B A L L A S T

henceforth

2011-05-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

photography collaboration with Mariola Rosario

two images

just images

sharing a person

sometimes an "I" or a "you"

superimposed

palimpsest

of lifetimes lost

until and since

we were

indistinguishable

beholding the fire

which is oblivion

before forgetting

the beyond

we still must be

elsewhere

as soon as you or I

become irrecognizable

to eachother

we really are without

on exile's stages

stammering nonsense

through the wounds

on our faces and between our legs

trying to fix and brand

upon some new tissue

the history where

we both limp out of the frame

at best victors

though

most likely

unintelligible

witnesses

of the ineffable

the

once embodied between

two of us which

i remember

like an orphaned angel

dragged by its wings

i remember

like the spoils of a war

yet to be declared

i remember a place

that hasn't been burned down yet

where "tomorrow morning"

means just that

and

where these eyes

are as immediate

to you as the sockets

that contain them

Alfonsina Storni y ciudad

2010-06-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

Cuadrados y ángulos

Casas enfiladas, casas enfiladas,
casas enfiladas.
Cuadrados, cuadrados, cuadrados.
Casas enfiladas.
Las gentes ya tienen el alma cuadrada,
ideas en fila
y ángulo en la espalda.
Yo misma he vertido ayer una lágrima,
Dios mío, cuadrada.

Squares and angles

Houses in line, houses in line,

houses in line.

Squares, squares, squares.

Houses in line.

People now have their souls squared,

ideas in line

and their backs on angle.

I myself have let go of a tear yesterday

My God, squared.

my translation

may 9th, 2010

2010-06-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

I choose to remember you
as you were when you were
happy to have found me

guilt will have almost nothing to say on the matter
maybe scorn or regret will find their prodigal home

nevertheless, I'll be surgical with the rest that
stopped being you

I'll celebrate indefatigable
the body built around your
then

the body for which to survive
...tissue, teeth & tongue true
worthy of peace

domestics

2010-06-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

     To you who are running for your life
the lifetime in emergency stated only
really looking for the absolute
singularity

     To you who are running for you life
between who & what, muted by your own
scream this is running, this is you going...
to the now higher ground to
the last returning

   To you who are running for your life
threatened innocent, of real needs & death
without being & lost, a spoiled souvenir
you've been to before, because of time

     all your life
in the realm of a trap
no referents for this

the heart of the sleeping choice
a missed simbiosis of what is left
to keep you safe from the flame

To us with our questions still
with our eyes on the wall & what
it meanss, knowing how to speak by
listening, & able

To those inside of you

To you who are running to your death
as if alone.

desenvoltorio

2010-06-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

el mejor
regalo que
me puedas
dar será
el no
buscarme
recordar
hasta encontrarme.

merecer

2010-05-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

por favor, te encontré

sobre el
mantel o bajo la frisa
te haré de comer
la espera vitalicia
de saberte poner;
y beber el sabor de la sed

con mis manos saladas
de tu olor a devoción

te remiendo como una foto de dios:

como muñecos abandonados en un aguacero
de un dolor honor entre epicentros que
se desdicen todo hasta ser

entre yerbas, de camino a la ciudad sin luz
rascada por la lluvia
te agolpas en el viento trasnochado
con ganas de huracán nupcial

prodigal

2010-05-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

— Des fleurs se pâment dans un coin.

Ch. Baudelaire

flower finger-tip words
the missing child beliefs found
stretches like a yawn with the
dew of skin steam

low headed holy pilgrim
step over step in step under
step fall in between legs fencing
laughing and crying, denting
denting smiles, branding

as if in a romance of roses
the things of the ocean
fruit bearing trees on the loom
milk breeze with honey, please
like a play of amorous murder
a real crime of the passion
forgivable yet never overlooked

it runs as if to fuse into pores
tissue tissue foliage
water bonds cauterized coves
& see-saw throats and commissura galore
on a horse of
pillows panting pillows

Angel floods parapet Song
the Sun's trafficked light
the ends & the nerves' dreams
begin...& I awake
somewhat cured
& underfed

Pastor Martin Niemöller

2010-04-30T10:36:00.001-07:00

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

notes yesterday

2010-04-23T00:44:00.000-07:00

Corta'zar:Traveler

Julia de Burgos: pa'jaro en el pecho

Los panchos: "Reloj no marques las horas"

Elis: Cais

voces y guitarras

2010-04-18T22:33:00.000-07:00

una canción / a song

Piano Magical Hour = (María, Lorraine, Danny, Mario, Pablo)

http://www.mediafire.com/?zyymdjytoon

Fernando Pessoa on love letters

2010-04-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

Álvaro de Campos, 21-10-1935

Todas las cartas de amor son ridículas...* Todas las cartas de amor sonridículas.No serían cartas de amor si no fuesenridículas.También escribí en mi tiempo cartas de amor,como las demás,ridículas. Las cartas de amor, si hay amor,tienen que serridículas. Pero, al fin y al cabo,sólo las criaturas que nunca escribieron cartas de amorsí que sonridículas. Quién me diera el tiempo en que escribíasin darme cuentacartas de amorridículas. La verdad es que hoy mis recuerdosde esas cartas de amorsí que sonridículos. (Todas las palabras esdrújulas,como los sentimientos esdrújulos,son naturalmenteridículas).**Heterónimo A. CamposVersión de Miguel Ángel Flores

All love letters areRidiculous.They wouldn't be love letters if they weren'tRidiculous.In my time I also wrote love lettersEqually, inevitablyRidiculous.Love letters, if there's love,Must beRidiculous.But in factOnly those who've never writtenLove lettersAreRidiculous.If only I could go backTo when I wrote love lettersWithout thinking howRidiculous.The truth is that todayMy memoriesOf those love lettersAre what isRidiculous.(All more-than-three-syllable words,Along with unaccountable feelings,Are naturallyRidiculous.)

