. riesgo, del 23 .

the creak of chain link, too often used by horror films to provoke fear in the hearts of their spectators, rings of happiness, sounding more like squeals of joy singing rhythmically to the beat of my to and fro than anything else. little feet floating above a red mulch with a deep forest smell reveal each perfectly calculated movement. as they push forth side by side and pressed tightly together, arms stretch out, elbows lock, spine tips back, head leans so the face gazes skyward. now knees bend and tuck feet beneath body, toes pointing back, tiny hands pulling with elbows bent and torso pushed forward. my science, this pattern i have long studied. i continue the prescribed movements, repeating one, then the other. i plan my next step, carefully counting each breath, each lean, each dip. legs bend, forward lean, breathe. extend, lean back, breathe. legs bend, forward lean, breathe. extend, lean back, breathe, prepare-- release!

my fingers extend, following my soaring body, frozen midair, breath choked, ecstatic.

three gusts of wind blow past me, and i see my feet plummet.

the red much comes up to meet me, embracing every gasp of my adventure, praising every rejected doubt.

i turn my body and face the sky once more, chest heaving, ankles throbbing, cheeks sore from the smiles that abound.

there's magic in that mulch.

flying is magical, indeed. but it is in landing that my true love is found.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/daily-prompt-moon-walking/

. instrucciones del 2.21 .

i sit in silence and let the calm flow over me. nowhere to be, nothing to do, no expectations, no rules, no limits. free to run wild, and i sit. free to play, and i'm still. free to tear the world to shreds, and i work to put myself together.

(i cannot run from any fear in this silence. perhaps if i am still enough it will not see me.)

(it has never worked before, but it is always worth a try.)

the ticking clock marks the path of today's unscheduled life. each second reminds me of my freedom. i feel the hand slow down, and i fear it might be infinite.

rising from my place of peace, i look around, calmly observe my surroundings, identify the spots that need work. slowly, calmly, i move into action. taking up my tools, i set out to tidy things up. i seek out the sounds that will fill the space around me and accompany me on this journey of cleansing. my environs slowly improve, gradually revealing the effort i put forth.

when i am satisfied with my effort (because i will never be satisfied with the outcome, always finding a fleck that remains, a speck that i missed), i step back. i take a moment of pause to observe the change, the growth, the improvement, the progress. i find joy in this.

stepping slowly, i move to the next room. i move my hand to the spot where i placed your thoughts. i grasp this collection in my palm, wrapping my fingers around it. sitting once more, breathing deep, i scan through the fragments of your voice. the memory of your warmth washes over me, flooding my heart, swelling my soul. i am overwhelmed with happiness. i feel your peace.

my bare feet inching around, one adjustment after another, i move once more. i open the new room to another set of eyes, another smile, another soul. sitting together, we begin our exchange. the beauty in this sharing, this communion most holy, penetrates skin and bone, seeping into our marrow. we speak of troubles and of celebrations, successes and failures, struggle and surrender. thus, we speak of love, and of joy.

our feet
move
alongside
each other.
with a gentle, steady pace, we travel beyond the walls of our home. we move to see the world outside. we move to change our breath, to grow our hearts, to nourish our souls.
we see nature
sky — with clouds and birds and sunshine;
air — wind, thick breath, swaying branches;
dirt — more growth, wiggling life, and also death that slowly rejoins its origins.

taking a lesson from them, from this last sight, we seek out a space to settle, to rest our weary feet. we have grown so much. we have been wandering for ages. we have encountered many fellows, learned many lessons.

we find a patch of grass that calls our names, whispering in the cool breeze. we stand together. we slowly,
gently
bring ourselves
close to it.
we sit, then lay. facing each other, our eyes lock in a gaze that contains all memories. our lives, in the meeting of pupils. full lives.

with lives so full, now complete, we rest.

we hear the ticking clock once more.
slow,
then faster.

and as you take my hand in yours
it stops.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/daily-prompt-good-time/

[I watch the pendulum swing from one extreme to the other, never seemingly pausing in the middle ground]

I am a therapist. Some areas of employment involve hourly wages, pay per pound of potatoes picked, a fixed salary. I get paid by the tear. Well, per fluid ounce, really. I push my patients as they sit or lay before me, I poke and prod at their deepest and most painful memories. The further in, the more repressed, the more forgotten these emotions are, the more the tears drop. The more my money flows. 

