Lotta

I wanna Lotta love
I wanna voice with a Lotta warmth
I wanna Lotta houses
I wanna Lotta sweet sounds
I wanna Lotta loving hands making loving things
I wanna Lotta voices from different tongues within earshot
I wanna Lotta songs
I wanna Lotta laughter
I wanna Lotta honor
I wanna Lotta respect
I wanna Lotta peace
I wanna Lotta community
I wanna Lotta smiles
I wanna Lotta homes
I wanna Lotta culture
I wanna Lotta togetherness

I don’t wanna Lotta condos
I don’t wanna Lotta rent
I don’t wanna Lotta forgetting
I don’t wanna Lotta regretting
I don’t wanna Lotta evictions
I don’t wanna Lotta displacement
I don’t wanna Lotta speculation
I don’t wanna Lotta harassment
I don’t wanna Lotta nightmares
I don’t wanna Lotta fear
I don’t wanna Lotta pulling us apart
I don’t wanna Lotta nonsense

I wanna Lotta soup in my pot
I wanna Lotta music in my living room
I wanna Lotta sunlight coming through my window
I wanna Lotta hugs from friends
I wanna Lotta moonlight when it’s dark

I want my staircase to
Sound like a Lotta piano keys

I wanna Lotta love

© 2016 Tony Robles

 

Still

Still here on a
block that doesn’t
recognize you even
though your fingerprints
have been taken
bones dusted
picture snapped without
your consent, photo ID
in the family of humanity
revoked, including your
membership in club native
in which you were clubbed
and shown the door

still here and it seems
the only ones who know
you are the trees lining
the block

they are still here too
and they remember how
you kicked, climbed
and peeled their bark
back in the day when
the dogs were loud

standing side by side
with those old
trees

A silent
choir

still
here

(c) 2016 Tony Robles

Community Guide

Community guide standing
on the corners, crevices
fault lines of my city

Can you guide me
to Jesus or maybe
to the promised land

Community guide
with the jacket
adorned with patches

I’m going through a
rough patch
myself

You think you can
help me get
through?

Guide me like a
pen across a blank
page into a poem or
an incident report where
I’m proclaimed innocent
of indecence

Guide me like a
pencil in a
fill-in-the-babble
scheme where the
truth is a shade between
decline to answer and
none of the above

Community guide
can you tell me
where I’m at because
I don’t recognize it

As blimp pimps
sky, i, a mere blip on
the landscape, a breach
on the laughter of silence
Ask

can you guide
me to a place
i recognize?

(c) 2016 Tony Robles