(k.)

Hoy morí

En un bar de cualquier pueblo sureño 

Pareciera ser testigo de un agitado reconocimiento a lo que alguna vez jamás se preguntó.
Y, a su vez, respira cada memoria ausente y transeúnte…
tal vez de las últimas que le quedan.

Hay momentos en los que no halla palabras,
ni balbuceos ibéricos capaces de restablecer
la conexión entre su niño interno
y el big bang emocional que lo enloquece a diario.
Y como si fuera el colmo,
aún es adicto a las galletas con leche antes de dormir.

Le toma tiempo escribir. Pero aún lo hace.
Lo hace solo, y para nadie.
Es mudo sin saberlo.
Habita en la esperanza de las memorias ocultas y perdidas,
como él, casi resueltas en el misterio medieval
de la continuidad del tiempo…
entre segundos agobiados por minutos,
deshechos por las horas,
bajo la nostalgia de los días
y la exuberancia de los meses;
sin el maltrato de los años
ni el olvido de los siglos.
Sin querer seguir creyendo
que nunca será olvidado.

 Y sin embargo, cuando piensa en ella,
el universo se pliega con dulzura,
como si su nombre aún viajara por las constelaciones,
sosteniendo la promesa de que el amor,
aunque ausente, nunca deja de existir. 

Hoy hay que cerrar las hojas en blanco.
Para hoy no existen metáforas descomunales
que puedan sostener relación alguna
con los personajes de su inmadurez —
aquellos con los que, en ámbitos inmortales,
ha tenido que convivir toda su vida
y que ya no pueden estar presentes
con sus propias ideas.

Al margen del agobio del tiempo,
y del temor a ser olvidado,
sigue caminando hacia el atardecer
de mariposas libres de pecado
y murallas de papel.

A vísperas del recuerdo,
y de los ojos de miel
con los que alguna vez encontró utopía,
vuelve a perder la cuenta,
mientras aumenta su curiosidad
por seguir andando entre laberintos existenciales
que lo hacen sonreír
al compás de este mundo cruel.

Pero siempre la amará
de la misma forma que la amó
durante aquellos 5,769,654 minutos de su vida.

Porque, a la mar,
nunca habrá una igual.

———————————

He seems a witness to an exhausted truth,to a question he never thought to ask.
And still he breathes each drifting memory—
ghostly, absent, wandering…
perhaps the last that remain.

There are moments when no words arrive,
no Iberian murmurs to restore
the fragile bridge between his child within
and the emotional big bang
that unravels him each day.
And as if that were not enough,
he still finds comfort in milk and cookies before sleep.

Writing takes him time—
but he still does it.
He writes alone, and for no one.
Mute without knowing it,
he dwells within the hope of lost memories,
like relics trapped in a medieval dream
of time looping upon itself…
Seconds crushed by minutes,
minutes devoured by hours,
beneath the nostalgia of days
and the lush delirium of months—
unharmed by years,
unforgotten by centuries.
Still refusing to believe
he will be forgotten.

 And yet, when he thinks of her,
the universe bends in quiet grace;
her name drifts among the stars,
whispering that love—
though vanished—never dies.

Today he must close the blank pages.
No wild metaphors remain
to reconcile with the ghosts of his youth—
those immortal figures he’s carried all his life,
who can no longer stand beside him
with voices of their own.

Beyond the ache of time,
and the fear of being erased,
he walks toward a sunset
of sinless butterflies
and paper walls that breathe.

On the edge of memory,
and in the honeyed eyes
where once he found utopia,
he loses count again—
drawn deeper into the labyrinths of existence
that make him smile,
even in a world so cruel.

But he will always love her—
as he did through those
5,769,654 minutes of his life.

For beyond the sea,
there will never be another like her.

Fooled the shadow that I can’t be,
Fooled the mirror that doubted me,
By a promise whispered through the years,
That love outlasts our mortal fears.

The house still hums our quiet song,
Its echoes soft, its roots grown strong,
Each wall adorned with time’s embrace,
Each breath within a sacred space.

You sleep beside me, calm and near,
The storms once loud now disappear,
I trace the sky upon your skin,
And find the dawn that burns within.

Requiem of Love, a sea both vast and kind,
That tests the heart yet shapes the mind,
We sail through tempests, drift through grace,
And still return to the same place.

There were days we lost our way,
And nights when silence chose to stay,
But every break became a bend,
That brought us closer in the end.