To bad there is no direct translation for esdrújula other than a word accentuated in the antepenultimate syllable.

olhos e piano

2010-04-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

Ficas me olhando do piano
e te olho tão intensamente quanto tu,
até a ossatura,
até onde o pudor aguenta
até eu desabar por dentro
tentando te seguir.

Isso foi ontem, hoje quero te ligar,
escutar tua voz, conseguir um pretexto
para falar contigo e, sem mais delongas,
te dizer que desejo me sentir assim
indefinidamente

A poet from Brazil I once met in Iceland saw fit to translate this to Portuguese. My thanks go to him. Muito obrigado, Luciano! More of him here: http://www.upsaid.com/estuario/

to the gate (for Gustavo)

2010-04-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

What are you to do these days walking around exile's fruits?
Let me tell ya I've been missin' ya somewhere here
It must be knowing you are still relevant but filtered by distance
must have been the always last time goodbye leitmotif to what
you do to be. Must be the thanks of your crying mother then when
we lost sight of you: honest voice of the weight of the world.
Still, which windows found you still discovering nuances of the city
and its overcast days? dancing in the eye which is so masterful
in a language of its own. I have nowhere to look & I see you
again

dispelling farewells

there was a song that started with the words "There are places I'll remember..."
on the record you gave me or I gave you once. I listen to it often.

Pink Steam

2010-04-13T15:27:00.001-07:00

canswer

2010-04-13T15:11:00.001-07:00

the violence we see

2010-04-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

Is there not something suspicious, indeed symptomatic,
about this focus on subjective violence-the violence which
is enacted by social agents, evil individuals,
disciplined repressive apparatuses, fanatical crowds?
Doesn't it desperately try to distract our attention
from the true locus of trouble, by obliterating from view
other forms of violence and thus actively participating in them?
- Slavoj Zizek

After seven years into the Iraq war it is hard to transmit empathy for its victims using the scarce images that come to us already pre-digested by the major media moguls and the interests they respond to. But yesterday, we caught a glimpse of a video we were not supposed to watch of events which happened on July 12, 2007. This video -disseminated through out the web by a whistleblower organization directed by Julian Assange called Wikileaks- depicts the assassination of a group of Iraqi civilians, amongst which were two Reuters employees.

There was a small report of it on Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room in which the complete video was obviously censored invoking the respect for the families of the victims yet, I can't help but feel they were responding to something other than the respect of the dead and their survivors. Still I will give CNN the benefit of the doubt and congratulate their effort in making a footnote out of murder.

When we look up the video online what we witness is pure unwarranted violence quickly justified under the Rules of Engagement of the US Armed Forces. In it we see through one of the the rangefinders of two Apache helicopters circling above a courtyard in a suburb of Baghdad. We also hear the radio chatter between both helicopters as they ask permission to engage their targets. To one of the gunners, Namir Noor-Eldeen's camera resembled an AK-47. And while the helicopters were virtually unthreatened by the presence of these men gathered around the journalist and his driver, Saeed Chmagh.

After identifying them as targets they get the permission to open fire. And we see how in a few seconds almost all of them lay dead on the ground. One of th gunners says "Look at those dead bastards" while another remarks "Nice". They notice someone crawling amongst the bodies. It is Saeed. One gunner taunts him -"C'mon, buddy" - "All you got to do is pick up a weapon."

Shortly after, a van arrives to pick up the bodies and help Saeed. The Apaches open fire once more. Killing Saeed and his rescuers. Two children were in the van and were wounded. The gunners wash their hands by saying -"Well it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle".

The tanks and the troops that the helicopters were clearing the ground for arrive. To add insult to injury a tank drives over one of the bodies laying on the ground. The gunners laugh.

The Pentagon has regretted the incident but sustained that the gunners acted in accordance to the rules of engagement. Other than that it limits itself to change the subject by pointing out that the video represents a breach in the Department of Defense and holds Assange as a threat to national security. Assange, who is based in Reykjavík, Iceland has reported to the press what he understands are various articulations of covert surveillance on him and members of his team.

Other than a few pieces in less than a handful of papers, I have not found much coverage of this story. And the ones written on this side of the world concentrate more on what a pity it is that it was Namir who died. Him being one of the hundred and counting journalists that have been killed reporting the war in Iraq for the rest of the world. Not much is said about the sadism portrayed by these soldiers that, may very well believe they acted accordingly against an alleged threat yet, the video speaks for itself and what it says makes them look like the basest of murderers. And then why should you interpret a van coming to the aid of a wounded person another target to engage?

