Devotional
He’s still here but Is he still willing? More so than me Because he’s my crab. His scorpio rises Riding a bull Pliers hurt But his outer shell Glistens. The creature is all about staying It persists Grabs Claims Instinct devotional and He prays to me drunk. But for what? No! I bid him to stop And then again He’s the literary dream I asked for Unaware. He demands And I am his To come home to Vent Relieve. Why me? Don’t have much grain I’m nothing more than an oddity A crooked arrow Who can fly straight. What he sees I’ll never know Still he stays Enduring time lapses Under muy loose chin These jowls. He wants this joking smile My mockery of life These worries followed by a breakdown My sleeping body trembling Under the influence of dreams. Yes, yes, those things I remember He’s that dream The oldest one of all, Devotional nightmare Come to life.
Unanswered
Who are they? And where from? Old lovers, friends, sons, fathers, brothers Those who helped, guided, worried, cared Same ones who left, changed me for, walked away from, grew to hate My lost men. Who are they? Jitters arise for their attention I long for their excitement Mourning when they find another better Satisfied when they laugh it out Inevitably expecting A reaction. Why them? Why me? Who were we until now? Old flames in transformation Merge and part And we haven’t stopped yet Something reaches Lights our wick Impregnates our feeling Since long ago. They invade routine and fantasy alike I make believe they listen That they are here Drawn to me and I to them While they’re at work Away And I ask again Who were we until now? But no one’s answering.
The Item
There is a presence, an item, and it lives, without need for oxygen. But it’s not him, even if my mind’s eye insists. I made him up in the length of decades. After many words ensued, he inhabited my head, full of himself. He became a rant, annoying as a jump scare, never listened. But today I let him go, even if he imprints his presence, always busy in the background, ready to protect from the greatest threat of them all, loss. I created him, internalised the frequencies of his mission; absorbed into my stream the perceptions he embodied; took it all into the deep tissues. His worried presence, neurosis, accumulation of stress. The item fights a future he conceived in fear, almost a century ago. But today I granted him the possibility. I bade him farewell, gave him the freedom to disappear and to continue on as simple energy, told him he could change. I can differentiate now, and that is the difference. He is not human, but a servant of a will that is not my own, the envoy of a mission that I did not choose. Yet he must be appreciated, somehow acknowledged, and I do, by strange grace arisen at the summit of change, an eclipse, a dark Sun bearing the radiant crown of closure. An item to be left aside, to dissolve in the newborn year. He shall then rise as cottonwood seed would, in the warm air of my evening. In the meantime, I will fight to remember the way of brightness. Adventures free of expectation, clear roads unblocked, vacancy. I shall pray for silence, empty rooms, and a handful of future. Gold pebbles in the raw, the touch of Midas in my hands, a magical song dancing as a flame would in twilight. Intentional fire ablaze. Velocity inspired. He left in an instant, when I saw my fear was his lack, the familiar voice an poor imitator of my soul. Imagination transmutes fast, I know. Soon he will live differently, on another type of ray, a beam of tomorrow, dressed in clear splendour, waiting for my arrival.
Baroque
You’re so classic, almost baroque. Must be those strands, it’s been a while since you let them be; coarse between my fingers, opulent mahogany curl, streaked with silver anguish, and the burnt butter of your skin. Yes, I know what the harshness of grey skies did to our mane. You’re such a moth ball now, although I still like you in a suit, when you give off the aroma of a cool cathedral, enclosed, quiet. Time’s debris floats in subdued streams of sunlight, filtered through the stained glass. You’re a piece of sacred art, a haloed saint, looking up the elaborate vault, drama in your eyes, always. A dark background is all you have suffered, your orbe the only light in the portrait, and your exquisite hands, my very own Greco. You’re a grand organ for sure, a monumentalist, and it’s sort of embarrassing, but I stay and listen. Dark eyes can hide under extremist brows and yet, gentle light infuses the swivelling colonnades of our lives. Sound might mellow your whisper to low confidence, and rise then triumphant, booming like the cinema. Colours march out the grand pipes in patterns, repetitive, like you opening the door for me since we first met and, I daresay, forever. Jubilees outside my window, the morning mist. Thunderstorms through the late afternoon, it’s all you, a prelude, so tocata, a fugue.
