Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

On Their Eightieth Birthday dedicated to the Governor of Arizona The poem has been accepted for publication.  I will put it back up after it gets published. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 29, 2010

Queridos amigos, (Dear friends)   Quiero invitarlos a que escuchen a Calle 13 - Musica urbana from de Island of Porto Rico, BORICUA!!!!   Allow me to turn you on to Puerto Rican Urban music-  RESIDENTE CALLE 13 MUA!  pApI TU SABES QUE TE AMO!

On My Own Will there be a change in your voice next winter?  —I prefer to shelter it with rum, walk through the monkey-puzzles in the Andes.  Their leaves are as thick and tough as my hands, scale-like with sharp edges, heaving like my heart.  The winds coming from the Pacific fan out my reptilian branches.  Black-faced Ibis fly overhead.  At least I know they will return next spring. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 28, 2010

Dead Cats and Poisoned Frogs The feverish python made you shrink like all the other little Hamlet's Cerberus bribes: Business men in silk ties, boogieing Isadora’s whose scarves tangle when they trundle around the globe choking on meth-amphetamines. They grease the bodies of social security millionaires in the back of warehouses. You bring me Mariachis, or Japanese paper moons on my birthdays, but I am a virgin attended by banana breads, and an old withered Madeleine. Money is the sperm fluid dead cats and frogs take to your bed—your breakfast, along with freshly cut roses imported from Iran while you listen to drums announce the countdown for yet another electoral confrontation.

The Rival taken down for publication ©  Sergio A. Ortiz April 25, 2010

By Sergio A. Ortiz Dear Friend,         I went to this protest thinking it was going to be a community protest of no great consequence. I had no idea of the seriousness of the problem in Old San Juan, a city that is hundreds of years old. Four days ago, I walked through this very site and took photographs of this garden on the side of La Casa Rosa. That photograph is in an album at Facebook. Yesterday, this was all that was left of that garden. To make things worse I walked by a couple cats that had been poisoned.           Some of you may already be wondering who to hold responsible for this atrocious act of stupidity and brutality, in Spanish we call it a "BURRADA". Well I have been informed that the donkeys on which to pin the tail for this criminal act are the First Lady of Puerto Rico and her friend, the First Lady of the city of San Juan. A city that is hundreds of years old and that has been the victom of donkey...

Postcard to Willie Perdomo April 22 nd 2010 Willie, papi, Sorry I missed you at my alma mater But judging from the way you’ve cut the amapolas And all those barrio pitchers and jungle leopards You write about, I thought it would be best if I waited For the right milky constellation  To appear before we actually met.  So much has gone down in these two years.  I still don’t see men like me in your poems, But if the barrio is anything like the island I know I’m in there somewhere. By the way, listen to this:  You didn’t just toe me an inch, no — Nor leave me to set my small bald eye Skyward again, without hope … Negro, you should know better than to take me Seriously, it’s all Klonopin And lithium, gang rapes and LSD. Promise you’ll read my manuscript. It won’t disappoint you, or the guys in the barrio. tuyo por el resto de esta fucking vida sergio ©  Sergio A. Ortiz April 22nd, 2010

To the Crying Venusians dedicated to Ashley Santiago and Steven L ópez Mercad both brutally murdered trans-gender people living in Puerto Rico My skin shrieks, a cave dweller notified of yet another death, filaments by which the eagerness  of penguins annihilate memories of dwindling oceanic twilight.  I did not want to leave a trail for redheaded dragons with fiery tongues to terrify empty lighthouses, meadows and the jingles of readers on my day of resurrection. Queen Lazarus unwraps my feet with the grace of a deer tutoring my hands in the art of dying. Daddy, daddy, daddy my knees are skin and bone. I wear a pink triangle and numbers tattooed around my ankles. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 21, 2010

The Illusion You punish me to provide a spectacle of excess—tamp my testicles with affirmations of your power. Your mannequins blow and breathe urgency like naked bald-hydras morgue between Santiago and Lima where desert sands are voiceless. What is different between us is the intensity of our attraction. Oh, how many nooses I've stretch around the necks of gigolos at cul-de-sac social clubs where cellos moan and mouths wilt as I listen to tangos and pick up sugar dropped on the table trying to ignore the blood on my recently buffed shoes. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, April 19, 2010

Año XIV • Nº 229 5 de abril de 2010  Cagua, Venezuela Poemas  Sergio Ortiz cuando el otoño no se acuerda su nombre el timbre tiene que cambiar y así se ha hecho todos los timbres suenan para querer, devolver la movilidad de tu conciencia, la que no te vale nada como el  kayak  que usas cuando nadas por las nubes tocando tu tendón de Aquiles un poco envejecido bombón envejecido y embustero a ti te mueve el dinero las conchas secas la cintura estrecha pero envejecida tu zapato derecho la máscara que usas al correr diez millas de grama linda putos zapatos mi pobre pueblo decenas de ranas y reptiles políticos invadieron su pozo ahora todos nos odiamos virus de zapos con  “putos zapatos” de cocodrilo La seducción Para aquellos días íbamos a la playa a practicar el tiro al blanco: la seducción. Aprendimos inglés, o francés. Leer quitaba un poco la mancha de plátano así es que no faltaba el  bestseller. Se usaba la palabra...

