Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

alive and well in the age of color blindness... I stand naked for no one but myself

sleepwalking on the way to Jericho difficulties vanish *Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around citation:  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

where is  your native land? dipped in mud... my head covered  with the thin blanket of poverty

agoraphobia... who can blame me for declining to defy such whiteness with the snowshoe cruelty of tracks

refugees on their last legs-- playground stones in the cupped hand of a lifeless child

there was a time when I chopped down trees, beat my head praying against a seawall... my innocence lost in dreams

painkillers... what are you waiting for touch me like you do

you dream of having a Chinese garden in a forest full of mirrors  I draw a map of myself in the sand a draft of the theory of zero

there are birds trapped in those shadows they're bursting  with untold happiness... bird songs awaken the dead 

you were seated in the fires of ambivalence -- born into violence I wake up tired of wading through storms of ashes

I've changed the furniture,  rewritten our relationship back  to its beginning...  strangers dancing at a bar  in Amsterdam

beyond grief and grievance Je suis Charlie

breathless moments breaking me down drunk on grief 

standing at the door  pieces of a great mystery

autumn comes with a price… the world caves in on itself, yet at the river's edge a heron lifts in flight

there's nothing here but speech, the words we  fill the dark with hoping for a rescue party knotted in the lines

on the bridge  to my next huge sadness... water

shadows pierced by the sun confetti

don't stop the rain from falling on my wings my eyes  are swimming in your breast... a minute for the two of us