I see in you what time refined,
A mirror not of self, but mind,
A soul that stands apart, yet near,
A song that only I can hear.

The rain outside no longer weeps,
It sings of roots our promise keeps,
And every drop that used to fall,
Now blooms in gardens through it all.

Perhaps the years will still surprise,
With roads unseen and shifting skies,
But in your gaze, I’ve come to see,
The endlessness of what we’ll never be.

So if the night forgets our name,
And stars go dark, yet hearts remain,
Know that in you, I find release—
A love that moves, but stays in peace.

For even shadows learn to glow,
When hearts recall what they both know—
That love is not the end of two,
But all that’s lost becoming true.

And if tomorrow finds us changed,
With dreams rebuilt, with paths rearranged,
May growth be kind, and time be slow,
To teach us more than we can know.

We’ll build anew from ash and seed,
From every scar, from every need,
And rise as branches intertwined,
Still reaching higher, still aligned.

For love, when tended, learns to grow,
Through every sun, through every snow,
A living thing that bends, not breaks,
And heals the heart with what it makes.

————————————————-

Engañé a la sombra que no soy,
al espejo que olvida mi voz,
con promesas que flotan como hojas
sobre ríos que nunca terminan.

La casa respira en hilos de luz,
sus paredes susurran secretos,
y cada rincón guarda un eco
de lo que fuimos y lo que seremos.

Duermes cerca, pero tu sombra
camina por jardines invisibles,
trazando constelaciones en mi piel,
donde el alba nace sin tiempo.

Un réquiem de amor, un mar de espejos,

refleja sueños que se disuelven,
y aun así navegamos, quietos y juntos,
entre corrientes que nos reinventan.

Hubo días de hojas quemadas,
noches que se derramaron como tinta;
pero incluso la ceniza guarda semillas,
y del fuego brota un nuevo cielo.

Veo en tus ojos un mapa flotante,
un lugar donde el yo se encuentra,
libre y cercano, enmarañado y claro,
un canto que resuena en los espacios.

La lluvia ya no llora, danza,
cayendo en espejos, en sueños, en mares;
cada gota que tocó la tierra
florece ahora en mundos que inventamos.

Vendrán los años como constelaciones,
desplegando caminos que no existen,
pero en tu mirada descubro la luz
que nos guía, aunque cambie el rumbo.

Si la noche borra nuestro nombre
y los cielos se quiebran en silencio,
sé que en tus brazos habita el pulso
de un amor que respira y se expande.

Incluso la sombra aprende a brillar
cuando el corazón recuerda su vuelo:
amar no es perderse ni fundirse,
sino crecer en alas compartidas.

Y si mañana nos sorprende distintos,
desplegados, abiertos, infinitos,
que el tiempo sea un río amable
que nos enseñe a ser nosotros mismos.

Brotaremos juntos, raíces en la bruma,
ramas que alcanzan estrellas dormidas,
y cada herida será un jardín secreto,
cada latido, un cielo inventado.

Porque el amor, cuando se vuelve viento,
trasciende la forma, cruza la sombra,
dobla los límites, rompe el frío,
y se convierte en todo lo que somos

Let it.

Let it sink—

without past tense,
without imperfect nuance,
with laughter hanging
from a clock
that beats like a heart.

Let it forget.
Let it die.
Let it—
with butterflies
weaving cities
on the backs of their wings.

Let it senseless.
Let it dazed.
Biting a paper sun.
Swallowing its blaze.

Let it—
with the weight of one glass too many.
Toasting with ghosts.
Empty tables.
No cups.
No gods.

Let it meditate on a Brooklyn rooftop.
Let it dance barefoot
with a horse made of smoke.
Let it sip passion fruit
too sweet,
too loud,
collecting shadows
in glass jars.

Let it in the slaughterhouse.
Foosball with broken mirrors.
Fito on repeat.
Lemon cookies—
bleeding blue ink.

Let it with its mother.
Full of love.
Suckling memory,
like river fish
singing lullabies
long forgotten.

Let it sleep
in the nostalgia of its multiverses.
Let it sleep—
on a bed of fish
breathing air.

Let it cry.
Let it cry
for all the ones before you.
And then—
tattoo a verse
it will never,
never fully understand.

Let it fly.
Let it plant fire
in pots of ice.
Let it play with its children
till midnight.
And at dawn—
open umbrellas
underwater.

