We are beautiful

You are as beautiful as this rose.

And I am as beautiful as that tulip.

And he is as beautiful as a wilting sunflower.

What floral beauty we have

Lined up in a row atop uneven pedestals.

They are dandelions, wretched and menacing,

But they are still beautiful too, for they can fly.

Spreading their spores everywhere

Invading our pastures and decorating our landscapes.

So we whisper in the ears of children,

Asking them to uproot them and blow them away,

In order to grant their wishes.

And with the weeds removed, we live in happy bliss

Until the humans commit further herbicide and pick our sunflower

And Mother Nature, unforgiving and brutal to all, kills me

With an indiscriminate frostbite

Finally, a vicious tornado uproots you, my precious rose,

Bush and all, severed from your earthen cradle, I weep

For our happy field has been tarnished. Expelled are we

And in our place a new Eden is made, embroidered by the wind

Nurtured by our mother, A sea of silver appearing every June.

I don't want to always write colored

My words aren't always colored, in everything but black

My reality is always colored, but that doesn't mean I can't sing

of the hills, the river bank, the beautiful full moon beaming

an indiscriminate light onto my face, no cheese wheel here

And honestly I sometimes find a solace in its bold faced lie

One I refuse to admit, but sometimes I indulge in when I'm tired

of constantly being upset over a meter that doesn't conform to my intended line 

Must I write a sonnet about love? Will you accept me with a vilanelle about loss?

I don't know what you want me to write. So I'll write this.

I can't always use words the way I want. They're slippery. 

I can't always create a pretty scenery on command. 

I can't imagine a fresh bed of snow in which I'll write a poem, just to have the harsh win wipe it away 

Nor is there clay from the Amazon at hand, ready to be crafted into a monument, slowly eroding. 

Shakespeare used sand. Lake sand doesn't work as well. 

Perhaps we'll go on a long car ride in the cold winter, and I'll write the poem in a fogged up mirror. 

Not quite pretty, but we can all recall times as a kid where you'd adorn the it with your initials. 

Screaming out to those on the outside, I'm here. And the heat washes it away. 

There isn't a repertoire of beautiful images I have for you. I'm sorry

But I offer you up this poem as a token of my appreciation. 

And hopefully one day you'll realize that my words are sputtered out by a boy who was too worried about      the world liking him, that he forgot to be genuine  

Prose and Poesy are one in the same, words on a wrinkled page. 

Still you'll like this poem, right?

Why I took Latin

When I came to the University I realized my previous education was lacking

I could speak perfect English, but I couldn't speak Western 

No not with a draw, but instead with a middle English inflection 

My reading repertoire was filled with the usual middle school classics

The Giver, Number the Stars, Tell-Tale Heart and so on,

But here at the U we speak in Homeric verse

And Great Expectations are always met

Your Professors will shout names at you and unintentionally condescend

"Have you read anything from him" (it's typically a guy)

and I'll look sheepishly around the class, my peers nodding in begrudging reflection

of the times where they were forced to take AP lit and drudged through Grapes of Wrath

While at my high school I was constantly given the book Outsiders as if they were trying to send me a hint

Still, now I can read Latin verse and in a misguided bout of oneupsmanship I flaunt my useless talent

Deluding myself into thinking that now, they would finally accept me as a scholar 

But no my last name makes it so that I constantly do a "good job", you know 

for someone who has lived here his entire life and happens to have a Spanish last name 

But I had one friend who praised my writing and kept pushing me to 

Drop my pretense and begin writing the way I used to, which required deep breaths and spattered slang on 

        the tattered pages of a black and white specked notebook,

 I was carving into literary marble 

But one day I walked into the hallway and could hear him speak to others, "he's so talented for someone from those circumstances "

Et tu Brute? And then it clicked. I have been trying to speak a language that wasn't healthy for me

it forces me to white out my vernacular and silences my entire presence. For there will never be a Latino Achilles.

I am a Trojan Horse who has infiltrated the great walls of Western Literature. I wait for the black night to take over so that I may comfortably begin singing. 

O Muse thou shall not possess me. Be not proud for this verse is sung from the spirit of the oppressed. Don't view these western tropes as monuments, they are colonies that I am locking away in this poem. 

 Cano,Cano, Cano

I too sing, I too sing, I too sing