We can concentrate on this aspect of the obvious and subjective violence that is captured in this video yet I fear I would missing the point. Eventhough the news of this leak has not caught on in the media (except for a small segment of in BBC America earlier today), I have seen how the video has gone from 300 something views yesterday to 2 million today. This indicates an interest on the story, but I am afraid it also points out our pathological obssession with the macabre.

Let us not fix ourselves on the terror of these images but on the network of systems which legally permits an individual payed (american taxpayer dollars) to hover around in a helicopter above a city he claims to be protecting by shooting a cameraman, his driver and other passers by. The sociological system which we feed by merely interacting with its market has been naming and creating our present and future enemies. The need to be an economic power or the leader of the free world is costly to people around the globe which we will never meet yet suffer for the whims of what our government considers important to its well-being.

When we think about 9/11 we tend to focus on the fact that it was a horrible act of violence perpetrated on innocent people. But still we fail to see that it did not come out of nowhere. What are all those people who died on that fateful day but victims of their government's policies? I do not think the so called terrorists who are responsible care much about our "way of life" in as much as it supports the regimen that threatens their way of life.

These are just a few crude examples of the way violence manifests itself in many different levels. But be it subjective or more systematic, people die just the same from both because they are concomitant. So when we see an innocent civilian get killed on the other side of the world, we should remember we are also accessories to that death. Be it by paying taxes or not opposing the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, we might as well be a gunner on an Apache.

war crimes/it is important & imperative that you see this

2010-04-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

& hopefully react...

thanks to Julian Assange, his team & all the journalists & whistleblowers who do their jobs.

http://wikileaks.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack

titus

2010-04-04T22:23:00.000-07:00

thinking about what survives
as somewhat sacred nowadays &
I can only think of innocence.
probably because it is missed by
almost everyone. Even revenge might think twice.

I'm finding parallels between Whitman and Huidobro.

I'll quote some gold later.

love,
p

marcos

2010-04-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

here tolls who
understood war-
that it never left-

who saw further than travel
that the epitaph
of the world would
be crowded

and where to have
is to be, the lack of
space rendered
him lifeless yet
surpassing

my love will turn you on

2010-04-02T16:20:00.001-07:00

resignation

2010-04-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

I don't know who you write for. It doesn't seem to be me.
Is this what you tell yourself now? Is this what you want to prove?
You can wash your hands clean of me. But I think you are lying.
To yourself more than anyone else. I can forgive being reduced

to the cartoon of your desire. I can deal with being archived under death (because that's what you are trying to do). You can choose to hide behind some twisted notion of motherhood & the righteousness of being responsible to everyone but yourself. Yet, I never asked you to renounce your child & I never encouraged you to lie Quite the contrary actually. But I am not here to defend myself, I think you do a better job at that. I was willing to go the distance and I made that clear. If this is what you chose nonetheless, I don't want nothing to do with you. I hope this is your brave decision. That you are not settling. For you may find someone that will be willing to take you as you compromise your own happiness. There are those who will use that card to bargain for your love. In that case beware. This is what you teach your child. This is what I saw when I was growing up. Resignation. Happy mediums. Subterfuges to legitimize and justify the decisions you've made. The things I never forgave. I can have no part in this. I will not. I prefer oblivion. I prefer you forget me. For the worse has won if it is that way. I will trust you come illuminated. That this is just my resentment; my disappointment speaking. I wish you don't see the day in regret. For my part, I won't try to block out the sun with my hand. I don't want to. I still feel. I still feel. And I will defend that. I wish you strong. I wish free beyond yourself. I wish you alive.

I leave you nothing because nothing will do for you now. This is what we earned. And this is what you deserve (or at least believe you deserve).

[I fear this is just as illegible now to you as it is to the custodian of your fractured heart. Be careful of cynicism & denial. It's too easy] Rid yourself of guilt. And know that my contempt is born out of (& only rivaled by) my love, knowing you greater yet, reduced to the mechanics of your time.

your poem is being written

2010-03-31T22:37:00.000-07:00

for Helgi

For some reason you can't get Camels here anymore.
I light another brand I don't look at and imagine
I am walking down Klapparstígur,
On my way to see a friend.

if you ever wonder about the extent of the cold war

2010-03-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

I just can't stop watching this. I want to be the keyboard player.

cursi

2010-03-30T20:24:00.000-07:00

I feel whatever I write lately comes out corny/tacky so...I'll take a break until I can write more collected.

Good new, I hope. The interview seemed to go well for me. Still fingers crossed. I so want to quit my job at the supermarket.

here's some gratuitous live feed of a volcano in Iceland:

http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-fimmvorduhalsi/

interview

2010-03-30T00:45:00.000-07:00

I have an interview to be a librarian tomorrow. Wish me luck, guys.

Rilke's Lament

2010-03-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Everything is far
and long gone by.
I think that the star
glittering above me
has been dead for a million years.
I think there were tears
in the car I heard pass
and something terrible was said.
A clock has stopped striking in the house
across the road...
When did it start?...
I would like to step out of my heart
an go walking beneath the enormous sky.
I would like to pray.
And surely of all the stars that perished
long ago,
one still exists.
I think that I know
which one it is--
which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,
stands like a white city...

forgive all the saudade inherent in these last two posts.

no direct translation

2010-03-30T00:03:00.000-07:00

saudade (this is how the lusitanians describe the melancholy that entails loss or absence of the desired body)
söknuður (icelanders use this for loss & regret)
morriña (some spaniards thus describe the sadness of pining for things, especially the homeland)
añoranza (this spanish word comes from catalan "enyorar" which comes from latin "ignorare", to ignore [Kundera has a good book built around this definition])
Sehnsucht (apparently germans see it as an addiction to longing; it can definitely become pathological, I give them that.)
nostalgia (the pain of the return, self pity before the absence of friends, lovers or homeland)

many words for without; for the presence of absence. saudade sounds sweet though. especially in Brazilian Portuguese. but then again, what word doesn't? Söknuður I like also but, I am kind of partial to Icelandic words.

cos every once in a while one has to say...

