THE TWO OF ME
Like Frida, there are two of me.
But they don’t sit next to each other,
hold hands, or watch the other bleed slowly.
One is a boy wearing pajamas with feet
trying over and over to fly off the couch,
to reach some star, give his regards to Jupiter.
The other is a bald-headed man
throwing about orange cones
expecting the potential failure.
He doesn’t want me to lift off, take orbit.
He makes the idea of getting up and out of bed
like Cuba, set off to the side and forgotten.
I think maybe this is God at work
teaching me a lesson. But it’s probably
that bald-headed guy convincing me that
intergalactic traffic jam in my head,
holding down the boy in pajamas with feet
by the arm, trying to silence him as he jumps
on the couch screaming “get up and fly.”
—from Rattle #12, Winter 1999
Tribute to Latino & Chicano Poets
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Gilberto Lucero: “The son of a Mexican mother and father, and a brother of two wayward siblings, I gain poetic inspiration from meditation and the study of art. I write in order to remember and love.”
