Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

A Song of Ice and Fire “Fear is for the winter… when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. ― George R.R. Martin , A Game of Thrones                 What is the most precious part of your body, your house of stillness? Do you remember that your fingers are places of prayer? One never knows where the body is going. Concentrate on what you might acquire. A mate, a pilgrimage to somewhere distant in the heart, a brain unlocked or left to ruin, and ears for music: A Song of Ice and Fire. Is it that thing between your legs? Bowed down by words like firewood, clenched with words like ice… language is for the coward who thinks a rule is nice at any price. Oh my Ariel, you are in your eighties now, a universe apart. Seven realms in long summer days, but soon will winter come.

Medication Half asleep and wrapped in a blanket of nightmares I pass through all the broken windows of the world with an appetite for cake. It is the medication struggling to wear off, the dew-haze blurs of an autumn sky.  I yearn for a day without a fix, a day with the realization of who I’ve become in the tall grass of my imagination.

Silence And in that city the houses of the dead are left empty... Debora Greger, The Dictionary of Silence   The cold war has not ended. Its architecture of  loneliness  became as widespread as the silence between  the sun  and the moon. a battle of gestures, this silent doomsday, is our last chance to open a bottle of good champagne

Headlines Meadowlarks sing to the dead man who got sick with sorrow. Covered in death’s icy mosses the dead man lies flat, laughing sardonically at heaven. He wants to read the headlines to ponder and resolve the riddle of his days. For his brain is not swamped with the poisoned blood of lust. On the day of his death he read news items about what’s happening in Iran. Suddenly the Ayatollahs of the revolution piled in his heart and they suppurated in his soul and he knew he had been cheated by life, so he died and meadowlarks pleaded for his asylum in heaven. The Ayatollahs laughed, and then there was silence, except for the hiss of his rotting body.

Sex at sixty-three - Tanka prose It’s been years since the color of my sex is red. Nothing  seems to interest me. Is it fear? Those old lovers stay away;  the new one’s lie, no, vie for my paycheck. Salt and pepper  hair, bald spots, and I am so fat that who would want me anyway.  to all the boys  that are so smart,  I have let my anger pass,  so while you’re down there kiss my ass and I will love again at last. This is not a promise. I’ve begun  a scrapbook with the sole purpose of pinning my sex drive.  You can’t hear it, or see it, or read it, or sing it, specially sing  it, since I don’t rhyme. But you can feel it, my crocodile skin.  Please don’t laugh. It’s not a laughing matter. I’m so lonely  my shoulder bone hurts. what illness  do I think I have— the warrens of my brain dry  and crackle

let's pretend  I came to swim, hands spread apart, in the wet sands  of devotion  scraps of music cleanse me 

painting a wave is a lot of trouble— water  under water  with its thin  mascara  of buoys and corks

It’s been a long time coming I’ve had to reach deep inside my shipwrecked city to say  goodbye to my dead.  Now, I am a morning mutant, calling  out His Name from my nuclear abyss, ninety-five times a day.   I’ve lost all my images to the moon, to the doorways that  promise answers, to stories of old wars, and I bury my  head in the piñatas waiting for the sun to shine brighter.

*Se acabo , it's all over, baby... blackbirds smash their heads against a window, dragonflies of mythic proportions sink in water. "*Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." ¡Se acabo!  ~~~~~~~~~~ *it’s all over, song by La Lupe * Wool and Water, Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

I’m Cantinflas I taught you how to cry a verb, kill a moffie, set his body on fire in a tent performance

a new beginning  I who am something else enter your mouth unafraid  of kisses...I try to make  these wretched words  line up again across this paper  that can feel no pain a new beginning  starting from shale  scuffed by wind the survey of a condor’s eye

to be dipped down and again into time— everyone screams as they go through life, silently

stained-glass window the beauty of your light  shining within a healthy measure  of darkness

http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/ Sunday, March 30, 2014 One Man's Maple Moon: Wild Horse Tanka by Sergio Ortiz English Original I was the sin, a wild horse galloping from the horizon -- everything I saw was spoken into her ear Cattails , 1, January 2014 Sergio Ortiz Chinese Translation (Traditional) 我有罪， 像是脫韁野馬從地平線 奔騰而來 -- 我所看到的一切 都在她耳邊訴說    Chinese Translation (Simplified) 我有罪， 像是脱韁野马从地平线 奔腾而来-- 我所看到的一切 都在她耳边诉说

*"let’s walk among the night’s dark roses"— it's hard to pack for the rest of my life when all I really need is a hug ~~~~~~ * Cabaret Ludwig by Rachel Wetzsteon

dawn  broke... no, shattered— rattled  like a coin  in a beggar's cup days after your funeral

the skin of slumber is thin-- come back from the echoless shore, rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep

Scheherazade a day-and-night pattern  of spirals,  a thousand and one nights  of her private gamble

attrition warfare a language of mass death how high a price for victory