2010-03-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

"Fuck this shit."

and today was one of those.

Take it away Belle & Sebastian!

anonymous

2010-03-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

if i told you i found the child reared in your rhyme
would you help me, the eyes that were yet to be born?
would you stay enough to believe what i tell you is in fact true?
from within a language that has lost even its ability to call for help
to cry and be answered, to be undeniable, where this is that already
which has epitaphed itself in your turning gaze too late?

is it the endless sadness of being a poet tonight -which might
as well have been your night (and is probably now your night too)-
where the muses only exist in the calendars of their devout

i can't even write! and it's all trifle, no form to convey & save
this meaning devoid of its recipient & content. i am the word muzzled
i am no longer, i can't even claim my wounds as mine
unless you were to reply

Rilke told me to read Jacobsen

2010-03-28T00:03:00.000-07:00

"The face of the little girl looked very astonished, she was just about to laugh; the smile already hovered in the eyes. "

-Jens Peter Jacobsen

so far so good.

for you. yes, you.

2010-03-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

poem sketch #1

2010-03-25T15:44:00.000-07:00

there is this, which I choose
& I cull against the grain
the action that sets me
apart from the rest that live in me
is my willful inability to do nothing
but lift you

apart from the dead
that lacked the humor
to live as victims of the
longest siege known to
man,

which arguably
still wages on -smiling
at the cameras that do not
remember peacetime-, and
this is where I, uppercased
still choose you: the voice
of my insubordination.

how to cut off the balls

2010-03-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

Slavoj Zizek on what it means to be a revolutionary today. A really good speech to shake off our preconceptions and whatever moral ground we think we stand on.

float

2010-03-23T21:42:00.000-07:00

I asked the right person for musical insight. Turns out she also does music herself. Beautiful music. I will refrain from trying to draw comparisons or throw in references but instead suggest at least a listen. The project is called Dalida's Cat and you can pet it at: http://dalidascat.tumblr.com/ & at: http://www.myspace.com/dalidascat

the boys are back in town

2010-03-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

I think I'm accepted to comp lit masters program...

this calls for some celebration.

we hold these truths to be self evident

2010-03-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

ask and ye shall be given/spinning plates

2010-03-22T06:08:00.000-07:00

I asked some friends for new texts and stuff worthwile. Janina Daria Witkowski from Finland
recommended Ryszard Kapuscinski. I am still trying to find more online, at least a pdf or something. But I found one poem that shares its title with his last book. I thought it a condensed piece of truth.
"I wrote a stone" it's called.

I wrote stone
I wrote house
I wrote town

I shattered the stone
I demolished the house
I obliterated the town

the page traces the struggles
between creation
and annihilation

if you find anything in english or spanish let us now.

& thanks for sharing, Janina

here's a video of a song dear to me:

called in sick today

2010-03-22T04:10:00.000-07:00

I heard a volcano erupted in Iceland. Reason enough.

here's a poem by a friend called Gunnar M.G. from his book Milli Barna

Manstu þegar: rigning

auðvitað var hún varnalaus
vorum við bæði & auðsærð: háð

en sterk á yfirborðinu
kröfðumst þess að vera: sterk

sunday dress & kierkegaard

2010-03-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

lousy day at work but...I came home to Sibyll Baier

give her a listen or don't, you will regret it either way.

what has to happen

2010-03-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

If I write about a car
does it idle, stop, go forth or crash?
Anyway, I think someone has to die each time
for you to talk to me.

freundschaft

2010-03-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

I'm friends with a great writer. Hopefully she'll believe it one day.

I was reading her today. I'll share this with you:

la dicha

antes de abrir la boca no cierres los ojos
mira que fui yo quien te lo dio todo
mira que tuviste más de lo que esperaste
mira que las alarmas son para despertarte
mira que las calles son para encontrarnos
antes de cerrarlos procura usarlos
mira que no mienten las cordialidades
mira que el otoño está de tu parte
mira que fui yo quien se desvivió
mira que la dicha no fue nada de buena
mira la hora porque nunca llegó
mira como acaban las cosas que cuentan
mírate ahora, y recuerda, que fui yo

her name is Lydivette Roldán. you can read her better here: todo lo demás & here: aerolineal

lesser evils

2010-03-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

today I saw a man that was missing an arm and I was surprised to see, not far away, a woman missing a hand rapidly approaching his field of vision. he saw her and I believe I read envy on his face.

Las uvas con queso...

2010-03-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

I never met my grandmother but they tell me she used to say:
"Las uvas con queso saben a beso." (grapes with cheese taste of kisses)
I did some field testing and I think she's right.

reading John Ashbery

2010-03-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

Just Walking Around

What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is no name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,

Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

Morgen früh, wenn Gott will

2010-03-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

reading Levi

"Memory is a curious instrument: ever since I have been in the camp, two lines written by a friend of mine a long time ago have been running through my mind:

'...Until one day
there will be no more sense in saying: tomorrow.'

