i have cried in the veil of darkness. no one hears me here. i am sure to be quiet. crumpled tissues hushed in fuzzy sweaters, comfort envy only known to skin. closed doors are quiet locks. click. turn. remain steadfast in will. you are almost there. I've known smiles once upon a time in dusty books laid upon scripted journals in fancy ink when vitality was more desired than finality. so i sit. and they roll down my face, beckoning to be wiped. i am defiant in the cause. my hand refuses to leave my side.  drip drop and I hear small feet buzzing around on warm carpet, voice booming he is a superhero. behind closed doors, I feel a rush of a cape donned from a blanket around shoulders more bigger than mine. so i wipe my face. sip water. say a little prayer. rise. -b.r.rivera Dedicated to all those living in chronic pain. Now As a U.S. Pain Foundation Ambassador, I am advocating and bringing awareness. I share my story. Please follow along with me o...

I've been here before. You can always tell Where the shapes meet the trees Curvatures of lines and familiarity of the bark. The moss is fresh and pointing in the direction of safety Which way to go? As I turn left And forget all sense of intuition And forgo sacred superstition As I move on. The dew. Blades ripened with shadowed earth stripped of bare nakedness begging for open toes to give her a kiss And I wish That my path lies to the rubble in Where no creature dared ventured in. Imaginary breadcrumbs. Sprinkle one here. A drip there Don't get lost on the way to the enclosure muscled tendons tightening their grip around my waist And soft lips kissed in darkness in the devils hour in smooth haste With broken promises unfulfilled and signs that are visible the naked eye Imaginary breadcrumbs Leading me to vertical Kama Sutra positions once preserved For the goddess that is I. I've been here before. Door one closes so a window opens Break g...

It begins with a light stab. A constant reminder of who's in control and who isn't.  Let's me be awakened with boss like qualities of urgency with no employment, deadlines but no place to go. Then it begins to sizzle. Sizzle like fire acid rain down the curvatures of what holds me together.  But I'm not together. Here, I am a jumbled mess of confusion, a chaotic place of nerve endings and muscle fibers begging for rest. Do I dare to stop? Do I dare to state that I am not done with this life (nor the next) so I must simply just enjoy what has been given to me. This is my place. Not a resting place. Not a place begging for a wired hangar to be anchored on a glossy doorknob, shining of beautiful welcomes and scents of candles within. No. This is something new, entirely. This is my place. A place where lightning shoots through the neck and electrifies my insides. This is a place where I drag my feet and droop when I wince in subtle positio...

I wish I were an artist. Trace your curvature of lines in vivid detail and remark on the thickness smooth lips as they intense with hues of graphite and stencil. Wish I could paint vividly. an encased reverie of just you and I to become we. oh, how I wish to be the stroke on your body and retrace its endings and firm beginnings, retold in pastels, water soluble paints and revamped historical perspectives. I only wish to capture the image of you. Recapture the soul and eyes of orbs encased in the human skull so hard to shift elements in globs of watercolor. tell tales of high cheekbones and broad shoulders free following of a pencil in raised eyebrows and sympathetic frowns. A white eraser clings nearby, swiftly chasing hopes and dreams, lines drawn dark holed black and now vanishing  in dematerialized crumpled portraits. -b.r.rivera Poem 22 of 30, April 2012 #30in30

This one particular man stands as prolific in my mind. Something about how the wild bird doesn't feel sorry for itself even in its frozen state. How secretly a broken wing challenges the raw Rocky-esque like stature the creature has. Screaming Adriiaaannnn!!!! with blackened eyes and sweat glistening from silken feathers. I don't know if I believe in such things. Here. Now. Sitting in chronic pain, barely able to move injured disks that stab burn stink in prolific meanderings. I mean, who can call their self an orange fiery flamed bird, beaten down by life and spit out in graves, turned to ash only to rise again? I am not that bird. That quiet, beaked, songstress. Attempting to flutter bloodied bashing's against a steel cage, minuscule perforations of seed scattered unto the recreated soil that can't fool earth. Self pity. Woe is me. The woe is me mentality framed in photographs where flight leaves the orbs of my eyes and ...

its broken. kinda like the sweet sparrow dropping hard from its nest its wing flapping hard against the dust of the earth eyes wild and unforgiving, trying hard not to feel sorry for itself and establishes within its mind that it has a broken wing. i wonder if I can fix it. be the invisible cast crimson in creation where miracles happen beyond the skies in pleasurable and comfortable existence. its discarded. merely a decomposed state of composition hidden with maggots and live insects swarming to infect and circumspect the small pieces of flesh exposed from hard calcified bone and marrow. it lays there, a piece blowing in the wind no longer recyclable to be sorted in large aqua blue tubs to be reinvented into plastic cups that once again, someone will throw away. and I wonder. wonder if I can fix it.  be the mending stitch that sways smooth firmness on  supple skin, avoiding infection and  regaining cellular regeneratio...

