Dreaming and Surviving

By

Jackie Lopez

Juan Sepulveda

I take my pen and dip it into my heart

because it is so hard to live without beauty.

Dreaming is surviving  because there is no other road for me.

I caught you with the poppies, and you caught me with the red shoes.

I dance to bring the sun up for the world.

I sing to wash dishes.

And write  poems for emancipations.

I think I have got a lot of menial work to do.

That is why I hide in my writing.

Thinking is freeing and so is love.

I have both in abundance and seek out olives.

Transcendence is just a pickle away.

Dreaming is surviving, that is why I think they have raised the minimum wage

and put out want-ads for poets.

Blue is the color of my skin.

Red is the color of my rose.

Soon I will speak to the melancholy who write prose