It is like that here. Do you know how one says 'never' in camp slang? 'Morgen früh', tomorrow morning."

pedagogue

2010-03-11T12:07:00.001-08:00

i want it so much for you to spell
with your heart dress my blood when
you teach me to read poetry

today

2010-03-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

today I thought of Wislawa*, and how her love was so much so, she owed much to those she didn't love...as a solace it seems, a pause between wounds reopening. a space of coherence and legibility against a horizon of semantic combustion.

is intermittence the sine qua non to life? wake & dream.

I went nowhere further. I think someone got lost in the rain today. it must have, the way it was raining.

...Cette chanson Les Feuilles Mortes/S'efface de mon souvenir/Et ce jour là/Mes amours mortes/En auront fini de mourir...

the dead loves -plural in time- grew up today and made themselves place elsewho and everything that entails. I am proud of them (I almost feel like an grateful enabler). I don't know how much I owe them yet, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. how do you reconcile in yourself the existence of two debts that are legal tender to each other? [this is getting way too socratical, yet rest assured I ain't trying to sell nothing.] Bob Dylan says: it ain't me, babe... I imagine that "babe" got over Bob and went on to find what she was lookin' for...

songs are maybe what's due for adieus

now I must scurry to write an essay if I want to keep studying comp. lit.

in other words: violence and vassalage

2010-03-07T00:27:00.000-08:00

the religion of the historic is
that which turns whatever it beatifies a document
into a relic whose power is to conjure the pilgrimage
of every subject to its premises
just for the sake of its own sustainability...

noise choice

2010-03-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

perhaps the next step is to acknowledge the infinite and simultaneous existence of meanings that any and everything are. we will still be prone to choice and to map these, alongside other permutations, until the possibility of every manifestation is given the space to do just that: to manifest, the overlapping systems of significance will leave no negative space when considered. against this body of sound freedom lies in the right to volume and the pursuit of endlessness.

political geography

2010-03-06T23:27:00.000-08:00

I don't know if to admire or abhor
the ones that decided to stay when
the New World was conceived.

what the fall told me

2010-03-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

on the second time around
I came for you though
my love would not say so
there. it was an act of faith
not so much in you but in me
to accept whatever came from you
the music was gone & I didn't
care about your language
because it wasn't you speaking it
at least anymore. I bit your lips
& proved your body against mine
for you to say the words you can
only utter when I am about to leave.
And you still do. And, I see you in windows
and in the corners of my eyes, wishing
I could show you this, my you, everywhere.

snapshots

2010-03-02T14:58:00.000-08:00

I wish seeing him would be easier.
Oliver at Hvalfjordur, Iceland/December 2009

These are the things that I keep to miss Iceland with. Barren cemetery of intentions.
Hvalfjordur, Iceland/December 2009

Last time I saw Marcos he was living here. We listened to Sonic Youth & My Bloody Valentine records amongst other musts. I had never been to NYC yet I never left Brooklyn. I don't regret it contrary to the fantasies built around its many flocking visitors. That was the only piece of New York that was relevant to me at the time. Or maybe it was the only place that pretexted the city around itself for my sake.
Brooklyn, USA/December 2009

Wislawa Szymborska

2010-03-02T08:46:00.001-08:00

There is much I owe
to those I do not love.

The relief in accepting
they are closer to another.

Joy that I am not
the wolf to their sheep.

My peace be with them
for with them I am free,

and this, love can neither give,
nor know how to take.

I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,
I understand
what love does not understand.
I forgive
what love would never have forgiven.

Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks.

My trips with them always turn out well.
Concerts are heard.
Cathedrals are toured.
Landscapes are distinct.

And when seven rivers and mountains
come between us,
they are rivers and mountains
well known from any map.

It is thanks to them
that I live in three dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,
with a shifting, thus real, horizon.

They don't even know
how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I don't owe them anything",
love would have said
on this open topic.

cytokine storm

2010-02-28T00:30:00.000-08:00

When the body perceives that it is sick, the immunological system interprets a threat. Even if the threat be the body itself, or believes it to be so, the system will not stop until the body succeeds at defending itself dead. This defensive perspective henceforth lives on, being the enemy justified in self diagnosis.

Similarities have been found in other bodies not limited to but concomitant to our own. At times it has been called civil war, holocaust, ethnic cleansing and the Patriot Act to name a few auto-inoculations, yet these names serve to give a clinical distance to an intrinsic, even chronic syndrome. Unfortunately, the cure's manifestation is still subject to the language, the laws and the markets that police its hosting constitutions, enacting and enforcing a martial state, a constant curfew breaks out of a widespread and imposed misreading of the singularity it takes offense in. The body, is held hostage to its antibodies' redundant ransom. A bedridden coup-d'etat it seems, bent on suicide unless it mutates to demand an organic habeas corpus from its autocratic garrison. If the system's policy remains unchecked and the necrosis continues it is an indication that the storm has affected the patient's psyche to the extent of producing a psychopathological comorbidity that parallels the body's illness with disorders such as body dysmorphic syndrome, masochism and other coping mechanisms.

disembodied

2010-02-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

when the word is solitude the ornament is enough

some Pessoa

2010-02-27T15:03:00.000-08:00

He pasado toda la noche sin dormir, viendo...