Let it confused.
Let it intrigued.
Show it the moon—
wearing mustaches
drawn in wet charcoal.

Let it—
and don’t let it melt.

Let it laugh
with the taste of raspberry.
Floating face down
in a river of clocks.

Let it far
from bastard hierarchies.
Let it embrace a tree
bleeding blue ink.

Let it perplexed.
Let it listening
to how the stones—
sleep,
and still speak.

Let it box secrets
inside matchsticks.
Let it not know—
the why,
the how,
the outcome.

Let it chase a train
it will never catch.
Let it invent a language
to speak with stars.
Let it write letters
addressed to the wind.
No address.
No destiny.

Let it return.
To safe times.
To forbidden futures.
To opposite pasts.

Let it lose itself
between the real
and the dreamed.

Let it simple.
Let it multiple.
Let it impossible.

________________________________________________

Déjalo ir.
Déjalo—
hundirse sin pretéritos,
imperfectos,
con la risa colgando
de un reloj que late como corazón.

Déjalo olvidado.
Déjalo moribundo.
Déjalo—
con mariposas
escribiendo ciudades
en el dorso de sus alas.

Déjalo sin sentido.
Déjalo aturdido.
Mordiendo un sol de papel.
Tragándose su incendio.

Déjalo con la tendencia
de haber bebido una copita de más,
brindando con fantasmas,
en mesas vacías,
sin copas,
sin dioses.

Déjalo meditando en un mirador en Brooklyn.
Déjalo bailar con un caballo de humo en la azotea.
Déjalo beber maracuyá con demasiada azúcar
mientras colecciona sombras
en frascos de vidrio.

Déjalo en el matadero,
jugando futbolín con espejos rotos,
escuchando a Fito,
mordiendo galletitas de limón
que sangran tinta azul.

Déjalo con su madre,
llenito de amor,
chupando memoria líquida,
como si los peces del río
lo arrullaran con canciones olvidadas.

Déjalo dormir en la nostalgia de sus multiversos.
Déjalo dormir—
sobre una cama de peces que respiran aire.

Déjalo llorar.
Déjalo llorar
por todas ellas que vinieron antes de ti.
Y después,
tatuarse un verso
que nunca, nunca entenderá del todo.

Déjalo volar.
Déjalo plantar fuego en macetas de hielo.
Déjalo jugar con sus hijos hasta medianoche
y al amanecer—
abrir paraguas dentro del agua.

Déjalo intrigado.
Confuso.
Muéstrale la luna,
con bigotes dibujados en carbón húmedo.

Déjalo.
Y no lo dejes derretir.

Déjalo reír con sabor a frambuesa,
flotando boca abajo
en un río de relojes.

Déjalo alejado de las jerarquías bastardas.
Déjalo abrazar un árbol
que sangra tinta azul.

Déjalo perplejo,
escuchando cómo hablan
las piedras dormidas.

Déjalo guardar secretos
en cajitas de fósforos.
Déjalo sin saber—
el porqué,
ni el cómo,
del resultado.

Déjalo correr tras un tren que nunca alcanzará.
Déjalo inventarse un idioma para hablar con las estrellas.
Déjalo escribir cartas al viento
sin dirección,
sin destino.

Déjalo volver.
A tiempos seguros.
A futuros indebidos.
A pasados opuestos.

Déjalo perder la noción
entre lo real
y lo soñado.

Déjalo simple.
Déjalo múltiple.
Déjalo imposible.

 Of countless fragments,

tongues that were never mine—
stolen syllables for metaphors
that don’t even earn a footnote.
All of them ending here,
scrawled on the wall
where children once gambled bottle caps for blood.

I could write my name a thousand times in cursive
across the cracked bricks of a neighborhood
that forgot itself stone by stone,
guard by guard.
And still, I would forget the accent
over Señor Ambrosio.

Now we don’t eat with elbows on the table.
Now appointments refuse to go unnoticed,
even when I arrive late—
to every single one.
To arrive late is to cheapen time itself.

You—
you found your god in the street
and could not extend a hand.
Pitiful man,
green blazer, bleached-out afro,
smaller than immoral.
A perfect tongue,
yet one that will never speak.

Two thousand eight hundred ideas
float like vitamins dissolved in air.
And still,
you stack ladders of ridicule,
climb into your hollow skull
without knowing it was empty
from the very beginning.

