Kenyatta Jean-Paul Garcia

To Repetition

Never believed in unicorns nor the whispers of horses. I know a liar in any species. They all give themselves away. And yes, if it breathes it can lie. Plants, flies, mushrooms, yeast even those fabrics, that synthetic blend of chemistry that lets air in and dries sweat super fast.

*

Hope is a love song for the streetlights. And you know where time goes? It sinks into your wrinkles, slumps the shoulders, builds on the waist, goes on the thighs, grows hairs and exiles any sense of attractiveness. Quarantines some something from the handsome. But hope carries on even when only the lights are listening.

*

Every diary is a thief. Each entry steals from the ability to reimagine an event in a better light. The truth is mean and uses its cruelty to defeat its enemies. Thus, it is free.

*

Dreams are made of wires and gears. Circuits and machinery. Thinking is John Henry. Fantasy, the steam drill.

*

Come hell. Come high water.

Go, heaven. Go, lowtide.

Be still limbo. Be still cesspool.

Remain purgatory. Remain standing

water

always among

us

stagnation.

*

Tied to sympathy, the angels already lost

both their battles

and their path

- the will to submit

to instincts.

Pity is a guardian. Regrets sentry the city demons.

The spectrum

is wide

but a gated community

none(for)theless

*

If only a better system was more in vogue. In demand.

Fought to win

to settle debts

and the new world

unfamiliar

with old world dreams

whose bravery has all but

been sweat out

without a drop mourned for.

For if the soil is unfit for fruit it is unfit for us.

Grace is a worthless harvest

redemption is a cash crop

of little profit.

Silence diminishes as sleep ends.

Thought comes with a voice of actions

enslaved to notions.

Dreams whisper if they speak. They are the phantoms of privacy.

A secret spirit meant to haunt

only one

who might find meaning

for waking

hope in sleep / fear in sleep / love in sleep

beauty broken to alarm

cells to rise, work, build.

commence.

Completion is the greatest lie the Devil ever told.

Over and done do not exist.

Tower of Babel collapsed along with the walls of Jericho.

The Grand Canyon is deeper every century

ice melts and water reminds us

we are no longer its children.

Magic is nothing without an audience.

*

Breathing is a give and take fiasco.

On the window pane

how many lives

have been left /

wiped away?

On the phone

how much was received?

Its such a pricy ceiling above holding onto air only seen in age

-grey, yellow, tainted

as unclean as life itself.

Down on itself the drain begins to leak

gives its love a goodnight piss

talks in runs, handle shaken

to silence

complaints of the overused, overworked, overlooked.

Chains, a part of a toilets troubles and utility.

How helpful restrictions can be in one light /

how bleak in some other sense.

Tied down. Whipped. No fetish for the reality of relatives. A crown of no. John Henrys single minded heavy handed swing for the Jackie Robinson fences to come.

A shroud of opposition.

Christened. Baptized. Consummated. Initiated.

That downward strike to shake applause from nosebleed seats

- nigger heaven-

balcony, mezzanine.

Hard to relax when respite is never long enough to allow us to forget.

Only to forge. To force a spike. a rail. a light headed this way and away

black on the backside. smaller. shrinking.

Pistons are improved upon. Gives way to electricity.

To circuits. To cycles.

To completion being equal

To repetition.