This one looks like a particularly fruitful goldrush. So strange to see how she folds each tissue, blotting first her right cheek, then her left, carefully, as though not wanting to wrinkle neither her face nor the cheap sandpapery material. Then she rotates the spotted tissue ninety degrees counterclockwise, folds a dry part down, and creases, as though covering, then burying, her tears that moisten the once-dry tissue. She runs her nails across the edge, head cocked awkwardly to the right, staring blankly, intently, passively, as though thinking about her response to my last question, particularly painful. 

"Do you think you are ready to stop these things that are hurting you?" I had vaguely asked, just before her face tightened up, the creases forming across her once-model-like features now squishing her into a play-doh-like figurine. The cartoon face before me accompanies a body that squirms uncomfortably in the office chair (but not because of the seating quality, for I always make sure to select the finest of the options offerred within the small catalog allowed to my colleagues and me). Her chest and shoulders expand with shocking tenseness; at first I think she is inhaling, but now I know she is not. The expanding motion reaches a sudden stop, like a mechanical latch whose gear slowly, repetitively, rotates its position. Sliding, sliding, sliding towards the edge, then clicking back downwards into the original position. 

Not quite squirming, I suppose. 

She carefully piles up the folded, soggy tissues, each forming a small, tight block, set aside only once she determined that the imbued creases couldn't repeat themselves further. She stacks them upon her tiny notebook (a Moleskin, perhaps), as though constructing a wall, a fort to represent the progress towards overcoming whatever it is that happened to her. 

She has only ever spoken to me in metaphors, and often answers my questions with more questions. This time she does both: "What if it's something that still happens?" She pauses, click-breathing for a moment, blotting and folding tears away, before answering in a small child's voice: "Like, when you're little and you're learning to tie your shoes, and someone in your class throws mud in your hair while you're half-squatted, half-kneeling in the playground. You don't get mud in your hair every time you tie your shoes for the rest of your life, but a lot of those times .... you think about that time that kid you thought was your friend was mean to you in front of the whole class, and then the embarrassment is back .... or you worry that someone else, someone new, might come and throw mud in your hair .... or you think that, even though everything tells you that this person really is your friend, you worry that they might have stuck something in your hair while you weren't looking, and then everyone else knows that they're making fun of you... everyone knows but you."

She was probably raped as a child. Or maybe the captain of the football team slept with her, told her they were going to be together forever, and then laughed about it at practice. And she recently found out the truth. 

I am certain that my college professors would all tell me that the human psyche is not so simple, not so straightforward. I am also certain that this fort of soggy tissue-bricks means that I will be able to buy myself a cool new pair of sneakers this weekend. Though a part of me worries that I will think back on her sadness, her internal battle, each time I kneel down to tie them. 

I pause, laces in hand, lift my head slowly, and look around. Even though nobody is in sight, I rush to finish tying them, and run a hand through my hair as I walk out of the shoe store. 

[morningtime poetics]

she tossed
   and turned
as the
        world turned
and hands turned
marking
    every new second, her
sleepless
           seconds

til the fourth hour came
    and passed-
half-passed and
half-dropped her
half-fallen
half-asleeped her

til
the
hands half-blurred and the
worlds half-blurred and the
eyes half-stopped their half-reading

and the morning half-began

[deleuze y guattari on kafka]

hacia una literatura menor

p 16: "A minor literature doesn't come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language.  But the first characteristic of minor literature in any case is that in it language is affected with a high coefficient of deterritorialization."

