Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

I know You by Your First Name In my house loneliness sits on an armchair, stirs my bed sheets and opens the book where my rival’s name is written. Soledad, my enemy, wakes me to injure like a tightrope around my throat. I don’t take my innocence to that well. I’m not the one whose dawns are clouds and poison ivy climbing the stairs to the bedroom. I sit alone at the breakfast table, alone turning off the TV to pray and receive the devil of insomnia. My enemy ties me up with obstinate dialogue morning, noon, and night. But no one can say I don’t put up a fight. Beyond my skin and more, inside of my bones, I love. Beyond my mouth and its words, from the knot of my tormented sex, I know I will die from nothing other than love.

Ya ni su trigo precisó la casa de mi rival esta poblada de muchas superficies no puedo quitarme el caparazón temo golpearme con los roncos lamentos de mi amante indeciso el jardín de mi rival esta habitado  por huecos vacíos y el cielo quebrado que son mis labios ligeros hace mucho que abandono su hoguera

Looking Out from Where You Once Stood The corners never turn. No witness established the degree of their fractured evanescence, angles bear the taste of swearability. The arc of memories arranged with  patience: bitter, moist, entangled. A trigger that makes the human heart bleed. Fiction allows a corner to be replaced (curved, bent) so one can breathe.  Answers  the real, the vacated. Malleable, the wall where one was cherished. A sense of curvature stands where once you stood.

The distance between us feels like an iron cloud covering all my body. Could it be we were born to wander on opposite poles? I’m undulating river lying on your dreamlike  Lazarus chest oblivious to my leafless twilight. I have patches of yellow  planted on my skin  that are not immune to cold. Today I sing you my melody The same as I’ll sing it tomorrow. Maybe you're too far to taste  the gifts you’ve already savored from my wedding banquet. I do not care, my Lazarus.  The distance won’t make me impatient. You sowed flower and new moon  long ago on the clear surface from my tearful day. But now  I do not know if I remember  the color and texture of your hair. I don’t even recall your reflection in my eyes.

La distancia entre nosotros parece ser una nube de hierro que cubre todo mi espacio. Será que hemos nacidos para vagar siempre por polos opuestos? Soy río ondulante acostado sobre tu pecho de ensueño ajeno a mi deshojado crepúsculo. Tengo salpicaduras color amarillo que no son inmunes al frio. Hoy te canto igual que mañana. Quizás estás demasiado lejos para saborear mi banquete de bodas. No me importa, mi Lázaro, con la muerte no puedo ser impaciente. Hace tiempo sembraste   claveles y lunas azules sobre la superficie clara de mi lloroso día. Pero hoy, hoy no se si recuerdo el color de tu pelo y no veo me reflejo en tus ojos.

Poem Up @ MagCloud , Bird's Thumb , and Better Than Starbucks !

Vienes a la ceremonia como enlace salvaje de mi silencio, tu lógica bien apasionada. Atestiguas la cadencia que estalla dentro de mí en este instante.  Sazonas mi fuego, sostienes los hilos  invisibles manteniéndonos juntos con un retrato  que enciende mis ojos. La suma de todos los minutos,  esos detalles minuciosos,  esas correcciones no especificadas,  se han grabado en mi mente. No ocultaremos lo que nos une. Ven a mi ceremonia  con voz tan salvaje  como el silencio.

In the Dark I spent the whole night with my arm in a hole. I was not in a classroom of saints at that hotel on the outskirts of town; queen size bed too soft to feel any comfort. A vulgar living arrangement. Spent the whole night with my arm in a hovel instilling the devil with witty rage. Words no longer dazzle, they’re in the dark. Write what you kill. Let the snail piss on your mask. Remember: when you go to the cinema to see Hollywood movies, you are not white, or black, you’re not even Jewish. Don’t get into something as complicated as God. Don’t argue with me. Don’t sell Barbie doll ribbons. Don’t bring me their severed limbs. Don’t ask me to learn to respect things I can’t see. Touch what you kill. I haven’t been able to write theatrical screenplays for a couple of years now. Drama is nothing more than a passing skill better done in the dark. I spent the whole night with my arm in a hole.

I Guess I'm in Love I guess I'm in love, and it is stupid, absurd. Love songs make me cry and feel lonely. At night I watch more television than usual. I've fallen in love with Jose, and Winston has fallen for me, a lternatively, Alberto and Victor, I laugh, and I cry all at once when I kiss them. You do understand that I'm smart but humble and simple, and I find great comfort in also being truthful.

out of your mouth nocturnal treachery... your trickery adds syllables and pauses to my ashes after pleasure

Three poems Up @ Cultural Weekly

Under a Beech Tree Dancing through stillness the stars learn of the tireless work and bleak future of thinking. The message unclear possibilities unknown. They cross the cosmic streets flaunt their lives, their afterlives. Cling to sensations when physical bodies are absent. Bodies use to hearing songs while lying on Mexican blankets, drinking poems, reading wine, heads stuck in the heavens.

Let's talk about us, we are not simple but yes, we're vulgar. I'm not sad or happy, my resentment is made up of frost, understand me? We need very little. For example, more time to kiss two or three  other mouths without committing. We need plausible passion in the background of what  we’re willing to receive, maybe loyalty and commitment. But we’re soft and stupid, and never stop crying. Mud drags the earth  that unites us. We’re misery  of infinite nothingness,  and everything’s  understandable frost.

Precipitation My marble gaze flings against the front glass. The wind whips, licks, tames my bifocals. A tree stripped of its sad spangle vibrates, almost boils, in the open air. The artificial crack in the front glass, like my love never ends. The arrhythmia reminds me to take off my clothes. It's like walking on hot coals when I walk without you. The twin rocks of my crystalline eyes tremble when you say your name on the other side of the phone, it rattles my eardrum. I hear your voice on the phone and it's raining.

Dilapidated You left the island on my lower back  deserted. Today my own carnivore flagpole  eats at me from the inside.  The carousal begins. It spins around red orbits on fire.  I know I am at the center of a dying planet. My headband kisses the ground,  while I imagine my scrotum exploding. The walls of my body wrapped with small jelly beans, our misfortune rejoicing.  They urge me to this pressing urgency. Convulsed, out of ordinary words.

Nothing is Others have already said but I'll repeat it: Nothing is forever ... Not even this disguise, my naked body, that I jealously guard in view of everyone. I have dreamed everything that I am so as not to leave empty the lines where the other should go: the other, the real one. Dreamed that I'm stuck in mountains of water. My house uprooted , floats adrift in the current towards a precipice. DNA of escape inherited from my grandfather . That's why I sent you my nudes closing the door.

Desiderata, Is It Needed         There are days  you walk around dazed and you're not very friendly. Minutes, even hours,  find you lost and I know  my presence confounds you. That's when you start talking in whispers. It's your way  of asserting the strands  of silver on your head, your Lord of the Flies dance  around my campfire. Don’t let it blind you. Virtues  abound in everyday heroes.

Poems Up @ Former People

Desperate The sea blew wind chimes, wind chimes dried the red roses, the roses heads of martyrs. My memory full of words, my thoughts looked for ghosts, forgotten nightmares from many nights ago. At dawn, my thoughts flew like seagulls. In the lit windows the ever-present portrait of death made desperate efforts to flee.

Poem Up @ Califragile