the shallow waters

on an afternoon
you swear you want something light this time
you want to be like some clouds
those happy ones
those that change faces and shapes and
colors every second
something slippery to our senses
you dislike permanence
and stability
you opt for the floating flimsy things
a leaf floating on the water
a boy wading on the shore afraid of the
depths like the way his mother watches over him
you say
you are tired of these philosophical pursuits
as though thinking hurts
as though every word becomes an argument
you like something fashionable like gowns
and the latest creations of
some gay designers
i am firm and i stay
on the depths of my thoughts
and i am drowning and as you well see
i do not need your help
i like this pain of fathoming
whatever is there
is mine alone and now
step out from the yard of my life
get out of my fence
i live here and this is my territory
this is my loneliness
and i am proud of it.

what is it that you like?

don't you like this sweetness
of my words?
you are bored with this sugar
and honey
and cream?
you are afraid you have become
sick of such
sweet tongue
such sweet indulgence?
oh, you want something bitter
something sour now?
some bitter herbs some sour
species of green lemons?
try me,
i am a bitter person
i am the latest delicacy of
all that is sour
and
decomposing.

as we talk

time goes so fast
as we talk my mind whirls
and ideas are sucked
and then buried
within my
dark bottoms

keep on talking
i am a barrel that is so empty
it will take you long to fill me up
and you see
i am never filled up with water
or stone
or even air, i am always empty
and i am emptying still
whatever i hold
inside my mouth
i keep on spitting
but you have no time noticing it
not even my pain
i know how to hide things even when
i was still so small
to the eyes of my mother
even when i was just
a corpuscle of blood to her vein
i already hide
my own emotions
as we talk i always
fly away
there is nothing here
that is worth keeping
you think i am listening
i give you that impression
you have my body
excuse me
i do not have any soul
anymore

to the woman who is always asking for cybersex

i am tired
on this virtual reality,
the truth is
i do not ejaculate
with words and images
we can do it somewhere
where we meet
and do the thing
but sorry
i never love you
and even if you think of me
as nothing
but a condom
i also know
that beyond all these things that
we never do
there lies this space
beyond eroticism

you have never been there
that's why.

to Ms. S

Do i have to step down
and use your
language of abuse
so that i can
understand your world?

I may have been
air
you may not have felt
yet my
water
you have not yet
landed to
my island
yet this does not give
you the power
over my soul
and call me just like
any person that
you have conquered
by putting
them within the confines
of your
being the worst idiot
i have ever met

i am sorry too
for having met first
the devil in you

pain has always been poetic

everyday
pain is poetry
please do
not demote it
to your
layman's prose
do not degrade
it to your
language of
abuse
let it stay
beautiful in our
hearts
we need it
to be that
way in order
to survive

the barking dog in your mind

it must be noisy inside your mind as you complain about the barking dog barking all day long in your lifetime, and it must be also unfair if as you feel it, you are always the wrong tree being barked at, so you are the tree wronged and i, this human being writing some lines for a conversation, shall always be that barking dog inside your mind. let us talk let us exchange places, or let us settle for a little compromise, there is no dog, and there is no wrong tree, onthe very first day next year at the very first hour, let us talk, as new friends, let us begin again as strangers in a new place wanting to know what each street is named after.

poem 2

the little black bird goes home in a cave just below her belly between her legs it sings about love that she always kills for nothing before midnight the blackbird flies seeking the warmth of other blackbird it is cold and dying in her keeping now she sings alone like a blackbird cursing the trees and the flowers she wants to disown the blackbird in exchange for the earthworm she likes it that way wriggling without any feet at all pointed and penetrating the curse continues it can never be hers and the blackbird keeps coming back mocking her like an old man

my love is ambitious like air

wanting to fill
every emptiness
like air
filling every
space
my love fits
in and takes
the shape
of you

writing poems

it takes a lot of
frustrations,
a little inspiration
but more
of melancholic
clamor
for someone like
you to write
a poem
sometimes only
once a year
or nothing at all
not a poem
even
when they read it
or when
you read it
yourself

it is a matter
of just
surviving
less the poems
which you
could have
written

everyday in your
life.

