Rain Drop

In capricious gales

Your weight has gathered

Enough confidence to

Land on my forehead

A lazy eyelid flickered in reflex as futile as holding one’s breath during a childish storm.

We dreamed a Moorish dream

And on we went

Like a newly formed brotherhood

Ill-conceived and destined to be wiped-off

A slight tremor that sent you rolling through my eyebrow, desperately leaving behind parts of you like the clicking of a bandoneon key is left behind as its bellows push the sound through its labyrinthine mechanisms.

Feeling the wet finger lay

On my high cheek bone

A kiss of gray

A terminal breath

The rupturing love story of chaos

That birthed all those who burrowed themselves

Only to emerged estranged from that light

Only to quicken their breath down

The steep angle of an archetypal jawbone.

Once more

And off my chin you end, limp and lame, amidst the threads that transmuted you into a memory that is only too fresh to singe itself in the staccato of crisscrossed embraces and departures.  I hang you out to dry above green steps.

Gray is a Memory

The morning is a horrid mess of ice covered snow and sleets of cold water

breaking through

the gray of this perpetual             morning of all mornings.

I was hoping for a day off;

a day of mooring myself in sheets and covers in a cold room.

There is a dog that does not care about homelessness or bills or school;

hell!

I don’t even think he knows he is even breathing.

No, but he feels it.

That’s one thing that matters when looking out of windows at passing shoes and perched pigeons;

feeling the cold window panes,

the warm breath against the back of your hand,

the condensation collecting at the bottom of your finger tip as you trace your name or someone’s name;

a scribble of running droplets.

Starched sheets covering the lawns

bring me back to waking in fogged mornings and,

as I made my way to school,

stepping on puddles of ice sheets making music with my rubber soles.

Small polyrhythmic compositions that filled my calves with joy and traveled to my ears as they interrupted the sound of my own breath through the vacant streets.   Ice floes shift above my head and I inhale the moist air as I balance my body on one leg that sinks into

the crunch under my heel.

