Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

To the insolence of a scream The new big bang, is it the cry of an Emperor’s tired mule, or the screaming scent of night blooming jasmine?  Perhaps it is the riddles of the blue men of the Minch enchanted by the chocolate fragrance of the night, or the turquoise  music of the deckhands.  The new big bang, we got so dressed up  for that event we looked like mannequins who vomited because  worrying builds up fat.   

The Phone Call I turn my face and I am ten sitting by the phone waiting for your call.  All my dead are in a field of butchered children striving to appease this racing blood. I’ll renounce every grudge with a million oaths, press out every umbrage that fills my chest with pus if that phone rings and you ask for me, your only son... mother.

In This Well Come, there are no bodyguards in this well, only a shrine covered with crosses and a high mast fanned by invisible winds.  These mud walls regularly flinch like a drunken homosexual who just found out he’s HIV positive. “I want flowers, arum lilies, gardenias, and tulips; it’s the end of the year, time to celebrate.  Oh, and don’t forget to rent Gone with the Wind .  Please, no ashes, I want to be a diamond on a flashing white finger."

Tinta Entintar tu cuerpo con la nada  Sobre mi piel anudada  Es borrar la esquina de nuestro arrabal  Devolver los ojos tajeados al paredón de mi niñez.  Cible D'encrage de votre corps avec rien sur ma peau nouée Est effacé nôtre ghetto Rendre les yeux coupassent au mur de fusill é s de mon enfance. Ink Inking your body into nothing On my very knotted skin Erases the corner of our ghetto Returns these slashed out eyes to the executioner's Wall of a sad and lonely youth. الحبر بلدان منكم الهيئة لا تملك شيئا مني جدا باﻵخرين الجلد أو زاوية نظرنا الغيتو عودة هؤلاء الى تخفيضها في عينيه ألا في جدار الحزن على أعمال الشباب.

Time Waits Once I was a mute rock, a muffled accordion, smothered cello hiding in my secret pain, wearing a trench coat of unidentified emotions.   There was always the fear I would break and everything I’d worked so hard to cover up with fancy rhinestone mustangs would gallop forth in all its rawness to be ripped apart. Time waits for the first of us to speak, then opens up a city hydrant.   That’s when our language disappears, and all we hear is the resonance of laughter.

I wrote the poem below this tango. Harassed, because I woke up humming this song for two days in a row.  I guess that when a poem wants to be written it will do just about anything to show its strength. Sergio

Harassed what I want to be is thread mark live coal a distinct aptitude the hawfinch song with a hawk-owl tail in short it is a different offering hounding my heart he is a well built panic room the minimal significance  of a phonetic expression on the tongue

Last Stop that my worst enemy not be the barbarian’s footservant’s verse or his easy-going memory that I may choose a tougher skin for my errant legs, not one that collapses in a galloping fire that my words come from a recognizable palace furnished with truth, joy, and pain that the most embellished portrait keep me alive at the last stop of the Orient Express

Take the Blank Page to the cacophony of other poets the ones that mock my images that other me making fun of me whispering: take-the-blank-page and make it your home wheel it through life after all, we are that ram that keeps the balance on the low end of the blank page the gun, the seed of the old gender that forbids all unauthorized transportation of cum fallen in the activity of love, the inferno that genetically manipulates the bent germ from the juice of war.

Penance A lizard bit a spider  in  your lumberjack’s tool shed.  I cried  watching it rot like a dead, dry trunk. Today it rained,  you clamped  the memories  of everything  we’d built together trying  hard to make me smile. The fragrance of the moon is profoundly asleep, but the sun is awake.

These fabricated lines are the tuffs of what I’ve never said out loud, the authentic celestial kicking up of heels in homoerotic retinues. They pile on wherever mahogany curves like a hand classifying the erections   of retired gay gigolos.  Ones from a different era, because the ones today are christened Jesus la Muerte, Jesus the bling is coming out your ass, Jesus don’t suck my face, I blow but only kiss real women. And it’s because lately I’ve been drowning in an ebb of blood and I want to leave a written declaration proving the existence of my ink and paper unicorn so that you know I came from a different era.  One where a kiss never imitated death, or money.  We were just two bodies, two men swimming into open sea.

