if we do not guard what is real, something else becomes

yellow page, blue car, red wheel, date unknown

Feeling too media-obsessed to notice how far we've strayed from the wellspring, we approach the toll plaza and I am thinking more about record labels and Wayne's World than how I'm going to pay off my library fines, let alone cross the bridge. It makes sense, this hunger for connection and unity through an artist or a writer, might even be enough to sustain someone through a lifetime of righteous work, but is "Tryin' to get to Heaven" gonna get us across the bridge when the fog has rendered the windshield opaque?


Editor's note: Now that the stretch to the glove compartment has become our morning calisthenic and FasTrak is the most honest form of inhuman interaction there is, now that vinyl albums fly from off the sidewalk out the window of a dorm-room dream to shatter former crutches, now that the time is 20 minutes before 20:00 and the bridge is beginning to seem like it has more than two ends, certain resistance--even analog--melts in the passenger footwell, that there are some bridges sound waves can't cross, and others that are drawn in just in time to let the lessons of immobility slam our faces against the cinder-block wall of machismo speed and the laurel of accomplishment we've been erecting.

Lightning Strike Like Viper's

don't take the prop plane
brimming with boxes and familiar faces,
go out the other door;
resting on the crowded runway
stay grounded stay grounded

while on the rocks
where diamondbacks lurk below
step assured, assured and cautious

and don't forget to come back strong.

keep apprised of their eyes,
whether serpentine or obsidian, opaque;
there's no time to shy away
from our interpreter of interpreters
who speaks in keys

with unintelligible skeletons

Great Mother of Peripheral Whispers
and Vistas in the Mist
                                            I am here

Magical Landscape Poem

           
           


Smoke, fog and haze competing for the waning sun's attention.

While the neighborhood bulldozer scoops and cleaves
I walk along the downward slope of the
fire break decoding this puzzle of light:

             a funnel of midnight blue culminating
             in a stove pipe the abandoned lodge produces;
             the trail to the source: black curtain

and alabaster bathtub, a table hiding
amongst forgotten inventories of prehistoric metal
that harken back to the day the storage unit was delivered.

                                                          we ascend
due to concerns of breathability, visibility
and our dresses flair violet in the breeze
between clay and sandstone--

        the summer is burning and we
        inhale strings of days, bridges of muscle,
        dreams and charred pine needles,
        night-flying weather balloons whirling
        in the casino parking lot, waiting
        for the one-eyed owl to land eye-level
        on the lamp-post as muffled and calculated,
        real and tacet, as little cat's feet.

Listen that Raggy Levee

hopping continents like freight cars,
making rounds across
the earth, following a mask
of coastline to meet the present
        eye           to           eye. . .


this sky's arms reaching through
brittle stone with roots that
push into the unknown like
fingernail sprouting forth
from polluted lakes of death
disguised as heirlooms, a mirror.



well, my own nuclear ambitions fall
into contrition in the face
of the wall outside our house.

Que onda?

Howdy, Reader!

You are just in time to join me for a quick perusal of my blog that is a book that is a blog. I just finished it...

Four years ago.

What follows is a collection of poems and photos that I compiled while on a life-changing journey through the unknown and into the super-known. Take it all at once, or any little bit you see fit whenever you happen to feel up for it.





As a continuous work, this blog from here on out is composed of two general movements, "first act" and "the river" (hit up older posts for the latter), framed and broken by a certain amount of -ludes (pre, inter, and post). I have very much enjoyed editing it for the here and now blogoglobe, as it has reminded me how texts remain fresh and growing over time regardless of our daily, consciouss toiling and striving.

And don't worry, you too will have ample opportunity to leave your mark on these walls along the way, so here we go!

setting

Every corner, even of sidewalk, becomes a hiding place to hug and kiss.
Decked-out policía honk at chicas from their shiny trucks
While a clown—bright, painted face, big shoes—sips out of a bag, waiting to catch a bus.

