By Juan Gomez
and what am i to do with all this silence?
a gliding parka in the park
(that is, my backyard)
sliding, hopping through the islets of my
nonage (non-aged)
as I jostled off
the well-worn path, no longer lured by thoughts of
being tiny in a pond
being lured by horrid scholar whispers
being lured by hoppity incentives
to grow up and be a man—
whatever that may mean “to be a man” in
modern day, when the slightest breath
disintegrates and disembowels one whole
without the slightest flicker of a thought to what a man may be
and what a man has built in all his life.
Father has been rummaging, fidgeting through the house
for lack of work, and I can’t help but wonder:
what brittle castles are our clockwork systems,
so easily distraught by slightest pause.
“No, not so” he bellows back in harrowed tone.
“This one’s made of wood—I built mine.”
and that really shut me up,
right there and then.
i didn’t know que
había pensado en voz alta, otra vez… *
anyway, i really need to
stop
* doing that i didn’t know that
i had thought out loud, again…
Juan Gómez, first generation college graduate of Mexican descent. Native of Oakland, where I currently reside amidst quarantine, for whom this sordid state of affairs is business as usual (INTJ and Cancer—not that I believe in those kinds of things). I write poetry at dawn to slow the tide of modernity and rediscover the comforting whispers of old that hint of a future possibly.