p 17: "The second characteristic of minor literatures is that everything in them is political.  In major literatures, in contrast, the individual concern (familial, marital, and so on) joins with other no less individual concerns, the social milieu serving as a mere environment or a background... Minor literature is completely different; its cramped space forces each individual intrigue to connect immediately to politics.  The individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary, indispensable, magnified, because a whole other story is vibrating within it." ... "The third characteristic of minor literature is that in it everything takes on a collective value.  ... what each author says individually already constitutes a common action, and what he or she says or does is necessarily political, even if others aren't in agreement.  The political domain is contained in every statement (énoncé).  ... [I]f the writer is in the margins or completely outside his or her fragile community, this situation allows the writer all the more the possibility to express another possible community and to forge the means for another consciousness and another sensibility."

p 17-18: "The literary machine thus becomes the relay for a revolutionary machine-to-come, not at all for ideological reasons but because the literary machine alone is determined to fill the conditions of a collective enunciation that is lacking elsewhere in this milieu: literature is the people's concern. ... There isn't a subject; there are only collective assemblages of enunciation, and literature expresses these acts insofar as they're not imposed from without and insofar as they exist only as diabolical powers to come or revolutionary forces to be constructed."

p 18: "The three characteristics of minor literature are the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation."

[from someone's facebook, stolen]

about me:

yeah, you know
or i guess you don't
considering you're reading this
is it weird that i start a new line instead of putting periods, or commas, or semicolons, or dashes, etc.
to represent natural breathing places?
i think it might make it seem like i don't care for grammar
or anything of the sort
i do i've just adopted this way of typing
i'm enjoying writing this
even though i'm not really giving much info about me
or maybe my random rambling (sorry if that's redundant)
is giving you insight on my life
hey you
what's up
that's right i'm talking to you
whoever you are
i hope you're enjoying reading this as much as i'm enjoying writing it
damn,
i'm excited for tomoro
it's gonna be a great day
good things are gonna happen
hey, sorry if my "gonna" bugs you
it's my guilty pleasure
that and almost NEVER capitalizing "i"
oh and never spelling tomoro the right way
i've given up
i've spelled it wrong too many times
alright
i'm done typing in this box

peace =]

(just became a fan of hers- after the backslash: profile.php?id=705600130&ref=ts)

[beluga]

belly bands play

to announce your arrival

and everyone congratulates you

on your extra pounds

--have you stopped working out? you look so good!

and while your mind gets foggy

the academic papers write themselves

you'll stick to the poetry

and pink skirts for transvestite children

because everyone is so happy

and you're so happy

that the month doesn't matter

what the picture doesn't say yet doesn't matter

the matter matters

so you brandish black and white blurry pictures before you

and lay back to hear the music play

[¿on recycling?] .filosofía 3.

week by week

by weak

transcend --- fulfill your potential

decrease

diminish

occupy less space

fill less

ful fill your potential

to fill less

decrease

diminish

transcend

go beyond the need for space

stop

occupying

space.

week by week

by weak

---be strong

and leave the space for someone else.

let time decrease you--the

hour grows beside

you

shrinking

(grow weak)

week by week by weak... decrease

                                         diminish

                                         transcend.

[justice punch]

I stare into space.

The scene plays and replays. With a still fury, I replay it, wishing I had understood more quickly to what you referred. Because, of the two things that happened that night, I expected the first to be fine, and the second, blackmail material.

The scene plays:
You rush to me, call me out, and are met with a bowed head (here the intentions are crossed). I mumble something, thinking the second event was yet to be mentioned, and slip out.

The scene replays:
You rush to me, call me out, and are met with a furious glare (here the intentions are clear). I respond harshly, "Are you reprimanding me? Who do you think you are? My father?" "Well if I were, I probably wouldn't speak Spanish correctly." FWAP! Before you realize how ignorant your comment is, your punishment begins (for you have had plenty of time to think about all of your former, also ignorant, comments). You hit the ground, and lay flat, mostly shocked by what just happened. A third stands nearby, watching, jaw dropped in sheer surprise. I quickly lower my body onto yours (no, it is not what you would like), and the barrage continues, one punch after another, each one bringing me a fraction closer to satisfaction. But since the approach occurs in fractions, I never quite get there, and thus the blows continue.

