Misconstructed Sonnet #1

Your love comes and goes like the backwash of the sea.
It scratches and tears at the skin of the world
Leaving but the scars of a fading memory.
Your love comes and goes like the faces of the moon.
It guides its small underlings to their unchanging destiny
That shall finally be unwritten in a plain night sky of gloom.
Your love comes and goes like the dark depths of a dream.
It claws and nestles in the corners of the mind
Till the sun shines over immateriality unfurled.
Your love comes and goes like the promises of time.
It tricks the dancing blind into the abyss of eternity
That withers to the dust of junk swept by a broom.
Tonight, I'll patch the wounds of my old and faded jeans.
Your love comes and goes like the backwash of the sea.

Heart Spasmodic

Saint mystification
Enveloped in the lonely sound of thunder-stricken
Rainstorms, that have fallen down to Earth since the
Great flood. Wandering out in the street—for
I am nowhere. Every drop in the pavement’s an
Open wound,
A gaping pool of death
Looking at a small soul with an air of
Elevated prophecy. In front of me the statue of
Justice becomes numb,
Arbor-like, its edges cut into the body of the
Night. Whoever feared the moon just
Doesn’t know the gallows of the sun hold their own
Rope: its everlasting eye lays flesh to
Open fire. In darkness, sleepless thoughts, tangled inside the
Mind’s sheets, turn around condemned by insomnia,
Erring when they think they can make it silent—
Noise. It tap-dances and creeps along the bones,
Don’t stop it—it’s the heartbeat. It hammers as if it wanted itself to be shown in
Open flesh. A runaway from temples and from
Zion, no promised land to hold an
Angel fugitive, no place for acceptance and for
Home. The ghost of night stares at it with
Open eyes, the slow-paced
Crimson guest of this world, its skin marked with the signs of inner
Hunger, the undeniable proof of mortal
Malady, that has outrun heart-strings out of their
Axis, left them to fade away as the raven’s empty echo:
Nevermore… oh…
Nevermore.
…

The Sniper

A minute of shade against the pale skyline,
Stands the chosen wizard, the handiwork of Satan
Untamed upon his hand. He's the owner of now-time,
Him, a snake-charmer, the guardian of the key
To a lake of fire. Every single second means subtraction
Of some unknown, sleepy, foreign heartbeat,
Who drags in its own red-carpet parade
To shake hands with the Maker. But now look!
The crowd, like foaming waves, has begun drifting
And no one has an eye for the astray bird
Who shall shadow the clouds. It is his turn now:
An expert with a dark past of deer hunter
He sets free the swift hawk-eye of the bullet
To fall upon its prey. The last scene is now set:
Already upon the stage, the ultimate tragedian
Turns back; he shall return to his falconer of men.

The Novel's Laceration

Judge. Tell me, with or without epigraph?



To you, the one whose name I never knew

Wonder if you catch my mood
Can you feel my solitude...
-Mick Jagger


A thousand poems I have written about your beauty.
They have all gone, metamorphosed, become
Ink hearts for lonely ashtrays at old-fashioned café tables
Or jumped away from toilet-papered baskets
Leaving a trail of rotten verse down on the concrete,
Fuel for silent nights around a trashcan campfire
Whose ash shall feed the sighs of every homeless.
And yet how could I ask for it to stop,
The dancing of the pen, skin to skin on paper.
You do not know how many times a hero
Has spawned out from a lonely window-side, looking-out table,
How many mortal wounds have been the same;
Rerun of an immortal well-known story.
Out from this smoke that was never an oracle
Outpours a cloud for castles in the wind,
Fickle love of shooting stars, candle-flame guidance:
They tumble down the precipice as if made out of play-cards.
Now it is time to hide away the sheet,
The napkin, notebook, whatever was a home
For that young poem that matched the Arabian Nights,
A time to think about the evening’s work, tomorrow’s sun, next week,
When the novel shall just glide along, so peaceful,
And forget its postmodern jumps and sudden starts,
And the stupid, alarming hole in the plot
After all, means nothing.

Coffee

My work for you to judge.



Dedicated to all my friends who have been brought down by anything


I spilled my coffee today.
It may happen to everybody, yet
Everyone forgets it happens when it happens
To anybody else. It makes them become perfect.
And I become the flaw where they can
Fix their sight. And if I walk on to them,
They'll look at me with disapproving eyes,
As you do now. Why look at me that way?

I know it's no good to cry over spilt milk,
Not even spilt coffee. It's more mature to cry
For not having a good night's sleep
Because that leaves you tired. Or cry because
Your mother has grown old, and sad, and sick. Or
cry because somebody told you
Your father died last night. But if I cry about it
Then nobody will ask. They'll give me kindred smiles,
friendly pats on the shoulder. They just won't look at me
With disapproving eyes. I guess it is
My turn now. Should I go there this way?

But if I stand up right there
They will start judging me. And you shall sit with them,
See they are judgmental, and say
She's not my friend. And they will laugh and tell
You: Look at her, she's careless,
Such an important day and she's all messy,
All because she's careless. That way I'll be
The drunken clown on stage, the junkie sad star,
A really-don't-care-for-you politician,
Who stretched out his hand, and ordered
To his fire to burn bowels, to ash corpses,
Everything to explode as my sad coffee
Exploded on the floor, and on my clothes, and on the memories
Of my heart.

Another cup of coffee, now. There is no other way.

Antipoética de la ciudad

Publicado en Brevesías: www.brevesias.blogspot.com



…y tú me decías no sé qué cosa, que te ibas a tirar al río, y yo, mientras me revolvía entre las sábanas, pensando si tu voz sería parte de un sueño, no pude dejar de imaginarme la escena maravillosa de la mañana siguiente: tú, y tus vestidos flotando alrededor de tu cuerpo, pálido, azul; la Ofelia nenúfar de Rimbaud. Y yo, el amante de luto, sosteniendo tu húmedo cadáver en mis brazos...
Porque créeme cuando te digo que no me imaginé esto. Tú, ahí tirada, revoltijo de tripas y sangre, en la portada del Metro. Y es que se me olvidó que aquí en la ciudad no tenemos río Sena, sino río Churubusco.

For Lucy in the Sky

My work, inspired by the recent death of the real Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Lucy O' Donnell. (And the Lord's Prayer).


Our Lucy, our myth, who art in Heaven
(or in a drawing-sky with painted diamonds)
Hearkened be thy name
in every single vinyl, mixtape and radio station-
And thy Kingdom come
together with tangerine trees--
And your song be sung, in Earth as it is in London:
"The girl with the sun in her eyes is now gone".
Give us this day our daily dose
Of the opium dream you never were.
And lead us not into temptation
Of believing every rumor
But deliver us from music critics
For you died innocent, and immortal, and Top 100 Greatest Bands of Forever,
Amen.