Yellow Galoshes

I am from earth and I have been carefully developed to travel. Extirpated from rocks, each of my parts is a fraction of me and everything ; while I am one object, at the end of this process which I will tell you about, my background is extremely varied. My core is made of lead from Nevada, my skin is of Bolivian copper and my guts are from various parts which now escape me; there is a curiosity, within me, as to finding out about what makes up my guts, but the only thing I now know is that it was first formulated in Asia and then spread all over the world… Anyway, my conception was rather violent and it involved various stages, all connected by conveyor belts, trucks, furnaces, casts, more belts, boxes, and hands. I am to fit into a chamber, then travel from that chamber to some mark or object. These things I know, but the details are so obscure I barely have any idea where to begin to look for answers; yet, since I am a simple being, I leave these inquiries to those who feel compelled to search and study the nature of those troubling questions of existence which could consume the best of us.
Of course! You might ask: how do you know about some parts and not of others that make you?! Well, I tell you, the details…I am trying to put together in the darkness of the aftermath… within a box. I am just waiting…I don’t know what for, but I am waiting within this comfortable, dry, cool box which offers the company of others like me and theyhave informed me of some of these former details; now, I am forced to trust their information since they are my only company, but these “facts” could, perhaps, be proven otherwise…I will just tell my side of this story, ok? This is the only way I have to make some sense of me and everything around me. Most of what is “me” was heated to extremely high temperatures, and dragged by the truckload into huge vats to be melted together; then molded into blocks of differing qualities, placed, arranged, and stored to ensure the proper usage of me. The conveyor belts are our feet from the moment I left the rocks.  I think I am among others and we see the world passing by and we just sit there trying to make sense of things, but BANG! We are suddenly changed from one thing to another without us ever being able to do anything about it. I was to be nurtured by something which went by the name of Winchester corporation, in Illinois; the truck dropped off most of what was to be my skin onto pallets, then forklifts placed these pallets in the appropriate shelves. I find it very suitable to be in the right place; order and categorization have made my life much more bearable. Bells, buzzers, chains, casts, sprays, bangs and much more distress later, I now possess a slick shape which is filled by lead, perfectly balanced in weight, and of somewhat seducing qualities…I like this! My form is one that is supposed to offer the least amount of resistance. I travel swiftly through most anything.
Now, the shelves were rather quiet, depending on the place of course, and we stood there silently. We were sometimes moved, these brief moments would make us rub against each other; startled by this and the clink that followed each tangent, we stood there nonetheless…silently. Stamped and shipped, we ended up in some store, on some street, at the best prices. Sold to some such Jorge, I felt that the brief transition to this new shelf was interesting; Jorge carried us mainly by hand at a smooth pace and we, again, came to a rest. I think he liked us, he put us in a cool and dark shelf for some time and it was just some more of quite the same stillness of thought.
One day, Jorge picked us up and placed us on a table. I think his dog was lazily walking around the same room; the table being close to the back door of the house gave us an opportunity to feel the warmth of the sun and we, maybe only I, became excited for some reason. Jorge’s son, Gabriel, was getting ready to go out as well; he was about 7 years old and wore blue jeans, yellow galoshes, and a third generation brown jacket that had seen countless mornings like this one. The backyard wore no fence, an open field into the flatness of the landscape. Trees in bunches scattered as tight, flower bouquets rising midway through the ground adorned the flat-lined horizon in random places.
They walked for some time, Gabriel thought of facturas (pastries) as his mind fell off the horizon and skirled on a heap of pastries of all kinds and chocolate milk…warm…sweet…
“Gabi! Por aca!,” Jorge yelled “Is this way!”
Gabriel tilted his head out of his dream and followed his father; he carried us in his small canvas bag with a knife and some matches. I was enjoying the smooth steps Gabriel took and the heat from the sun gradually became slightly warmer and I grew anxious with the peculiarity of this trip, it was much different than past jaunts. In the darkness of this box, the splattered memories of that day become clearer and the paces of that walk are felt closer. Jorge carried his favorite winchester rifle as any good arms man would: his hand fully covering the trigger guard, safety on, and the canon pointing down to the ground. He knew a good deal about weapons and hunting; this is why, I think, he bought us in the first place…we are the best. Gabriel walked to his side now, he did not say too much, if anything at all now that I recall. Jorge stopped, having spotted something, and said to Gabriel,
“give me the canvas bag, I will check these boys out before we try them out on our food”
Gabriel did just that and Jorge’s hand reached for a few of us in the box; his hands were sweaty and soft, his skin bent to our contour as he lightly pressed us into his rifle. “Ah, this feels right,” I thought, “I fit perfectly into this new place, this must be that “chamber” I was told about.”
Jorge had spotted a beam that was sticking out of the ground about 100 meter from his sight. He told Gabriel to walk back a few meters for his own safety and Gabriel nodded as he silently agreed with his father’s request. What a good boy he was.
Jorge placed the rifle firmly against his shoulder, looked around briefly, the proceeded to aim at the metal beam sticking out of the ground; he did not realize about my special relationship with metal…there was no predictability as to my trajectory when confronted with certain hard metals. Gabriel walked away from his father as his eyes perused through his surroundings and spotted a stork; white and graceful, the stork floated briskly through the milky air. Gabriel looked at its motionless wings in mid flight…I was pushed up, by some lever, and I saw light. Something in me was agitated…all of the sudden, I felt a strong, brief tap at the bottom of me. I felt propelled through the cannon at immeasurable speeds, my being burning through the cool air. I reached the metal beam in less than a second as my head plunged into it and I shed my lead core; my copper skin recoiled, and I was traveling over Jorge’s head, then I saw Gabriel and I was heading right into his dreaming head. The stork was still in his gaze….and I could swear, after I reached a full stop, that I was looking through Gabriel’s eyes…he looked at the bird, at the sky, then the azure of his gaze turned dark….
Jorge turned around, but did not see Gabriel, and he became frantic and started running around the landscape. He saw the gray sole of Gabriel’s yellow galoshes and tears flowed from the corner of his eye lids. He screamed as he held Gabriel’s pierced head in his hands…bleeding…motionless. I traveled through the boy’s head, and his dreams were the last thing I touched.  The warmth of Gabriel’s body, I remember, quickly faded as I ricocheted back into randomness.

Untitled (How do we even begin to think of these things)

What is it that you want out of life?

Shelter and some rags to house my cold body at night and drape my naked limbs.

A hat and shoes to shield my head from the gamboge sun and sheath my feet as they take steps to carry these weighted bones.

A rock and flowing waters to crack the seeds that nourish my hungering frame and slake my parched tongue.

A sense of self so I know if I’m standing next to others and whose hands these are.

What is it that you want out of life?

Young Adrian Under a Barrage of Questions

Como Empiezan Las Tormentas (Gefühlsmensch Mist IV)

Gemidos sonoros, amorosos

Escalando tu garganta.

