Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

something  has come between us— it will not sleep it whimpers settles in the interstice

bailing out-- no parachute beside my bed

in la Belle Epoque    of the imagination,  the egg came first... a box without corners an isolated oddity

Jolts from the not too Distant Past no way to bail out, no parachute beside my bed…       I wrapped myself around the AIDs epidemic in the 80’s.  The fear grew well into the 90’s, when I saw a man on a starvation drip. (no more Lazarus for him) He had had enough of needles and ventilators and AZT and gauze and scars and tubing. Suddenly my fear was gone, and there was a raw sense of militancy. I was determined to give him a dignified burial. What else could I do for a person who had starved himself to death rather than go on fighting a lost battle. One really needs to be brave and distinguished to accomplish such a deed with honor. I knew that, the nurses knew that.  His family knew nothing but the looming gossip around them.

come as you are before it snows again— chrysanthemum shaped fireworks explode over the sky

Each to his fidgety revenge  It was you  who threw away  my name. Where were you  when I was burning alive  with duende, learning  to love myself  too much?

insomnia living in the house of chaos— my place until the sun is in my window I listen to the things I own, the murmur of an empty mattress, the steady accusations of the clock my factory where decay's silent armies clock in to steal the grace of sleep

Remind me to kill you later of who I am of my country Remind me to look-up the name of this cancer to cuddle Remind me of my own dear friends                         my hunger                         my suicide                         to levitate                         and fill my pockets with rocks Remind me of the clouds                         and the daffodils      ...

Clouds The last time I saw the place where clouds are formed was from my window. Rich moisture moving through the saguaros, touching them from head to toe. Once I saw the place where clouds are formed in your eyes, high above the stars, wet, damp, tearful. I had nothing to say, no story to tell, just a sad hum.

He is what is left of my life a blizzard of one snowflake the lies I tell him are different from the lies I tell myself. When I walk, I part the air between us, and "air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been."

Marilyn Monroe August 5, 1962 the nightmare a tortured poet the manic fear an imperfection half-drugged eyes under the lids of teal shadows Marilyn’s face dissolved in ink used by men of ambiguous capacities hers was no common emptiness her self-consciousness was really her infatuation with her own fame in perfect solitude there is a lasting fire

Vietnam I was a hippie apprentice, a secret heard for the last time, a song moving through the city like a widow. I was snow shredded with gunfire, and roseflower petals on a black dog.

an obsession its poise unquestionable, voice unsteady? it praises calmness but adores upheaval I walk alone across the floor of my life-- a spider                    wrapped up in a simple obsession in the days when my obsession was only a wound-up toy, intractable as the world seemed, I was happy

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