Today is my poetic birthday.
I am turning one hundred
and there is no one to help me blow out the pages
made from childish rhymes, false love,
friendships past and reflection.
Seven years later there's not much I've outgrown.
I still wait for present moments to mold together
in literal ways that will appear abstract in the future;
I still wait for a simple phrase to ignite my imagination.
This morning the inspiration was finally complete when the
Alaskan ghost returned to haunt me as I stared at my reflection.
Instead of her words carrying my through the seventies,
her voice now brings me into the third dimension
with an eerie reminder of the event she arrived for last time.
Technically I’ve already reached this point
but I’m unsure of when it happened because
some ended up burning in a cemetery of confusion
with diaries that showed no life
and a written self constantly changing.
What remains is bounded by metal rings of confinement
and wonders how long it will be
before the prison sentence ends.
Believe in the power of words and it will not be long.
Like those that have come before,
I can only write from my present state.

I spent last week preparing for some majestic masterpiece
and ended up yesterday getting stuck at this point
because my mind was still too scattered.
Captured moments have already returned
but I’m not yet ready to look back
and reminisce over the questioning eyes of babies,
bright faces that are almost invisible,
and misleading cookie jars.
I’m not yet ready for the uneasiness that comes
from their comments comparing him to my first love,
because the foundation has only recently been formed.
It’s beginning to feel like my life is one big cycle
in which different actors keep playing the same parts
and only the judge and my lawyer stay the same,
leaving it up to me to keep the court record
and change the words so that it’s worth reading.
Maybe I should step aside and give this task
to those following me on a path through hell
while giving speeches on Chinky Purple Roses
that magically turn red in the arm of truth
before my return to the expensive Atlantic
and frozen xeroxed memories of winter visits past.
The natural energy was drained during a blind date
with lukewarm macaroni as I realized that all I had gained
would soon be lost behind the sun.

On my way back to the stubborn snow
I sat next to a woman shaped like my grandmother,
and I couldn’t stop noticing that her hands
were always shaking, even when she held them together
over her tired legs, across her fragile form.
I saw myself in her at the age of one hundred,
my hands beyond my control because I worked towards
a useless degree, and played for an unsatisfied audience.
It was at that moment when the next creation
started to come together, when the pieces began to merge,
and now, here in another pathetic attempt,
she is immortalized in tomato juice and club soda
along with men who used up too many of my ideas
and women who deserve more than supporting roles.
Will I someday reach an age when this is no longer true
and arrive at a day when I’ve finally figured it all out,
causing me to remember this time differently?
Will I remember the first time we made love
instead of the first kiss I shared with another?
Will I remember the way our voices blended together
instead of the later way our anger clashed?
Maybe I’ll nosily flip through yellow originals and wonder
whose voice I once listened to on some street,
what the city actually did look like,
and when I ever had a second father.

I’m no longer a child of thirteen
spending time thinking about what rhymes with inquires
only to screw it up and use desires,
a mistake I regretfully changed years later.
Now I spend even more time contemplating
a pair of hands, a similar smile, a worried voice,
a timid strength, an unsteady mind.
Will the last one hundred leave the world
trying to figure out if I’m actually Spanish
and debating how my first name is really pronounced?
Will the next one hundred surpass
those contained in music forever connected to events,
the constructed emotions of an ogre who hides in basements,
and even the studied words accepted by masked intellectuals?
Probably not, but she’ll still find time to humor me,
to ask what I meant by Chinky Purple Roses,
to say that she admires me even though others remain unaware
of the products that have formed my personal definition.
Poetry is her laugh reaching me when nothing else can,
the feeling that I am once again sixteen and that she never left.
It is the way he pushes my hair aside and pulls me down,
it is the excitement felt when receiving a simple sentence,
and the mixture of beings that inspires me to write.
The game is just beginning-
I still have hundreds of thoughts left.

Alana Munoz

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