Leyla

I know it’s hypocritical, at this point, to write you a poem
I know your hands will no longer tremble holding this page
that your gaze will not crystalize nor refract daylight
you will not tend to your garden thinking of my words
nor will your heart sip a taste of tenderness
I will not have the power to evoke the day’s nostalgia
that leads to the tricks you showed us at the theater
to eat cheap and crash screenings

I will not have the power to ask about the songs you sang for our mothers
before your husband the drunk barged in howling
or after he fainted on the records and broken glass
and wet fish scraps
I will no longer understand how they did not burn you in the mountains
of Guatemala
for stealing the rapists’ dogs
and talking back to the town’s patriarchs

At this point,
you do not fear the flying saucer that summoned you to the clouds
to tell you unsayable secrets
about a peaceful life
you will no longer long for the white guerrilla man
you almost left your family for
wandering toward the unknown
beyond the businesses and official extortionists
70s 80s 90s
You never had respect for them!
and I, adrift in small airplanes
wasting so many months when I could’ve called you
asked about your mystical voyages
your silent furnaces your theatrical beasts
and your syncretic friendships
you
who called women your age “old ladies”
and painted as many objects as you could
you who wrote letters to break apart your history
to leave a whole gamut of mercurial contradictions
and histrionic gnome stories
forbidden bazaars
elusive and demonic dogmas
that recalcitrated near your melodic body

your piercing slanted bovine eyes
will not show compassion for this lament
nor will your chest have the power to breathe next to mine
nor will the morning fill with your wise-woman aroma
of tiny bracelets and incense
of symbols and stray beasts as company
of freedom as a consequence of breaking one’s back
to burn neurons and stitch the blood
and the faces that wear the blood
the hands that mend those faces
the time that ages them
the tree that awaits in the seed
captive of its own dream
and the alchemy it was conceived for

You will not have the power to be who you were
nor who you wanted to be
nor who we believed you were
nor who we wanted you to be
you will be the becoming of your message in air
of the movement for movement itself
of communication like roots that sink into earth
and collect spring water
with its own mineral stories
an alligator that foresees the east
light that embraces you from behind in the darkest hour
faith in the richness of every rose
mistrust of impostors
and of shadows with a face

You will not have the power to hold this page
because you will inhabit it
the crystal will be your memory
the garden your legacy

Within our armor,
your freshness
and your disobedience like a tireless compass
sailing the latitudes
of the universal feast

◆

Forbidden Paradise

Maybe we should never have left the forbidden paradise
the winged key fled taking flame
rhinoceroses,
bastions of jellyfish,
disappeared like sunbathed drops
on the cheek of a statue, heroic
and mournful

In the hangar, one finds heaven
in heaven, one longs for the hangar,
like a trapeze artist between molars:
dislocated xylophone

In a deep insect nest,
a dampened paper decomposes
like an aversion to human forms,
vultures secrete
mailboxes dream
gutters belch
five-star restaurants
too have cockroaches
and shit under fingernails

Secret bridges that connect volcanoes
have made a truce to protect this cursed earth
from their own addictive designs
the franchises of the key are not in the directory

One must observe from any window,
make a pact with the window first, and
then, with what’s been observed,
touch that war in one’s belly
the absence in the hair,
the lust in the heels:
an agonizing thirst to represent madness itself

Proud hunger is disseminating searches
measuring vortices
hanging from giant petals
with eardrums overflowing with paint
adding paradigms to foolishness
so the glare of unknowing
won’t haunt us
let it take us to the kaleidoscopic abyss
with the talkative ghosts
and glorious intrusions
in life’s grandeurs

There’s no penance that’s worth it to the flame,
a fire knows how much it burns,
like the ocean knows how many souls inhabit it
and try to tame it
or at least understand it

In a fistful of ashes,
from another land,
a civilization traces its fate
they do the things that we do
and do not correct any of their mistakes,
they call it progress
survival
or market depreciation:
machine shredder of clouds
and of children’s balloons
perverse enigmatic beast
inhabitable crevices
sponge-like laments
symphonic anxieties

One travels to the park of childhood
where dust elapsed unrushed
where death’s urgency did not restrict
and play was the only hangar

The dams overflow or dry out,
like addicted mouths in times of crisis

If a jaguar comes to visit,
treat him like an old friend
he reveals in his eyes the heart of the mountains,
and, in his physiology,
time’s immaculate vehemence,
if the clock stops,
be thankful
and let it run again,
nothing is forever,
grandma used to say, and
the rest cannot be repeated

Nothing is forever,
undying only chaos
and its perfect harmony
undying only this moment
in which we, awestruck,
sometimes entangle ourselves
like two clay animals
who throb
tremble
and hope the pain transfigures,
that it becomes saliva for the ocean:
a hand,
amidst an empire of dead leaves
that display in their filaments
any form of astrology

