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)
