Poem Exchange

I was sent an email to be part of a poem exchange:

the pain

the rain

i thought the rain would make it all better

but there's still pain

and rain

when can we go outside?

and smile, again?

hidden smiles behind masks

greet a new day

oh we remember

when our smiles were transparent

but we didn't care

now all is behind

hoping that today

the rain

will clear the pain

Valentine's day

Happy Valentine's day
glücklich Valentinstag
Feliz Día del Amor y la Amistad

a little post from The Guardian
these Valentine's Day: The 10 best love letters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/feb/14/valentines-day-best-love-letters

and there is also this very lovely collection
of Love Poems
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2012/feb/13/best-love-poems-interactive
and that is where i got this one
that reminds me of all that is love...

the first one has to be about birds

finally the first post of the year!

sharing the good things of the last & few new days
like the little view from our table at the
Fish Market's Top of the Market
restaurant, where my mom & i
celebrated our New Year's Eve dinner
wonderful view with excellent food



and this 'ambiance' tune courtesy
of one of my preferred musicians
mister Brian Eno, Emerald And Stone from his new album
[one of my Christmas gifts]
Small Craft On A Milk Sea



and a little poem by Emily Dickinson
and the row of mourning doves
waiting for me to fill the feeder



and i can only hope that this year is
full of birds, and lovely sounds,
and good food, great views, and
good loving company
for all of you, and for me...

A Bird came down the Walk (328)

A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass—
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass—

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around—
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought—
He stirred his Velvet Head

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home—

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam—
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

by Emily Dickinson

a kitchen poem

she opened her mouth
wide
(a mild gesture of her fatigue)
& the fresh scent of peppermint
by her face
prevails

how will it be his embrace?
as a ray of sunlight
that caresses a fresh piece of wood
in a carpentry bench?

fragrances of honey &
of wet soil after rain

***

in my kitchen
there are these higher shelves
the ones i can’t reah
unless i put a stool
underneath my feet
where i store cans, rice, & other food

if there is...
peppermint &...
your arms smell like wood...
the higher shelves
i can’t reach them,
anyway,
while you are away


árbol de lima - Autlán, Jalisco
April 2007

natural insomnia

no retorts
not there tu
not me somewhere
nor the small squares
beautiful reminders/pacifiers

hectic/
not recalled

silence

afraid insecure
if invading
a simple thought
is too strong?

retreat
safer
and
distance is
longer

sent sent
no come back

a blank mind needed
not invading
not even with thinking
rather in a
way of disappearance
i feel i despair
lately

distracted was
runs fast
not idea where
or how to open a front door
some times

a link not since
have been muted
maybe something i wrote?
maybe something i thought?
and long travelled...

insomnia
insomnia

natural
read and sleep is not coming

can’t stop wondering
i hold out

a dream
an unreal
a something
can’t get a hold
of my own peace
somehow

if i could flat out tell you
yet

what to do?
not pills anymore
not fiction solutions
a natural pain

like the one
of being for some
an umbrella
on a day
that is not raining

if still breathing
unexpectedly
change it
the world

the world can
in a second
all be changed

yet afraid in my waiting
i am forgetting
i am not the only spectator
just because with me nothing changes

not mine
not again
not something
i just don’t know
how to blank-mind-it
if just...

just letters against
white screen
on a cyber space
rented

late on a lonely night
paying the price of
not sure what karmatic
error

that eats my guts
you might forget it
but i feel inundated in my own
ignorance

the damn valve closes
and believe me it is not orange

i wish i felt safe to walk late the streets
but can't even find the front door
for a starter

an umbrella
in a day
that is not raining

no wonder

hair gel

first the eyes were shot
palms up against them strong
those holes in the crane
that hold them

other own bones known
are cross, on top
to count this horrible night
over

opened raised
rightist light through
thick wet straws of my own hair

many months i forgot
to notice it or wear it down or to cut it
now i touch it and strands
go all the way down to the shoulders
thick and messy
didn’t see it this long growing

blurry then vision of
green little pearls shinny and
fuzzy from the pressure hold-ed
patterns on white soft of
aunt’s embroidered hand towel