I no longer fear the lightning strike
I liberate owls from their fable
and from their anecdotal responsibility
I embrace the instincts
and betray them,
sighing in the toilet of the gods
cultivating in their miserable pipes
clinging to a tree trunk to grow with it
and, in exchange, only give it my abundance
take a bite of its fruit with abundance
the teeth in abundant sweetness
abundance in fear
in slowness
in rigidity
abundance of being an astronaut
without having jumped on the moon
nor having orbited Pluto
lonely like ingratitude
lonely like a pig before the knife
the sharpness reflecting its gaze
the gaze understanding it knows its fate

Nobody has seen my movies
because I’ve never shot them,
but I’m a filmmaker,
to me Kurosawa’s battles exist in every corner
Bergman’s monologues
Sofía’s abandonment,
expressionist faces violating the antennae
preying on the curiosity of those who look for
long dialogues about the importance of boredom
about euphoria’s disdain:
the misanthropy of loving delirium
in all of its forms

And that’s the thing,
like vomit
that drinks from the gastric acids of consciousness:
tropical paradox
the rain that doesn’t skimp
it expels from its nucleus a stairstep
it shortens the path to vertigo and,
even if it resembles it,
it is not the vortex
it is not the map’s destruction
it is not the fissure in the spacesuit
nor the ink of goodness

Maybe we should have never left the forbidden paradise,
but it’s better
not to think about it

◆

6

I don’t do my experiences justice writing an erotic poem;
I don’t know how to describe light
nor the phone line to the archangels.

All of you who know the truth
and have the moral standing to look down,
know how hard it is to escape
my precarious mental circumstances.

Paranoia can be prison,
a battle to step outside of oneself,
to scream the odor of silence,
to suffer the color of afternoon,
to embrace the temperature of goodbyes,
to tremble tenderly,
and self-flagellate,
no mercy,
infamous,
voicing that porcelain is not a material,
but an experience,
and that each parachute absence
is a gift;
in each broken smile,
a memory of what moves you.

That is why one must not ask for forgiveness,
and take it as sadness,
wrap it in a dramatic role
and smoke it.

When the voices of early morning
bring distant echoes,                                                everyone’s asleep,
my eardrums indulge,
and I confirm I’m not prepared
to write about erotic experiences.                          I don’t give importance
to my political ideals.                                                I don’t know how to channel my intuition
into accurate messaging
that does not turn into delirious and tragicomic anecdotes.

But I can’t stop because my chest is a nest;
it blooms,
and what was once unimportant
is prioritized:

the exaltation of detail,
the swarm of perspective,
the cosmic owl,
the gastric somatization,
the cognitive flexibility,
and other series of ghostly straw men.

At times I find joy spectating the conflict;
sometimes I deny it;
sometimes I think about the importance of its existence,
this way, like a group of tired theater actors
who spend money on rehearsals
for my life’s play,
I exercise to fall,
to adapt,
to understand my place within things.

Yes, all that I boast about
is all that I lack.
I don’t name my wealth,
I don’t see it
and, sometimes,
I don’t know that it exists.

◆

Rabid

Flutter the weightless virgin insects
in pretentious almond trees;
flutter the fragile boys
along alleyways of French bread rolls and brick;
flutter the small doves
on electric posts
along contaminated avenues;
flutter the small cops
surrounding hungry houses;
flutter the congressmen
in prestige storefronts,
above the basic food basket’s limit;
flutter the words of love,
of rejection,
of indifference.

There’s suffocation outside the oasis
and the addictive pharmacies.

Flutters the specter
announcer of stories,
chants,
accounts,
and different congestions.

Fluttering I,
brutalized spectator,
you,
merciless reader;
unfathomable theaters,
unwritten lines,
cocaine,
diazepam,
chlorine,
activities in the style of a funeral
or a beauty salon,
where one buys speed,
and rest,
and what’s clean
(which is the most vulgar type of beauty
that exists).

After all of it, there’s you,
who thinks this poem matters,
and I, writing it,
along with the vulgarity of insects,
about the moments we no longer know each other,
call each other by the names of other people, wear a seductive mask,
struggling so the world won’t steal our tenderness,
so they don’t measure the weight of cellulitis,
acne,
cavities;
so we don’t have bottled speeches
with which we pretend to avenge the decadence
of everything that flutters,
so we don’t say
I no longer want to flutter,
that’s a thing of insignificant creatures;
what I produce is thought,
severity,
tongues ripped out of putrid mouths
that may make me think
I’m on the right side of history.

…But there’s no right side.
That’s why history flutters around a graveyard
and diamonds spit out angels
who also make decisions
with severity.