He loves me. We call this our secret place. our holy divine shining from the sky awkward and amusing feeling in the nook of your shoulder sacredness. here, I am hidden from all those that want to destroy me. you, my glorious prince and beautifully sun-kissed with no white horse but still defend me. and I want to live here. In this space. Forget about all time and dimension, hold unto a little sanctified beauty and lose my religion at the mere thought of you. He loves me not. We call it not seeing eye to eye. A fragment of losing control and too much stimuli. How raised voices become the ever present norm Cold shoulders and turned backs become the norm. here, I am the bitch you kick in the corner forgetting I snarl and bite back so who's to warn her of sleepless nights and insomnia filled moons Forget about everything and nothing and lose myself in doom at the mere thought of you. He loves me. We call this our beautiful beginning. Another day mark...

She's a shell, you know. Some sort of fat humpty dumpty look a like skin un-kissed by the warmth of the sun. She's never seen what its like to allow the dimples to careen into deep valleys whiten the glazed over eyes of youth in almost porcelain enamels challenge the hurried hours in a curl of a moist lip. who knows what enters the mind at the middle of the playground dust and dirt kicked up to the pressed starchiness and itchiness of stockings. A reminder of delicate legs and shapely hips, bursting out to enter adolescence but pulled back in ribbons and plaits worn in her time. they scream at her, you know. some kind of words learned from their environment where the mother is a bitch from handing the daddies their plates cold the father is a motherfucker from a stain of red on a collar the dog is a shitter from a pound where only mixed breeds die and the child still lays in the womb as audio obscenities blast auto-tune in its fetal po...

Yesterday was the day in which we declared solidarity made promises for the future that would hold doe eyed babies because romance and fairy tales come true. We separated that page in a fun filled chapter illustrated our delight in permeated whites and tell tale laughter changed the rhythm from setting to climax because tomorrow was the day for no looking back. We celebrated in sentences. Held firm to future tense and elongated phrases secret jokes and short mazes riddle me this, dare I say because dreams won't dare be a reverie in truth living in the present of the day. I bookmarked it. Circled a date on the calendar and marked it in legible scribe. Set the timer on my clock and waited for the impending buzz to arrive Placed a red ribbon on my finger A pinch of salt thrown to the left of my back Placed a picture of you and I on a cork board held in place by an aging thumbtack. because yesterday is coming. because romance and f...

he called it a kiss. i called it a misrepresentation of a moment held lip to lip. hardly mentionable. if anything, exceedingly questionable of the stillness that holds silence in the dark. it lays thick. the silence. a hung canopy weighted in the air of deadly gasses to the masses particulate clouded in smokey haze and devilish grins of sarcasm and uncompensated limbs. how dare he even speak that word? he calls it a kiss. I take a drag of a menthol cigarette and exhale bullshit. we were once so beautiful then. no wrinkly lines to expose wasted years and wasted tears held with grains of sand and unspoken arguments that became our religion. the passion, an unrequited love marked by inked x's and o's reserved for secret lines and tell tale signs of what was passion of a honeymoon phase now the spark sprinkled from the star gazing eye dreaming of a hundred ways to become that reverie again. that mystical way in a graze of the skin became an ignitio...

Does a hope inscribed begin with subtle little lines engraved in shallow letters and hardened dreams faced with cursive lines and silent pleasantries How can a borrowed memory Become a shadowed past Fuzzy with details distastefully described In purgatory of Jacob's Ladder Worlds collide and clash and within, I find lies.   When a love letter becomes a complaint Where two wrongs become a right falls play to victim and Heavenly Saint When excuses become statements fallen from the lips Where complacency holds no wrongs because ultimately ignorance is bliss Where entering a home becomes a hostile territory When opening a lock becomes synonymous with dread from the flick of a key Does hope inscribed begin with subtle little lines Shaped as certificates that mean nothing Rings that are not eternal and dreams that give birth to become woeful funerals Anniversaries as impending doom A interruption to something- A toast to life, raise your glass Two young lo...

You invade me. There is no hidden offbeat path where I can dust myself off from rubble and shattered dreams. Bury myself from conflicted wounds and organized chaos that inevitably surrounds me. I wave a white flag. Simply surrender to the noise created from empty graves, beckoning scythe and Hail Mary's fingers approaching forehead, rosary laid to rest in heartless coffins. You are here. You hear no bugle horn calling its falling back, no wave of retreat into the dusk falling over the horizon. I have no place to go, no place to hide, no place to run Only a dream of what simple freedom felt like before the day disrupted cadence entered my life. -b.r.rivera

I want to be your disruption. Your inner breathing of how you challenged natural selection The decision to hone in upon undefined chaos and internal stimuli. I am your squiggly lines on acid free paper Brainstorms in thunder and rain Freezing cold hail dropped on a desert reserved for miraculous sustenance. I want to be within you, as you. I want to ripple your waves and have the this and that of you stir up as a complicated recipe where grams are immeasurable and teaspoons come to the lips as a sweet indulgence of a kiss. I want to be your disruption. I want to eject the stillness of your enraged spirit cast fire on the doused flames and be your Phoenix rising. I want to dwell within you. I like how the hands of you move from tingles and electric buzz to raise goosebumps within a simplistic fuss. I am your confusion. Your hues of shades discolored from the past and penciled outside the lines with broad brush strokes. Have your ink dwell within my pen and your lines of...

