A Poem a Day

Keeps the heartache at bay

Author: B. N. Serraty

  • Unchained

    I am hurt. I am angry. I am afraid.
    The impotence running through my veins is hereditary and I want to be the last generation to carry those genes.
    I am hurt, why is no one listening? Why do I have to cry, scream and break things.
    Listen to me, I am angry.
    The blood of people who look just like me is being used to garnish brutalities as if they were salad dressing.
    And I am afraid, that one day the face on the news begging for views instead of aid will be a face that my heart knows intimately, and what am I supposed to do then? Grieve silently?
    While a storm the size of the continent brews inside me? Gale force winds breaking the sails on my ship because I know in my bones we were never supposed to come this far.

    I. Am. Hurt. And nothing is being done about it. There aren’t enough witch doctors in the world to mend the semas that have been broken. There are too many ways in which to explain that those seams were never properly sown together to begin with.

    I. am. Angry. So fuck you and the right way to do things, I tried it your way and you keep telling me that’s not how to go about things. You’re right, fighting bare knuckled and bloody, I can no longer allow myself to confirm to your version of expression. Because being black is already too loud in any position

    I am afraid. Words aren’t working. Violence isn’t either. How do we get through this? How do we ensure our survival? How do we reclaim the narrative? It has never been us, always them. But we have erupted, there shall be a cleanse.

  • Wonder

    You ever stop to wonder what it is you’re praying to?

    If God is actually a little elf in the sky, collecting prayers like post it notes, selecting the ones to answer by throwing darts while blindfolded and hope that it’s nothing they promised not to do, like curing world hunger…

    I do, all the time.

    I wonder and imagine and try my hardest to paint the plain of God’s face with my fingertips

    And get nothing.

    Nothing but a dark sky with a gathering of stars for a face.

    Do you think that’s omnipotence? Or laziness

    Because if we really were made in their image, what if God just really doesn’t fucking feel like it?

    If they bob and weave and dodge those prayers because answering them just takes too much energy.

    They created us and suddenly, we’re too much.

    Those prayers have to be going somewhere.

    Because I refuse to believe that we are really this lonely.

    That there is nothing, and no one higher in power than this blemish of humanity in a timeline we created.

    Do you think they just vanish? Eroding like pennies at the bottom of a wishing well.

    How far do you think prayers travel? Are they shot like arrows, bending the breeze to catch their target unaware? Falling back slowly as they meet resistance.

    Maybe only some prayers make it to God, or maybe they die in the sky, suffocated by the atmosphere, set aflame and snuffed out all at once, never having reached their intended destination.

    Is there anyone actually listening? Do they find our suffering funny? I can almost hear a teenage group of deities, giggling.

    But they got to go somewhere right? Like whispers on the wind.

  • Dancing Queries

    A Dance with the Devil, a Date with Death

    I have never been afraid of death.

    Wary of it, yes

    But curious, nonetheless.

    And I guess curiosity might finally kill the cat.

    Only this time, satisfaction can’t bring it back.

    Is it wrong that there is a part of me too loud to ignore that would be okay with that? 

    That would welcome that outcome.

    Yet, another part of me is just as loud, and she rages against the idea of an end. 

    Fights with tooth and nail until she’s bloody

    But the opponent is inevitable, the only thing that the determines how long you will fight is time.

    Time is the thing to fear most.

    Time allows you to believe you own it, you have it.

    But it is nothing more than a handful of sand.

    The more you try to grab and possess

    The more of it that slips through your fingers, 

    Right back into the hourglass.

    Back into the fold, isn’t that how the story goes?

    Polvo eres y a polvo volverás, no?

    That’s the silent part of me, the one who weighs the most.

    Who steadies the devil on my shoulder, and stifles the battle angel in my soul.

    She waits, for truth, for confirmation, for the answer.

    Be it received now or decades down the line, she simply waits as acceptance and denial murmur words to sway her. 

    To tilt the scale one way or the other

    To react.

    But silence is nothing more than the absence of sound.

    She is my anchor of peace in a world that is too loud.

    She does not fear death, nor does she embrace life, she merely exists. 

    And for now, that is enough.

  • Thank You, Mom: A Celebration of Love

    Thank You, Mom: A Celebration of Love

    Thank you, mom.

