Cityscape I

The town bum
marking time like a broken metronome
waited eagerly in the warm, cloudless afternoon.
His squiggly sperm-tailed whiskers
proffered looks of blithe indifference
as the sterile bus lurched forward to greet him.
Insignificant moments passed and he began to degenerate
into a pile of heroin-laced nonsense:
"cat, cat, cat...zanzibar is coming".
We all pretended not to notice;
to prefer the passing blur of restaurants and thirsty bushes.
"Stop requested" the bus chimed
and in a grove of equally perverse poets,
he was welcomed as their brother
with stories of last night's decadence.

every one

even when the notes seem so clearly displayed
so crystalinely frozen
in neat black picture frames
the music seems to sway just so slightly out of tune
leaving me just instants away from cacophonic implosion

Lo que somos---Homenaje a Perlongher

Montándote derritiéndote hasta no ser más
o hasta serlo todo o hasta volver a ser
lo que siempre fuiste.
Serás concavo e invertido
tan sublime y azaroso
tan omnipotentamente otro
tan loca como tu madre
tan perversa y charlatana.
Fuiste arrancada por tus propios versos
y tu incomensurabilidad de profeta
profeta común y plebeya
plebeya loca y sagaz.
Y cuando subes
aquellos pasos antiguos
de cal que derrite que gotea
con los miles de años que se surrealizan
y todo siempre fue agua y luz sagrada y pura
tan pura como aquella perla barroca y demente
que siempre fuiste
y serás...
Tendrás tanto que decir
y estarás tan decepcionada con nosotros
que nos banalizamos cada día
cada vez más normal
cada vez menos lo que quisiste para nosotros.
Y se extinguen los efímeros momentos
de perverso yirar
cuando nos embarramos tan mansamente
tan lúbricamente expuestos
tan hambrientos por devenir.
O en estos momentos de intensidad
lo que buscamos
sos vos.

cumbre

subiendo hacia tu destrucción sublime y trágica dejaste huellas vaciadas de su peso original. Llegaste a la cumbre, donde la nación se ve a lo lejos, expandiendo, expandiendo en círculos concéntricos que se delindan y se trasponen, se acarician y expulsan largas gotas de historias pegajosas.
¿y dónde irás ahora?
¿o te torcirás absolutamente hasta enterrate en aquellas rocas de cal?
¿o te quedas? ¿Quieres?
Aquí te alimentas de las esencias, vapores ya combustidos, que ahogan allá lejos pero que se tornan dulce opio al tragar mezclado con este aire puro, purpurino, casto.
Y desde aquí verás tu despedazamiento, autofragmentación atómica, tu parcelamiento retórico/sensual.
y correrás derritido, hecho polvo y espacio por las fisuras y fronteras que se imaganaron con tu sangre y con tus memorias.
¿ahora quieres escapar?
¿hacia dónde?
¿dentro de cuáles límites te encasillarás tan mansemente
como toro vencido, sangriento y maricón,
o como bella Monroe decadente?
Antes tienes que mirarlos
profanar tu patria
cuando vienen fluyendo como hormigas hambrientos y sin religión.
y repetirán su dogmática profanación hasta comerte vivo,
primero los vellos suaves de tu esperanza perdida,
luego las uñas con las que una vez me rascaste,
por las venas y hasta tu corazón intermitentemente palpitando
cada vez más debil;
lejos de parar,
pero tan harto de soportar tanto veneno.
¿has visto cómo construyeron circundantes redes con efímero labor?
Vienen por ti.
Vienen y ya vinieron y vendrán
y ¿estás bien?
Pero tú ya sabías.
No lo habrás podido ignorar,
vienen y viniste
y ya no estás...

secreto

te quiero contar mi secreto más intimo:
la fisura imposible que me parte en dos:
no
en fragmentos rizomáticos e intransigentes
terribles
en sueños indecibles
en terrores tan delicados
e imperceptibles:
un deseo insaciable de producir, perfeccionar, ganar
y
el pensamiento fugaz, chispeante como la aurora
de desafiar, de romper, ser múltiple, obedecer tan fielmente
que no me deja respirar

mi nombre, tu cuerpo

déjame tallar mi nombre en los lugares más blancos
hacerte mi tronco desnudo
casi primaveral
disfrutar de esta violencia
tan tierna
esta minuciosa tortura que nos hiere tanto

to benny

Stack up the hosts in pillars of sonorous rectitude
Raising a tower of deified sugar-free holiness
A jenga stack of salvation
Begging to tumble down piece by piece
in slow motion
As bricks of your demagoguery
Asphyxiating us in the liberation of our final nefarious desire

atonement

Why don't you sing to me in that beautiful voice of yours, that silvery song voice that you only take out to please me? I'll let you atone for all those unforgivable sins. I'll let you drape yourself in invisible architecture, in layers upon layers of tailored deception and golden-seamed patchwork intimacy. Why don't you ask me again in that penitent, steely voice as I fade away to dark? Why don't you accentuate your undying love for me or mutilate your drum beating heart, the one that slowed down just enough to make me start to miss you?

winter machine

Mechanographic winter cable cars
pound their industry
so transcendentally rhythmic
across my soft white flesh.

