The July Editor's Pick Poet is Juan Perez
Please feel free to email Juan at: gotobulldog87@yahoo.com
A RESPONSE TO SETH GRAHAME-SMITH'S Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
The proverbial log cabin ax
Shining with moonlight
Where otherwise covered
With foreign, crimson fluid
Death, a fact
To someone or something
Always, yet what
A barnyard blitz
On a concrete jungle
Puzzle pieces waiting
To recover, return
To its owner
A human converted
To the blood-sucking disease
Surely will not stand
So long as the hunter lives
For man cannot endure
In a place half-human, half-beast
For one will surely end the other
As man divides against himself
So long as either shall live
For as long as the hunter shall resolve
As the last best hope for earth
Lincoln, for the ages
ONE NIGHT'S LAST STAND
Sana, sana, colita de rana
Si no sanas ahora, sanas mañana
Precisely the morning
That I had to hold on to
My hands melting away
Holding on for dear life
La bruja was pleading
Kicking, screaming
Biting, clawing
To get far from me
I, frightened for life
She, attempting to claim my soul
For a strange night of sex
The smell of sanguineous sulfur
Her morphean skin, my human one
Begging to be mine forever
Assume any form I wanted
Any woman I desired
All I had to do was let her go before sunlight
Yet, I would lose more
Than I could ever gain
Lust and one damned bottle of tequila
Had gotten me here
At the end of my proverbial rope
Holding on to a sobering dear sun
To burn this sin completely away
A witch’s death on my mortal hands
Her dark husband shall have to wait
A far, distant chilly night
Before claiming what she paid for
In this hot, beautiful new sun
My scarred, melted hands
Reminding me of this senseless conquest
Sana, sana, colita de rana
Si no sanas ahora, sanas mañana
THE MEXICAN WHO TRIED TO SAVE THE WORLD
Standing alone
Where oblivion is not as noisy
As I had first imagined
Where all I knew
Where all I loved
Was sucked away
Into a faceless vacuum
Where my thoughtful warnings
Did nothing to stop self-destruction
Where life and counter-life
Danced the wicked beat of time
Where oblivion steps in now
Not as noisy as I first imagined
Had I not attempted
To save this world
Only dissatisfaction would remain
With no room for lovely memories
With no room left to be human
Had I imagined a noiseless ending
I would not had bothered as much
Besides, human is my final name
Yet, that too will soon be forgotten
For what oblivion has truthfully taken
It will never share again
And death its only partner
Yet that is okay somehow
For life was a noisy world
Oblivion not so much
Not as I had first imagined
CENTAUR-LET BI-POLAR OWNER
I lassoed a Martian centaur-let
[to kill it]
So my little Machitaz could have it
[to eat it]
How lovely they really are
[on a platter]
Here on the red planet Mars
[let’s kill more]
My lovely Machitaz, she loves her
[as a side dish]
She strokes all four hands on its fur
[to prepare it]
She gently straddles its back and rides
[right back to me]
Even secrets to it she confides
[that I will kill you]
After a decade of military service, including the First Gulf War (1991), Juan Manuel Pérez is now a public school history teacher and author of six poetry chapbooks which includes Dial H For Horror (2006), plus two full contemporary multi-culture poetry collections, Another Menudo Sunday (2007) and the e-book, O Dark Heaven (2009). He has also completed three other poetry manuscripts: W.U.I.: Written Under The Influence of Trinidad Sanchez, Jr., Comic Book Love Affair and Make Tortillas Not War. He is a member of the San Antonio Poets Association, the Poetry Society of Texas, and the Science Fiction Poetry Association, as well as, student of the great Chicano poet Trinidad Sánchez, Jr. He has also been a featured reader at many poetry venues in Southwest Texas. His work has recently appeared in Jazma Online, The People's Comic Book Newsletter, Boundless, Voices De La Luna, International Poetry Review, Illumen, Star*Line: the Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, The Poet Magazine, di-verse-city, Voices Along The River, The Dreamcatcher, Inkwell Echoes, The Palm¹s Leaf, and Message of the Muse. He was recently named the 2nd Runner Up in the 2009 San Antonio Poet's Association's Poet Laureate Competition.
Please visit Juan at: http://www.juanmperez.com/
You can also visit Juan at Poets and Writers HERE.