         The paint was thin so the walls still whispered,
         “LA REVOLUCION ES LA SOLUCION.”
         Someone had been telling someone else, perhaps,
         that resisting change is a change for the worse.

A dog walks deliberately out into the middle of a busy street to urinate.
His nighttime companion leans over the edge of her roof to bark away from her payphone
anyone who might be able to afford a conversation.

         Blasting her music so loud, guarding the clotheslines,
         she better start protecting what’s hanging out to dry from the rain.

Guajalote is out for a Sunday stroll to take in the newest canción
performed by the blind guitarrista and the six year old girl playing the accordion.

         After stopping to rest together at the top of the mountain,
         the two clouds decided to drift their separate ways,
         one west, one eventually east.

Most surely El Che and Maria Sabina would here be crowned king and queen
of the prom, that is, unless a government-issued counting system be used.

         The little lizard, though, had no problem crossing
         through barbed wire at the top of the wall.

Ancient sacred trees from which men are descended
still dwarf colonial cathedrals that were built to displace them,
though these days, the strongest mystical power either holds is shade,
for many forget their hats in their hotel rooms.

         And me? After thousands of years, here I am
         in a museum looking through glass
         at faded colors on isolated figures propped up on pedestals.

prelude

CLIMBING SAN FELIPE ON KOL NIDRE



All this time carried away by words, carried away although
I wish to stay right where I am, carried away until I find that,
somehow, here is where I’ve ended up:

my doubts concerning whether or not this is the place.

Either way, River, it looks like you and I walk side by side
on this leg of the trail. As we near the waterfall

my forest breath begins to steam, and in a land of clouds
my footprint precedes me.
Each footstep is the wavering of vegetation in my wake,
the displacement of certain insects.

How is it that I can think I know what to expect,
do I find my own words so opaque?

Or is it that I suddenly find them so transparent?

I stop to read the topographical map of a solitary tree in the meadow.
Stripping off the bark reveals fire;
the combustion of organic matter into spiritual energy.

From the ashes grew a mushroom.

EARLY RISE

I remember walking the streets expecting to see
        him. Then returned to a different apartment.

Because I do not remember any more dreams,
                I wake up into one. It was,

even before it started to be,
                before it started to already not be any more
        though each time I swear never to return,

but once the day had crossed into,
        once shopowners and their dogs started again
digging to find rivers that course beneath our streets,

                to dive into concrete memory expecting a splash,

I must try to go back--shutters
                be slammed!--to change it all by changing myself

by taking a little nap, avoiding what the day
        wanted to get done, and in this, I have memories.

Please let me not look at the clock,

        I do not want to know this moment has come to an end.
I have been orphaned by the passing of too many moments already.
                Each time, I swore never to return.

What begins impossible becomes more impossible,
                but I knew he would turn up.
The walls were fading, cracking, peeling, the walls of night.

        This morning is a gift given to me by a rooster,

and for each rock in the dirt there is a flattened plastic bottle,
        water or transmission fluid. I notice the sole of a boot upturned,
no bigger than a four-year-old's foot.

                Fixed to burning edges of the clouds rising above Sierra Madre,

he sat, or maybe slept, but I had yet to arrive.

                As I continue on, more boot soles from under the surface emerge
and float there, in the dirt, but when I climbed
        not quiet enough he was waiting, fixed to burning edges

of the clouds that rise above.
        Even from the distant reaches of the solar system

the sun still has to rise, I figured, and had a seat
                        after climbing ten steps past.

"Only your blood will quench the forces that replenish cosmic creation."

                Our highways have always run through ruin, but in that morning
looking back over his shoulder
        reflecting off of my presence ten steps further up

I become no longer an immediate threat, so he gets lying down,

        springs up to spin around--avoiding my gaze,
                turning away, towards his tail--

to find the spot he was looking for, back to sleep with a yawn over pavement.

                "Did you always go through life as easily as it seemed you did?"

The response was loose and bouncing on the penumbra

                but then escaped. Awake now and with no one to play against, the team
knew not what to do. The answer was a play on words,

        a statement more obvious than fact, a pre-fact, a circle,

and left each member with a choice to be made unto each self.

