The morning wakes me, It is always as if my body hears the new day and wakes. My two dogs who sleep beside me, listen to my waking body. My Yorkie, Chuy, hops on me and licks my face.

This week’s poem blog comes in a form of a poem I wrote for my students to remind myself of the sacrifices they made in order to have a better life.

People die. Everyday. That’s what we do—eventually anyway. Death is an idea until that idea is attached to a person we know. Then it is no longer an idea but something very real—and very painful.

I talk to you. You talk to me. You ask me a question and I answer it. Two people using words to communicate. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? It isn’t. We use words. We use language. And all is well. But what accounts for so much miscommunication?

Talk is cheap. What the fuck are you talkin’ about? I was talkin to this guy and he said most everyone he knows is always talking shit. I never want to talk to him again. There is no talking in this class. There’s no talkin’ to him.

Poetry is home base. Poetry is my default setting. Poetry was my first love and once it managed to enter into my body, it lodged itself in one of the chambers of my heart.

I wrote this presentation at a writing conference twenty-one years ago in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was the first time that I gave a presentation to a room that held more than two-hundred people.