Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Poem Up at The Linnet's Wing Come read

Finishing Line Press just accepted my chapbook, "An Animal Resembling Desire," for publication. I will be sending out notices for pre-orders as soon as I know the details. Sergio A. Ortiz

La Memoria en la que M e he Convertido Las frases giran como lo que recordamos desde el momento en que  nacimos la primera vez. He construido estas memorias con palabras, pero  ahora solo son sombras. Sé que todo origen es una Roma que arde, toda belleza nada más que arrepentimiento. Lo que he trabajado corre como agua través de los tubos de drenaje del olvido. Inquieto, como las palabras, desposeído, basado en la repetición cautelosa de tu frágil inmensidad, reconciliado con el silencio brutal que llevo por dentro, una tierna autoridad. Los días no dan respuestas. Pero los días son descuidados en su apariencia. Para prosperar uno debe estar  infundido con supervivencia hasta cuando la duda es anunciada y arreglada impecablemente a medida que las voces desvanecen y el aliento toma el control en tenue progresión.

Your Moaning, my Moaning Our salt-pepper locks gallop translucent at dawn Your lips and my lips saltpeter at daybreak Your eyes and my eyes Your hands and my hands bodies dripping slippery algae Oh desire, my desire our morning seashore

Visibilidad afuera llueve está oscura la tarde pesadas nubes se mueven lentamente giran alrededor de un centro de gravedad que compite con la tierra empujando hacia arriba todo lo que encuentra a su paso canales y tuberías de tormenta no pueden hacerle frente a toda esa agua las luces están apagadas los celulares no tienen señal solo te acompaña el concreto húmedo de la ciudad no puedes esconderte detrás de un teléfono no hay conexión en ausencia de estos monstruos el vacío ó lo que queda de el es lo único que tienes

Consciousness And if I were to expand to the point of bursting into thousands of pieces, if my suffering should reach that level do not sanction my heart do not let it escape into the void like an insignificant hot gas

The Meaning of Nothing There was a certain sadness to it all, grey moss and violence remained --a sorrow music could not disclose where it came from-- it just kept floating by me, aging pure and perfect, the sound pounding its inescapable presence, a vow of eternal ownership. It was a warning, like the kind discovered when sentences start with "it must have been." As with the things that must have been, there is never an offering of a revelation, a meaning.

Mudanzas y  Cambios . . Me he querido mudar lejos del huracán de la incompetencia y los viejos ladrones de Wall Street creciendo a orillas del Atlántico. He querido irme lejos de todo lo que se repite interminablemente en esta isla al descubierto. No sirven los fantasmas de papel que contamina las conciencias con vapores inútiles y truenos que no asustan a nadie. Me he querido ir lejos pero temo no haber vivido el mismo dolor de mi terruño cubierto de tantas mentiras absurdas

Cold Water . . Save me, I'm about to faint. I lift my hand to hold up the sky. Not for the flag. Not because of hunger. It's not the thirst. It's my solitude surrounded by screams. It's knowing  what motivates my desire. It's the fatigue of being a puppet. My strings collapse amid the beauty and laughter of children. I can't save myself. I'm this crumbling, desperate country, this unthinkable winter. Water, who has a bottle  of cold water  for me to bathe in?

Oh, Dios de la Miseria - Oh, God of misery and incompetence chain the winds of destruction to the doors of the Casinos of the orange giant. May he suffer until his reality is no longer a reality and we take turns spitting his face.

A Presidential Mistake  . toilet paper  or disposable towels...  insensitive son  of a bitch--do we really need  to kiss his presidential ass? . can we afford  another five hundred  years of insults, grave diggings, war deaths  and stupidity?

 presidential tanka poem, Somoka :  . toilet paper  or disposable towels...  insensitive son  of a bitch--do we really need  to kiss his presidential ass? . can we afford  another five hundred  years of insults, grave diggings, war deaths  and stupidity?

Hasta El Silencio Se desvistio la noche su cuerpo quedó al descubierto dejo de llorar y llamar al sendero perdido se fue a rescatar lo poco que quedó de su orgullo, los puertos, el espacio aéreo, corazones subyugados, el puño combativo sin saber que el yugo pesado doblegó hasta el silencio

Even Her Silence night undressed and all could see her nakedness she stopped weeping and wailing over lost paths to rescue what was left of her pride, seaports, airspace, enslaved hearts, and raised fist without knowing the shackles were so heavy that even her silence had toppled 

Remoteness And the world disagreed  with its blood. The wind blew away sanity and today we pull against the riptide. Time and space, wooden shacks, flew in an unknown direction and love lays on the image of a moon tired of unfaithful loves. 

Hurricanes Clouds do not know where to rain and the air smells of electric storms. Blood, as it is logical, dissolves into the river of concern. Its honey removes the sediment that falls on the island bed. From each star hangs a probe, a 110-volt extension, in whose spectrum eyes see translucent viaducts crossing water. Everything is organism. Here an artery, there a frond, a mudhole its demulcent. In an expanding and contracting of pulses, all is sown land. Ignited, light-matter floats on the water as its flora is dragged adrift. The only shore is night and it's no shelter. Eyes do not know where to cry and the air is lightning's prism. Where is the deity? Blood is tragic in its full torrent.

Dominant Pig I was asked how to sustain homoerotic sex without falling into intentional eruptions which involve dominance. I answered with a single letter: I let my mouth open a heavenly poppy. The poppy opened without anyone touching its petals. These poppy fields, pig styles my blood, gave in to intentions with stipulated traits. That is how they exhausted lead skies, and their four Asian walls, their nylon dresses. The eruptions to which they responded wrote a book whose backbone was a stem and its leaves upheld the bark of the trees made of the steel from which they were born. On those poppy fields intentions reacted with minor swings to insert themselves into the tail of the firmament. It was like making firewood from Ceiba trees thorns. I didn’t care about the thorns, just the order of the punctures they left on my hands.

Sacred Tribal Breath The oldest turtle in the tribe tells sacred stories in dense, exquisite language and behold, our fragile understanding is lost in a slow dalliance. Primordial water, the foundation of earth. The voice of archangels, a landfill of waning lights. "Why hide?" Your voice, a perfect animal that creeps among the stones to a trough, bloody scales and tail. An old Lady shouts, "Do not come back" "You've wasted too much time on those visions. If you continue like this you'll go blind." And I grow feathers and take flight. “Now, you will not suffer," a voice shouts. "You will invent your own shadow and your words will have a slight incandescence." Then I dream I am a strange flower that invents mud cities with its scent. I dream I am a giant butterfly nesting in the tribe, and the turtles bow when I pass by.         

Paranoid His reality, so small he misplaced it. With a deep poetic sense but no metaphors, he spread pieces of his body as he walked. He was assassinated by his own shadow after an unavoidable persecution.

Poem Up at Unlikely Stories Mark V