classroom crush

My classes are intoxicated
with thoughts of you
can't hear the teacher
cause i'm dreaming
about what we could do
not in terms sexual things
(although those aren't ruled out :)
but just the questions
I heard you ask
I heard me ask
in my head
and stifle my heart
to say
does this have to matter
what she says
yet she is judge

My classes are drunk
with standards
i don't want to jump
when she says how high
i'd rather sink
in my chair
as my mind knows
how oppressive she is
she weighs us with
guilt about truths
on what is right
what is wrong
just sink me
til i'm invisible
in her game
and if possible,
you'd be the other one
invisible too.

I hope you don't mind
that i'm spending my time
thinking of you
and the possibilities
of our thoughts.

one among many

tell me all you can do
is tell the authorities
but who are the authorities
but people who run the game
that hurts people for pay
for order
for progress.

they have rules in which
questions i have
poke at their
hypocrisies
and they have no answer.

but this is the law
this is the path of justice
i don't like their game
i would fall down the cracks
just to tear down their walls
with my nails

the emperor has no clothes on
cause he's been fucking us this whole time

dream about apo*

in my dream
i was talking to my grandma
she was worried
(now realize
my grandma has passed
to the other side).
But i heard her
worries.
i looked across the street
and saw my grandpa
(now realize
my grandpa died
when I was 'round 2).
and i looked close
to see if it was him
under the hat
sitting across the street
he waved and said hello
and send me a thought message
for my grandma
whereever she feels safe
he is there.
i told grandma.
she leaned back.

there was a phoenix
at the moment
i was telling
the bird was flitting
its wings.
then
when she leaned
the bird fell flat
on the ground

the phoenix
is a bird that rises
from the ashes.
maybe my grandma
was roaming the house
worried 'bout somethin
but i hope
she heard grandpa's message
and went to other realm.

*ilocano for grandma

to my teacher: never silenced

my umbilical
severed
cut my tongue
bashed my brain
took them out
when the bullet
insane
them workers of the man
numb the pain
so cut out the wound
that piece of pain
that spoke truth
in the school
reminding youth
that their pain
is not out of the blue
but truth
we feel
cause we
spiritual
beings
connected to all things
near and far
and them laborers for the man
want to act like we caught
in little boxes
musuem objects
they charge at
the door of the house
they take entrance fees
in order to show
our tricks
our feats

my wounded teachers
dared to speak
in straight jackets
of academics
and they cried
when they lectured
tongue of ancestors
brothers and sisters
continents away
waiting that she
will connect our fire here
to connect their fires there
and burn down
the house
of the man

cutting free

I am tired of their dream
tired to putting my body
to work in their machine
tired of their lies
they try to push behind
ear drums thumping
to heart beats bumping
PTSD running through
my veins
cause their words
return back to the logic
of carcasses as profit
and they hide behind
their books and degreed looks
pretend what they have to say
is something cause its lots
of specks on a page
but just blah blah blah
something that don't mean shit
except they have their name
written on some electronic space
gated with authenticated sign in log ins
locked in knowledge
don't ask me to review your paper
i don't understand what you mean
when you talk about helping systems
to improve military machines
to crack the code of movements
speaking up on electronic space
you think you can track us
but our knowledge cannot be reclaimed
cause you stand on stilts of shame
cannot even touch the ground
cause so long you've erased
any sense of faith
of freedom

What is strength?

What is strength?
To look inside the self
where there is a gap
between happiness
and what I'm leading my life for.

Contradictions
displacement
like lands being slipped from underneath
due to programming
seeking something
more than I have

and I've scratched this now
Dug up this present
in order to build a ladder
out of what I know
to be in that bright white
called success
out of this ghetto.

But little do I know
I've dug up the bones of my ancestors
and their fragments litter homelands
so that their spirits haunt our bodies
stealing our spirits
so we are empty and epileptic
Because we have left them
empty and desecrated
They died the same deaths
we do now
But at faster rates
And they do this haunting
because they guard us from the graves
Wanting us to wake up
from the dream
of disconnection

Piko, pusod, puseg, the gut
Umbilical that connected us
As we traversed the place
we now call Pacific
We sailed from island to island
trusting our intuition
that by reading the currents
the language of birds
the talk of the water
the eyes of the stars and the sun
we would find our way
trust that each lifetime
is just a step toward something
And our ability to remember
is what lives on
in collective memories that generate
layers on a spinning wheel
thrown out as seeds
from the center.
We floated, landed and dug deep our roots
in different worlds
connecting them
with invisible connections
piko, pusod, puseg, this gut

What is strength?
But to remember that which has been severed.
To study the wounds of the cut
and understand the ridges of the knife
the tear of the flesh
to understand their weapons
so we may come back with our own healing
to ensure that weapon no longer exists.
To teach future generations
medicine of our own knowledge
that sense
to be reconnected
to our insides, because it is our compass
To determine the journey
into what is made black
what is made bleeding
what is made fearful

That is the strength
to feel the burning in one's heart
that it ignites the eyes to tears
To express that something has gone imbalanced
And that you have a medicine for it.