He pasado toda la noche sin dormir, viendo,
sin espacio tu figura.
Y viéndola siempre de maneras diferentes
de como ella me parece.
Hago pensamientos con el recuerdo de lo que
es ella cuando me habla,
y en cada pensamiento cambia ella de acuerdo
con su semejanza.
Amar es pensar.
Y yo casi me olvido de sentir sólo pensando en ella.
No sé bien lo que quiero, incluso de ella, y no
pienso más que en ella.
Tengo una gran distracción animada.
Cuando deseo encontrarla
casi prefiero no encontrarla,
Para no tener que dejarla luego.
No sé bien lo que quiero, ni quiero saber lo que
quiero. Quiero tan solo
Pensar en ella.
Nada le pido a nadie, ni a ella, sino pensar.

quelque chose

2010-02-27T14:33:00.000-08:00

what broke inside your engine
that left you down in resignation?
as to the destination of your visions
of return of pastures and of youthful
bewilderment before the world that
had forgot this place between pretexts
the desert where you can meet me
your ageless accolade, I know
there is repair yet I am hoping
it is not all in my hands to save you
from unwarranted faithlessness

More's enough

2010-02-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

i do enough to not lie when I am asked.

your heirloom

2010-02-11T23:27:00.000-08:00

For Mariola Rosario Padró

As you see them letting go,
buckling under their right to do so...
I only want your unbridled sovereign joy to
be such in my completion. My furthering reader,
I write to you from within the distance of
repetition, treading the loudest swelling water.
My faith's earned asylum to whom this is
singing that Bitter Song, I tide towards you
knowing that to blanket your blessed barbaric breath
would be to throw off your life behind the part of us
that flourishes unbound beyond our selves.
Your lures keep squelching upon each other
in a seamless & ubiquitous noise in which you wade & play;
these are my gift to you.
& this is why my witnessing will only have
your silences my smiles,
already inflected here where we break our voice

an old dream

2010-02-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

for þ.

I dreamt with you last night she said. I was at the beach with my friends playing various games and drinking wine when we noticed a ship adrift a few hundred meters in front of us. You appeared on the beach, always somewhat separate from the group. You picked up a stone and cast it at the vessel. It immediately caught on fire and started to go under, taking in water as I watched horrified. My friends weren't there anymore and you just stood there, looking at what you did.

Q & q

2010-02-10T19:03:00.000-08:00

if you were a consonant...
which would it be?

I'll picture you.

i think I would be k

a less obvious firefighting

2010-02-10T15:03:00.000-08:00

'And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.'

from the last chapter of the last page in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities

color & devotion

2010-02-10T14:37:00.000-08:00

outskirts #3

2010-02-10T01:45:00.000-08:00

there, back against a frisian horse,
waiting for the Body to sieve through
my limbs

in clots & clabber, redeemed
under or the sun. green, ripe &
stillborn? it hasn't come yet

but this, my voice's pristine anticipates,
when you say answer, when-you just say a where,
it is welling, porous as it is, it yields to coat me
in my entirety: a welcome abuse out of a shared will to be only
if in each other galvanized, convulsively overlapping in

morganatic resentment, cowering to encircle
even More; & Choke & Plug, selflessly insufficient,
conditional to resignation with regal disdain
the rest & the center disavowed

without an elsewhere or a need for one, it cries unquenched
at the same time as it douses & weans
the Great Fire's flames from us, still there,
branded into an "I": survived for.

henceforth in

smuggling Brimming thresholds
in prairies, lowercased outside the nouns
until further is enough enough to

reach you beyond your Self,
kiss-chase your marrow illegible
& dent your shuddering stomach
into my throat, right
here

outskirts #2

2010-02-09T15:21:00.000-08:00

#1

2010-02-09T15:18:00.000-08:00

i have to forget that you learnt something else when you first saw this word. Still, you react however and that is o.k.

Poetical Metonymy

2010-01-27T19:42:00.000-08:00

If you are a simile
are you like a metaphor?

2009-12-10T20:31:00.000-08:00

2.
They once came together and she showed him to me. I was, as I am always, with my arms wide open and quite cold. They walked around the garden behind the old church and visited the others. I think I saw them kiss. After they left that day I did not see them for a while. She came once more. Then, he started coming more often. He looked at me as if I were to blush. And I did. With his every-other-days he made me feel as if I could move every time he came by, looking at me. I was her favorite and he knew this, until somewhere in the garden she became as still as the rest of us.

Inútil Paisagem

2009-11-24T18:51:00.000-08:00

Dime "pra que?", Elis.

