I grew up in a tough neighborhood,
Seen and experienced every kind of
Street hell you can think of.
Its no secret I was a drug addict,
I beat that.
Its no secret my mother was shot dead
In front of me.
I beat that.
All who know me,
Well, you all may not like me after
I told you I was dead.
I beat that.
So for those who are fighting,
Those who are bullying,
I send an open invitation to bully me.
To hate me, to write bad stuff
About The Dedpoet.
Leave all those other guys alone.
I can be your punching bag.
Because I can take it,
Because after all,
If we met in the streets I would
Hug you with a haiku,
I'd lay kisses on your cheek
With a thousand sonnets from
Neruda.
I'd read you Octavio Paz
Until you realized you are not a poet.
Poets do not bully,
They understand, they are philosophical
Word artists whom write the human
Condition and deal with the chaos
Of this world with peers.
So bully, so whomever you are,
Attack me, someone who knows
What you really are.
I can take it,
Just leave the real poets be,
This is an open invitation.
Let the fun begin, if you have the
Metaphorical ***** for it.

I have romanticized hotel beds.
As a kid, I called the concrete home,
And nothing was better than a hotel bed.
My brother and I would fall like Icarus
Onto the feathery home as we said,
"There's nothing better than a hotel bed".
They were our trampolines, our forts
That protected us from the horrors we knew
And in that hotel bed we were nothing short
Of limitless.
We could laugh, we could fight,
For once we could be warm through out the night.
But that bed was more than just a place to sleep,
It was an escape from the every day.
Its something every child knows,
And most adults have tried to forget.
That whenever they lay
In that fluffy white bed
The world is their's to own.
So whenever I see a hotel
I'm transported back to long ago
When cold and wet
My brother and I
Fell, deeply, into a hotel bed.

I never may turn the loop of a road
  Where sudden, ahead, the sea is lying,
But my heart drags down with an ancient load--
  My heart, that a second before was flying.

I never behold the quivering rain--
  And sweeter the rain than a lover to me--
But my heart is wild in my breast with pain;
  My heart, that was tapping contentedly.

There's never a rose spreads new at my door
  Nor a strange bird crosses the moon at night
But I know I have known its beauty before,
  And a terrible sorrow along with the sight.

The look of a laurel tree birthed for May
  Or a sycamore bared for a new November
Is as old and as sad as my furtherest day--
  What is it, what is it, I almost remember?

(20 minute poetry)

Railroaded,
I'm being fast tracked,
loaded in
fired out,
stacked like a tower of dominoes
and I don't know what anything's about.

'Is it 'cause I'm' working class?

The background check wrecks any chance for me,
I see a future through the looking glass through which I
the double blank cannot pass,
what passes for justice is just this and just this is nothing at all.

On the railroad track when treated, observed in and deleted from memory there's a part of me remains in the looking glass, looking back.

I suffer and fall
while the crystal ball
tells me nothing.

In this end where no end is in sight
I light several candles
say a few prayers for the dead,
Hoping that someone out there in the vacuum will hear me.

This one goes to the real poets.
To those who decide to carry the world on their own.
To those who carry hell in their head and a graveyard of lost love stories in their heart
To the brave ones who fight darkness with darkness.
Tho those who the only answer they seek from a god is if there's eternal life for their loved ones, because they know there's no space for them in that paradise.
To those who know that suffering is the most humane feeling there is.
To those who loved and hated the wrong person.
This goes to Lorca isolated, hiding in a closet in New York.
To Unamuno craving to believe in something impossible.
To Quiroga drinking the poison of his sorrow at a hospital.
To Becquer and Espino for dying so young.
To Neruda for cheating on himself so many times.
To Machados' lost spirit.
To Marquez and his melancholic ******.
To Poe's tormented soul and his raven.
To Shakespeare and his Juliet.
To Dante and his story of woe.
This goes for the only beings who can live with a hell inside of them, and still manage to write heavenly things for those in need to read.
This one's for us.

Maybe in an alternate universe:
We wouldn't be divided
by oceans and mountains,
and times not synced.
Maybe we wouldn't be fearful.
Maybe we wouldn't be doubtful.
Maybe you would have green eyes
instead of blue.
Maybe I would have liked another
who isn't you.
Maybe I wouldn't even be writing this.
Maybe we would be beside each other,
Laying intertwined, in love and at ease.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
But who cares about other possibilities
when my universe is you?