Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Trump Midas There was no water in Jersey City but Trump Midas in his Olympic pool was swimming as if the water in the city was all his. After counting the day’s earnings he was happy he had made a million more, and his businesses made more poor. Politicians and businessmen praise me , was what he’d say. Great, I am a winner, a total winner, an unequivocal winner

Medusa Medusa didn’t die in the pantheon of mythologies, she lives inside us  with her ravenous eyes. She has no gender or specific place, she keeps growing in our body like a terminal illness. To find her all we need to do is stare into the face of cancer, stare at the snakes that fall from our hair, at the man who breaks like a child.

Poems to my Double Years pass from me to you like crow’s feet my tears don’t stop rolling down your cheeks a breath separates the mirror from the reflection I opened his eyes saw my darkness live is there a boatman to can carry light from end to end? beyond me you don’t exist to exhale the ghost is a task for the living to drink memories through the eyes is the purpose of the dead split the bread of illusion in my mouth

Wounded Babylon I love your confusion the scrambled birds of your tongue your simultaneous words your Babel    your Delphi Sibyl of enemy voice I love it when you say night and it is dawn when you say I am and it is the wind I love your wounded Babylon the misunderstanding that forces you to make up a fable

Night in the City Do you refuse to accept that love was here imagining birds, unearthing ruins? Rain, rain and music are black in these streets crowded with crucified people that walk, the dying that work, unburied corpses clapping and smiling. Perhaps there still remains in this space of shattered dreams, mashed dreams, another crazy dreamer repeating: light is close, light is near . But, as in other times, only a cold and empty silence answers, a festive, blind hustle and bustle of these dead remains, the perfectly dead               dead. Only a sour, metallic drop of night can be heard, an immense black sheet of iron.

Ramona Part 3 but it grieves my heart, love to see you tryin’ to be a part of a world that just don’t exist Bob Dylan, To Ramona I’ll call til the doors of your fortified city, with inviolate statutes, adopt me as inhabitant of the life that unfolds within you identical to the rain of silence over your head I’ll permeate you gradually until I am smoke in your voice.

Ramona, part 2 though breathlike, get deathlike at times and there's no use in tryin' to deal with the dyin' though I cannot explain that in lines. Bob Dylan, To Ramona I am what you are I look through your eyes I walk because of your feet I get up no weight on you and I immerse myself in your waters. I know the specific meaning you have given your view of the universe. I am your meridian laughter, your arms floating in the air, your fingers de-kernelling a time composed of            dawn to night. I am your       without a body. Your story is the same as mine, from childhood I feel through your spores with absent eyes.

Ramona Ramona, come closer Shut softly your watery eyes The pangs of your sadness Will pass as your senses will rise Bob Dylan, To Ramona When night ashes spill on your pupils, the same as in a defenseless city, knotting your silence, you don’t tell me anything. Moss also grows on my lips. We contemplate each other as if our bodies didn’t exist. I come to your room with a confusion of mouth and a capsizing of manhood. I bring my daily offering, a mound of absence cast in copper memories.

This is a Dream Do not fear hit men coming with air guns under the rain. Do not ache for victims at the corner waiting. Do not worry, the gods of human sacrifice are dead. This is a dream. When you wake, there will be no assassins, only the rain falling on an empty street.

Little Oedipus It was early morning, the mother woke up the youngster and between supplications, and prayers to the god of earthquakes. She dug her fingers into the sockets of the little boys eyes then opened the door of the squalid household and cast the little Oedipus, with blood dripping down his face, to grope about the paths of earth announcing the end of the world.

For Insomnia night… in the window your body rains a butterfly spins and spins in that squall night knows no roads… the sparrow doesn’t recognize where it has fallen when nobody sees him man walks out on man your body and mine a sweltering ghost among the doors that open and close one remains open, the one painted blue by the wind

At someone’s feet I will walk with you in the sun and wind rummage in life’s dumpsters I lie at your feet like a shadow like a dog

Yesterdays my yesterdays fit in one hand I carry my profits in a bag full of holes when I move I win one place and lose another presence and absence are the same all my yesterday’s fit in one empty hand

Wetback of eternity I am                undocumented worker of eternity, an illegal                   crossing the border of a dream. My passport of existence has expired. Without proper documentation                my bones are worthless. I travel            night in a crowded truck without headlights. I sleep in the backrooms of the law. My American dream became the hell of my exile. He has come out of shadows , they point at me and say, when I appear from the toilets of my job. It doesn’t matter.  I celebrate like a wetback the passage of wind in desert altars and contemplate infinity in the place where the twin towers stood.

Ways of having an angel An angel is the spiritual bodyguard that protects us from material, supernatural enemies, and those we engender with images, words and dreams: he fights, at midnight, in the middle of the street, and in bed, against odious figures, figures that we tend to love. People say: an angel  passed through here , when there is silence among them, united in one body: while our angels wait they look at each other in the mirror or stare out the window at the long yellow afternoon. Lovers say: an angel just walked by, as if the presence of the desired one had the body of absence, as if it could perceive what had already happened, and they knew they loved when they no longer love. An angel passed , says the angel, without seeing his own shadow in time, without perceiving the longing his words left within, men of flesh and blood, looking from the other side of the window, drunk with love and death. She’s...

A Time for Angels And God said, let there be angel. And the angel was made out of words. And man said, let there be angel made of inner words. Let the angel be in the likeness of my spirit. And God said, let every man have an angel in his likeness up in heaven and when he dies may they become one. And man said, if God does not create the angel, the imagination must create it, because if there’s a gap between God and man there can be no communication. There must be an intermediary spirit between sky and earth, between the invisible and the visible, between the spiritual and the material. God said, man arrived late for the time of gods and early for the time of beings, the angel came on time for both. Man said, the angel is the body joining gods and beings, it is the bridge that joins the stare to what is looked at. God said, so men and angels understand each other, angels on earth must speak the languages of men, and when men ...

Werewolf I am werewolf, I devour myself. At dawn I cut fresno trees where the moon settled. At noon I burn pastures where the deer run swift. At dusk I go to the beach to butcher turtles. I climb mountains to hunt the eagle. What God created in six days, I destroy in one. I am the werewolf, I devour myself.

My Aunt Hermione The story of my aunt Hermione has always bothered me, lost, according to my father, for a year in Yugoslavia. Missing, according to my uncle, on the ship bringing her from Smyrna by the Sea of No One. Survivors confuse the paths of the dead with their own, they no longer know what dream, what memory is from whom. Was she lost in a time without calendars, a sea without waves and a ship without walls? Didn’t she know that while she was alive, however far she went into the Nameless Country, she’d always return to the refugee ship which is the present, which is this planet? They found her one day, this is for sure, but if she found herself, nobody’s telling: one day she disappeared without leaving any other anecdotes.