Lie to me

I ask of you
to lie to me
if it means

when in a dream
I see your face
 
you're so dear
I wake up crying
because you fade.

(Shared with the Poets United)

The lamplighter

to go through the streets of Bonne
at night holding nobody's hand.

I do not envy you, lovers,
curled around one another's bodies

a hundred years of good deeds
distributed in God knows how many lives

to bring you to share the same pillow,
to rest your fears in the same dream.

but I move stealthitly through
the quiet neighborhood

putting off the spark of hundreds of stars
for you, by lighting the streetlamps

then maybe I do.

(Shared with the Imaginary Garden)

Letters to the man in my future #1

My love,

if you see me in bed with the Turk,

if he speaks too close to my breasts
and I seem entertained by his words,

if he plays with my curls
and I compliment his moustache,

If our minds seems to merge
and our worlds on request,

Know he is also an insomniac.
In the small dark hours

all we have is our share of loneliness.

(The Turk being Nazim Hikmet, a favorite poet of mine)

(Letters to the man in my future is a series of epistle poems I'm writing to an imaginary man I hope is coming my way from somewhere)

Twitter bites

Sometimes
I feel
the heart of life
is not
my heart.

~

Next thing
I'll have
written on
my skin

is a warning:
prone to
imaginary
loves.

~

In the end, please,
don't go wishing
you had been
someone else.

(Shared with The Imaginary Garden)

Halves

What is the reason that I hear your voice so far
in the past and it still causes my heart to ache?

I was the one who chose
how this story would be told,

where on Earth
each of us should settle down

and start over, as half, awry souls.
I don't regret it.

To love him in his sounds

It still feels
like a song, even when
it is not

even when it's
a laughter, or silence, or
the sound of

a busy street
my feet won't touch, he
wants to share.

Swimming

My father was born exactly
one year after his town
came into existence.

A beloved son of progress,
he was raised by an aunt
because while his busy mother
left on a train headed north
before he was two,

his old man never lived to get old.

Under the direct sunlight in his
whimsical town

my father, a child, worked in the coal mines
and helped power a locomotive
he wouldn't be allowed to ride.

He was around seven
when he first thought of an alternative way
to escape:

by swimming down the river.

He was to rest on the banks when he
stopped feeling his arms,
live from fruit collected
out in the sticks and
sleep under the stars.

That would be his freedom.

It was one soultry afternoon after work
he learned how to swim,
by swallowing a small fish alive
in the shallow waters of the São Franciso river.

Everyone knew that was the only way.

I was seven myself
when he taught me everything
there was to know about swimming,
just in case.

I was excused from the fish.

(Shared with dVerse Poets)

Dear Sam

don't grow too old for forts,
or stories,
or for trying and being friends
with your exquisite wild things.

 don't.

(shared with The Imaginary Garden)

The song I hum

The Mill, 1964, by Andrew Wyeth

A man spying on a window open to my soul
can read  much of who I am,

but will he peek long enough to ever figure me out?

Does he see through the furniture and walls
for a better grasp of the big picture?

Will he get close enough to learn the song I hum?

(Shared with The Mag and The Imaginary Garden)

to rise whole

I've made it a ritual
to kill myself
five times a week

the fastest and
least painful way,
not a cry heard

in the sleepless nights
minutes after I
record suicidal notes

to my morning self,
my braver self,
the woman who will rise whole.

So she knows what I did wrong,
so she can fix my mistakes.

(Shared with Poets United)

The minute you came to matter

Two extraordinarily
different people, you.

When he came to matter
he came as a beacon.

He came so I could always
find my way home.

But I missed him less
the minute you came to matter.

I loved him less
the minute you came to matter.

We can't go back

Of being young
and sleepy.

Of writing my safe word
on your left arm.

Of the promise
we made under the
avocado tree
in the backyard.

Of your light,
smiling face
when in
spit shake
we didn't let go
of each other's
hand.

Of spending
that night awake
watching the stars.

The path we drew
by connecting supergiants
now severed
by  a supernova 
in the Cigar Galaxy.

Our bridge burned down.
We can't go back.

(Read about the closest supernova in 27 years here)

Courage

woman,
there is another kind of courage.
that of walking down the aisle
listening to hundreds of years of tradition
before and behind you
to make a commitment to an idea of future
you've envisioned since you were little
when tomorrow is rather vague.

there is another kind of talent.
that of raising children to be an extension
of your very self in this wonderful,
bewildering world,
who will be able to never get lost,
to always find the way back home
knowing they might not.

I wish your path had chosen me.

(To my friend Corina, who thinks I'm so brave and so talented doing my job, when that's actually all I can make.)

Yuánfèn

there is a word in China
for us,
I've learned it recently.

a word for our souls meeting,
for our paths detouring,
fate without destiny.

enough we beat up
all the odds
when you got onto

that bus and
made it to the place
by my side.

it took me ten years
to find you, but only
six months to lose you.

yuánfèn.

(Shared with dVerse Poets)

Sole survivor

They sent a boat
to collect the parting debris of me
among the floating pieces
of broken sureness. 

