Paperless World

Update, update, update, update <snarl> Flutter
sigh, program, re-program, click, tap, point, 
program, re-program, your apps, your apps need to be updated,
your software needs an update--speed-up, 
--faster, faster [wait wer're not at warp speed yet]
Update, repair, repair, reboot, __restart the router/
Turn it off. Turn it back on, now. choose a ringtone,  

INVENT--RE_INVENT  Yourself.

check your notifications,
check your e-mail.

Apply online,
register online, 

ELECTRONIC __SUBATOMIC!

Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

April 15 post Pantoum

Pantoum

Afraid not--madam not for me
terribly updated daily inundated 
Refresh Button clicked in attention, see
unbearable views forcibly animated


Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

April 14 post

Persona Poem

Situated on the North
side of the city you live in,
but across the army of me
she has a scar on her face ___jagged
wrecking the beauty
but granting the beauty FREEDOM
from surface awkwardness
Bent over the sink
spitting blood into the sink

Sink into an obscene delight
crimson warfare explains her
miserable exposure

Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

prompt from April 13th

The Beach

Overwhelming 
cold  cold  cold  cold  
beautiful view
jagged rocks 
that lead you to the sand 
child wonder
incredible fumble
across the rocks___octopus lining
horribly tangling  
But peaceful ease 
sets in after noticing such an 
overwhelming  power in that ocean
an empowerment, an ocean within us all 
Our Empowerment. 

Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

What I would like to say to you

You think my life is hard because of your experience
But my experience is my own 
I don't worry about the same things you worry about

You think you're hot shit because 
you drive a Mercedes Bins 
well you ain't shit

I am tired of you, you, and you in my life.

I am bailing on you!

It will be hard at first, no doubt
but I will be ok.

I will overcome
My freedom means more to me than this corroded circumstance

I will find the resources I need 
I'll be fine
I am not afraid anymore

I know there are ups and downs
so just stay out of my LIFE!!!


Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

American Cinquain

In the morning light
rests a remote black kitty
upon a wooden
rocking chair shaking wildly
the chair cracks and breaks earthquake






Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Life's Annoying Little nuisances

Crack in the front view window due to
a tiny little pebble when you drive over gravel

The kid comes home claiming someone is bullying her
I see her walking home she's crying holding on to her shoulder

I lose my temper, yell at the grandparent, the only parent around for this suspected bully
I talk to the suspects parent, and from her point of view, my kid is the suspect
the bully.  Who's telling the truth? 

Annoying little nuisance
Life you're ANNOYING!

Mother__ who's always undermining me,

After I have been paying her bills, the rent and the taxes on the house
After overachieving, graduating from college twice with honors,
keeping a job for two years, keeping a job for a year and a half

Mother is Mexican, but she more like tiger mom

Mother still not happy

I am lazy from her point of view 
I have no ambition from her point of view
My life is in shambles because I am laid off

I was "let go" I have not the money to feed her habits
to her money is equal to integrity

Hopelessly annoying Life__Life's little nuisances

But she'll still take whatever money I have! 
But "give me money" she says give money to gamble, gambling is my job
I am good at gambling.

NUISANCE 

Because I gave you life she says, "you could have been an abortion." This rings through my ears throughout my childhood and beyond! 

Annoying, abusive mother. SHOOT ME!

Lousy Partner in class assignment, next

Chapter project presentation for training for teachers

He doesn't even read the chapter.
Makes up his own power point.
He wants to change everything at the last minute

After which I read the whole chapter, I worked my ideas through and did the work
After which I e-mailed him and contacted him several times to tell me or give me something
NOOOOOOO, completely inconsiderate. Inconsiderate of what grade either of us get.

And he argues with me about who is going first in front of the whole class.

Meanwhile my child sits in on this class because I don't know which one is the bully?
Who's telling the truth?

Annoying 
              nuisances 
                            horrid, horrid, horrid. Painstakingly horrid! 

Life you're so annoying sometimes. 


Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Noir Poem #10 Prompt #9

The dark smog raises its tentacles above
a sea of skyscrapers and lights illuminating
an eerie sky

Above me the haunting smell of cigarettes
and fossilized rain drops sparkling misty dew
all over my unwelcoming trench coat and
harlequin template

I walk towards my old office slowly
as I feel someone's breath blowing mist toward my view
Her long blonde hair covering one eye
as it luxuriously swept over her face

The reddest of mouth's I had ever seen
but what made this doll uneven
somewhat peculiar was her
even tan in the middle of a winterland
that knew no sun,

Mexico, she said she just came in from
Guanajuato, she was looking for a man
that she knew was pursuing her,

says, she wanted to finds him before he found her
we'd take the nine-o'clock subway to my partners office

I knew if anyone could help this woman,
it had to be Rodrigo.

Rodrigo knew a man in the manufacturing
of hardware goods just on the other side of the border,
Bender he says his name was

I led her into Rodrigo's office introduce this doll face
to the old man and set off on my way

Back into a cold dystopia of a winter night
among the city lights and the glow
of the smog surrounding the gigantically awkward
buildings that hovered over me as I walked
down the steps of the subway they'd descend

I knew, she'd be taken cared of from there.



Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Ottava Rima Poem #8 Prompt #8

a       songs invigorate attempt a mistake

b       Before my smiles and Cries bring a sea

a       The Means, A cognitive duty, update

b        Finds dendrites in brains to reconstruct me

a        I, determined to beat this, to RETAKE

b        Recovery to meet tranquility

c        exhilarating insight mind myself

c        Many cycles pass to find a lost self













Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

NO AMBITION Poem #9

Audio

No ambition--no ambition
sweaty head frame 
no ambitious drive
my drive comes from something inside
that declares I have or can find my inner PEACE
that INNER PEACE is worth my work
My countless hours studying 
My efforts toward surviving 
not flourishing, not thriving (although I should thrive)



Not seeking an inconclusive comfort
but merely knowing I CAN BE OK
despite my anger, pain, discontent rousing inside
forming through from the direction of all my life 
My historical overview 
The collective memories of Author D
knowing that once I felt a mourning for 
the absence in my life 

My childhood renovates 
my adulthood affairs
My reactions are always derived
due to some past experience 
Already lived -ROTTING within me

I take myself into a more complicated struggle 
because--hell--life is just too easy without
that struggle, piercing beneath me
Piercing its uninvited pangs of sharpness
profoundly stinging me 
Making me what I have become

An empty hollow shell
with someone inside struggling 
to break back through to my surface
Where perhaps someone may catch a 
glimpse of who I REALLY AM!

A womyn with brown eyes and skin,
aged scars from within 
stretched through to my outside exterior

The stretch marks that agree I once gave birth
somewhere under some circumstances

other scars, debris,
that prove I once inflicted pain upon  myself,
I once scraped my knee 
riding my bike as fast as I could
rushing home so that I could get there
before my mother got there 

A chipped tooth root canal 
broke-off out of my mouth 
on a chew of raisin bran cereal 

A woman with dark-medium brown hair
with spectacles and bronzer over my cheeks
sun spotted freckles around my eyes over my nose
that seems Afro-Latina but nobody knows

An unknown history --taken
stripped away from me 
A woman who is now here 

After a history of colonization 
                                                 constant migration 
and commercialization 
                                       for only one nation 
to rise 

Meanwhile, all those other nations 
without the slightest notion of what 
it might be like 

Given the opportunity
to have become a nation with promise
to flourish and give its citizens
comfort

Inconclusively 
                        some comfort

that agrees, INNER PEACE CAN BE FOUND!