That is strength.

Report Back from Turtle Island

The land called Aztlan
the land of many tribes
Genocide by the whitened settler,
soldier
Many men taught to see the land
and body
as objects
scalped, raped the people
of the land
called Aztlan
the land of many tribes
who named their place
by listening to the geography
of her
in the mountain of silent strength
in the gurgle of the river
in the whisper of the wind
in the tears of the rain

Rightly so,
they cried and still do
when scalps and bodies
named by those
who saw worth in medallion coins
buy and sell according to the names
of those engraved
on coins and dollar bills
the priests of the church
called Bank
Genealogy trace to London, Paris, Lisboa
Centers of western nations
that bought and sold
Aztlan, and many named lands from
Spanish, French, Dutch, English
Birthed a memory of empty white soul
to be a broker who bought and sold
islands of Philippines, Guam, Puerto rico, Samoa
because of arrogance of blank faces
sold their color for shillings.
that monetary wealth brings
the nerve to steal this land
called Ka Pae Aina o Hawaii Nei
This land called Ka Pae Aina o Hawaii Nei

You think the past is in the past?
Well what you think
when this land crawling with empty bodies hungry
equate bodies and lands
according to how much money they make
for holes in pockets
festering soul wound black like the Gulf.
Try to teach children of Aztlan
the land of many names
the lands of people across the sea
bleeding
taught to worship their God in the church called Bank
We only literate in the texts of dollar bills and coins
To numb our bodies raped ancestor cell, spirit,
Trail behind us as we walk like cattle on conveyer belt
toward the machine called war
machine called tourism
machine called empire
Selling your skulls and bodies according to dollar bills and coins
Our bodies working to the old and new plantation
Brown people of the land
Brown people of the sea
Wake up
Tell me, how you get free?

In dig in us

I remember you
But do you remember me?
I admit
that I only knew
when I read the text of you
submitted under the iron fist
of conquistadors
who you thought was a god returned
from the place you assumed
but he had changed
he swallowed bodies
and spit up regurgitation
of your bones, your flesh, your thoughts
into the likeness of his order
and that is how i read you
that is how i remember you.

brown girl
indigenous face
fuckable body
but not loveable enough
to struggle
cause i walk in museums,
archives, libraries
looking for ways to build a bridge
to the memory i have
to the memory you have
cause i remember

there was a ship
and i was a slave
brown girl
indigenous face
fuckable body
but not loveable enough
to spare me
as warriors saw me
as traitor
and as the battle ensued
you did not see me
but only as shattered porcelain
taken off the galleon
and decayed upon
acapulco shores.

how come
when we fight
through the words
of our masters
we can only remember
the time when they
demarcated our identities
according to our skin tones
the shape of our nose
the slant of our eyes?

how come
when we fight
through the words
of our masters
the value of our spit and speech
is commodified
to the amount of people
we gather as we bank knowledge
into the empty vessels of
masses' minds?

how come
when we fight
through the words
of our masters
you do not hear
the words of sisters and children
who speak in silence
who speak in the language
of bodies that cower
of bodies that shake
underneath the power
of brothers who want to invoke
power of warriors
who protected borders
when across those borders
once you sold bodies
of women, feathers, slaves, gold,
for iron, power, canon, and dreams
of empire
yourself.

i remember you
but do you remember me?
brown girl
indigenous face
fuckable body
asian eyes
but speak spanish
black hair
kinky at the ends
where do I come from?
from the sperm of conquistodors
that splattered across
manila acapulco terrain
ejaculated
swallowed
like blood
when fist hits mouth
silenced by
mestizo hands
of husband, father, brother, uncle
silenced as emasculated
commodified power
empowers you
into de-emasculated poverty
rape the body
to control some kind of terrain again
to enter into lands you have been forbidden
because you are brown
indigenous face
traces of ancestors fucked
by capital wielding conquistadors
injected into minds
to inject their penises
into local lands.
impregnate and forced birth
of monumental histories
to feed so called
empty hungry minds
like the land we have forgotten
has a voice
has a mind
has a way of speaking
although it is silent
like languages of women and children.