Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The Last Threshold The promise to return to the place w6here life began Failure, to be banished from an endless happiness Shadows that wandered the desert carrying their own past A leaf-storm-fear thrown to the felines of night A beggar's desire going door to door and sitting on the steps of  last threshold to discuss his ragged loneliness his bones, a premonition of the mirror where death calls The indelible imprint of pain and undaunted scars A history of humiliating executioners and false fabulists The unsatisfied thirst of gods who bully us with their vengeance and a tree who in its old age only nested birds of prey

Caresses Never tell me that secret. Keep it to yourself, that between us the convulsive beauty of this island may last. Embezzled of its green, hope broken island. Incendiary seed of an afternoon that illuminated fertile land, those vines hidden at the bottom of their own abyss. Hurricane winds between the lips of your sweet wine. The music of water when I dig into your skin and elaborate with thirst my ancient hoe. The frightened caress, the dark kiss, your salt collapse and your landslide. The convulsive beauty of the cry that crossed this isle.

Proto-Balm Saw my light on and all others off. Saw my time entering the time of others. Searched for you while tending the dreams of others. During my youth, I made sure someone would see me coming from the war. I hated those who made me believe that " we " had discovered the world together when only I suffered. Who goes through the pain like a mother feels the same or more? I do not think so. A man leaves his life and comes to me, takes the floor, smells it, tastes it, relishes it. I tell him, how beautiful a man he is like all men that don't believe in anything. He says, how necessary you are , a man who needs to believe in everything.

Poem Up at Ariel Chart : The Things We Draw On Mapas 

Wild Needle Raindrops It rained inside the bedroom. Outside these sea walls the day is a hot red knot. My body fills up with wet nouns. Silence has a light-blue Spanish  accent. The men in my photographs  drowned. Their cries of distress  stopped breaking the water. I am a moist flesh statue. Lightning begins, embedded  in my feet. The walls crawl with electricity. I doze off again listening to turtle music.

my body, not a twilight sleepwalker, refuses the coffin- a rhino at the foot of my bed calls me by all my names

My body  is not a twilight sleepwalker. I've seen my body refuse its coffin, & a rhino at the foot of my bed calling me by all my names (as if it were The Dove ), & the red eyes of flesh, abandoned.

My favorite poem is up at CROW HOLLOW 19, Murder Four , Spring 2017

Opposing Conversations If I stare at the wave,   I turn-on the irony of oceanic depths. If I stop the air with my dead scaly skin, I break-into desolate barren places.

Wise Audiences  When you're inside me  i don't know if you laugh  or if you come from boredom.  if your tongue freshens  or arrives from fever.  i don’t know  if what you search for  on weekends  exists   inside me.  i know life stretched out  beneath your abs   is the same as snakes  and concurrent solitudes that correspond  to the twinkling light  where i can see you.

Poems Up at Rigorous : Last Truth and There was a crime ...

dead bird wings  spread out over the frost of my emancipation thought i heard chimes ring announce a vision of mine  abandoned mid desert saguaros i opened my eyes lips for words that inhabit approaching bodies of dangerous animals i do not dare bite

Let's Stay Home and Watch a Movie What else can I say? Blood gallops in the streets and inside the Whitehouse head first into the face  of an office manager. Darts into the song of birds and inside the Malls downtown Blood bolts everywhere We're not safe in the bathroom, or buying chocolates! We need a bodyguard to go to the florist and if we dare say we want to visit a museum, uff We won't exist long enough to see  we're in the Blue House that's no longer blue,  nothing blue anymore, not even the sky Everything turned violently red blood sprinting in the streets like the dirty hands of the president like Red, Red Sunrise and Red Mary To see red houses, love, we don't need to go that far

Canto to Men I sing to the destitute souls to their ancient lineage of shadows to the corpses of hope and foam of days Canto crisscrossed by absence wound of time that spreads to unarmed Mythologies shredded by crumbling hours  when staring at you was always my design informed face of all my solitudes  accomplice of the deepest silence I was once able to endure

Memory Lapses   all the women I imagined had your face they were all you  in their own way, I was you  in my own way too free me  from unfulfilled  desire its useless worry its vain misery I don't understand your way of loving my love  what do you love if you run away at last you have returned or you didn't leave or I didn't leave the fact is you're here & I don't know if I am

free me,  disappearing island & painted sea,  not from memory but from  the light that is desire painted sea & disappearing island not from memory, from light that is desire― free me

He left like a   rambunctious whirlwind looked back smiling in silence wore well-laced boots did not forget the tears bent corners without dropping eyes no diminishing storms in site drew an ocean on his pale cheeks  with all the pent-up pain I do not matter! a step behind the other’s back closed fist nibbled heart & swallowed rage spit lahars bit himself so many times that all he wanted was to hang bright stars while flocks of birds crossed  moonlit skies 

Muddy water you sent me your floating likeness it sloshed when you stomped  the pool of water Slippery wet echo you sound like paper  crushed by hard stone hands Your rusted teeth  and muddy being breathe in air bite the memory that cannot return You chew on the tangle of stones and dirt splatter your conceited  smelly self all over my page and profile