    Thank you for having me, for carrying me and nurturing me before I ever set foot outside your womb.

    For loving me and teaching me and yelling at me.

    Thank you for chasing after me, for never letting go or giving up..

    Thank you for existing, I would be nothing, not even a thought in this grand universe if not for you.

    Thank you for being you, for teaching me all of the best parts of you.

    For letting me carry you with me in my heart.

    For being the best person, mother, friend I could ever want. 

    You are the most amazing person I know, the most kind and caring with the most beautiful smile and laugh.

    Thank you, mom.

    For all of your pain and your sacrifice

    Thank you for it all.

    For everything you’ve done that we couldn’t see, for all the things you did that we could.

    I can’t thank you enough. 

    I could never give you enough. 

    Thank you, mom. Just thank you.

    For living this life and allowing me to witness it.

    For laughing out loud with your whole body.

    For your advice on conflict management.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

    I have no bad memories of you, no ill will or hurt feelings 

    But I would relive every argument, every fight we ever had just so we can make up and get to where we are now, in the end.

    Mom thank you for being my very best friend, my counselor, my teacher, my reason. 

    I just wish I could keep you forever.

    Wish we could swap places so you could feel all of the love in my heart for you.

    Mami thank you 

  • Unlock the Passion: Read Me Now

    Unlock the Passion: Read Me Now

    Read me.
    I want you to inhale every one of my figurative details.
    Hold a sensory image in your brain of what I look like.
    Let my pages describe what I feel like, and what happens when I skim you.
    When, my eyes devour your chapters in seconds.

    Pick me.

    Lift me off the shelf and bore your eyes into mine.
    Let my lines sing to you the beatings of my heart.
    How they flow in time to the sound of every page you turn.
    Drown in the sands of my hourglass.
    Let my words pour into your soul and complete the understanding.
    Tell me you see me, finally.
    Read me, like your favorite story.
    Predict my lines and rewrite the dialogue,
    Just read me, it’s the only way you’ll see me.
    Believe my words, feel the passion behind them, they are my most sacred treasure.
    And I’m giving them to you.
    I want to share myself with you,
    But I am so lost in these lines.

    I need your help to find the page where I left myself behind.
    I’ve jumped into the pages of your lines,
    Of my part in your story.
    Read me, pluck every syllable from my soul.
    Define my adjectives, nouns, and verbs.
    Get to the root of my words.
    The root of my soul.

  • It’s just a bad day, not a bad life

    How do I even begin to explain? 

    Some days are better than others, 

    And most days, I have good moments

    But not good days.

    It’s like my vocal cords are wrapping themselves around one another

    Constricting my throat so tightly, 

    It’s hard to breathe.

    Being stuck in a hole, and feeling powerless

    As to your survival.

    What else are you supposed to do but sit.

    Wait, talk to the shadows who deem you worthy of conversation.

    Because while you’re stuck in this hole, life, the world,

    They go on without you.

    And say, you manage to escape, 

    Freedom never felt so great, but,

    You don’t know what to do with it.

    You haven’t been around people in so long, that being swarmed scares you shitless,

    Haven’t seen the light of the sun, that its rays are blinding.

    So you go back, and jump into your hole.

    Because your prison became your home, 

    You found understanding, and faced fears in that hole.

    But the laws of life consist of nothing but regeneration.

    You take one away to be replaced with the next one.

    How do I explain how it feels to feel like I do, right now,

    And secretly, all the time.

    Seething. Desperately hopeful,

    Wishing that others can change, that they’ll notice the dirt on your clothes from climbing into that hole every night, and climbing your way back up every morning,

    Before the light reaches the windows of those you thought might notice,

    But they don’t

    No one ever does.

    And that’s okay, I’ve mastered slinking away.

    Lying about the look on my face almost effortlessly.

    And you don’t care, you try not to, but you can’t help it.

    And you notice the dirt on their clothes, and because you know what it feels like to be stuck in a hole, you offer consoling words

    Only to be struck back, lashed at, leave it alone.

    And that’s okay, because you tried and were pushed away, it wasn’t you, 

    Or was it,

    You question and search and maybe you shouldn’t have bothered, maybe they like their hole as much as you like yours.

    But digging yourself out hurts too much at dusk. 

    Blindly seeking hand and foot holds, sliding and reopening scabs that healed from the last falls.