Empiezan en tu estomago

Como el revoloteo

De gaviotas celosas.

Precipicios en tus pestañas

That at night are a wall of darkness where ships find their deathbed; an illusory night where no lighthouse dared be built; granite so shrill in color and texture where no light reflects; an end where the means are slapped to and fro in disorienting rhythms; jagged rocks where not even a grain of sand has remained averred to its zealous crannies

Y yo

Me digo

“Como e llegado aqui?”

Aferrado de uñas a un pilar

Donde nadie a terminado

De escribir su nombre

Letter and symbols in delirious scribbles that are carved with drunken fingers till they resemble the stump of rock they are clinging to; gasping and gulping water till the salt crystallizes in their veins; and their prophetic, whitened eyeballs see the light till they are peeled off and washed away; what gust of wind, what beating of a wing on the other side of us drives this tempests, this hypernatremia of sorts that swells flesh and bone

Es ponerte a dormir

Donde uno puede respirar

Sin dejarte abrir tu boca

Ni parpadeo alguno

Donde la calma en el ojo se asienta…creo

In feverish shudders of thoughts I’ve yet to find out as I cling to this stubborn, splintering rock if this theory is right; what calm is one to hope for if all is known are wall and water clashing everlasting: red crabs mating in burning columns; carvings that last a million years if any eye lived long to see.

Precipicios En Tus Pestañas

Dalmatian Dream (Gefühlsmensch Mist III)

Speaking in three languages

We stared at the stars

To keep ourselves sane.

And after cups of Dalmatian wine

We nestled in a minuscule bed.

Tu sonrisa tan contagiosa y tus ojos sinceros estan inprimidos en mi mente.

Sweating, I tasted your skin again and again.

My hands trailed your supple legs

And I thought of your eyes,

The color of Hvar rocks and rich clay

Tu piel tan suave como una pluma ligera, tu pelo, y el aroma de tu cuerpo todavia juegan con mi olfato.

As I suggested, we were to dream together.

You asked to hear stories and

I told you shaky tales to sleep.

El sonar de tu voz corre, como un niño en un jardin, de una oraja a la otra.

The soles of your feet against the top of mine, we walked through

The hot and heavy air of our room.

Tus suspiros acarician mi garganta y tus manos apretan mis caderas.

Your heartbeat woke me numerous times

And my hands learned the geography of your breaths for which I was a demigod moving, rubbing tectonic plates and sending waves through your limbs to your

Fingertips

Mis manos se mueven en el aire cuando pienso en tu cuerpo.

When I think of your body my hands move in the air

Cuando pienso en tu cuerpo mis manos se mueven en el aire

My hands move in the air when I think of your body.

Hvar - its rock and soil

Sitting in the cemetary, opposite this building, is where I wrote the english part of this piece. Mostar

Mar En Noche (Gefühlsmensch Mist II)

Ojos de mar en noche

Se han ahogado en ellos naufragos moros

Con tempestades de carcajadas

Tell me where you’ve been,

How those scars got on your knees

Of wintry winds

And slashing clouds.

Your hands run right

Through me.

Labios de sal

Se desmoronan

Con el mas leve tocar.

An angular jaw

Full of history

Of clay and meadows

Now lit around the clock

Cuerpo y lengua

Of dried powdered peppers

And peopled with topografia Americana

My eye caresses a skin yielding, scraped by falls

Under the Sun (Written on June 19th, 2011)

I have gone blind.  The furrows of my eyelids are piled up like old scroll in the caves that are my orbits.   I think it happened three or five days ago.  A constant orange glow is my new landscape; well not so new, now that I think about it.  I used to close my eyes and fan my hands across my face tracing opaque shadows in summer afternoons while laying about.  There is not a single moment to waste now; my body wants to melt into this scalding sand and rest, breath, give its tired muscles a moment to relax, one last time.

I know that I am to go on, but cannot see which way I am going; I smell the air and follow salt, eucalyptus, rotten flesh, and the cries of birds.  I may just be following myself for all I know, walking in circles, tracing the flight of carrion eaters.   My limbs shovel about heavy loads of lead through a dry mud that peels my skin off as it sifts about the swollen joints.  My tongue, now a piece of shriveled chalk in my mouth, moves from side to side with each labored breath.  When was the last time I drank water?  John had tried to drink all the water before he died and spilled it as I was sleeping; that was one of the last things I saw before I sunk into this orange mélange.  Is there night?  I pause in between sunset and sunrise but seem not to remember the sweet darkness that would give these useless eyes a rest.