To the daughters of selfish despots,
to the sons of freshwater sailors—
the only threshold they will never cross
is the fear of losing their head
to a chessboard.

Half-asleep,
on a stranger’s couch,
I beg:
give me electric clouds,
let me love you in French—
or any tongue I pretend to master,
even in dreams.

I am a ragman,
stitched together with shadows.
Or else—
dissolve me in effervescent water,
orange-flavored,
my mother’s favorite,
and swallow me whole.

Meanwhile, his work continues.
Yet hunger gnaws at him for something small—
a bite of cheese,
the answer to a question:

Do his crayons still have points?
Is his ink too thin?
Did his mother make him breakfast?
Are there coins enough for coffee, or a cigarette?
Is the water cold when he bathes?
Does that place still exist?
Does he learn new tongues only to lie
a little more than he should?
Does he snore when he laughs?
Laugh when he snores?
Read everything,
from the soles of his feet
to the crown of his head?

I keep your wings.

The first time I saw you,
I was drifting in a state of delirium—
impartial, autonomous,
a poverty estranged from even the hope
of knowing you as illusion.
The only reason to exist
was to repeat the words
you never dared to say…
the echo of your silence.

The first time I saw you,
you appeared beyond imagination—
terribly ill with yourself,
uncertain of where to arrive,
where to be born,
or why to die.
I rose from frayed versions of myself,
threadbare remnants of centuries long forgotten,
emerging on purpose
only to conceal the endless grays
that fall like April rain.

I emerged from the hands of authors
who write and then vanish,
who write and then breathe,
who write and then weep.
Authors who refuse sovereign gods,
who drink no milk before they sleep,
who surrender their titles
when ink runs dry and paper fades.

For themselves, they are only shadows—
mimes of comets without flight,
strangers to the truths
carried by every lost gust of wind,
silent before the smog of morality,
the dissonance of humanity,
the weight of a renaissance
that never belonged to them
and never will.

These authors—
poisoned by coincidence—
mirror one another,
addicted to their own reflections.
They love,
they hate,
they fall in love,
they destroy.
For them,
with them,
without them.

(friendly match with "El Atico - April 4, 2006)

Ellos creen que lo saben todo.

Saben decir culpas y culpan a los que no saben.

Pero yo se un poco. Tal vez un poco mas que ellos.

Ellos comen como los dioses.

El impetus sediento al delirio de un sabor sin limites.

Pero yo tomo aguardiente de caña molida, cafe colado y pan de leche.

She burst into laughter

refugee of her own humility

She's afraid of loving herself

He mounts a horse with no foreseeable destination

guilty of predictions with no resolutions

He's afraid of loving himself

Please don't forget us all

We are prisoners of a world with no name

Back and forth

Forth and beyond

Coffee, sense... obsession.

Welcome! Join the conversation.

Agrandar a la espera
mientras el niño duerme,
y el ventilador repite su queja tranquila.

Aprovechar el silencio
para acercarme a ti,
sin palabras,
sin pensar en los porqués,
solo sintiendo el pulso compartido,
la respiración que se enreda,
el calor suave de estar tan cerca.

Tensar las piernas,
cerrar los ojos,
respirar profundo,
y por un momento breve
quedarme suspendido
en ese lugar donde todo se olvida,
donde todo se entrega.

Dejarlo todo en ti,
como si el mundo pudiera detenerse
en el olor que deja tu piel en la mía,
como si crear algo —
aunque no sepamos qué —
fuera inevitable.

At 1:30am I go through every second I saw you lurking without asking for permission.

At 1:31am,  I reimagine the day you kicked me to the curb as you prepared for the first step towards oblivion. Another excuse perhaps. Another song badly written, horribly danced, and ridiculously misinterpreted.

At 1:33am, I shed a tear because I’ve missed you for so long I don’t even know how many light years have passed since I smoked a laced joint and made love to you while my body exploded into a million dimensions.

Now, at 1:36an, I cursed you again for letting me go last night in my dreams. 

I think of my kids often. They look nothing like you. Their skin doesn’t taste like you. Their laughter is immeasurable and subtle unlike yours. Their sense of humor isn’t so much about being funny but they have the ability to make jokes and laugh without thinking ahead. And unlike me they remind me of the times you kissed me and promised me a future where my kids would’ve been yours. And that for sure ain’t funny, as hilarious as it sounds.