irreconciliable at last

this is the story
you meet someone whom you think is very interesting
and you go to a busy place
buy beer and talk a while
the usual get to know scripts

more bottles to make
a certain familiarity
more words
and less periods
less question marks now
more of introspection
and then
all the questions are erased
the answers are too much to take
the conversations drag
and contempt comes at the last drink
'one for the road' the other says

you leave and you realize
home is always sweeter even without
anyone whom you at first think is very interesting.

reading you

let me read you that was the beginning
of this all
i was pleading then like a suitor of wisdom
to a goddess
who is blind, and deaf and mute
and so cruel
to reject my prayers

i was stranded in an island and i was very lonely
but no one knew
not one of them has gone there
only the waves from far that touched the sands
and then leave without taking any news from me

i was murmuring
there were times that i was hysterical
but no one hears for there was no one there
not even a crab

or a rat

let me read you once again
let me hear you like a page of a book
like a song of a leaf

you look at me with disdain as though asking
who are you? you have no name to woe me into submission

i resigned and dumbfounded
i begin being myself believing that i too have something to say
though different from yours

heartfelt and deeply wounded
i begin to hear my words
soothing like a balm of my clean conscience
freeing like my hands opening and letting go
from the past with you.

As The Sparrow

To give life you must take life, and as our grief falls flat and hollow upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes. Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh. I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love. Charles Bukowski -

There Are Those Who Love To Get Dirty

There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work, And those who stay clean, just appreciate things, At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea. Gary Snyder -

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pur whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you? Charles Bukowski -

Hidden

If you place a fern under a stone the next day it will be nearly invisible as if the stone has swallowed it. If you tuck the name of a loved one under your tongue too long without speaking it it becomes blood sigh the little sucked-in breath of air hiding everywhere beneath your words. No one sees the fuel that feeds you. Naomi Shihab Nye -

Whatif

-

Last night, while I lay thinking here, some Whatifs crawled inside my ear and pranced and partied all night long and sang their same old Whatif song: Whatif I'm dumb in school? Whatif they've closed the swimming pool? Whatif I get beat up? Whatif there's poison in my cup? Whatif I start to cry? Whatif I get sick and die? Whatif I flunk that test? Whatif green hair grows on my chest? Whatif nobody likes me? Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me? Whatif I don't grow taller? Whatif my head starts getting smaller? Whatif the fish won't bite? Whatif the wind tears up my kite? Whatif they start a war? Whatif my parents get divorced? Whatif the bus is late? Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight? Whatif I tear my pants? Whatif I never learn to dance? Everything seems well, and then the nighttime Whatifs strike again! Shel Silverstein

if you like my poems let them

if you like my poems let them walk in the evening,a little behind you then people will say "Along this road i saw a princess pass on her way to meet her lover(it was toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants." e.e. cummings -

Seeker Of Truth

seeker of truth follow no path all paths lead where truth is here e.e. cummings -

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. Sharon Olds -

this peace and quiet

the stones learn the language of the moss
in harmony with the stillness of the clear water of the pond
the grasses and the marshes mark their boundaries
the fog is a white blanket on the foot of the cold hills
the clouds are watching with awe
this peace and quiet

amor vincit omnia

conquer me

love

conquer me

for i am the lonely child

the father of all lonely men

in an island of the lighthouse

in an island of the lighthouse
many have been saved
and well guided

but no one stays here
they all returned home
and no one comes back
to say thanks

virtue

unsaid but well done.

felt and gone.

a friend in chicago is in a relationship finally

on a cold winter
a friend in Chicago finally
opens up like
a clam and grabs
a sand that pricks
his tongue
so he can make a
pearl
this Christmas

i ask two questions
which i think are
intrusions to his
privacy

honestly, i am not
interested
he's happy and it is
enough to know
that

what i realize is that
he is happy and he is
no longer interested
about what i ask
or what i say

i quit.

she is alone in the room fast asleep

i cannot dictate
what he must want

that will be too personal
and cruel

when he says
that there are still gods among
men
it is sad to admit that
i am not
one of them

i was born a man
lives and shall die
as one.

meanwhile he takes
photographs
of those
that keep themselves
comfortable
in winter.

