philly spring
bendición, abuelito, you limp in my dreams, pilgrim of humatas.

bendición for the child that falls and breaks his glasses,
for the one that picks them up and glues them together.
plastic to plastic: love.

blessed chalk. toy cars beepbeep blessed.
against boxes and chairs where we sit
to play dominoes. bendición, dead star.
ashé for you and me. ashé,
which is more than bendición,
and bendición that knows itself ashé.

bendición, poet.
you were raised close and far because the barrio’s different
and you always carry other superimposed streets.
you write them like seeing yourself between planets
from the ship.

will you be on time to survive the change?

gloomy and sick pigeon that walks without flight,
but confesses everyday 
sacredly on the steeple.
your cure is the sky without god,
but with many angels,
dirty like that, dressed as rats.
bendición you drop on those who buy tea
at starbucks where the cops
stroll their dogs and bullets
like that, casually, bendición,
park that’s no longer public.
ashé for those who smoke and fuck it.
ashé for the selfies of smoke in scrolls.

i hope this bendición reaches you, edgar.
for that time you taught me to see with my mouth
or mouth with mouth, simply.

the blessed justice eternal
because it never arrives,
may it arrive, bendición hurried 
into now by may first.

ashé, gaddo, with your eyes that cry like pepper spray.
nina, ashé.
i write you letters so short they seem bendiciones.

in some universe called philly,
giving out bendiciones to be worthy
of the city deity that saves
leftovers for when i get home
and fixes the fan so it doesn’t spread
dust.

between dust and otero dust,
who knows if she blesses or curses me, the woman
who carries the rosary close to her chest,
but she is my abuela or grandma to someone here.
sometimes handsome and sometimes sad.
 
maybe, one day, while i’m putting away the groceries,
a record label will discover me
and on the radio i’ll be able to bless 
all the boricuas in allentown and chicago.

for the diaspora,
(y’all know the chorus by now) bendición.
to the one who got here on ships
and the one that flew in on frontier flights.
the one they say doesn’t count,
but still tells us all the stories
of disequilibrium and joy hidden
in the shell buried between laminated 
bricks.

bendición, infernal heat of a snowless summer.
bendición, paradisiacal and cruel snow.
bendición for the trash buried in the cold.
ashé, seriously, ashé.

may the world, the horror of the inevitable collapse,
the end and beginning of all, be an if not
of perhaps and when.
may it all fit in my hand,
the inflatable and collapsable universe.
bendición for you and me.
for me. despite not having all the blessings
of being born with certain names.

all the ashé,
may it cover the ground,
a petal rug
covering all west philly,
covering thousands of eyes shut against noise.
we trample it and, when blessed, 
we bless back
with a beer and a cigarette
unfinished.