To the rock of Sisyphus a tide, yes a tide of blood. We say so weedy a race only happens in mythology.  There the famished plump the bellies of their camels in wars empty of complaints. Unicorns thin out in paper jungles to survive the vinegar of our contracted livers. Uta’s stare, and the absolute silence of slender bony people wearing black cornflowers, and purple cabbage-roses on their surgically-enhanced-lipped smiles at funerals revive our fears.  There is no Shangri-La, no forest, canyon, or wilderness far enough to stand and guard against their stiff and lean assault on peace. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 17, 2010

Evil and Heart He used to wake me up at five a.m., eight a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. I’d stare into his eyes and ken that skinflint angel caressing the most obtuse features seizing my morning thoughtlessness. All sorts of miracles occurred throughout the day, tricks of the heart.  Then he bought me an alarm.  I knew a rook had made its nest in his trunk.  It was as if he’d moved me back and forth through dosshouses, I couldn’t sleep.  My friends said I resembled a comma. That was, of course, until I met Omar.  He’d call me up at five a.m., eight a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and grunt like a grizzly bear without constraints. My teeth would actually chatter, and my skin sounded like roasted, crackling pig. But my heart never did get over those everlasting Monday’s when Steve softly poked whatever cheek he’d chose to kiss that day and say: honey, wake up! ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 15, 2010

Dear Reader, I took this poem down because it will be published within the next few days at   Scythe. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, 14 th of April, 2010

Recently I wrote a poem that will be published very soon.  The poem “Transparency” is a reflection on how little input most of us get to boost our self-esteem from the people that matter the most.    So much is overlook in family ties, lifelong friendships, and work relationships, we are left with the sensation of being locked-up in a cage like a neurotic animal reminiscing on the freedom of the wild.   Recently pop singer Shakira put out a video where while sleeping with her significant other she turns into some sort of a shewolf locked-up in a cage.  This is one of the most artistic videos I’ve recently had the privilege of viewing.  Our anger has no other option but to populate that cage with our imagination (in Shakiras case it is the many distortions her body goes through as a half-breed human/gothic animal) an imagination that struggles to find the balance between fiction and reality.    For some this is a good thing since it sets in...

Satan’s Bride The great payoff is over. Turn your mirror to the caterwauls of Satan’s bride if superbly round breast and two weeks vacation in the azure with Circe be your goal. Death has a first, second, and third prize in the lottery of stars: a rare rumpus, a magical orb sweetly rolling around your arm pits, and clouds on their way home along the seashore. The streets sing as well, to hydrocephalic politicians reeking of a haunt. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz April 13, 2010

We Walk the Plank with Strangers Dear friends. this poem was taken down because it will be published in the next few days at  Scythe © Sergio A. Ortiz, April 10 th , 2010

Dear Friends, this poem was taken down because it will be published at  Scythe within the next few days. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz Rivera, April 2010

otra vez flores maravilloso lustre tu piel sin teñir Haiku ©    Sergio A. Ortiz, April 2010 Pintura:  © y  cortesía de la Compañía de Turismo de Puerto Rico

A Letter to Emily She makes the women think I’m caught on her nail-dangles. Although, I do admit to a slight inclination, a tiny swoop. I don’t blush. No, I won’t blush like the gothic Bronte sister & all her brilliant Oh’s. For all it’s worth, this rendezvous with tattle teller dreams is all the marrow I need.  Feel free to kick; days beneath the high tide cling to the wedding of words. I’m never right! ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 2019

to the oasis  Dear Friends this poem was taken down because it will be published at  Scythe  within the next few days. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz April 2010

Pintura:  © y  cortesía de la Compañía de Turismo de Puerto Rico

Itinerary “ If it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. ” William Shakespeare When did my mysterious itinerary with words begin:  the one I could clear on stilts, one that could send me crashing by the moon’s frozen lake when I dance in the vertigo of the forked road, like a tide of shadows watching a pheasant nest on an icy dolmen? ©  Sergio Ortiz, April, 2010