Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

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