Time stamps
Time deals differently now. I ask to the invisible ¿have I been dislodged, dug out of somewhere, a matured stone turned crystal? ¿Or was something dug out from me? ¿Is it possible to go backward, find the place where I was brighter, before solidity? Maybe even further back, to the ancestors, in the deepest forests, when conversations happened all at once; trees reverberated voices, whispers emanated as song, before this extraction, when the pit was left bare. ¿Could I sleep in such crystal perfection, resting as a goddess, carefree, accomplished just for being placed, that dreaming would be my only formal occupation, a profession eternal? But for now I must resist the call to the grind, the advancement mill of success, of my present time stamp. Upward I only see the whipped clouds. Skies rest before the coming of age. Our atmosphere heaves like the oceanic tide and then exhales, belly flat. I must learn to let it out too. And the pit, ¿what about the pit? It’s what I carry. Memories clinging for shelter, when the wind whines harshest. But time ran itself out, it chased itself mad, time to refresh. So, ¿should I fill it now or honor its sullen interior? I’ll give the pit time to sulk. Afterward I’ll patch it good. Make it wholesome with loosened soil, intense nutrients, aired by early spring. I’ll pack it firm, and mark the repaired hollow with a sturdy flag. This is my new time stamp.
River
February skies my hearth, wind whispers my name transparent, knowledgable of its nature. I was raised in this winter quadrant, the Sun to the horizon, and they said it’s in detriment but I’m not bothered. My name runs through and is lost, but will find other hearths on its unpredictable voyage. Because I randomize, that is my fort, gusts out of synch. But today the Sun has snuggled up to Saturn, and I must see reality, fine as this day’s sky. He hints from his warm abode. An answer is born and is sure to last. I don’t have to push for it, mix it with others, or put make up on it. Reality just runs itself out like my gusts always do. Skies sing, they are taking to finer yet more potent winds. My hearth will never again be what it used to, it is almost ashen. But I see futures reflected when I stand by the river, the one that runs through all fields around. It goes on forever, doesn’t depend on me. I should only observe, listen, standing right here, on the the rocky bank. I close my eyes. A new gush comes, electricity in my head. The river builds up thunder, currents unstoppable, as native February must.
Transfusion
I guess you were meant to iron me out, after times of intense ambition, climbing cliffs, goat’s hoofs embedded in solid rock. Games for climbers, persevere up the steep and, I suspect, maybe I got lost in it, and this round has to be the last of that. You must spend all of me, empty my pockets. Imagine our tie as a promise made a while back, of bleeding it all away, and soon to come, the full transfusion. Total hema count anew. After you scrunch me up good, wrung it all out I’ll ask —¿what then? Let’s realize this in exhaustion and pray. A new configuration gurgles down below. On the surface my face sags, my bones hurt. Your hair thins, eyes shot. But we are almost there. Let this be the waiting room, as the last of another Sun year passes outside our window. Wait it out. And when the sky turns reddish and blotchy it is occurring, our next horizon, transfusion, our brand new blood.
¿Did I Just….?
¿Did I just realize truth while caught in the motion, amid the rat race, the traffic jam? Did he just pull up his mask and smile? ¿Did light flood the cabin while I stared, at the dented tail of the car in front of us, and what always has been just took a deep breath, and then exhaled relaxed? ¿Did the past just say hello with a real face, no makeup for the show, no PR? I believe she just yawned. ¿Did I just find out what was never hidden? Freedom hung out placid in terrenal constraint, nonchalant, waiting at the bus stop, no biggie. As I pass the grey, abused underpass, stained by chaos, vehicles swarming, ¿Did I just discover meaning at the edges of my usual brain rant? ¿Am I now finding it funny that we should care so much, that freedom turns out to be a child? Playing in the playpen of borders, earthly limitation, unconcerned by the litter. She smiles nonetheless, she laughs, each moment is of itself, a complete story, no drudgery of carrying it along to the next. She’s quick, organically attentive, not in a rush to make sense. It’s a short cartoon, rich in color, mesmerizing, that’s all. ¿Did I just hear the drums of potential while stuck in a traffic jam?
Clear Roads
A bit empty, Vacant, Unreachable as clouds. Detached, At the edge of boredom, Unimaginative, Disengaged, The blurred background, A minimalist painting, My canvas almost bare, And all could be. That a bird might traverse my crystalized space, A plane might soar into the deepest blue, Caressing the mist, That wings might spread, New things could appear.
Strange Riches
These strange riches given, Stand crumbling on the sullen street of times past. Grandma’s house with its ceiling planks bent, A violent crack runs wild, the length of the dining room, Shut doors, melded to frames, Of childhoods past, stories kept, Flooded memories. But Scheherezade still waits inside Arabian Nights, Bound in real leather, tightly fit in the carved Italian bookcase. Framed maps of antique parchment rest about the entrance hall, Leaning on the walls, waiting for something, Maybe the final collapse. And I wonder, Those long gone explorers, cartographers of time, ¿Might their eyes have met riches just as strange as mine?