I learned it from Icarus,
the importance of knowing
how close from the sun
is too close

how one can survive the fall
by breathing slowly
and avoiding questions
on the nature of living,

on the nature of dying.

Mornings

The hurried people
stuck in morning traffic jams
fail to realize
the communal solitude
they share along with the path.



(shared with The Imaginary Garden. I swear you guys are the only people who make me write tanka. Counting syllables has to be the most painful activity ever for me! For my previous failed attempt, click here)

If there is freedom

made up my mind not to lie about love.
if there is freedom in defining it
if there is freedom in feeling it

if love can be the freedom to leave
your own body to live in someone else's
i'm keeping my nonlinear memories

of being around you
of being inside you
of being meaningful

at some point.

A cat on the roof

I once met a man
with multiple lives,
say nine.

A stray cat who
happened to learn fate
traveling on big cities' roofs,

peeking into
open windows
on chaotic souls.

Scrounging neighboring garbage cans
for occasional meals of love,
granted leftovers on fortunate days

- curdled milk,
fruit and vegetable peels,
choking fish bones.

Five major turns in destiny survived

for his meowing Symphony yet to free sleeping spirits

- mine,
one of those.

(posted to The Imaginary Garden)

The girl who found fear at last

He who knows
no fear
knows no
boundaries.

I drew my path
and walked it
through forests,
and along rivers
before it met me.

it kissed
the top of
of my head
on the wings
of a bird

unraveling my
faith in the future,

building up
to the terror of
being just
ordinary.

Born

a heart
the size and make
of a dragon's
I've been given

under a blue moon
stars fed the blackness
with incantations
the night I came
into being

three ravenous tongues*
inflamed the silence
with fire and fury
the moment my first
crying was heard.

(Posted to the Imaginary Garden)

(*from believing awe, bewilderment and fear fill the silence when a child is born)

Guilt

Hanging
around my neck
on a golden string
as old as my first word

I carry
a haunting collection
of abandoned thoughts
and distressing silences

which hold me
responsible
for turning mornings
into storms.

(Posted to We Write Poems)

The art of being invisible

It would take a seeker
to go as far as two blocks
away from the ghouls
searching up tree tops
and in the shadows,
under rocks and
among the flowers
in the neighbors' gardens
to find me when I was a kid.

When I was a kid
I learned the art of
being invisible
from a shinobi
in a dream after
kung fu movie night
with my father.

I used to practice it hard
in hide-and-seek with friends,
walking to school by myself,
being around strangers.

Since then and to this day
I walk among the crowds of people
and they can't see me.

No one can.
Like riding a bike,
hiding
is something you
never forget.

I've become a pro
at being invisible.

(Posted to the Toads)

Noise

La Jument, off the coast of Brittany, photograph by Jean Guichard 

I hear you in the roar of the sea
you wave your rage against me,
there is more noise in you than
a soul should bear.

I see you, beautiful storm,
your naked truth grows
in the heavy untamed waters,
a heart longing for peace.

(Posted to The Mag and Poets United)

The other woman

The Passage - Elisabetta Trevisan

There is another woman I am who fears
the choices I make might compromise her own.

I want to be alone with my thoughts,
she sings in the shower.

I eat my vegetables,
she orders a pizza.
 
I walk barefoot around the house,
she spends a small fortune on shoes
 
I read Bukowski,
she quotes Jane Austen.

I have stage fright,
she recites poems.

I work overtime
she falls in love.


(Shared with Toads)

The death of a language

These words will soon get too old.
they'll be replaced with newer, simpler ones,

words anyone can say because they
don't mean much.

I beg you, don't go for the easy feelings,
or the fear of the fear of losing yourself,

or me,
or the other people.

Like home

If you come visit me tonight,
I'll borrow a hundred words
to tell you a few things as follows:

I love you like writing poems which
are not always good or make much sense,
but define who I am and I'm quite a thing
you can see through.

I love you like laughing,
which often makes my belly ache,
but happens to produce the
memories I want to keep.

I love you like the night sky,
which reminds me I'm the smallest thing,
I'm dust, but I'm contained in all
living creatures and we are one.

I love you like sunflowers.
I love you like rain.
I love you like home.

My role in the end of the world

It happened because we had a deal
and I broke it.

We were to spend time
talking music, movies and books;

laughing about each other's weekly
personal disasters,

fighting over who had the most down-to-earth
ideas of people and the world,

then walk somewhere for twelve blocks
on our best attempt to stretch the night

because neither of us
really wanted to go home alone.

I wasn't supposed to fall in love.

Magpie Tales

Before letting whatever it is go

You must
see the world from above
once more

and then
see yourself in it
from above,

be it by
taking the highest spot
on the monkey bars,
sitting on the roof
or parachuting.

We are small.

Like ants sometimes
and as tiny as specks of dust,
depending on where you have
chosen to stand.

This world is vast.

Most of us have never been able to tell that
by reading nominal scales
in geography class.

On the risk of meaning nothing

When you focus on what I say
you miss everything
I carry in silence.

There are distances in me
your eyes don't meet.

I have heights and depths
you feet might not touch.

But I lose purpose
when you don't
take the risk.