time runs so swiftly

i wake up
at 3 a.m.
symptomatic
of old age
and i open the
PC and start
scribbling
whatever comes
to my mind
a memory
a plan a
stream of
consciousness
that i simply
let go
like a flow
of an idea like
an electricity
running inside
my veins

three poems
and then
i stretch my
legs and
wriggle my
hands and
blink my eyes
grasping for
something new

now it is
4: 42 a.m.

how fast time can
run
to a man as slow
as i am.

my wishes for you

i wish that you finally decide to choose
a poem

and make it a poem
in your lifetime
the one that is ugly at first
but which does not give up to search for ways to become
another beautiful poem
i wish that you finally give up
on being a doubter
and simply be an ordinary wanderer
not thinking of anything else
but wonder
the one whose innocence is always a blank wall
and free to the ways of the confetti
one who looks up to the heavens and says
how beautiful are the stars!
even if there are none

my new jockey

IT FEELS so smooth on my skin
deep down under my
thighs i feel like a
god

my inner glands
are so curious about something
smooth and new
and tickling
like your feather dusters

and i like you looking at me
like i am a
born-again christian

on the other hand what really matters
is not this satin jockey
it is still what is bobbing inside
that really counts

feel it like your
throbbing heart

talk to the cat, i am away

just in case
you come home
and i am not around
sit on the
porch and call the
orange cat with one eye
and talk to it
it is not as insensitive
as you.

somewhere somehow

carry this dream:
someday somewhere something which is best for your life will happen
the windows

shall open and the doors too
without your hands touching them
the hearts of your loved ones shall open and give you another room
they will all welcome you and embrace you
and you shall have tears
of joy
so much joy that you cannot hold with your fingers
all the dreams you have shall come true

that one evening
the sky shall part and you slip through it
into a world that you have never seen

on my own

when i leave here, i leave without regret, i do not come from here and i have
nothing in mind that suggests that this is the place i am meant to be,
you know that, and so i go, and when i go, i wed possibilities
which are never in my mind, i alliterate, i swallow my pride, i have fluent lungs,
i listen, i move fast, i slow down, i exhale air, and take back land, i belong
to the untied, maybe always less, but i am prepared,
i fall on quicksands, and i am still.

i may come later. No one saves me anyhow.
except my own
self.

surviving the odds

slowly
they burn
little things
at night
to build
a fire

you know
what they
are really
doing?

they are
gathering
little things
to keep
the fire
alive

and they
keep telling
stories
to keep
themselves
intact.

switching to the ordinary lifestyle

the big typhoon
has left us.

we do not ask
any questions

for instance
why are we born?
where do we go
from here?

you just had
the uncertainty
and you demand
nothing more
nothing less
explanations do not
work anymore
justifications are
not teasers

the possibilities are
what we do everyday

cleaning the yard
sweeping the debris
burning the leaves
making firewood
dusting chairs


there is no need for so much
talk
one mouth is never enough
in this world

after all
we can always live
without ideas
no arguments
can appease us
not even answers
from them
damn experts
and psychics

we can read
Ulysses
we can imagine
another war
in Troy
or another Samson
betrayed

we can switch
to soap operas
and just be
nothing but
ordinary tearjerkers.

our own ethics

it's not at all shameful to text the
island

of mist

it's not an embarrassment to say
that you hear a red voice

if you are feeling uneasy
well, it is not at all surprising if
at the last hour
we choose to live by our own
understanding

our own set of ethics
our own way of life

the ending

always i check
if i have
my cellphone in my
front shirt
pocket
my pen and my
small white
stationery

something to
write
just in case a new
idea comes
along

neat and clean
and ready always
for an
emergency

all the days of my life
i think my life should be that way

except perhaps
the unhappy ending

the hell of my driver

at long distance travels
i get this hell kind of a private driver
who does not care if he dies
or i die
as though life in this instance
has no meaning
at all

recklessly, i say no word
and he says no word
perhaps we feel the same thing
when we left
home.

at the beach this early morning

i see indifferent soft sands
i feel the fineness of their being in my palm

i bury my thoughts there
my hands holding on
to what is falling out of my grasp

the waves murmur
so envious about my silence.