I think I heard some running water.  To my left…?  No, I think it is to my right?  The wind may be toying with me.  But I was sure that I smelled it, briefly right after I heard it.  I felt some rocks on my way here and a smidge of moisture like a watercolor brush stroke in the air.  I do not get my hopes up as much as the first few days, we wasted so much energy rushing toward nonexistent wells.  After the third false alarm, john broke down and cried.  I had never seen him cry before, so I walked away and waited for him by the shade of a rock.  I studied its surface and thought of it as it was submerged in water millions of years ago.  All the water you wanted, all the salt waters that would be as useful as a gun in one last try to escape this suffering.  And John cried as the waves receded and eroded the stone I am staring at.  I was exhausted and could not walk any further away from him.  The tears would have shortened my life by one or even two days, I thought.  John may have cried during the night as well, I have not heard him behind me in a while.   There is nothing but walking through this thick air of dried needles and swishing sands.  When the rocks become few and far between, I step firmly on them for a second or two to feel awake, to know that this is not a dream and realize that death is still a part of this.  And I breath easily, relieved that this will not last forever.  There! The sound of water, a bit faint, but I hear it like quiet clinks of glass jostled around in canvas bags.  I will not hurry my pace though, there not much to push me forward left in me anymore.  My neck is a chunk of rubber that holds this heavy thing that is still talking to me and thinking all of what you are reading right now.   I am truly tired of this.  Even if it was water ahead of me, I do not feel as interested in it anymore.  What if I drink and just make this torturous steps last longer?  What if I lay my head upon its meager shore and go to sleep letting the water feel my lungs rather than my parched belly?

I can hear the water.

I am inhaling the water.

"The Desert" From my stay in Ohrid, Macedonia

Gefühlsmensch Mist

Paddle across this puddle

Where I welter in wait

I gather all the waters with sweeps of my hands

All I have are just the fractions

Of them in cupped up palms

And the memory of you in forgotten psalms.

Pay Your Duties at Destiny

I do not feel as if I came from anywhere.  I am not going anywhere, really.  And there are not any places to go but here.  Where is “here”?

At the moment, the circumstances are taking a toll on my sleep.  For example, I was dreaming that I had gotten deported.  Yes, and the person who was the in-flight attendant had given me the news.  To make matters worse, the in-flight attendance was one of the actors from “90210 Beverly hills…” something.  He had the blue eyes and brown hair…Perry…something.  In any case, this guy is sitting in between the person that I am flying with and I; I do not know this flying companion in reality, but in the dream we are flying together and know each other very well.  So the flight attendant begins making a speech about: “do you know what the yellow ribbon means?” At this point, I realize that my papers had been taken away, along with those of the person I am flying with (let us call him “john” for the sake of making this less painful to read), and I see one set of papers with a pink sheet and another set of papers with a yellow ribbon attached to them; how peculiar I thought.  The thought of peculiarity came from the idea that the ribbon looked awfully familiar.  I remember the ribbons given to cattle at the national cattle event, “La Rural,” in Argentina; and this ribbon, attached to the passport and green card, looked just like that: a yellow ribbon for a prize winning head of cattle.  After a quick glance, Perry, the flight attendant, puts both items out of the line of sight and continues with his speech about the meaning of that yellow ribbon.  Part of it I missed because I was enthralled by the thought of gauchos and cows parading through concrete and tar streets with lines of cars and people around them.  I looked at John, who is intently looking at Perry, and this makes me pay attention a bit more.  “…You see, when you get one of these you are not allowed to be back in the states and that means that your papers have been revoked…” Perry says with a soft smile on his face; the smile that just tells him that he did a good job at explaining what he thought would be a difficult thing to explain to someone else.

“Is there anything one could do about this?” I ask.  Perry’s smile tightens and he shakes his head from side to side.  He raises both hands, with the papers on them, and I glance at the ribbon.  He fumbles a bit while handing the papers because he does not know who is who.  I noticed a nice embroidered phrase in red on the yellow ribbon.  It read: “Pay your duties at destiny.”  My eyes widened a bit and I begin to internalize all that has happened in this brief encounter.  I tell Perry that I am “Lucas” and he says  “ha” and then crosses his arms in mid air and hands me the yellow ribbon that he was handing to John.  I was the prize-winning head of cattle.