I love it that you're gone. I love the long winded absence of silence how two nothings became more than nothing but a pretend speech that was never spoken. I adore that you're gone. I adore how the seat is unfulfilled in momentary memories now a nightmarish calamity of how a relationship was never meant to be. I romanticize now that you're gone. I romanticize in warm touches and human embraces Fit for a body quenched in the desire of thirst where kisses are indulgent upon this idealistic notion. I am deliciously exuberant now that you're gone. I'm happy because I'm happy. I'm happy that A smile is upon my glamorous mouth and my teeth are showing their pearly whites to someone else. I'm glad that you're gone. I'm glad that you're not here. I'm glad that you're absent But not out of my mind. -b.r.rivera-taylor 10 of 30 #30in30

I wonder who will read this. Who will get monumental cries dripped from the Heavens To lay by the sulfured remains of Hell's waste side. Who will read this. Gaze upon pix-elated ink under the glare of a screen Its dark humility a comfort in a shadow dancer's insomniacs dream. Who will be amazed? Who will challenge little bits of imagery. Call this syntax a piece of prose Break my onomatopoeias oomph with a frolicking woe. Who shall it reach? Does this poem expand the thunderous seas and parched desert? Does this poem include a cartographer's map and grid like balance on A1 and below the equator where tribes still dance by fire and languages fall short of communication? Who will love thee? Who will want to adorn their heads with this prickly crown Seek vengeance in words when it is not allowed be the rebel when no one wants to be speak to their demons face to face and spit in the face of their doom like hilarity? I wonder who will read this. Who will...

I heard you say my name. last night a pregnant moon hidden from shaded blinds  eyes frozen from auditory hallucinations  and it was you. I recollect tiny sparkles sprinkling in my ear a luminary shadow from the peeked tides gravitating toward you and I could feel your breath a past memory from cold windows and warm perspiration huffed on a glass, shadowed by a finger and  swirled into two opposing curves that create a heart figure. because two become one, if I stand corrected or the absolute truth defines circular thinking let him go, set him free if he is truly in love, he will come back to thee. Simplistic notions. Simply not an ocean we are divided across time and space a continuum that supersedes time zones and past lives sudden truths and hidden lies. i would recollect another memory but I'm sure that it was not meant to be. You keep coming. Invading. Creating space within me. I shove back a dream swirl it into a nightmare, paint pretty little demo...

people look in the mirror all the time. pluck this little hair, smooth that little wrinkle with a finger curse the mole on their shoulder bless the plumpness of lips. imperfections. Tiny little lines formed from laughing or crying larger than life pores bursting from sweat embedded from the brow after a long days work. little nuances that prove that we are alive yet die with the cells that provide us. and we're human. human like a life grown in the womb, wet and wrinkly encased in globs of fat around bone to protect life amniotic fluid and stem cells fluidity as the river of unions gave birth to what a child should be. and somehow, some way between that beautiful birth and our end of cellular growth we are inept. ugly. imperfect. we look in a mirror. we gaze at little things that become lots of things which focus on larger issues of why beauty is not a cliche skin deep but a humongous and perpetual diminished fight against the youthfulness...

Si yo fuera una mujer feliz, Yo exigiría que el mundo sea lleno de margaritas de Gerber. Luminoso y brillante re partiendo alegría en los rostros de encontrado a nadie que los pétalos. Para tener esta felicidad, Voy a disfrutar de la sencillez de los medios de los pétalos Arranca una Él me ama. Y otro,  Él no me ama. Cuando lleguen al final del tallo de la flor Yo pediría más pétalos. Aterricé en la pequeña frase que no me quiero repetir. él no me ama. Y tristemente, esta mujer feliz en el exterior llena la flor de lágrimas mojados, Visible pétalos de rosa y morado. Este pequeño rocío un recuerdo Que más del Cojo lo peor más se pone. Pero  yo adoro a poner esa flor en el pelo Pero esto es una flor media y la ira en mis pechos. Tener este espectáculo pétalo el marrón glaseado sobre mi piel. Los colores suaves y tonos pastan en las líneas secreto de mi cuerpo humano. Él me ama. Él no me ama. Lamentablemente, esta flor se ha quedado sin pétalos Y me ha...

he tries to sway me to the wind that blows in the opposite direction Giving me pillow talk in the early morning where burning aurora rises in the east. and I come admittedly pulling away from the things which hurt me I am saddened that he has not called to learn of my location. sickened that my presence isn't readily missed. so I go to the way which the wind blows me drifting vicariously and gently I land on hundreds of threads of sheets. subdued to the masculinity and pure divinity to which the wind blows softly in my ear. he speaks of the truth which my heart cannot bear but my mind yields the truth. that my soul has the human desire to be a woman. to be loved. I deserve this. I deserve the passion which i feel and the mighty hurricane to that the wind becomes. the electricity and pure satisfaction of breathing daily a renewal of fresh air. I inhale. deeply. carefully. meticulously. the gusts are too strong. I disclose that my wings are broken yet he holds me tight to be the air ...