NO! Apparently, those colonized nations
beneath that one nation,

are not worth, the having , or the keeping of ambition
An ambition with a preconceived corrupt manifestation
Let's continue migration because commercialization 
is the mark of one nation's freedom and promise,

The Free Market that derives from one nation's comfort,
How can I want to be ambitious? 
When I don't feel the free market will stop this manifestation,
of constant migration

The supply and demand of one nation RUES
and I am an American woman that can know PEACE?!
But despite this clarity, this woman, this me,
others think of as a case to need charity

So, I struggle without ambition 
I study with a heavy heart for countless hours
to fulfill my own determination 

because two generations ago,
those very migrations, made my very existence possible
Guilds traveled,
at different times, on different days, for different reasons,
but with the same tenacity that led them here,
to make an American woman with brown eyes, skin, and hair
that would someday have no ambition except to find
her PEACE inside, after a historical divide between a faded nation
into a diaspora within a new nation 
one day dependent on the dismantled nations beneath it 
to sustain its inner workings 

Colonial migratory industry
human enterprise 

And here I am with the same freedoms given to 
one nation but doing nothing more 
(due to a lack of ambitious drive) than struggling
and searching for a transformation 

One day 
My humane drive will find PEACE
beyond ambitious drive and I will 
meet a PEACE to comfort me in knowing,

I am OK!
One day.  








Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Stab at it >>> Poem #7 Prompt #5 (not good at counting stresses on lines, but I take a stab at it)(I am sure a little switching around and I'll get it, but who has the time?)

Mine
notorious
glorious for escaping further FREEZE
Away from such Problems <AHEM>
until now


Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Poem#6 Prompt #4 Frank Exchange of Views

Frank Exchange of Views

Flies upon the flies around the kitty litter poop

who can explain how this space ship arrived here?

The one eyed cyclops captain steps off 

The Frank Exchange of Views to explore more of her perfect candor

she says to me "brace yourself for the worse"

I says, "I can finds the beauty in these ugly days"

dontcha know?

Cantcha see "what that woman's been doing to me?"

My mother, she's driving me mad

the Cyclops replies: "how can a woman drive you anywhere, you're a human 

not even a veichle?"

Oh literal Leela.

There's a rare few of ya
exploring the galaxy

Frying your brains with curly burly
sacks of I don't know, and whose to say?

Across our ancient amphibian forms lies
an underland that repairs itself
in our dreams

Our imaginations make up
the stories that keep us sane:
Let us not forget the insanity of a culture
 that values the most frivolous leaders to dominate our destiny

imagine a world free of money hungry mongrels?

Leela your world is free of money and hunger?
oh yeah, you're a cartoon.

This is me speaking to only me?
I am here on The Frank Exchange of Views
sharing my point of view,

first person, ya know, first person singular, that's me

the object, personal pronoun looking out
into a bright cloudy sky
dreading and nervously
 worrying about my own destiny
to finally see
the clarity

Frankly, I must exchange this encounter of a doubtful future to come
remaining reluctant as I let go of an amateur past
between
me and the things no one has seen

about me,
frankly, you see

I am a being drenched in fear trying to make
a dollar outta a penny that's blue

flying spaceships frequently land
around me, saucers, aliens too

My encounters are closely reviewed
through insightful
delightful
effigies

count the moons spiraling colors
that make my trance smother
my fear
with great power
sharp courage

"engage" I say just like
Captain Picard and numba one
until all is said and done

I regret my trampling moments
but make up for them with
forgiveness

I forgive my views
for sometimes they ignore, assume, and judge

But ultimately I try to keep these views open
to reconstruct and deconstruct themselves

reflexivity that yearns for
a reciprocity unmet

I am lonely here, frankly, exchanging such hollowness

I am in love here, frankly, exchanging wonderment
with our hollowness

that struggles with a
dissonant ease
disease
of the mind

One day we shall recover
the blows we lay upon ourselves

One day the Frank exchange of views
will wake us up to a new beginning

and hopefully this happens by June of this year

Frankly, I can't shower you with
my kindness although, it's there

I don't know how to form an alliance
with the hive mind

I shall retire
farewell, Leela, Picard, Counselor

Depart! Frank Exchange of Views!








Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Poem#5 Prompt #3 Migrant Daughters

Working through inspiration 
After a daunting migration

Strange daughter left 
enduring lashes-her uncle's whip
what she felt
who would have known the profundity,
the bittersweet loss of integrity?

