I Am Human Too

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Arlathina

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I Am Human Too
This is a poetry thread where I will post my thoughts as poetry and try to mend all my broken bits. I hope if you, too, have broken bits, that you may glean some wisdom from my experience. After all, we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. Thank you for your time and consideration.


Doppelganger
by Isaac James Flores

It feels like
there are two of me.
I am my own Cenote Angelita
where fresh water meets blackening sea.

I may swim free of cares,
but I am not truly free.
Never would I dare,
to explore the increasing salinity.

To dive below the halocline
is to be destroyed.
Or, pretend that I am fine,
a silken veneer, a ploy.

The waters above,
and the sea of salted tears
herald the end of
my previous joy, my greatest fear.

It all began with a thought,
as all things in life do.
I cannot retrace it; I forgot.
I’m done and I’m through.

It feels like
there are two of me.
The dichotomy is one
that terrifies completely.

 
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Realized that there was a fair amount of older poems that I had posted in a thread that was archived while I was on hiatus. I'll share it here to get things started going again.


Tick Tock...
by Isaac James Flores

As my grandmother entered
old age,
she developed dementia.
Doctors said it was brought on
by cholesterol build-up
in her brain.

She lost interest,
as many dementia patients do,
in nearly everything.
She would sit, doe-eyed and complacent,
asking me for the fifth time to
what was on the news or
reminding me for the fourth time to
feed the cats.

Her skin was pallor,
almost translucent.
She was made of glass, delicate and pumped full of toxins
like the cigarettes
that she smoked;
only a third of the way before crumpling
and throwing them into the yard.
Minutes later, she would spark up another
and try again.

One sweltering afternoon,
I came home and asked her what she was doing.
After a second, she replied, "Waitin' to die."
To most, it would seem cynical,
but I thought my
brain-clogged,
coffee-breathed
grandmother made
tons of sense.

A few months later
her wait ended.
And now, I stare at the crippled cigarettes
in the yard,
stark against the yellowed grass.
I stand by as the cats go hungry,
bloody claws ripping at one another
for a single scrap.
For the first time,
I sit and wonder what to do
to pass the time.


Planes of Silence
by Isaac James Flores
My heavenly bodies no longer speak.
The stars have stopped their whispers.
I am left with the weak—yet incessant—beat
of my fractured heart.

I no longer speak to the wind,
nor share secrets with the trees.
How sad it is when their leaves
speak words that can be learned with ease.

I don’t know what changed,
humans rarely do.
I am crying again,
but I can’t say for what, for who.

Maybe, for everyone
that I have ever known.
For now-silent planes, stars, leaves—
all that once was home.

Drunk and depressed,
bathed in something else.
We try to care, to heal, to help—
couldn’t cure ourselves.

Tears,
mine or theirs,
are worthless
when
no one really cares.


Untitled
by Isaac James Flores

I remember,
searching amid the greenery
for the bright yellow petals
of the flowers
with the soured stem.

I remember,
our faces puckered
and we all laughed
under the happy, blue sky,
knitting together
wreaths and bracelets
of dandelions.

Now,
the sky isn’t
blue,
and those stems aren’t
soured.
Maybe it’s because,
we are.


A Fine Fragrance
by Isaac James Flores

He wore a cologne
of shameless lies,
false promises,
and I inhaled deeply of it.

I used to love the way
my bed would smell
when I knew he
had lain there.

Even my own clothes reeked
of the intoxicating miasma,
flashback to a scene of me picking
my old shirts out of the laundry

just to take one more breath.
 
A bit of improvisation with Shakespearian Sonnet. Commentary is always welcome.

Christmas Sonnet
by Isaac James Flores

A fond memory fills the heart with glee
Of mercurial joy that cannot last.
A family gathers around the tree.
It is distant, a fragment of the past.

A child's wonder succumbed to bitterness.
I used to dream of a recovery.
Each succeeding Christmas left me with less,
Hope, but a keen sense of discovery.

I found out their lies innumerable,
Their mask a crumbling facade that with
Each passing year appeared less affable.
Their love was not genuine, but a myth.

Who can name a mistress crueler than time?
These memories are many things, except
Mine.
 
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