haiku
brisa salada sopla sobre nuestros cuerpos noche otoñal
Posts
The key you have not lost
The key you have not lost is there between those spaces, not by or in, but flanked between the here and there, living like a fugitive on your skin. It is a prelude to our memoirs, the text of a poem fused with nectarines, an exploration through Copper Canyon , visions of Haiti ’s angels licking my ears, a hypnotic dance on sands matching the colors that mesh upon your hips, an experiment we refuse to put down, an invitation to cross the doorway of the home I no longer occupy. The key you have not lost is not the manual for a digital camera, or calendar entries for next month’s readings. It is not the Popular Mechanics article you wrote to put food on our table, or a classified add on craigslist. It wants to be the bungee jump into the pangs of a deer in heat, the obitu...
The Illusion
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.
On Family Days
On Family Days You don’t try hard enough, she’d say. All the while, his thoughts grow increasingly gray. She can’t smell the fear he inhabits, a macabre work of art from which he comes and goes, the run of wind at a deserted murder scene. She forgets, as he forgets, control will arrive soon enough, and that brachiated spectacle of blame and praise will dissipate like hurricanes dispel after they touch land. They’ll both be left wondering about the pieces of debris, the river’s current, and how much to fix of whatever comes undone.
Quilts, Flags, and other Wrappings
Quilts, Flags, and other Wrappings I started the quilt when the only reminder of civility I had was a stuffed doll whose button eyes fell off. Sewed while bathing under the moon’s eclipse and watched you throw my porcelain spoons— a collection of gifts, against the wall. I stopped stitching when you drove that bulldozer in sight of all those present at Jose's welfare funeral just because he was gay and my friend. I glared at the tangled patches of quilt as they threw me into a paddy wagon took me to jail for protesting that unwinnable war. I climbed into bed even as Allen lay covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma to calm both our fears, his and mine. Studied you when a signature to keep your only brother from becoming homeless made you shudder at the funeral expense if he died while the blotch of endearment you gave him was still warm on that piece of white insignificance. Then I added...
Mr. Morris
Mr. Morris Mr. Morris was a tenant in my house, and a friend. He wore the night on his skin, a panther copiously sprinkled with stars draped in spider webs. After a long day's work he’d sit by the phone in the kitchen and counsel dying men I’d never see. When the virus spread and independent living was no longer an option he wouldn’t complain, show fear or pain, even when I’d rush him to the emergency room. It was in a sweat lodge with Mr. Morris that my feathers dropped as he rose above the cornfield like a vision.
Lucas
Lucas We met one last time before his corpse was washed. I couldn’t get past the odor of medicine, the skin and bones talking from the wheelchair stopped me cold. Lucas? Lucas… I didn’t recognize the proud man I once knew. He said: Come, give me a hug. I held on to a chair worried I’d faint, but I couldn’t betray the hope invested in an embrace. He found substance in the gathering of friends. I know because I am acquainted with my sins, and all the ways my fears have killed.
Dead Willow
Dead Willow [ There is a straw mattress full of bedbugs under the dead willow, where the tears of every whore in town are as open as red hibiscus. It is the only place left to wait. ] We went our separate ways, but when I reached the train tracks I picked up a few rocks to throw at the racemes of trouble hanging in the meadow orchard ahead. My feet, undefined wanderings of a bite, were in pain as I suspect they will continue to be until my time spills over. I knew there was a mystic in the ordinary—(à la Rilke) that would carry me (Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!) through the rest of the day, like that first cup of coffee, or a prayer said in the distant past.
Snorting Through His Ass
Snorting Through His Ass He is a medical student on his way to Spain with his intestines full of plastic bags containing cocaine. He is so good-looking, un sol that thought about little else except his cut. School became unimportant, la familia didn’t matter. There was nothing he could foresee, not even the possible prison term in a Spanish jail: that is not going to happen. There will not be any consequences if I keep calm, cool, and collected. But things don’t always work-out as planned and the beads of sweat are a dead giveaway after a six hour plane ride with your ass stuffed. Then the “what if” one of those bags ruptures before you pass Customs and you start feeling cold. Your heart begins to race, suddenly you’re sweating profusely and everything is turning around at 60 miles an hour. You know you’re going to need a hospital, but mother doesn’t know where you are and you’ve arrived with a quar...
My Palace in the Shade
My Palace in the Shade I’ve spoken to my hands before, whenever I’ve had visions of Hitler in hell with a hose up his rectum; my laugh reaches new limits. Why—peeping through Hoffman’s camera—am I more alive alone now than when I am with another man? I know people have nightmares about blood, if not blood, roots. It’s an excuse to keep dying, or ask for the time. My palace in the shade is full of books packed with questions. Is the law, cops rubbing their eyes, and its curvature, an American sentence? Does it have the right syllable count? Is it true doves demand they be allowed to go to war in heaven? I’ve become a saint. My grace has a catheter in its nadir.
wet stones
wet stones no one understands him as I do i hear fervid winds in the stillness of his hands no one rubbed my narrow walls as he did we danced to death's song without any recollection of another life i claim two sighs and a large garland but if he's never to return we'll drown this grief together wet stones orbiting restless echoes in a drop of rain
What I Recall of Madness
What I Recall of Madness there were wheels, and they spun with a roar there were sparse, but crucial moments of masochism those made me want to end the journey with a surprise there were blue skies, and lapses of memory those felt like trickles of light disappearing there were substitutes for affection but they made me round and ordinary there was medication, but it never seemed to be enough
Skylark
Skylark She waits for the early morning mist to cover the valley— the flower of tranquility. Her arms full of a timid light weight down the air as the western stars begin to fade into a trail of broken hearts.