Working through inspiration 
After a DAUNTING migration

A brave mother leaves
two daughters behind 
the greatest heartache of all time
A greater heartache than a dead husband 
left in the dirt the legend of his crime

made her stoic

working through inspiration 
after a daunting migration

daughter number two 
left behind with a mild flu
left further though

The mother did not want this one to migrate
but that sister she planned a different fate
Her great heart guided another to migrate

bittersweet 


Working through inspiration 
After a daunting migration


As she looks at her distant niece 
from afar at a chain of Ross stores (dress for less)
she permeates a morose melancholy echoing 
throughout the whole store
Her eyes drowned in pain bittersweet
she wonders what forgiving would restore?
But it is too late for this aunt to form a bond

Her mother's word was not bond 
in turn daughter number two
spends too many years, bitter,
talking down to the first daughters
last daughter (the niece)
bittersweetness began to increase


Working through inspiration 
After a daunting migration


disconnected 
bittersweet, awful, discontented 
remorse, regret, envy (envelopes daughter number two)

She should have never migrated (bitterness grows inside her)

divided she begins to find ways to humiliate 

the guide that brought her over to migrate

Mother is ashes now

and divided the family's fate

the retreat to somehow

find freedom as of late

but forgiving never comes

walking, working, worrying through inspiration 

after a daunting migration 

walking through a painful way to gain inspiration 
after a haunting migration 

Apoco, que tantos años luchando por mi hija
ya no llorro porque me ha hecho fuerte

stoic

working through the realizations that bring inspiration
after a daunting migration


Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Not a Poem/ But a Venting Throw-up #when you need to, you need to

Reluctance, impervious virtue how doth thou haunt me
with lauder day intrusion
mormons, watchtowers, latters of mormons trying to spread 
their infectious ideas. "rich miserable bastards"  It's scary, Man.
Trying to convert-- trying to convert
the love of god you say?

For the Love of GOD!!! I say, in a not so penetrated way.

"I am A BUDDHIST"

But I am not, for, you see, I am a human with a Buddhist will
and a christian sense of humor, a smidgen influence from the catolicos (alcolicos) tu dices
 but do I believe?

Hek, I mean HELL; I barely believe in myself and I realize 

I am going to get out there and "start happening too" 

Because, when I was a child there was not that belief from
the familial opinion of me, you see, I was the brown sheep of the family
so out of place, my sister once tried to convert me to christianity and 

the results were: I fear christianity.  "I am a recovering Christian" 
some of the stories are so absurd they're funny
once in Las Vegas .. T-doe and I saw a topless show called Jubilee all bout Christian stories
the one I found particularly alarming and absurd Samson and Delilah  bout a guy whose dreads make him strong. spook stuff, I tell ya.  His hair is cut and he loses his superhuman powers. That's like the opposite of patriarchy, (are men not meant to have short hair?) Oh but in the bible everyone has long hair-long beard and looks like a hebrew priest.

Alls I can do is sit back and find meaning to be the meaning of life, if that means anything.
  
     You see, things never really are as they seem. Build a support network they say, never works for me.
I knows I need people and dem peoples needs me, a collaborative process, but I am so old, you knows, thirty-one, hows a gal supposed to make friends at this age? For Christ Sake! people are dicks, and they just remind me, you know, of dem olden days, whens my family used to judge me, so now I have a complex, and I am not made of stone I am made of flesh and blood, (that wacky stuff that the catolicos do) eat a cracker, call it christ. (I seriously, did not mean for that to sound racist towards whites) but it has a little ring to it: eat a cracker, call it christ. Don't you go accusing me of reverse discrimination --I will accuse you, of double reverse discrimination.  I went to college for a really long time. And I never really made any friends except for Rosa. But I went there to try to discover myself. And you know what I discovered there is no way around getting a "yob" man.  Idk if this here is a poem. But it is a fart vent of a cracked up poetic cry for help. Isn't that what everything is? I went into Chicano/a studies because I wanted to explore whether it was just in my head or if some of the stuff that actually happened to me really was racist. And you know what I learned? That there is a lot of racism out there but there is more sexism than anything else. I swear, I had a male professor that never read any of my papers. I think he thought I was crazy, and I swear but I can't tell if he gave some more of the opportunities to the boys, but I can't tell because I was too busy understanding what things were racist.  The sexism was just supposed to be tolerated. 

