Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Epistle to future poets Poems are long avenues where our burning rage marches. Everywhere the crying, everywhere a black wall besieged. Could our poetry be a solitary column of dew? It has to be perpetual thunder as long as children stare at a loaf of bread with envy. There are higher things to mourn than lost lovers: the sound of a society finally awakening is more beautiful than the dew, the glittering metal of its anger more beautiful than sea foam. A free man is purer than a diamond.

Indigent I’ve squandered the rainbow, the swallows I set aside for poems are in the red. The account of my sunsets has been frozen. I owe the treasury five thousand fifty butterflies.

Letter to the drummer of my band I want to watch that movie at the cinema I want to see the roses and not see the roses I want to drink café-au-lait, and drink and drink drink this and that and what you have to give and what I have to offer I want to go to the movies but I don’t want to see the movie I want you and him but more you than him more than you or him I want some coke 

To the Economic Board the US Senate wants to Impose on Puerto Rico The crime has been committed, But you’re going to cover it up with sheets, and sheets of paper in television adds, and radio spots. The thick still air, the terror, the ignominy surrounding voices— traffic, life— the crime / has been committed.

sorry but this one has just been submitted.

Sorry but this one has also been submitted

Don’t blame yourself or build paradise out of your faults and miseries, don’t ask your tired nerves for a halo erected out of truth, or demand the unexpected serenity of a vision. Please, try to understand, the world couldn’t care less. Don’t mislead or deceive or fight or turn tomorrow into an opportunity. Don’t plan equilibrium and reason for yourself —always a good shadow. Pay attention to your obsession with the imaginary moon, silver-plate your phantom’s song. Any day’s a good beginning. An hour can be agreed upon. Don’t hurry, it’s like a scuba-diver groping the waters of the sea. Without fear but with the passing grace of a man who has never known to where he is going.

Cover - A Tribute We got there late. Me to your dream and you to my best hour, merman hidden in the cornfields of my body.  Later we lost sight of each other amid the tumult of adolescence. We broke up, widowed before the marriage ever consummated. Fifteen years later we saw each other, me the bard, you the juris doctor. An avalanche of love made me call you the next day. What superhuman beast (perhaps accumulated courage) possessed my body, what lie? What did I say my Troy, my Caesar, my taurine lover, that made you look my way. I can’t remember,  but out of  the sea inside my chest,  my abyss,  primitive animals  emerged  singing:  purple rain, purple rain…

The First Sacred, Joyful, Mystery I didn’t use to smoke but one day Our Lady of Sorrows put her hands on my back, approached my face, and whispered in my right ear: go ahead smoke, give Our Heavenly Father some smoke, and may nobody be warned of his presence.

Death hits me “It’s true, death hits me entirely on my sex” Alejandra Pizarnik Castrated cadaver # 1 Beware of me my love Be careful of the silent one in the desert of the traveler with the empty glass and the shadow of its shadow Castrated cadaver # 2 Now then: who will stop sinking their hand in search of the little girl’s tribute. The rain will pay. The cold will pay. Thunder will pay. for Aurora and Julio Cortazar Castrated cadaver # 3 he says he doesn’t know about love’s death he says that he’s afraid of love’s death he says that love is death is fear he says that death is fear is love he says he doesn’t know Castrated cadaver # 4 “It’s true, death hits me entirely on my sex”

Now this is something completely different from what I have been writing.  It's a political poem.  I hope you enjoy it. You already built that Wall Forgive me Mr. Trump I will not shake your / hand you are not my friend / I cannot welcome you / you are not welcomed / nobody from your party  is welcomed / to this presidential race I want you to say you’re sorry / we are not rapist / we only flee / injustice. I have my hammer. I have tears. I have a backbone. The only thing / I am giving you / is my disapproval. I’ll turn my back  and walk away now.

On a whitewashed wall in the fortified city of your body I come to you slowly. You say something I don't understand. You laugh. Write your name on my abdomen. I walk from the edge of my body to yours. Sleepwalkers like us don't distinguish between reality and desire. To us reality is wider, more tangible, more corporal. It’s a garden in the bedroom, a thick weave of braided hair, an endless hieroglyph tangled in our legs, and rarely can we find someone to decrypt, read, or write it on our bodies.

The inaccessible  I entered  the uncomfortable night of your body — tu amurallada ciudad — with moistened footsteps, and the long creak of the catwalk was lost amid the shouts of stevedores and sailors.   It was midnight before I found your labyrinth. You would be talking to me about the fleeting language of a broken clock, the wings of your Moroccan city, the life of its cobblestones, when suddenly you become the quiet rage, the trembling conversation of doubts: the inaccessible  power  of an orgasm. 

Sorry but I have submitted this piece, I have to take it down.

Sorry, I have to take this one down. I am submitting it to a journal.

This is also Feminist Erotica Today, I allow you to hold my hand in public. But tomorrow, nobody should be surprised if Salome asks for your head on a silver platter, and kisses your mouth with her cold lips from hell.

Sorry! This one just got submitted to a journal.  I have to take it down.

Two aging men together Suddenly, two elderly men cornered on the love corner of their sixty-something bankrupt dreams are witnesses of the epidemic spread of fear and rejection. They are  together. Giving each other what remains of their dignity, pillaging death, and salt. They’ve learned to queer it up without a map, without a condom, with no more radar than their intuition. They distill with patient certainty the fact that there is no better tomorrow for those who seek to be sanctified by the light of the phallus. A hand strings together their grey hairs, their star of David. Who cares if you’re young, you’ll get there too.