
but she hasn't told you this yet
but you don't know any of this yet.
 
you don't know this but you want it
and so does she and so you sit and write poems
hoping that it will make itself known soon
that all of this won't be in vain
 
this is what you do at night
with birds on your telephone poles
populating your dead fruit trees
blessed by the drone of the freeway
spread out below
your window and its blood red curtains
hailing the slow crawl of ennui traffic
 
You do it under the guise of the thousands
 in this city-all of them probably doing the
same as you:
 
wanting, wishing, willing
and crying
to make all of it
make sense
or just stop
altogether