At 1:43am, I imagine myself telling you to fuck off the last time I saw you. I imagine you telling you that for the 10 years after that moment I was a blur. A nonsensical paradox. I was confused, hurt, and bored. I fucked, and drank, and did all kinds of drugs and girls that meant nothing but gave me girth and gullibility. Because I loved you for 10 years straight without a hint of you by my side. I loved the idea of you and our invisible nonexistent kids that would one day ask us how we met and how we craved and how we build together a paradoxical world filled with stars and rainbows and bullshit and blah blah blah.

1:50 could not be more wrong.

Pre-planned rabbit holes and assholes who haven’t forgotten how to forget.

At 1:51 I did not forgive.

I remember your dad. I remember your musky basement, full of untold stories of men who dressed up as trees in the desert, of seas and songs and pipes and gnomes. Of station wagons and furry dogs. Of divorced parents, of step siblings, unarmed children who dealt with all.

I remember how much I thought you were mine and how much I wished I was yours. Like the infinite abyss, and the blunders of the forgetful. 

And to think that all those years were nothing but a marketing campaign.

2:02 makes me feel hopeful and stupid.

Dave helped me with my flirt moves. Etta made your best friend jealous. Don made us laugh of nonsense. L found us a dimension to express our angst. Thom dislocated our brain waves into a million possibilities. And you and I transformed our lives forever into hearsay and past of future daydreams.

I still pretend to know what I’m talking about and I’m still good at it.

I still have a gift for gifting and I’m a damn good parent (Tuesday through Sunday 7am-9:30pm)

I’m tired of waiting for you.

You are probably tired of waiting for me.

I’m afraid of think about you.

I’m afraid you are too.

At 2:11 I called you to wish you goodnight.

This is the closest I’ve felt you in years.

And you don’t even know who I am, and who’s next to me. And I don’t even know where you’re at and who’s next to you. And your last name(s) makes no sense anymore.

But your lips always will. Even if I’ve forgotten what they taste like.

And he tastes your lips and she tastes mine. But they don’t know. They will never know.

And to you I say… a tout a l'heure.  

Ma petit chou.

July 2nd, 2025 at 2:18am

 Your calm, so distant, drifts into the burning light.

It carries no apology, no urgency —
only the quiet cruelty of peace.
My kiss trembles with impatience,
and through parted lips, I ache for the sweet torment that guides you.
In your frenzy, I feel electric eyes —
tracing shadows where no witness dares follow.
The sun withdraws in silence,
leaving only the softness of your absence.

And so, woman —
immensity waits for us around every corner.
Your stars fall into curses, tears, and quiet laughter —
those sideways glances,
the slight smile when saying goodbye,
the déjà vus that sting without meaning to.

A blind night, hollow in time —
yet full of you.
A night wrapped in reality's hard shell,
still pulsing with green mystery,
as if your life itself were bound
to a fragile, naked moon.

Virtue belongs to those who dare to reach for it —
after the war, after the silence,
after the long road of forgiveness.

There are those who crave the stories of your sorrow
and my own quietly bitter hours.
The cowards of infamy —
victims of dreams not their own,
mourning grief they’ve never carried.
But I — I have lived through the collapse of luck,
through the choice not to steal your touch,
through the delicate cold of your hands,
through the act of breathing
only what feels holy.

And no —
I’ve never forgotten your scent.

Scream — open the pulse, risk everything.
Scream — taste the reason you still believe.
Starve, if you must —
but in the name of freedom.

We are not puppets in the cold,
not merely tormented by illusions,
but innocent —
for being more human
than what the world expects us to be.

Still, they sing their sad, unraveling songs —
melodies of crimes long pardoned,
intuitions lost in disagreement,
plastic toy carts, children’s laughter,
coffee, tea, cigarettes...
marijuana, heroin, amphetamines...
pornography, sadomasochism, pain...
the idea that vices must be renounced
or perhaps simply —
the desire to fall asleep in someone’s arms.

Two souls, untrained in the art of pretending.
Caught between freedom
and the roulette of reckless joy.
Metaphysical melancholy —
Catholic, drunk, beautiful.
And yes —
the hunger to trade the entire world
for the depth of your breath,
the sacred weight of your skin.

Blessed are the children
of minds that transcended their forms —
shattered in avalanches,
yet still here, still rising,
still eating dust between broken phrases and quiet fasts,
unmasked in the morning light,
as jazz hums by the pillow,
on the road we’ve walked too many times,
beside a forgotten highway cross,
in the place where love stays unfinished
and never extradited.

