Poetry

Poetry:

Poems have been a significant part of my life to express myself. I have been published in my school’s Literature Magazine, the EPS AQUILA, for both my Spanish and English poems. Recently, I submitted Meridian: A Retelling to several poetry forums for consideration for publication in The American Poetry Review. You can sample a few of my poems in my book here and a recent poem below!

Where did he come from?

I sense I have earned Tobin's trust.

God is present, if not in me.

The irony, I decide, is that God too has a sense of humor.

A scalphunter seeking bounty over life

And yet the most pious of us all.

He senses my question

And tells me that the Judge was first found in the desert

By none other than Glanton and his gang.

An orchestrated move, no doubt

Yet even the devilish Judge wouldn't have known where I'd gone

For I'm the wretch even God cannot follow

Unless the Judge was Satan himself.

They were all pursued by Indians, Tobin says

And had run out of powder for their guns.

Another Comanche could have happened

But in came the Judge and his pistols,

That saved their lives.

Gold and silver,

That bought their respect.

And a rifle titled

Et In Arcadia Ego.

Even in paradise, I exist.

The deputy Brown wanted to the leave the Judge

The only good decision he would have made

Had Glanton not overruled him

Glimmering treasure in his eyes.

Long lost now-brothers who lust over ore

Got along instantly

To Tobin's disgust.

The Judge's needs had long been met

And he saved the gang, again

Telling them they needed to steer away

From the mountains, which they did

With their impressionable leader.

What great evil lies there, we said, that the Judge knew?

I suspect he wanted to keep the gang alive

Until he lay me in my desert grave.

Indians are resilient, they do not let by

And they were catching up

Yet the Judge was cheerful

Acting like a young child

A godly creature of saccharine nobility

That wins all cretins' hearts.

The Judge took the gang to a cave of bats

Like some sorceress, decked in sage and gnats

And looked for the nitre, found in bat guano

That is of great importance in gunpowder.

A one man machine of violence

Turned a gang into dependency.

The astute ones deserted,

Choosing death, skinning, and hanging by Indians

Over any more with the Judge.

The Judge and his compatriot the Delaware set up a kiln

To burn the tears of the dead comrades

Into charcoal

And from its rise, ammunition.

Unforgiving wolves followed this pack

A truer, nobler army in comparison to ours

They smelled the blood in the water from miles away

And not that of the Indians or the killers we had become.

The gang reached the malpais, unforgiving and volcanic

Where - besides the Judge - all seemed to panic

But the Judge read a satanic verse

And delivered his first

Sermon, that the Earth provides everything

To destroy all good.

The Judge then chipped at the malpais with his knife

A sign of what he would do to us,

One by one.

For their very souls, the gang aided the Judge to create

The foulest, blackest, mass

That would turn every approaching Indian

To a gun-ravaged carcass.

Tobin's tale ended

And I wondered what sat before us

Only inches away lay the man capable

Of murder so great

That he could be the Judge of none other than evil.

Though I inquire, who the Judge is and where he came from

Tobin quiets me.

The word of God is not one to be told.

For the Judge has ears like a fox.

I turn to the campfire, where the Judge

Tall, bald, pale, and horrifically child-like

Stares back at me

And smiles the way he first did.

I understand now

Who exactly, he is.

Et In Arcadia Ego.

Even in paradise, he exists.