Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Reunited You take a puff of my cigarette the smoke ascends over the napkin —  your inaugurated lips and your discreet gaze I’ll see you later

Mistakes It’s the very last time I listen to myself say and you return 

Regret I give you a figure yet you choose your dreams and break  once you know my answer. Lamento Te esculpo escoges tus sueños te desgarras al saber  mi respuesta.

Razones  duermes en mis brazos sin saber distinguir tu calor del mío caminas sobre mi sombra con la necesidad emocional de un párroco arrodillado lloras porque no sabes cuando callar lo que te hace feliz callas pues confías  en tu ignorancia  más que en tu desdicha finalmente terminas siendo aquel a quien no  conoces

Partiendo escucho  pero tú no pareces   sino la voz de la existencia del otro .

Breaking Away I listen yet you don’t appear to be anything but the voice of the other's existence. 

Poem up at RED FEZ http://www.redfez.net/redfez/SubPage1.php?page=SubPoetry&ID=1232

Maybe the Moon Difficult times,  skip ropes  and pigtails  eroded in the breath of a dog-face-afternoon. Maybe the moon will come closer to whatever intelligent life is left in our dwindling universe and your wind will blow in my direction pure like the blood  that runs through the gates  of heaven, the deep color of clay.

 Tanka # 51 Definitions let them slide tragedy or miracle skeptic or vulnerable   love is caught in fear

On Friendship and Indiscretion  for Rey Smith She steps aside and watches  me struggle in silence as I cowered  from expressing my concern. The best I can do is talk  about my own shortcomings:  the impatience with hardship,  the many interruptions  in what almost seems  like one sided conversations.  Yet she already knows I am worried about his safety. He crashed  his car twice in the last month  and the binges lasted longer than the weekends.   I will have to move. But she stands beside me  silently praying I will not speak ill  of my best friend.

broken no time to fix  the iron  in your silence the dogs barked minutes later  there was  an earthquake next week I’ll wire the bottles to the counter

Selfless This friendship lasted over 42 years Rey Smith ~ may you rest in peace She sleeps with hummingbirds in a grape tree by the brook. When she wakes, she’ll dance weightless through a sea of light like a young bough and softly flutter her wings on my earlobes before she says a prayer and  returns to her Lord.

Salt They dressed you in wind to try and capture what cannot be captured. Then the oracles gave you white lightning so you could take on the eaters of your navel, horizontal men with little, if any, air stream. Your poetry spewed into the epitaphs of ghosts where chrome crosses shone inward and annatto phalluses burned with salt.  

No title # V for your benefit oblivion and passion  are cleft asunder I slide down a drop of pouring rain exiled  in a sip of water

Loud Eddie He watches his pockets  as if they were poppies in July  and salvation depended on a tenth  of your blood already exchanged  for money. He farts in the aisles  at the grocery store,  concerned with no one but himself, and pretends he has a love life. Yet I am sure when he’s gone  I will remember the stories  and the ferocious laugh that warned others he was not  to be tampered with.