To take your hand
and walk into the sun before it wakes.
To have you take my arm,
say nothing —
and say everything.
Your bullets, forever imprecise.
Your eyes, forever full of something unnamed.

The inertia of tasteless dreams.
The sense that somewhere,
others like us still exist.

Politicians, reborn as poets.
Swallows, displaced by storm.
Artists who once were prophets,
sinners, alchemists.
If thought and speech could shed their weight,
and if knowing too much about life
didn’t make it feel so dull.

Naked vigil.
Addiction, confessed.
An impossible Venus,
caught in a sliver of delirium.
No words that burn.
No desire to sever.
No need to erase
the face of your voice.

Only the quiet joy
of disillusion —
in your rhythm,
your form,
your way.

...and still,
they tell stories
of neutral elves...

(transversed and reimagined "Duende Acústico" 12/11/2006)

Innocent entities of desirable means
watch each other,
eating cotton candy dreams,
whistling songs of forgotten prophets—
stories foretold,
without a hint of knowledge.

It is I you seek,
I you lost.
It is I who spoke of births with assurance.
It is I who meant to hurt you—
and lick your wounds.

The songs drift on,
from afar and from guilt,
because a gentleman
never means to be mean.
And you and I keep undressing,
devouring each scent,
each sense,
each feather—
Icarus, floating,
as gravity betrayed him.

Incandescent.
Morose.
Persecuted.
Simple, reluctant—
a little too proud.
Arrogant, perhaps,
but never intentional.

His skin, still soft.
His muse, still present.

She stands at his side,
knowing little
of what he's witnessed,
killed,
absorbed—
in this world,
or another—
when he used to smoke
truths from distant lands.

Like the day he became
king of his ship—
and the ego that followed,
and the lie that lived within.

Because math does not mind
telling him
how we became
the blurred lines
between thoughts
he’ll always forget.

 Before, it was enough to let the hours pass.

It was enough just to have a couple of extra coins—
enough to stop pretending I didn’t care.
Flying in silence had never felt so damn loud.
You see, three years ago, I’d find myself in some forgotten corner,
drinking the same indifferent coffee,
maybe smoking a cigarette I couldn’t remember buying.
I became some half-child, half-man—
a walking hole in my head,
where worms pirouetted like dancers
stealing seconds and moments from girls and women
who’d lost their minds and just kept on smiling.
And today?
Today it’s even further away—
and being far from normal is still just a convenient excuse.
But here’s where you’re wrong:
We didn’t stop time, no.
We became its owners.
We didn’t leave our lives;
we just wandered in and decided to squat for good,
finding rabbits to share, and laughing like idiots
at a joke no one else could hear.
We didn’t move through space—
we erased it,
made a new one,
just for hollow children to play in.

What I have isn’t some intestinal scandal
or a desperate referendum on my sanity.
What I have isn’t called childish, celestial,
or some empty token of importance.
What I have is worth more than the Bible
that spat me out into this absurd world.
What I have is a collection of half-truths and illusions,
wrapped in the kind of deceit that only a tickle of the mind can pull off.

What you have is called Rigoberto—
a name, a winking ghost of something real,
but let’s be honest, you don’t even know what it means.
What you have looks a little too much like mine,
but it’s better at hiding the cracks.
What you have destroys everything I’ve decided to believe in,
one kiss, one look, one too many silences.
You’ve got me dancing in the ruins of my own faith,
like some divine joke I never learned how to laugh at.
What you have… you lent it to me,
but even you can’t figure out what to do with it.

And here I am,
still living in inexplicable fits and starts,
like a sailor lost in a sea that doesn’t quite exist.
Only for the fact that not being—
not even existing—is enough to give me the right
to ask the questions time doesn’t bother answering.
The essence of my scent, my sweat, my colors—
it’s been you,
always you.
I wish for you without hunger,
without the usual pride that comes with it.
Without knowing that everything I have
was stolen with a kiss,
a glance,
a silence,
and that persistent pursuit of a tear that never falls.

And then,
it was enough to stop reading it.
And she didn’t stop because she didn’t want to.
No, one moment,
and suddenly she lost her hands,
her rage,
her eyes,
her left-wing arguments,
her annoying clichés—
and no,
she didn’t do it because she wanted to.
Maybe she never did.
Maybe that was the only thing she really wanted.
Or maybe she just wanted the escape plan
written in someone else’s script.