Estas líneas fabricadas son el penacho de lo que nunca digo en voz alta, el autentico jaraneo celestial en comparsas homoer ó ticas.  Se amontonan dondequiera corva la caoba como la mano que clasifica erecciones de bugarr ó nes retirados.  Los de otro tiempo, porque los de ahora se llaman Jesús la muerte, Jose el bling me brota por el culo, Juan no me chupes los labios que no soy gay.  Y es que últimamente me ahogo en una marea de mentiras y quiero mostrarles a mi unicornio de tinta y papel para que sepan que yo fui de aquella época donde el beso no imitaba a la muerte, ni cobraba un minimun charge .  Éramos dos cuerpos, dos hombre queriendo meterse mar adentro. Estas linhas feitas são da pena do que nunca dizer em voz alta, o "jaraneo" celestial real en comparsas homoeróticas. Eles multidão de mogno em toda parte curvada como a mão que classifica ereção de bugarron aposentado. O outro momento, porque agora Jesus chamado morte bling J...

Antonio’s Rape He grew old covered by the  caña  leaves under the hammock bridge in his home town.  A leaf storm alerted a neighbor who called the police, who called his grandmother, who refused to walk that Via Crusi and sent her only daughter strong enough to deal with  la hojarasca .  Twenty cents and the weight of the man’s body sucked his breath out. His shorts were down to his knees, ass still sticky, memories gone. - It's been a week since Miguel's been fixing to poach around here. - You be careful with that man, you hear. Do not get near him. - Why auntie? Who is he? What's he look like? - Fuck, you don't get near him because I say so. - Don't ask a fucking thing you little brat. Why is this happening? - Look at the way you dress him. He looks like a god-damn sissy. - Do not leave him alone in the house. - Yeah, who the hell is going to be watching here, you? All of us work. - Look hear you little bastard, if I have to give   your mother a...

Well, the problem is theoretically solved.  Yesterday I talked to my psychiatrist and we decided on how it is that I need to medicate myself before I go into a hospital.  He also suggested it is time for me to make arrangements to leave Puerto Rico, something I have been wanting to do for a long time now.  He says a move within the next two years will be a smart move.  So I need to start looking for a community where I might have access to good benefits as an elderly person.  A good health plan and living arrangement.  I am already trying to save for this possibility.  Things are going to get pretty bad in Puerto Rico and it is going to take a long time before they get any better.  So to all my dear friends in all those artistic communities.  I am letting you know I am on my way back to the mainland.  It might take another year or so but the return is inevitable. Sergio 

Paraguas de cola erecta y rótulos en cavidades erógenas exigen cerrojos de ébano y marfil, postre de códigos: alcachofas que nos esperan al borde del abismo sicalíptico banquete de relojes donde ha de medirse todo, los centímetros, el espesor la agudeza de gritos, la trans- piración, los suspiro, el mela-o que se corre por mis mejillas al  decir: lo quiero adentro completitito .

The wind brought us close to butterflies and yellow maples.  We danced, read each other’s memoirs, hung the pictures of who we wanted to be in front of our bed and went to sleep.  We woke and said: That is who I want to be. rejection, the penumbra of voices that differ

Solo el Rumor ¿Oye alguien mi canción? José Lezama Lima Yo que no he visto la cordura ni al perro siberiano pasearse con su recua entre las nieves blancas, y que tampoco aprecio el silencio invernal del crepúsculo ni el sonido de osos rebuscando entre mis víveres. Me pregunto: ¿Alguien vendrá a poner su mano por la mía sobre el picador, o su firma en el papel que reclama todo lo que me han robado en mi viaje por la vida? Yo no he visto la ternura tampoco siento excitación al observar al niño comer de las manos protegidas de su madre. Solo el rumor de lejanas ciudades donde el invierno dura más que el verano acelera el ritmo de mi sangre. Porque ese frio si es mío. Yo que no he visto nunca la cordura he jugado con el agua y la nieve, que son la misma cosa. Los he amarrado entre mis piernas como se amarra a un amante. Le he dado forma con mis manos como se le da forma al pretencioso amor. Yo que estoy harto de escuchar a los lobos y dormir bajo los sauces ya no tiemblo...

Seva City Bloody, bitter fingerprint fluttering like crazy as it runs by a melancholic echo trapped inside seashells for relief. They are misaligned birds, men in tri-color suits waiting for the foam and the quetzal. Space becomes narrower, and our city collapses. Eventually we will open fire on this cascade of sparrows hiding in the polls of the blind. Ciudad Seva Sangrienta huella de amargura aletea como loca al recorrer el eco melancólico del desahogo atrapado en las caracolas .  Son pájaros desali ñ ados, se ñ ores tri-colores esperando a la espuma y al quetzal mientras la ciudad se derrumba y el espacio se hace más angosto. Tarde o temprano abrirás fuego, del todo al todo, contra esa cascada de pajarracos que se esconden en las urnas de los ciegos .