Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

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

The key you have not lost is there between those spaces, not by or in, but flanked between 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 ad on craigslist. It wants to be the bungee jump into the pangs of a deer in heat, the obituary of bolted doorknobs, or a listing for all the vacant walls on which we'll scribble our graffiti. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 2010

Tristan Breathe, let the lepers out.   Drift to the edge of my cloud and speak. Find the fire, burn my locust storm.   Persuade me to sleep in a matrix full of sails that drift disoriented yet attuned to the wind.   Touch me like an innocent man willing to let go of his campfire in the middle of this circular stage, the classroom where pupils are attentive to the magician’s tricks.   Dream and let that dream flood my vigilant ghosts, impostors of windflowers and silk. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, 

this is my story and place of birth a wheelchair a body wrapped in a sack a childhood jerked around by an unwarranted curse and a stubborn useless desire for a pair of tailored hands climbing up my thighs  ©  Sergio A.  Ortiz, publisher:  Flutter Press, 2009