Palm Tree Plastic

Missing seats in my birthday cake like, forced accidents make me
take family for granted when the candles get lit,
I mean like,
I didn’t awknowledge their value until I’m facing something saucy
that my grandmother’s tears left in my collar bone,
I mean phuck,
my dad kisses my cheek now like/ that’s the best phucking salivated kiss
I’ve ever phucking felt, with, the nerve endings,
on my phucking phace,
neutralized self enduced anger
(I grip my fathers sweater rereducing myself to a young age (I felt like I was 4) using the sounds of the ceiling fan to remind myself of sand and ocean {{together and seperate}})
Written from a letter he translated from spanish, to lost sleep.
Mass ave is the most tranquil street because no one is dying on it(I can’t believe It.)
and that’s something these historians will never see because I’ve met Africans who dress their daughter in Versace and take her to the opera because her dad lost his first family to everything
we blog about, he ran and never looked back, he showed me the direction, pointed, cocked his gun back, he used his, finger, his wrist held it up, on Mass ave, he was, we were, squeezing lime over rice, so thankful, no Thanksgiving needed on Mass Ave before he left,
kemo in Madrid, no thanksgiving needed.

Been having conversations with myself lately and getting into arguments
because everyone has dead family like the self blame she pulled,
from the greatest eight year old to ever live, passive aggressive about
vegetables when they described how you’d be and I’m pissed off at plastic
shopping bags like it’s too soon to poke holes into everything you covered
up with a windsor knot.

If I die tomorrow, spread my ashes next to my grandfather because
I want a paradise in the saxophone recital he left early like life has a limit,
time,
we don’t have, this is,
not sure ,but the,
Gods I’ve seen don’t look my way when I need it,
So my popery dried to the whiskey I age in my esophagus I’m burnin,
Merlin surfin in between the words I work around like no theosolis I’m certain, when I’m,
kneeling in no salvation because I checked out a long time ago.
I carry photos of my brother in a pocket no one can peep unless it’s my mother’s death bed,
Gonna tell her he went quiet and peaceful like the purples in his face was set romantically for the sunset,
and even though my happiness spends it’s time inside
With smoke and a soda on a broken sofa/not giving excrements being multiplied by the power of two,
I still walk these heavy steps I love so much like I need my girl’s cooking, so I know the world isn’t always in bad taste.

Lately I’ve been feeling like my belly’s been full of two day old lo mein like
all I want to do is avoid people on the regular,
This Is why my linework is the language I gargle when I watch midnight half shaded,
lined up for the train car I registered for, for 6 semesters straight.
Heavens gate is the family spot I’ve been waitin’ for like
(Costa Rican beach, swimming with turtles like we share the same heart beat{{push\pull}}
super black {{night time}} matted jaguars and kung fu crickets singing the only music we need because we’re waking up to a pink sunrise {{eating pineapple and picking out
fish to compliment avocado {{{Mom’s rosy cheeks}}}
eat beautifully and pass down stories about where we came from because
it hasn’t mattered since the universe kept expanding}} everythings a gift
on the accident continuously through the cycle,
just look at the current,
oceans under eye lids, {{meditation/orange blossom/steamed milk}}
she keep me peaceful in my center balance {{My Queen}}
Dalmatians and figure paintings {{walking}}
Paraplegic’s being told to sit down {{Yeezus}})
I don’t buy into religion because I’ve seen,
life drain from several people I’ve met since ’97,
childhood hopped off the Rye because the back of my five slapped Caulfield’s grip off my innocence, I’m Holden to my own lifestyle like, living it all in one weekend but leaving the rest unwritten, prayers to based god.

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Ramon Hernandez is a poet and illustrator in Boston.
Check out more of his work here.