an instant

I sometimes desperately want
to just not care.
I desperately wish the scaffolding
I built
around the world
was much simpler.

The biggest luxury now
would be to spend the whole night,
eyes fixed on the road,
mindlessly counting the cars,
and lost in thought.

and, yeah, why not say it?
fuelled by strong wines,
glass after glass.

At dawn, for a moment,
before the sun announces itself on the East,
I know the world would appear to be
much simpler,
even for a single instant.

Then my head would be at peace
for an instant.

untitled

Yeah, we should know that words are just words,
and that all noble languages died centuries ago.
What's then to be so enthusiastic about?
I don't think this show is edifying or glorious.

We applaud empty ceremonies, rites that are just dust,
and which deserve no coming back to them
anymore that the most wasted of fields.

We buried our old desires. Made them immoral.
All instincts sanctioned dirty.
All wines to be controlled, all ales to be lighter.
Everything strong to be curbed.

Very little remains then, outside these tax forms.
Do you fellowmen never hear the tinnitus,
discordant in the heated night?
Be aware you cannot buy glory or adventure,
much less in those outlets outside the city walls.

Walking directionless but with strong intent.
You don't realize what you're after.
That strong desire to find an illicit pleasure,
to revel in it for a minute. 

to spark that part of your head that lies most dormant.
Because that will give you a special smile.

walled garden

the more beautiful the flower is considered to be
the strongest is the need to build a walled garden
around her.

the dearest one holds it to the heart,
the thicker the masonry
and more imposing from outside. It is engraved,
this impulse.

I wish, though, I could leave you a world
that was safe for that flower, where a wooden fence
would suffice,
because the universe would be ordered
according to precise golden rules.

But, most likely, I am just wishing for the world
that they did not bequeath me,
and as for you, I am sure you will understand your world
so much better than me.

Why would I want to revisit the old days?

Why would I want to revisit the old days?
What on earth have I to find among the tired patios?
A silence that I have since replaced
with other cicada chants?

Let it stay that way,
as I've managed to almost forget the shapes,
the voices and the days.

The only token of that age that I tolerate these days
is the odd yellowish paperback,
scribbled with plenty of silly ideas.

I let those shadows grow as dark and fast as they wanted,
and it worked, in their own ambitions,
they just collapsed, and were thus left behind
where they could do no harm for a long time.

What am I to find?
Postcards from countries I did not visit?
Love letters that were never written?
Drugs that went untested?

No, you know what would happen, right?
It would be the same old streets again, but the spirits,
they have vanished, their winters now
belonging to other generations.
Yes, it would always be the same city,
and I already know it by heart.

I will gain nothing by shedding salt on the wounds.
The years are gone for good. Destroyed.
Ruins nobody wants to visit,
not because they're in the middle of a violent country,
but because they hold nothing of interest.

At most, they tell the story of a very slow motion escape.
But if I go back there again,
it will be the same fountain, the same dropped oranges
rotting uncared for.

Well, yeah, the stairs will be a bit more worn off,
bur that does not warrant the train ticket, to be honest.

Mom

Mom, such sadness...
what is this thorn lodged in my chest?
Had no idea life could hurt like this

mamá

mamá, ¡qué triste estoy!
¿qué es esta espina que tengo en mi pecho?
no sabía que la vida podía doler así.

slightly wet paperbacks, towels, long nights

slightly wet paperbacks, towels, long nights
salt, sweat and water... the occasional oily
fingerprint from the fish lunch we ate
under sun-sieged shades.

I am bored with living life like we have to measure
the carbs in every beer, lest we fall from grace.
Fuck grace then.
We'll have sex all afternoon to burn the calories.

I wish somebody had told me earlier on
that you could fall in love with life,
back when there was a margin.

Seems we never sealed that pact.
Never fully said "yes I do", thinking it
would always be there ( as in for ever )

deep sleep that finds you crushed the next morning.
Not caring. Leave your foresight pulse
at home, before travelling,
like we should always do.

want

the chest crumbles for want of beauty,
for the weight of yearns that go unheeded.

I slip my fingers along the fault lines,
along the knife points,
dull with late twists to the plot (scam) weaved
off a pile of days with no discernible
separations, like a wet pile of soggy phone books.

In each of us, an entire civilization,
hanging gardens of laxitude,
orbital cities of progress and science fiction,
banquets worth of Odin's visit
and lamentations that would put a
mendicant order out of business.

No, apocalypse does not come in a brutal burst.
Apocalypse is the tinned silence of the night,
day in day out,
- daily grind permitting -
realizing the futility of it all,
still untraceable in the face of the newborn,
yet fire-etched in each of us,
our brows,
weary.
We, encased in our echo chambers,
strapped fugitives,
counsellors to ourselves,
not always with the cleanest hands.

What remains at the end are the dregs
of what we could 've been, had we...

For want of beauty
we scourge the horizon, looking for perpetual motions,
to forget about ourselves,
- ultimate release -
and become a star with no name,
a simple rock away from our own reach.

The heavy weight of having
motives, reasons, emotions, thoughts
to reflect on sometimes seems like a practical joke-cum-punishment.

We've been had, cheated.
We never gained any enlightenment. We just were lost
in a place of shining lights.
And we pillaged whatever scraps we could get hold of
to build the beauty we wanted to have,
modelled after ourselves,
defective, dirty, dangerous, demeaning maybe,
the sense of dosing increasingly lost as the times accelerated.

The critical mass of a new dark age
is being gathered in our hearts, inevitably.

That too makes my chest crumble inwards.
What new beauty will be born out of that?