18 April, 2014

Vivir Para Contarla

The first story I ever wrote was about a raindrop who got lost in a river. She cried and cried, and her tears made it even harder to be found. She swam and cried and yelled at her family on the riverbank. Eventually her intuitive mother saw her surrounded by other droplets and the raindrop was saved. I was seven.

My love of words and desire to write (probably more “proper” now, but also more inhibited), is due to three people. The first was my mother- who gave me my first library card, painstakingly waiting every Sunday at the library while I picked out the ten books I planned to read that following week. Even more incredible was her ability to put up with my countless library fines, a habit I still have yet to grow out of. If my mother gave me the tools I needed to read anything and everything, it was my father who demonstrated the power of innovation. As he invented new tales night after night, my brother and I would lay on the floor next to Gustavo’s seemingly immense bed, wide-eyed and exhausted, anticipating a denoument that could terrify or enthrall us. His imagination remained unrivaled… until I read Cien Años de Soledad for the first time.

I can’t recall the exact age I was when I began reading what would become a texted imbedded in my very marrow. It was sometime after I started menstruating, but many years before my first kiss. This book changed my life forever. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for me, was completely and instantaneously divine. As an atheist, I use this word very deliberately. Any lover of words has that one particular writer who can unravel their soul. Marquez was mine- moreover, anyone knowing me intimately knows this as well. His novels, short stories, essays showcase the strange mystifying power he had to describe what rests inside all our hearts. His worldview was deeply whimsical, intoxicatingly romantic, and fatalistically comical. One of the cultural grandparents of Latin America, Gabo shown brightly, lighting our way through love affairs and civil wars and deaths foretold with the buoyancy of tiny little yellow butterflies. He instilled in me the absolute necessity to express through written word, and moreover gave me confidence to believe the things which I felt to be true. His death was timely, this cannot be argued. But once in a while for a choice few of us, even enough years on this planet are not enough. His words will rest in my heart forever.

La vida no es la que uno vivió, sino la que uno recuerda, y cómo la recuerda para contarla. -Gabriel Garcia Marquez

15 April, 2014

Hangover

The brain pulses,
convulsing and full of
conversations,
always wondering when
the pulsing may end.

All the lengths of Time
have passed, mercilessly
sliding by without
signals of dissipation
or any kind of peace.

Tiny twists of fate
bloom upward,
inventing again what
was lost in the
silences now melted.

The catharsis of this
fate combines with
the uncertainties hidden
behind closed hearts
and in empty bottles.

When will the cycle
break- when will the
sour feeling of
solitude and weakness
burn out, finally hydrated?

With these winds
Comes Green and Color
and a peaceful
resolution to a night filled
with disorder, Calm’s opposite.

Now, maybe with some
water and a few sprinkles
of interest, the aftereffect
will cease, after years of
wondering when.

Solitude and sour sweat
can be replaced with
equilibrium, position,
all in flower beds that
peek up from Hades.

Still yet, a cure-all is
never found. Night sweats
and early mornings
do nothing to contain
misplaced passions.

The earth is still thawing
and April’s attempts to
sober up the landscape
prove in earnest and
without due appreciation.

All that can cure these
trembles of uncertainty
is the patience Fate
gives as the petals turn
to face the Sun.

The heart cannot remain
hungover forever-
the buzzing fades, the
flowers grow upward,
the dizziness disappears.

09 April, 2014

Spring Fights

Splash some Spring on
our pale faces.

Just spit it right into
my eyes- go on!

Fight me based on
pesky inhibitions,

We’ve been asleep
for countless days.

Wounds heal faster
when the Sun is out.

Shake it off, let it bleed,
step outside and see.

Stop whining and stop
dancing without contact.

Cowardice is an ice,
the thaw is here, and sunny.

Splash the blood of
Spring all over, messy.

Failure

I was meant to have more love than this
and yes even I, am nostalgic.
Frailty may be my antithesis, and frivolity
my adoration, my Great While Whale;
but even I feel its stab, its puncture.

She sat sadly pondering, scheming of
plots to seduce and get lost in.

Schemes came and went, generally
haphazardly and without much regret.

This became its own homeostasis
a perfect perpetual inquisition.

It was a failure to realize that love
only lasts as long as it lasts, no more.

B

You remind me
and always have,
of the letter B.

Straight back,
big head, big
belly, big baby.

Broodish and
brown, often a
big bother.

You, little bee,
always busy and
annoyingly bright.

02 April, 2014

Rechazar

Respóndeme sin palabras, diciéndome que me has amado
por siempre.

Dime que te enloqueces pensando en mi cuerpo, boca, ojos,
con lujuria.

Ruégame que te ame, que sigamos enamorados, ciegos y
sin razones.

Regálame porquerías que yo luego quiera tirar al basurero,
con risa.

Dame la oportunidad de rechazarte, de ignorarte, brava y
con fuerza.

Defiéndete con llantos y declaraciones antiguas, amenazando
sin poder.

Vuélvete loco por mí, destrozado por amor y rechazo, cubierto
de lagrimas.

Flying through Clouds

Sugar-caked clouds
lay shadows on petrified ground
keeping the pieces frozen.

Mirroring outer Space,
these saccharine beasts
float in the air, hesitant to dissipate.

Flying through a layer of cosmic stuff,
the clouds, now beneath,
braid together, softly white and infinite.

Travelling from one end to the other
is like time travel, directionless
and sweetly unbounded.