Mas pra que
Pra que tanto céu
Pra que tanto mar,
Pra que
De que serve esta onda que quebra
E o vento da tarde
De que serve a tarde
Inútil paisagem
Pode ser
Que não venhas mais
Que não voltes nunca mais
De que servem as flores que nascem
Pelo caminho
Se o meu caminho
Sozinho é nada
É nada
É nada

nourishment

2009-11-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

as I fed from your only limbs
I taste milk and
remember you are
the mother I made
and killed dry

Esta noche

2009-11-24T18:23:00.000-08:00

EN ESTA NOCHE, EN ESTE MUNDO

A Martha Isabel Moia

en esta noche en este mundo
las palabras del sueño de la infancia de la muerte
nunca es eso lo que uno quiere decir
la lengua natal castra
la lengua es un órgano de conocimiento
del fracaso de todo poema
castrado por su propia lengua
que es el órgano de la re-creación
del re-conocimiento
pero no el de la resurrección
de algo a modo de negación
de mi horizonte de maldoror con su perro
y nada es promesa
entre lo decible
que equivale a mentir
(todo lo que se puede decir es mentira)
el resto es silencio
sólo que el silencio no existe

no
palabras
no hacen el amor

hacen la ausencia
si digo agua ¿beberé?
si digo pan ¿comeré?

en esta noche en este mundo
extraordinario silencio el de esta noche
lo que pasa con el alma es que no se ve
lo que pasa con la mente es que no se ve
lo que pasa con el espíritu es que no se ve
¿de dónde viene esta conspiración de invisbilidades?
ninguna palabra es visible

sombras
recintos viscosos donde se oculta
la piedra de la locura
corredores negros
los he corrido todos
¡oh quédate un poco más entre nosotros!

mi persona está herida
mi primera persona del singular

escribo como quien con un cuchillo alzado en la oscuridad
escribo como estoy diciendo
la sinceridad absoluta continuaría siendo
lo imposible
¡oh quédate un poco más entre nosotros!

los deterioros de las palabras
deshabitando el palacio del lenguaje
el conocimiento entre las piernas
¿qué hiciste del don del sexo?
oh mis muertos
me los comí me atraganté
no puedo más de no poder

palabras embozadas
todo se desliza
hacia la negra licuefacción

y el perro del maldoror
en esta noche en este mundo
donde todo es posible
salvo
el poema

hablo
sabiendo que no se trata de eso
siempre no se trata de eso
oh ayúdame a escribir el poema más prescindible
el que no sirva ni para
ser inservible
ayúdame a escribir palabras
en esta noche en este mundo

The City

2008-09-18T22:55:00.001-07:00

You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is -- like a corpse -- buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land -- do not hope --
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.

(Konstantinos Kavafis)

Travelogue - Berkeley/San Francisco

2008-08-10T22:40:00.000-07:00

From July 23rd to August 3rd of 2008

Orfeus´ Last Words

2008-07-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

I needed something to write about...
so I looked back and she gave it to me.

On Dancing

2008-06-02T00:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes more than often
there isn't much one can do other
than dance for one's life

Our Daily Barthes

2008-05-31T23:44:00.000-07:00

The code is a . . . mirage of structures; we know only its departures and returns; the units which have resulted from it (those we inventory) are themselves, always, ventures out of the text, the mark [or] sign of a virtual digression toward the remainder of a catalogue; they are so many fragments of something that has always been already seen, done, experienced; the code is the wake of that already.

-Roland Barthes

Memory Map

2008-05-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Always already is the legend
That eggs to ignore its own scaffolding
Of adverbs of manner,
Place, certainty and lack thereof thereafter,
Of degree and of Time, always already is

My tether, this then future
its shape transit shaped,
falls from the when it was made
Ensconced in the names
On shift; often rarely chosen
In the scarcity of a lifespan’s souvenirs

(-"I've been...")

Here after there for
Before

("the current resident")

Soon to celebrate the sacrifice
Of tomorrow in service
Of Yesterday’s today

Always already; The void and its wake:
an evicted address not so forgotten
as to be for giving never,
the lesser, that life thereafter not seen not
withstanding...

Subtracting One
another other to be
having been

survived for.

The road and the route

2008-05-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

Birthday confessions

2008-05-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Afterall, I was born in a basement.

Two maps

2008-05-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

Peacetime map
about behind from on toward above below in on top of under across beneath in front of onto underneath after beside inside out of until against between instead of outside of up along by into over upon among down like past with you around during near since within me at except of through without before for off to

Wartime map
about behind from on toward above below in on top of under across beneath in front of onto underneath after beside inside out of until against between instead of outside of me up along by into over upon among down like past with around during near since within at except of through without you before for off to

Thanks. For pardoning my belated

2008-05-04T15:14:00.000-07:00

…one cannot apologize for anything essential…
-Hermann Hesse

While living in X, as soon as I had learned a few ways to and reasons for saying thanks in this my new place, I was encountered with some peculiar contexts in which gratitude or its haunt was called upon. I remember. I was finished with work for that then day at my new job, when a woman that happened to be also working that evening there with me said –“Thanks for the day”; in such a way as a good-bye, almost as if “day” requested an uppercase “d”. All I could come up with in my translating mind was –“Likewise”. It was the tomorrow of my present yesterdays and I kept sporadically hearing this phrase at the end of days there after; like new words tend to do. And I knew that when gratitude meets custom there might be a lot left to be desired in the gesture, but still, I enjoyed the voicings I felt came from both language’s forebears and the acceptance thereof in service of more meaning; in tone and delivery perhaps. Now knowing the natural end of most things I came upon another thank. As it appeared, when more than one spend time together, afterwards when seeing each other again wherever that may be, the following phrase (roughly my translation) is employed: -Thanks for the last (time). I thought of a world where a second tryst would be nearer to a miracle than the cue for a quotidian expression. That “last” sounded so fatal to me; perhaps in this their past, the awareness of the cherished and unrepeatable was somehow more acutely accented by this little ritual. The Time came to leave with me. And I left in a rush, probably angry at the noun but blaming the sentence that punctuated me here. And when I left X out a frozen window pane, I realized I had forgotten to say thanks. Thanks for the day it had left me with. It was too late, X was offended (possibly beyond my repair) and with such an essential reason as ingratitude, I cannot rebuke. On one particular day in the middle of my stay in X's capitalized town, I once truly thanked a man for his generosity, and he did not say “you’re welcome” nor “it was nothing”. He said, as if forgiving the common place –“Thank you” emphasizing the “you” just so it did not sound the same as mine but making it clear that it was the best and only thing to say; like a mirror’s answer. I never saw him or his native X again. When and if I do I will know just what to say before and after my apologies.