        Supplied with too many options, I want--

and fear--them all, resulting in a loss
                of circulation. Language, blood of consciousness,

                now that my thoughts have begun to trip over themselves,
        impeding and accumulating the liquid confusion that I ride through this day,
perhaps it is time to stop perceiving and write a little.

                The balcony and my notebook have become too distracting.

As I fall towards the couch, fingers and eyes preparing the task,
        alarm clock tearing off into another room
in the apartment interruption,
                eandings are always so sure.

first act

POCKETS



after all these years
of walking upright
I have still not figured out what to do
with my two free hands
most of the time












                          TALKING TO US



                          Forget something.             Anything, please.

DRAWING SHADOWS IN SAND, DANCING IN A BOTTLE


Because of its beauty, I kill
the orchid instead of letting it die,
dancing on petals.

Now I am bending over
to pick up a gum wrapper buried
in a restaurant floor to write
a poem while everyone else sleeps

in their chairs.
                          Then, while tracing
my own shadow in the sand with a stem
held between two toes, I shall remain
comfortably seated.

ECHO


Once again I have slept through the sunrise;
this time I am going to dig a big hole
      where the whole thing will happen again.

    CHIAPAS


        through the windshield
                  the highway slithers
        through the jungle…

        potential shortcuts,
                  boarded-up caves,
                            green rivers,
                  and trees
                            of cascading branches…

        I am driving
        through somebody’s home.










CASCADE


I am falling
in torrents

from in front of my eyes
behind

behind my eyes
to in front

of

from my eyes.

SURF

                                        telar de plata
                                        tejiendo playas
                                        el oleaje

                                        --Ramon Dachs


and waves                    pounding
                    sending aftershocks
                    up the sand
waves                    dissolving in-
                    to sheets of foam revealing
                    more and more earth and air

          and the years pound away
time       overtaking      and receding
          dissolving      in darkness
                    in daylight

and the breaking waves
reaching out to grasp
                        and returning
                    returning                  to grasp again

falling away        with golden erosion
                    also depositing more of the same
                    different           sameness

                    and waves              pounding
learning          and forgetting
          forgetting          and learning
how little it is we all know
                    how much we may feel
          yet still somehow we manage to get by

all of us

TO HIDE IN THE LIGHT

                  For Alejandra Pizarnik


1

even before any rooster, a young dog barks
        howling insistently you come back to cohabitate
his morning, so again we might all be living the only dream alive

2

he told me talent was looking for something
without knowing what it is until it is
found, and silly me thinking he was talking
about death all along

3

no
you will always possess my shadow
refuse to sell it
refuse to let me be
        transparent
earth where I was born
no matter how far I travel
not even to high noon
at midnight

TEMASCAL


enjoy each horribly blanketless,
cut-off, and lonesome
night of solitude as if tomorrow
morning you are returning
to the womb


            tomorrow the sun will
            be waiting to envelope your
            opening eyes and your less
            restless feet as you slowly
            sink into the realization that
            you have slept on a bed of dirt


stretch your legs into the cold
void while relishing each shiver,
yawn with your whole body
as your collapse resonates
among four bare walls


            tomorrow you return to
            a place you’ve never been;
            at least tonight, tomorrow
            is a dark room full of steamy
            mystery which thankfully
            can’t be equal to your expectations

TALKING TO YOU


to seek the path of least resistance to and from your heart,
          must the distance between us be
as vast as
                    the difference between
the whole truth
          and an excuse?

forget that,
          so busy remembering,
you forgot.

EARS

                  while absorbed in echoes
          the origin of future echoes
passes me by
          unnoticed.









    TALKING TO MYSELF


    Please show me the path

                        so that this time I may not forget.

TALKING TO NOBODY


people, people everywhere
            and not a drop to drink;

two houses
            around the world
                      from eachother
            both lose their foundations
in a landslide;

            stop to leave the work complete
before you begin.