A glass of wine,
a view from some overhyped balcony,
will never stop being everything.
It is everything.
It’s the only thing I know.

But don’t leave me.
Come after me.
Find me,
and if you want—
lose me again,
for good measure.
We’ve already learned—
it’s never enough to just let the hours slip away.

Sometimes they ask me to retell stories I’ve long since forgotten.
Not because my memory’s shot,
but because I’m choosing to forget them.
Letting them go doesn’t make me some kind of noble sage—
it just means they walked out on their own,
without so much as a goodbye.
They left because the bus almost passed them by,
or because the rain here is like a permanent residency,
and they didn’t want to get caught in it.
Once, those stories had bounce,
I swear they did.
Others stunk of regret
like last night’s spilled wine.
And none of them had a destination.
But that’s what made them interesting,
all raw, unrefined,
the journey to nowhere.
Like one of those verses
that has absolutely no business existing:
“…of peyote and horizon-fame,
of my bathtub pirate heart.
14 reales and some old green warrior,
fighting the same fight with no abyss in sight.
You steal my words before I even say them,
and suddenly,
I’ve got nothing to say to nothing.
Because without you,
I still have you—
locked between these infinite, written, cursed,
beautiful… words.”

One day I realized:
it’s easier to forget
than to learn to play the harmonica.
The next day,
I forgot how to breathe through it.
“Forgetfulness is for boys,”
my mom taught me.
(She didn’t have much patience for sentimentality.)

And her face,
her forehead—
still tastes like lime to me.

 (brought to another dimension "Las horas" 09/09/08)

 From innumerable instances,

spilling like tongues torn from time zones—
syllables stolen in silence,
bartered for metaphors
that can’t even beg for change
on a poet’s corner.

That’s where they ended up:
scrawled into the muscle memory
of a brick wall
where the children of noise
once played tapitas
and dreamed of gods
with better handwriting.

I could etch my name
a thousand times
in cursive whispers
on the crumbling cortex
of a barrio
that forgot its own architecture—
brick by brick,
guarded by ghosts,
watchtower turned
wishing well.

And still—
I forget the accent
of Señor Ambrosio.
The man,
the myth,
the marginalia.

Now the elbows
stay disciplined off tables,
as if posture
could save us from hunger.

Now the dates we missed
don’t vanish—
they return
with interest.
Every lateness,
another currency
in this economy of fading.

He met his god
in the alley between seconds
and refused to offer his hand.

Pitiful.
That man—
little blazer of rotting green,
hair like abandoned revolutions,
too short to be immoral,
too loud to be ignored.

Perfect tongue.
Imperfect speaker.
Echo without source.
Noise without gospel.

Two thousand eight hundred ideas
float like vitaminless prayers,
orbiting skulls
we decorate with irony—
tin-foil crowns
on craniums already
hollowed by hashtags
and hereditary silence.

To the daughters
of despots
who tattoo their names
on men they will not love.

To the sons
of sweetwater sailors
who chart oceans
with no taste for salt.

The only tragedy they can’t afford
is the loss of a head
on a board of black-and-white logic.

Chess.
Life.
Checkmate me, if you dare.

Half-collapsed
on a borrowed couch,
dreaming in reruns.
Give me storm-sculpted clouds.

Let me whisper
nuclear sonnets
in French—
or any syntax
I pretend to fluently hallucinate.

I am a man of rags,
threaded with memory,
stitched by insomnia.

Or better—
dissolve me
in orange effervescence,
mama’s favorite fizz,
and sip me like grief
on a Sunday afternoon.

Still,
while the machine ticks on,
he aches for cheese—
the sacrament of small comforts—
and the answer
to a handful of soft questions:

Do colors still have points?
Is his ink too thin?
Did his mama cook this morning?
Does he have enough coin
for caffeine—
or combustion?

Is the water cold enough
to resurrect him?
Does that place still stand—
that temple of half-truths
where we first learned to lie
in foreign tongues?

Does he snore
when he laughs?
Laugh
when he snorts truth?
Or when he reads
everything—
everything—
starting from the soles of his feet
to the crown
of what’s left?

I got your wings.
I wear them inside out—
feathers like phrases
you never meant to speak.
I fly crooked
and still
make heaven flinch.

(reinvisioned "Tengo tus alas" 03/18/2008)