Ivy-laden winter wonderlands
grow opposite my veiny
vericosity
binding my sinewy knuckles
like a virgin.

Suspended in this ecological
ratchetwork
I've been waiting here
for days
and you still haven't risen.

Winter Discontent

I'll not wait anymore
for some frosty breeze
or ice maiden
to rapt you while we sleep.

This wintry idleness
makes you seem so pristine
so ethereal and corpse-like
that I'll have a hard time waking you
even though I've been itching to incriminate someone;
to spread some blame around.

And hopefully we can get straight to describing eachother's frailties
and enumerating our quicksilver nightmares;
pounding away on the drums of our discontent.

Homework #2

Dear Joe:

Decide on one thing and focus so obsessively much on it that everything else just melts away. Don't try to please everyone that comes across your path. You can be good at several things, but you can really only excel, I mean really excel at one thing. So don't feel bad about telling the other people that you can't play soccer anymore, or can't play music anymore, or can't study anymore, or can't whatever anymore...just do it and move on. As you get older, try to understand that your one weakness is completely manageable. You have the ability to do whatever, but you have to focus, you have to be obsessive and go crazy over that one thing and dive so deeply into that abyss that you never come out, you have to believe that you'll sprout gills and start breathing under that water; that you'll find a mermaid who will teach you how to breathe without oxygen; that life will suspend itself and you'll just be there, suspended in mid ocean so completely given over to the abyss.

Don't date bartenders, even if they're fun, its just not worth it...and don't feel bad for homogenizing all of them, for rounding them up into one corral. It's okay, really.

Call your mother more.

Don't be intimidated by people who read philosophy books...not the old ones...the new ones...the sexy post-modern ones.

You will be gay...and you will have to deal with the unsavory accouterments of gaydom in the 21st century; despite its apparent cache, you will wonder what planet you are living on sometimes.

Become a poet...no matter what.

Morning Mechanical

Soft copper streaks melt slowly
adding depth to the fall morning.
Garbage trucks and school buses
snap bitterly to life
smelling of burnt motor oil and doughnuts.

Tentative stray cats
slink gracefully behind overgrown grasses,
obediently licking each other’s oily necks.

Thick working-class fingers
grasp warm breasts
then abused metal and latex.

Drug-hazed prostitutes
stagger across slippery bridges
past misty wharfs and gently purring jetties;
fading imperceptibly to black.

1.
The morning light trickled across his tiny ear
accentuating the shiny moisture
of his unshaven throat.

2.
I felt around
grasping unsuccessfully
at the last strand of rope
that would have saved my life.

3.
Undisturbed by the quickened pace
of the dark breeze
he waited patiently
eyes fixed
jaw impassively clenched
exhaling the last drop of silver poison.

gay prez

Imagine a straight-acting, power bottom, named Mr. President.

It may not happen in my lifetime...but I wonder what would happen if people were forced to think about the president taking it up the butt.

What would that do to sodomy laws?

If the president were gay, would countries repeal their anti-sodomy or anti-homosexuality laws before an official visit? Doubtful...

What would happen if the world had to think of the president being "emasculated" in the white house?

What would they call his "partner"--if he had one? Not just the first gay lover, but the First Gay Lover.

What if it were a lesbian?

What if next time, a black lesbian ran for president?

Dressed in such anonymity
In such shattering effluvia
I couldn't help but notice
my shadow growing dark;
yawning in the mirror.

I wanted to ask him
how long this would this last.

I wanted him to see my potential.

Why didn't I walk down that road?

And I kept getting darker
and shinier
luminescently squatting
in a pool of my own ignorant sweat
seeping deeper and deeper
squeezing through perfectly random cracks
of sun-charred clay.

Nacieron trece hijos hoy
mientras llovía esporádicamente
mientras la tarde humedecida
inhalaba los llantos y la sangre
del parto repetido.

Mockingbird fought Squirrel today
in an epic and tragic
encounter of natural bewilderment.

Quién se llevó mi copita de jerez?

What if I wrote the same line, the same idea, the same metaphor or the same fleeting moment of trepidity, of senselessly frivolous frivolity?

What if I wrote the same line, the same idea, the same metaphor or the same fleeting moment of trepidity, of senselessly frivolous frivolity?

What if I wrote the same line, the same idea, the same metaphor or the same fleeting moment of trepidity, of senselessly frivolous frivolity?