I see the accumulating blood from the miniscule veins in your face I am slowly rupturing. Now a few drops squeeze their way out of your tightly shut eyes. Your nose has begun to produce a steady river. Your lips are split and the stains on my knuckles are evidence of why (as if there were any doubt). The third sees a puddle is growing on the floor beneath your beaten face, and steps towards us to end your punishment. I pause, straighten up, and look into his face. I hold up a bloody left hand, palm towards him, letting him know I have almost finished.

I ball up my right hand into a fist once more, and ponder for a second where you deserve it most. Your nose looks tired, your eyes swollen shut; aiming for your chest might be ineffective, and for your neck, too effective.  The decision becomes clear, and all too reasonable: your mouth. Though I wish there were a way to punish that far too foolish mind of yours, I gladly settle for that orifice that allows the escape of far too many foolish statements. As I lower my knuckles into your breath, I hear a crack and feel a crunch beneath my hand. I see you budge your tongue around weakly, and watch as you discover a broken tooth.

Before you manage to bring a hand to your face, my fingers dive past your bleeding lips and take hold of their winnings. I raise my knees from the floor, admiring between my fingers the goods of my conquest as I slowly stand. I mumble something - a warning, most likely - and slip out.

.first time english. [the pusher]

She walks into the room, sits down on the chair, and looks right at him. (Always make eye contact.) He smiles; she sees he's uncomfortable. He clears his throat, stands up, takes two steps towards her, stops. She smiles; he grows more uncomfortable.

She reaches her left hand towards her right breast, feels around inside her blouse pocket, and pulls out a small, opaque envelope. She inspects the envelope, as though trying to guess its contents. He stares, inquisitive. She notices he's fidgeting with his hands, and a twinge of panic appears on her face. Now they're both nervous.

She clears her throat to break the silence. She's back in control. She stands up forcefully and takes one, long, confident step towards him. She reaches out an empty hand, palm facing up. He places a leather-bound book upon her hand- no discernible title. Without letting go of the envelope, she flips through the pages. Seemingly satisfied, she hands him the envelope; this time no eye contact.

She abruptly turns her back to him and, with short, quick steps, slips out of the room almost as seamlessly as she entered. And she has no choice but to remain unseen. Poetry, news, and drugs have all had their problem years.

.bad poetry.

on the edge

she thinks

she hears

we had a daughter

dislikes the sound

she stops

steps back

walks home

[old things]

Strange snake-like monster

On two legs, facing bridge

Taking over town

a door slams

is she home already? He

exits through alley

stretching, dancing shadows

an exchange of high fives

a drug deal?

The alarm sounds

As she enters the house

Smiling, I greet.

.from year before.

[pelea doméstica]

mio

domestic argument with spoon

clinking on ice cream bowl as background

music

finish quickly

rinse bowl

exit left

crisis

avoided

.para que sepas que te hago caso.

si en algún mometo recibes una llamada

de larga distancia sugiriendo que leas algo,

es recomendable que lo hagas. lo más pro-

bable es que valga la pena. que sea interes-

ante. o que, en le peor de los casos, la per-

sona que llamó sabe que los minutos cob-

rados no fueron malgastados.

mi humilde opinión.

[Poem (Some days I feel...)] de Frank O'Hara

Some days I feel that I exude a fine dust

like that attributed to Pylades in the famous

Cronica nera areopagitica when it was found

and it's because an excavationist has

reached the inner chamber of my heard

and rustled the paper bearing your name

I don't like that stranger sneezing over our love

[Why I Am Not a Painter]

I am not a painter, I am poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg

is starting a painting. I drop in.

"Sit down and have a drink" he

says. I drink; we drink. I look

up. "You have SARDINES in it."

"Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by

and I drop in again. The painting

is going on, and I go, and the days

go by. I drop in. The painting is

finished. "Where's SARDINES?"

All that's left is just

letters. "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life. Days go by. It is even in

prose, I am a real poet. My poem

is finished and I haven't mentioned

orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call

it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery

I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.