Flicker In the Distance

The tears gather in your eyes

Like a baby in a cradle

As you smoke, sucking slowly –

Puffs collecting into clouds

Of impenetrable gray

In the rim of your mouth –

The edge of your lips

Solemnity

You are like that star

Of shining silver

Flickering on and off

In the distance  

The unattainable glimmer

That one ponders about in

The gut of night  

A mystery made more beautiful

By its secrecy

You sit by the window

Staring at the wall

As if you meant to break it

You are stoic like the statues

Of saints

With that intrinsic nurture,

Indomitable Beauty and perfection

Of pain

That only art can contain

And I sit facing you

Like a peon at the altar –

Small, like a child

In a museum

Distance

The last touch,

The final tangible moments

When the hidden silences,   

The diffidence of love

Becomes feral

In a hug

I smell your hair of soothing lavender

I feel the fabric of your dress

I kiss the dampness of your cheeks

I walk away

At 21 I smoke

The way you taught me

Without knowing

Imitating poses,

Moving to your rhythms,

Staring at the wall

Night crawls like a spider,

The ghosts of memory

Hide beneath the curtains

Of shadows

And I nestle in their pallor,

Tangled in the comfort

Of desolation

I search for residual warmth

Where your head lay like a stone

Upon the pillow, 

A paper clip that you dropped

On the rug

I know that it is not

The wall at all

But the light –

The relentless flicker

In the distance 

There is no need to try

To survive, for the survival rests
In living, which in itself

Is inevitable

Riverdale Diaries

June 8, 2013

My mind likes inconsistency. My moods are prone to swimming in oceans and playing with tides. They submerge and resurface from the waves, like I do in dreams. Sometimes, like today, they dive indefinitely, as if they intended to drown. Last night, in a drunken daze, I mentioned that this was the most precious summer I’ve had so far. And in many ways, and many times, I think that is not at all wrong. It is completely new, and it had been a while since I experienced new. I must carry myself with new strengths, sometimes strengths that I’ve had to forcefully provoke. I have to look at life with new eyes, live by new philosophies, because for the first time in many years, if ever, I am fighting to survive a world, a life – the one that exists outside the chimera of youth. And I have been successful so far. Yes, I’ve had to learn how to steer a boat and tame the waves to stay afloat, but I’ve been successful. However, days like today have a weary dread. Not even cigarettes are alluring. The solitary chirp of birds is melancholic; the breeze is bitter, frigid. I read but I pause… not so much because of overwhelming thoughts, but overwhelming emotions. They confound me, and I am left staring at the ceiling, with hollow gaze, motionlessly idle, as if I was waiting for my moods to resurface with that desperate gasp of a frightened warrior. But I dwell with turbulent seas; my arena is the antagonist itself, as powerful as tornadoes. And I’m pierced by an ice pick of nostalgia. I miss the sticky heat of an island summer, the buzzing  of mosquitoes in your ears, the pallor of clean blue skies, the relentless motors, the rancid smell of toxic fumes, the sound of flittering leaves on trees, the smell of home cooked meals, the sound of propped wine corks, the chimes of opened doors, the pungent scent of my grandmother’s perfume, the homely inertia, the sound of the ocean, the crisp odor of salt water, the echo of waves, the impertinence of sandy feet and cars and floors, the roughness of beach hair, the tired weight of lazy afternoons, the voice of my father, the voice of my sister, the voice of my mother, the barks of my dogs, the drowsy meows of my cats, the familiarity and slang of my language. Today I miss my home. 

"The great tapestries of trees had darkened to ghosts back at the last edge of twilight. The early moon had drenched the arches with pale blue, and, weaving over the night, in and out of the gossamer rifts of the moon, swept a song, a song with more than a hint of sadness, infinitely transient, infinitely regretful."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise

New York Impressions

Tonight I celebrate myself

And the music latching to my walls

Like perfume latches to skin

I celebrate the blades of grass

Smooth as baby hair

Gracing naked feet

The droplets on leaves

Round and translucent

Glistening like gems

Tossed, misplaced or forgotten  

I celebrate the workers at cafes

And the conversations that surface

Unprecedented stored and released

For brief encounters

Made immortal

I celebrate the common names

Of unique people

And the faces now printed

In the folio of the mind

Like instants captured in photographs

The words spun from tongues

The texture of rough hands

On handshakes

Like sandpaper

I celebrate the laughs

And the movements of bodies

The walkers beside me

The accidental shoving of shoulders

On the subway

The spiteful looks of tired eyes

I celebrate the city and its colors

The city and its smell of

Barbequed sausage on summer days

The sour scent of sweat

From glistening black faces 

And flustered white cheeks

The chachacha of bachatas

On particular neighborhoods

The bum bum bum of hip hop

On particular streets

I celebrate

Found this at Poetry Daily. How precise! 

[The life I live]
    from "The City of Poetry"

The life I live,
The one I hoped
To live—
How seldom
They coincide.

Sometimes, briefly,
They do;
Sometimes, in the city. 

by Gregory Orr

Howl Festival

In the streets

Of the East Village

The people Howl,

Their minds fresh

With fervor

They prance naked,

Their bellies flopping

Like flapjacks

They lay in the grass

Encumbered with the sloth

Of youth – treasured alibi

In this side of paradise

They have replaced sand

With moss and dirt mounds
Towels with blankets

Palms with withered trunks

And thick branches

And I have joined

The tragic romance,

The aimless parade   

Of idealists

 I walk

With idle pace

Bare, braless –  

My breasts dangling

Like ripe mangos

Bearded poets –mouths that

Spatter syllables like pellets,

Rhymes like bombs

As coherent to us

As Morse code is for the blind

As it was for them 

Back then