And my point here, you see, is that it derives from somewhere, and I say that that somewhere is church! 

The other thing is what if all this stuff is just in my head and I just think every man is sexist because my brothers and cousins were all male and I had to hear them speak as if I was not in the same room listening to the things they really say and think about women.

Life is a tragic disheartening sexist cell of intrusion dominated by an air of egocentric males talking about their mothers, undermining  them, and their competence.  Meanwhile it's the women that have to raise the little bastards. How backwards is that? 

What I did learn in Chicano/a studies is some of the stories behind Aztec mythology are brutal. Like that lady Tonanzin/ Cuatlicue/ something or other, the one that's supposed to be La Virgen de Guadalupe in disguise as an amalgamation to the old ways.  The Aztecs fighting to be remembered through a Catholic deity. (Many goddesses/ and gods) fighting their way through to the new catolico (loco) Spanish ways.  La Virgen de Guadalupe the most Mexican of them all--deities (that one) she had an army of male baby (warriors) like 200 or more and then these sons of hers found out she got pregnant through some other way (not some voodoo Aztec magic or Catholic miracle) ( but by actually having sex).  Once they found out (these Aztec warriors) killed her and ostracized her because she was going to have a girl.  Her impurity of an offspring was subhuman to these warrior men merely because of her gender.  So Guadalupe's or Tonanzin's own sons killed their own mother.  What they did not anticipate is that her spirit would come back to stay around for forever and Latin America worships this emblem of a woman that used to have a skirt of serpents which is now a flowered dress.  And no one even remembers about the 200 aztec gods (warrior sons) that were once the sons of Tonanzin.  They mean nothing because there was no way to subversively and subtly mesh them into Catholicism. Maybe that is what that male professor was so afraid of, that all the men would be forgotten and who knows, just another power struggle.  That is the stuff that is fascinating and eerie to me.  No wonder, my family is so divided. That little myth story reminds me of my whole childhood.  I am the youngest daughter, I do have a sister, but five brothers, and a number of other half siblings on my womanizing father's side as well.

What also becomes clear to me out of this little piece of information is that there is no way that anyone could really say that their heritage is superior than any other because when you really think about it, it is all so arbitrary.  The world, Latin America still very patriarchal in its thinking, practices, and beliefs, yet the main deity that is absolutely sacred in Latin America is a female figure, Matriarchal.  Go figure?

So, I guess this isn't much of a poem, it's just a long cry for help venting out... A harsh throw-up?!  

Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013

Lies: Poem #4 Prompt #2

I feel that Corporate America is a wonderful place to live. 

We get to choose and buy and the Free-Market dictates how free we are, I mean who wouldn't like to aspire to look like someone they aren't, talk like someone they do not sound like, and dress in very expensive clothes ;) to make a good impression!

Friendly, cordial warm hearted picture perfect homes where families don't fight and everyone gets along because if ever there is a problem, instead of confronting it, well, we can go shopping instead. Max out our credit cards, Plastic is great isn't it? 

Our young people fed the truth through those great Disney channel depictions that even include the diversity of our nations populace, remember; blacks, whites, Latino/as, Asians, and that lost group even (Native Americans) (such a weird group).  They all live in the same skyscrapers in Seattle, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and of course San Francisco.  Getting along, side by side, like the melting pot of this two hundred year old nation (the product of good ol' traditional capitalism). Never mind any misunderstandings that the nation was built on and lets just not mention colonization, unless we're talking about the thirteen colonies because those were important. 

Well, I hope your life is going just as great as mine, without any types of struggles, because, you know, the free-market keeps us all free and able to choose which great clothes to wear, kitchens to remodel, and don't forget the most formidable of all placing cute little sweaters on our tiny dogs. 

Ain't life GRAND!!! 

Deborah Leon Godinez Copyright ©2013