The Power of Intangibility
He doesn’t know that when I roll
off the Chinatown bus & stagger
through the usual twilight wash
of garbage trucks & shut shops,
I think about what I might write
him. Sending him an email, that’s
the best part of my week. He
doesn’t know how lucky I am
to have him as a Muse on the West Coast
whose dreams connect to my fingers.
His texts vibrate in my trousers like
haikus with wings & transform me
to honey. I’m glad he doesn’t know
my drama queen mind leaves my heart
& balls tongue-tied.
He doesn’t know that I’d give up
the gift of hyperbole for the power
of intangibility, rearranging my
molecules so I could phase thru his ribs
& turn the switch on in his heart. He
doesn’t know that I’d go on a ninja
mission to pull him out of Hades
when he’s drunk & debaucherous
in the Mission. I’d write odes
about his creamy legs till they become
gelato to the lips, run fingers
thru his hair, flip hotcakes
every morning & brew him coffee
when he wakes. He doesn’t know
that all this is much easier
than standing by his window sill.
silent as a pine tree, waiting for a kiss.
Oblation
Your poems revolve around
my brain like sushi rolls
of genius
on a conveyor belt…
I sit in the darkest corner
where my eyes are pitchers
full of sangria…
& I am too sullen to sleep
or blink. I offer you my arms
that are so heavy
they would break a lover…
Instead I give you my fists
unfolding like construction
paper cupids …
I have pried my ribs
in the hope
of finding you an Adam…
The cuckoo clock
in my chest
collapses & I release the bird…
Here is my body,
a mausoleum
of Russian dolls…
for all the failed romances
I’ve unscrewed…
Accept these gifts: the bird
that looks like 2 mustaches
kissing, the arms of a clock
that never meet, my fists
light as snowflakes & the river
of sangria that quietly
moves & waves us on…
Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer, having won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam in 1993 and taking top prizes in the 1993, 1994 and 1997 National Poetry Slams. As a theater artist, he received the 2006 New York Innovative Theater Award for Best Performance Art Production as part of the New York Neo-Futurist's production of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. His solo shows have been presented at Dixon Place, Joe's Pub, The Public Theater, Seattle Fringe Festival, Contact Theater (Manchester, England) and The Humana Theater Festival. He is a teaching artist at The Kennedy Center and performs his work throughout North America and the UK. He received several fellowships from the DC Commission for the Arts & Humanities, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Television credits include NPR's Snap Judgement, and HBO's Def Poetry Jam. His latest solo play, Godiva Dates and One Night Stands, received critical acclaim at the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival. Cabico was a featured poet at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Cabico is co-editor of the anthologies Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry (Lowbrow Press, 2013) and Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (Vehicule Press, 1998), and his work appears in the anthologies Short Fuse, Poetry Slam, The Spoken Word Revolution, and Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC. He is co-director of the Capturing Fire National Queer Poetry Slam And Summit. To read more by this author: Regie Cabico: Winter 2007; Regie Cabico's Intro to the Split This Rock Issue, Winter 2008; Regie Cabico: Audio Issue; Regie Cabico on DC Slam: Literary Organizations Issue; Regie Cabico: Langston Hughes Tribute Issue.