    So you ask, and you talk because you know. 

    But the I’m fines and it’s okays and just forget it, push you further back in that hole. 

    And sometimes you just don’t have the strength to claw yourself out.

    You make dolls out of clay, formed from mud and too many rainstorms.

    And then it rains again and it all fades away.

    But on my good days, the light from the sun doesn’t bother me so much, it lightens me and lifts me up. Dusts me off and sends me on my way.

    My hole, I’ve realized, is a prison, not a safe space. 

    But it’s where I spend most of my time, locked away from ever having to disclose these feelings 

    That, I don’t even know how to explain.

  • Blank Canvas

    Blank Canvas

    Do you know what it’s like to live in between the lines of a blank page?

    The vastness swallows you whole, but your essence is whatever you desire it to be.

    You can morph this page into anything of your choosing,

    Sail from line to line, fine tuning the details of your story.

    This page, this canvas, this world, the universe that is you in its entirety,

    Exists between these lines.

    You are free between these lines.

    And me? If I could live anywhere, I would choose to be immortalized inside the confines of a blank page.

    To make my home whatever my heart yearns for.

    Shaping my realm from lucid dreams to a vivid reality.

    My home would never be empty,

    I’d forever be accompanied by nouns, verbs and adjectives

    Skipping vowels and hard consonants

    Can you imagine? What it would be like to live in a place that always ends in exclamations.

    To mark the answers to your questions with periods instead of ellipsis…

    No more to be continueds, just straight living.

    Wouldn’t you like to make your home between the lines of blank page?

    To live out your days in a world you can call your own.

    Plant your flag on this imaginary planet.

    Hitch your ride to this chimerical wagon

    And imagine what home could be to you if only you lived within the lines of a blank page.

  • In the Arms of Chaos

    In the Arms of Chaos

    I’m giving up poetry. At least that’s what I think; I don’t know if it’s what I mean.

    I’ve been at this place, time and time again, and I always regress, back to my notebook where everything seems to hold less stress.

    Poetry is who I choose to be.

    It’s not what I do it’s who I am.

    So yeah, I don’t know half of the shit the workshop instructor said.

    Who the fuck is Charles Bukowski?

    Let’s just say this is all new to me. I don’t research my craft, I just put pen to paper and it happens,

    maybe it’s a natural born talent,

    it’s not like anyone ever tried to help me.

    The knowledge everyone else has, doesn’t make me,

    poetry flows through my veins it is me.

    Today they desire those who know about modern poets, and their work.

    But when they need a Pablo Neruda expert they’ll regret sending me away.

    When Edgar Allan Poe needs a tell-tale heart, that’s when they’ll remember my name.

    Langston Hughes had a dream deferred, but little did he know it was passed on to me.

    I know nothing about sestinas and soliloquys but the day you need a metaphor or simile lean on me

    because no one knows how to put an off base rhyme together like I do.

    No one knows how to push out excruciating pain thru pencil tips like I could.

    No one knows that me and poetry go way back.

    Back to the womb of my mother,

    back to the race between me and the other billion sperm cells.

    We go back,

    back to the lost memory of my sight, the first breaths of my cry.

    We go back,

    to elementary when my teacher asked me to write.

    She told me to write anything I wanted.

    And in my fist I gripped that pencil and in the funny squiggles that were still unfamiliar to me,

    I wrote, “If you met your heart what would you ask it?”

    And I keep meeting my heart and breaking it.

    Keep hearing my shadow scream at me you’ll never make it.

    But I am it,

    so fuck the name Bukowski.

    Bring back Silverstein and Frost.

    Because these people of which you speak I know not of.

    My limited knowledge does not make me, it shapes me.

    Yes, I’m a ragged edge and you must take care around me

    but no one can claim that my heads not in this game, because I have my soul in it.

    I sit at home and watch YouTube videos about it.

    I close my eyes and dream about it,

    I am that unheard brave new voice.

    Def. poetry jam is what animates me then it tears me down as I read the bios.

    They know so much more than I could ever catch up to.

    I don’t need that much to let my words be heard, and touch the endless skies miles from me.

    I know nothing of what they teach but I still go to learn.

    And I dare someone to say I’m not about it, I’ll show them what it is.

