Peace VONA, still recovering hoping for the bright future

“….our fate cannot be taken from us/it is a gift “– Dante

Fear is a fallacy

Inherit your blessed bestowed gifts

Embrace unusual

Walk around focused

Be wise in your wandering

Wish for what you want

Wait for it

Squeak one out

What shall be wonderful

No more fuck shit

How about some love shit

Don’t be done with future

Future is not done with you

Tomorrow may be uncomfortable

Uncertainty is very necessary for elevation

Clock pushes you towards triumph

Grab a handful of hope and hold on

Send out a smoke signal

Communicate to the clouds

Consider contribution to canon

Cultivate courage out the chaos

Like conviction to admit your flaws

Accept mistakes as mark of growth

Icy slope when you can barely walk straight

Prevent demise of ideals

Invested instincts influenced by elders’ errors

Look to the mirror forgive us

Recall you forgot agony to sit still

Capture your pretending

Gather what you left behind

Bid them peace salutations blessings

Presence es un placer

De conocer cara de nino

Pero alma de hombre

Fried anger will mata hambre

Pero perezoso will engorda

Chubby chicho spare tire will be cute

One day more of you from dubs

Potency of pa’lante better not be paltry

Skimpy bolsas de poder

Temporary fix for long term monkeys

Fed salty peanuts to put on sideshow

Let the extraganza sabado gigante celebration

Set off with a cipher to get the MCs loose

Enough to see prophecy within their search

Decipher conspiracy

Divine lives outside church

Wherever you choose to worship

Will provide heavenly temple

Gospel grounded in gutter

Go on get the gold at end of pothole road

Your truest smile lies at faded yesterdays

Past is no longer your cage

you gonna get this work

For me it was all about figuring this shit out. I know I took my sweet time with everything but I guess the lord has her own script for the way I’m living. Sometimes I’d like to think that those visions are entwined, but I’m often shown otherwise. So I bask in those small moments that remind me that what I’m going through is so much bigger than I am. Only a small dot infinitismal molecule in the galaxy of humanity. Just trying to keep moving every day like the sun shines new light on old scars in the hood.

So what is the deal? Statis, nothing else fams. If I tried to tell you otherwise I’d might be someone else. But me, stuck on the block with the same old folks doing the clichéd same old shit. Really. Even if you ask them, what’s good, they say, same old shit. As if we don’t have different bowel movements each time we eat something else. But what can you do when the only option are Kansas Fried, Kee Hing Chinese Restaurant, Hot Millions, snack cakes and sour powers washed down with High Fructose Sugar Water? So all that schooling, even going round the country and the Caribbean still got you in the same spot you was drooling as a young’n. Thinking that hanging out with the dropouts and criminals was going to instantly add to that the street credibility you been so desperate for. Like that saying you take the man out the ghetto but you can’t get the cold corners dark lights and smoky rooms from the soul. It stays trapped in the walls of your skin like that metallic musk you smell when you step in the elevators and sazon sticking to the hallways of your hope.

Where I’m at? Right in the back park, headphones on, zoned out, looking at the moon shift shape in the purple sky while the clouds cling on to the good memories of today trying to make the pain go away so that the sunrise can be brighter tomorrow. Analyzing the parts of myself that I keep hidden tucked away like the secrets behind my eyelids. Most likely just catching my breath while about to breeze around the city, scooping inspiration from the beast when the conga man bangs boogaloo on his bongo, the iron horse rumbles to the next stop, hopefully I will be getting wherever on time at least within reasonable colored people tardiness. Right to action.

But what happens when the words aren’t enough? Do we ever stop being poetry in life?

i wonder where this kid is

For Luis B aka S Gramz

How many will you have to sell

For your dreams to become closer?

How much work will you have

To put in before your hood credentials

Are officially certified?

What

Do you

Care about?

Where are you when you are not

In school learning?

Please, young brother,

Don’t just be another fool burning

This bridge is connected

To wherever you want to go

Hoping tomorrow will be

Brighter than all those

Dark yesterdays

When will you exit from the corner’s

Maze but you gotta follow directions

If you scream loud enough you might find

Perspective speaking straight from corazon

Block holds half the questions all the lies

Puddles reflect wishes of eager sky

Against bitter breeze

How strong will you have to flap your wings

To stay fly?

Descanse En Poesia, Tato Laviera

I think in Spanish/I write in English

                                                -Tato Laviera

Como puedo decir distracted distances en multiple lenguas

Future looking more mezclao

Gente from different countries all speaking Spanglish fluent

Primo we need to organize to get that power

Barrio loco shorties got that sour

Loudpack sonido en stereo

Dimelo how vecinos turned blancos

Got that banco popular

Except we are far from popular democratic

Declarations of pan tierra libertad

Subsidized that state will make you a slave through barcode

Scanned and watched

Mucho bochinche and porqueria on the block

Don’t want to start a resurrection of Young Lords Party

Pa’lante only a documentary

Fuzzy VHS ripped DVD sold for a dollar on 125^th

Shift in mentality marketed by prison industrial complex

Owning music industry murdering ears

Ponce massacre of minds sterilized souls

Estrellas imperceptible reflections

Calles chain your confidence

Constellations have muffled conversations

Giving you answers before side smirk

Break off in tonterias captures complete totality

Ghetto griot grito orality caserio newscasters

Replay lowlights of vicious pobreza cycle

Vital signs show high blood pressure

Bad cholesterol prediabetic disaster running faster

Happy hours at sweatbox social clubs

Looking for love in all the long faces

Race for independence speed walking marathon

Mananas depend on milagros migrating where

Isla dreams can be reborn from project penthouses

Skyline matches frame of mente molded by palabras

Motivating your jibaro heritage

Teaching proper lessons forever holding onto

Ancestral love sin compromisa sacred promise

Push next generation con fuerza siempre amor

Confianza en our belleza

Elevation

I love my grandmother, Melba Burgos!

Abuelita abuelita no llore mas

Abuelita abuelita en su vida praying for paz

How did you feel before getting on that avion

English weak but your faith strong as back bearing jibaro burden

Decade after decade world turning always towards sunny manana

Hustle your way through factorias

Sowing lace luxury undergarments by day

By night open and shut down the Copa

Una mujer en la ciudad

Bailando until breakadawn

Ritmo mas profundo makes you sing along

Release all that pena each song

Large family in small apartments

Dreams squeezed into roach motel railroad

Prewar buildings born for arson insurance

Drama kept you moving

Hard to preach Que Pasa Power

When children are starving

Cornflakes with water

Ketchup sandwich bacalaito for breakfast

Yucca for dinner

May the Lord be with you always

We feeble fellow sinners

Don’t pass judgement on next brother

Who knows when emptiness will be fulfilled

Grandma’s hands crotchet Lares flag

Collecting dust in back of closet

Let tumbleweeds push past parched desert

Constant conversation with Dios

From your blessed mouth to beloved ears

On your side no boogieman to fear

Except monsters you been created

Image of Beetlejuice don’t say name 3 times

Appear instantly behind bad memories

Distraction is contagious

Top of head to bottom of toes

Become your holy gospel before eyes close

Shielding you from hood frights

City skyline in broken distance

Bedroom looking at Rikers Riverside

Harlem State building to Empire

Hardwired to hold on to hope

Kiss your bony knuckles to knock out negativity

Followed by heavenly trinity

Sunrise to midnight

Echandolo Pa’lante never polite

Your smile is a kite

Flying from highest cascada en el Yunque

Able to see Guzman Abajo

And look up at confianza constellations

Forever watching