"ahí"

2008-05-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

2008-04-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

...al menos se le concede que estuvo
porque la omnipresencia del ausente
solo se da cuando fue presente
su presencia se volvió ausencia
cuando devino a la eternidad...
-Superaquello

The city is elsewhere today.

Gifting (The Boon)

2008-03-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

Better no prayer | than too big an offering,
By thy getting measure thy gift;
Better is none | than too big a sacrifice,
. . . . . . . . . .

-Hávamal, 146

There is no one without lacking; wherein

There is too much of Always’ apostrophe,

Often more than Never; one, maybe with any

Is expected to come

With no choice but

To be had;

Guilt’s guest of guests

Once again in there

Anew in need and in thrift,

Of the host only out-of-doors, threshheld

Alone at home bearing invitations

To be giving

Back

don't if yes

2008-03-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

reciprocated and unattended
growing indefinitely
if it were the chance to be
so much more than
the hypothesis behind
a law so anecdotal
it is doubted
by the exceptions that rule
the aim of being anything
more than its devices
like a firework or a story
in a story read over the phone
a tunnel
painted in the heaviest ink
possible like a law so said
and so assumed that passes
for a "yes"; the "yes"
that closes the condition
into a surrender and its
recurrent predisposition
to accept the mystery that follows
to be followed after and behind the name
that happens to be there hiding illiteracy;
perhaps the recognition of shared solitude
and the admiration for another's way to fold pain
however neatly into this nakedness

-"...again at the same time as..."

2008-03-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

Truth's truth is
not without
fiction being

the cease fire of
deceased words
that in between
you and I we had

coming
in order of
redisappearance
such a cast in within
little crutches quoted

is bound to play
as hinges will on
a hotter day

the same of
which we've
become starring
the relentless role
of shadows shingled and
besieged by buttons of

orphaned corners of

the eyelets

looking for another
the other verb that "to look" is not
for an epaulet uncharted in its wait
which has gone around the world
the times that these then words
will have lost (as they usually do) without gain
without you
estranged

Again at the same time as you read this sentence. I am
here only in the measure of my absence and your rereading;
so strong. Every again

on this somewhat
silver platter I am at
wait for the war
on handicapped cue

for example:
a generous thief
only steals in the past
gives in the present
and misses the future
as the word mouthed
now is?

once
you read me
my line out-loud
you will have already said(:)
yours irrevocably; -"yours
i-rre-vo-ca-bly"

mine;
our "mine"
and so much more

Decoyer

2008-03-05T16:01:00.000-08:00

I am cold
and from a
distance I might
look decorating
the unavoidable
in your education
the explicits that will kill
you any moment now
as long as you let go with
a report followed by a thud
or some another
mournful onomatopoeia

your eye is breaking
your (The) fall
for falling's sake
this is the only thing I am allowed to see and complete.

you venture calling
me by a name so warm
reused and cauterized
but now we will be just as cold
but with pretext
with inside elsewhere
me and you once
one mannequin at a time
we start to talk

2008-02-15T17:09:00.000-08:00

GONE

Whenever I already left for
With the same weight I
must've had coming
all pendulum like

I follow a brass section
making its shift out of the ceiling
of my mouth while standing
on the Concomitant Kick Drum

I'm alone and in good company
I'm going there
I am-go-ing-there
like a seasoned secret
self propelled
and somewhat Motionless
I grow

I grow, grow, grow
until I'm back
in view of
my redeparture

"there"

2008-02-15T15:56:00.000-08:00

-A traitor's map.*

* "She knew that language is only a map of man’s thoughts, feelings, and memories . . . “Like all maps,” she thought, “language is a picture of what is to be represented but reduced hundreds of thousands of times. A vastly miniaturized picture of human feelings, thoughts, and memories. On that map seas are not salt, rivers do not flow, mountains are flat, and snow is not cold. Instead of hurricanes and storms only a tiny cluster of winds is drawn . . .”

-Milorad Pavic

2008-02-11T15:58:00.000-08:00

Gluggi

The first of mine is

Staying in outside

I shiver the windows higher

Roofing their heads under my throat

I hear a name or a lie lapping

Around me like peninsula

I fashion your frame with my eyelids

Knowing you’re only another name for

Window weather

Thule

2008-02-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

Almost always never again

Inasmuch as nevertheless

I never loved you so

As when you said goodbye

Coasting the distance between

Your first, second and third

Person

I came to a full stop.