    I’ll lay my words onto storm clouds and let each word fall in the shape of rain.

    I’ll turn every gunshot into a story, I’ll make my project building be the stage and me the narrator.

    No one’s ever told me I was born for something greater, only something slightly better than where I am now.

    My head was never filled with you could be president or anything like that. In fact, my writing is supposed to lead me

    nowhere.

    I don’t think anyone sees that this isn’t something I do, it does me,

    it enters my body penetrating every inch of me,

    no it doesn’t fuck me, we make love to each other,

    I don’t chase it, it chases me. Around every corner, in dark alleys, on park benches, sandy beaches by the water, it follows me.

    It doesn’t belong to me I belong to it and it cares for me.

    Poetry invaded me, and I gave myself to it completely.

    Every tear I never shed ties me to it,

    every secret I never said ties me to it,

    every scar on my body ties ME to it.

    We’re entangled on paper sheets, slammed on spray painted walls, even the floors are marked up.

    It knows me, and embraces me, the wind that whips around my short hair, it whispers, you need no other knowledge than you just love me.

    Am I giving up poetry?

    It’s impossible to give up something that lives in me, it controls my limbs, my mind even the gestures I make with my hands.

    It’s fused in my fingertips, enforces the open and closing of my hand.

    I have been in love with poetry since the race for humanity began;

    It will always be a part of who I am.

  • The Halls of our Memories

    The Halls of our Memories

    Every time I write to you it seems as if the circle has gotten smaller and smaller.

    Yet the love in my heart is unchanged.

    See the present maybe be barreling towards the future at an unfathomable rate.

    But it’s taken my heart and my mind quite some time to catch up.

    It has become my favorite pass time to linger.

    That’s it. To take my time amongst the walls and halls that hold the moving portraits of our memories.

    I am no longer satisfied with an unexpected glimpse.

    I choose to observe each piece hung in the museum of our lives

    To study every smile, and the emotion that shaped each of our faces.

    That lined them just enough so that we would always recognize one another.

    Distance is normal, time marches on and the chasm grows even deeper.

    Fractures and cracks along the walls that once connected us all

    Fragmented into the different roads we all headed down.

    And while it is true we can never go back, that there is no back to go to

    We can always stop, and admire one another from a distance.

    Summon the light show and watch how we fire up the skies once more with our dreams for the future we are now sitting in.

    Reminisce the times we were forced to leave behind because we were convinced that ahead only lies greater.

    And we were right, so we stand up and dust off and march on as time does, moving the present towards a future we are still imagining, still creating.

    But every so often, we look back in the distance and see the lights of our past.

    The fractures come together once more, and we dance with the ghosts of us that once were, 

    the ones we swore we’d moved on from and left behind. 

    But this life is ours, now even more than it was then, so why not indulge the love that was left behind? 

    Why not open your arms to the ensemble that once existed only to play the sweet music of our dreams?

    To watch the movie of our lives one more time, while we can still linger in the echoes of that love.

  • Finding Calm in the Chaos

    Finding Calm in the Chaos

    It’s just that,

    Sometimes it feels like I’m drowning. 

    Like, I want to dip my toes in the ocean on a hot summer day,

    But as soon as they touch the water

    A hurricane of wind and rain sweeps me away.

    Most of the time, I’m spinning.

    Being hurled around and around,

    Fighting against the air being pushed into my lungs.

    Sometimes I command the storm.

    The thunder and lightning,

    The tsunamis and monsoons;

    We are one and the same, breathing into one another.

    Other times, I fly into the eye of the storm; floating on silent waves.

    As everything rages away

    All I can do is focus on every breath.

    On, staying afloat until I can swim back to shore.

    I can’t shout, I have to make every breath count.

    I can’t cry, I couldn’t muster up an SOS if I tried.

    And then there are the times I actually make it back to the line between the land and the sea.

    When I realize the only thing damaged in the storm was me.

    I take my time away from the shoreline.

    Away from the waves, and the sun.

    From the calls of the sky, and the horizon.

    Until, inevitably, I find myself back at that line between the land and the sea.

    Between living and existing.

    Inching my toes closer, wondering what the outcome might be this time.

    To see if we might endure the pain of life.

    If we might survive the perils of treading the open waters before us.

    Or if floating, fighting and drowning is all there is to be found.