it is the bathroom
i discover
my customary sacrifice-stone holder

the woman at the radiology test
smelled like a fresh shower
months ago in that morning

i remember the test
and her
ago as i wonder
if every morning
a man smells her hair
or if he touches it softly
it is fresh and silky
and smells well
as i re-call her

i wonder if her skin
is touched with love
at late nights
or kissed good-bye
in cloudy mornings

or if like mine
is cleaned and perfumed and soft
yet lonely
grows older

dark
the holes the marks
on my eyes
grow deeper
of the holes
stronger

tonight this painful bathroom
smells as her hair
it was familiar
since i entered
and before the pain
i smiled
since i noticed

the dying cow

today i am trapped in between the feet
of a dying cow
and she won’t stop kicking my skull
and being a cow i still love her soft

a white cross and two black chimneys against a blue late sky
imaginings awareness cryptograms to convert and
resulting a in a very small component
to live for
verdict a broken individuality
grounding thousand mistakes

changing divinities
on your trail of revenge
you revenging from

yet i was not ever a judge
nor a witness
even less the accusatory
nor the accused

yet somehow i end-up being executed
at once
from the friendly closeness i presented
with a smile

a connection fading
days become longer and sore

the palette colors on a canvas
could have been dissimilar?
if you haven’t seize one day my path?

innocence lost
can’t remove can’t go back can’t eradicate the facts

a white handkerchief
flutters high
and then subtle and gentle it falls
against a scenario of
a building built out of square solid rocks

an inside patio
surrounded by the edification
that square hole
the one your ignorance digs every day in my core

the hankie is humid and white
as i thought was your soul

you are just shifting
and i am lost
yet out of a private calamity
i have never been for too long
maybe in 36 years
for 2 minutes or so
while, one day in your arms
and that was all
but you won't believe me so

you and unknown goddess to beseech to
me back to my dying cow
she needs my attention
to feed her on the pieces of what's left of my soul

back to my soft lonely own
a sheep i follow while blind

hangover murders (or i am starting to figure it out, too)

‘this is not a party
but a police investigation’

found and lost
objects, at end of a corridor
lost was first
and found
a clock

embryonic/full
still yet goes

unfinished scheme
and a highly-troubled plot

tick tack
potentially, a casualty
just

another capture
grand
then no more

and if not

each second
overthrown closer
closed
then gone

at all

lapses
time
scrivener
capturer-imaginer

those skies
and some ghosts

the police figured it
one of those
hangover murders

a party,
investigation
followed up

funny things at an asian store and rain, john lennon too

you realize that your emotions might be playing with your lucidity*
when
you are in a chinese/korean/japanese supermarket, a big big store
and while buying some tea & snacks for the after lunch
then the indecipherable broadcast on the store’s amplifier recites sales, offers, and more! (all chinese so…)

in between offers carefully presented and distributed in amounts and percents by each aisle
(the numbers were in anglais so… )
they let play the tackiest version of john lennon’s jealous guy
it sounds straight from a jukebox, or a boy’s toy
it is at least an octave high and fast as if john had too much green tea
from the one on special on aisle 15

you remember the feelings, the words, you are about to start to let your heart melt deliquesce and cry cry

then the announcement, the sales the offers in chinese again loud & feelings interrupt

you realized you are just lost… you laugh at yourself or whatever you thought once lost
scared the feeling away while laughing, somehow melancholic but happy that you can still miss someone afar
even as eating panda-shaped cookies with bellies full of a pinkish substantial strawberry jelly
fictional as the character you thought you were in your own life

and I never believe before that one grow to become what we thought we could be
even though at my 36 I am so similar to my dreams at 12: an astronaut I wanted to be, eternally in love with the stars and an incredible man living in mars, with glasses and books, very much like harry potter and yet very far

today I am space-cadet not NASA title but hey! I can really fly high… the devoted one to, still in time in space very afar, maybe never reachable will be, but what life without dreams or great expectations would be…

poor ones those that have all that can desire and then reach, as wilde said: the illusion is the first of the pleasures my friend… now to cry with lennon again…

*(lucidity being out on vacation for so long had to be replaced by a lunatic-dreamy-fascination arising the belief that, in this world, at least half the population could be as idealistic/romantic as you…)