D is for dandelion

I owe it to you.
Standing up after falling,
holding myself gently.

We disentangle ourselves
from memories of togetherness,
set them to continue drifting,

once a week I still wish I
had worked harder at my
pretending.

I owe it you.
The conscience of my limits,
the opening up to impermanence.

They do not teach us

You were just now
the soothing rustling of leaves.

In the winter, a bird
singing a song
I have not been taught.

There is
enough about you
I,
who am restless
and clumsy,
cannot reason.

I fail to
determine your weight
against the
weightlessness
of this world.

In every case scenario
I try,
but cannot touch you.

Quantum interaction

I sit with thoughts
afraid to name it,

afraid the moment I
name it, I kill it.

An infinitesimal portion of
this universe, you and I.

Both dead and living
before being brought to light,

our destiny tied
to the behavior of waves.

Falling in love is
rarely  a binary event.

This is what I heard: surviving,
all we remember is being alive.

Waking season

in a dream we sit together
on the stairway and wait
for the storm to go away.

we talk about God knows what
because this time, I am just visiting
and I cannot control my mouth.

we are average people,
we need our sorrows,
we long for our vacations,

we say bad things about
folks we believe to have
nothing in common with.

you tell me in the kitchen
you have lost someone
I am lost for words

I fail to disclose that I write
to keep my ghosts manageable.
I am telling you now.

Closure

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five

The way

we look at one another
from sitting comfortably
atop a secure interpretation
of beauty

bathing our feet
in a basin of
socially fabricated
righteousness.

the way you see me,
the way I see you,
these eyes of ours
long broken.

D is for damaged

For I usually dote on
the troublesome,
the quaint men.

Hence,
I didn't anticipate you.

I wasn't ready to love
a person as honest
and humane as you

Then I didn't.
I apologize.

You are curious
as a statement of the dynamic
changes of heart,

as an illuminating breach
in the consideration of faltering.

I might have written you
ten thousand words if you hadn't
come into my life this late.

At this time,
I am damaged.

From the honest at heart

He told me to just write a word after another,

as if I were drawing them randomly from a bag,

so I did.

I find it hard to make meaning

out of the result, though.

I write poems I cannot love

murky verbs and nouns

cling to my wrists, 

I'm spurned by language that bears light.

Lacuna Inc.

Wondering whether I would
have you erased if that was a choice.

The elation of nights awake
versus the sad silent months.

The hours spent arguing casual intelligence
and deliberate stupidity.

How much of my grit

would suddenly be lost.

To tell of the person you made me
in the space of fifty-five words.

(Flash 55 Plus challenge over at the Imaginary Garden)

(I couldn't use the Plus word in the text, but I was driven by it. Lacuna Inc. is a fictitious firm in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where people go to have troubling memories erased)

I am not afraid

Wolf, I am not. I will sit under a tree,write you poems,read you my favorite books.Come when you don't want tohurt me because you finallybelieve I mean no harm.Don't worry. When you tell menot to fall in love, I usually listen.Can we still laugh together?Can I hear about your days?Can I curl around your body occasionallyand sleep on your chest?Will you let me touch your scars?Tell me about how you got each of themfighting your way into becoming who you are.Wolf, do not hide your crazy from meor your sadness, or your anger. Go and call it darknessand I won't approach itif you are not by my side.Here’s today. I promise it’s all thatmatters if we write a story wewon't be ashamed of telling. How we do it, again and againchanging the beginning,because we cannot agree onwho approached whom first.Wolf, wake up.The most beautiful part of youis your path. Whether or not youwalk it out loud, let me do it with you.

Dear Universe

I am delighted and encouraged
to have been offered such a generous opportunity to fall in love,
especially while trying to get home after a long day of work
when I am at my weariest, most uncomely
and doubtful I can be noticed in the crowd.

However, after having considered your offer carefully,
I have decided that at this point I cannot accept it given the fact that I am currently
in love with an intricate someone else, who takes one hundred percent of my heart and resolution,
thus making it substantially impracticable for me to undertake a new project at the moment.

I do thank you for your thoughtful consideration
and I wish you the best continued success.
Shall our paths cross again in the future under changed circumstances,
I would be happy to be considered for a new venture.

Yours truly,

K.

Three or four years ago

It started out with words.

We were infatuated with
each other's thoughts,

so eager to occupy our minds with
each other's ideas

we would sit side by side at cafés,
on boardwalks and spend hours

sipping from each other's psyche
before we harmonized silence.


"As we drank our tea, we chatted about our relatives, our childhood years, and our shared memories and we spoke ill of no one."

Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

(For Apparatus Mag NaPoMo day 3 prompt, and the PAD Challenge)

Chiron

Trust child, this pain will
any time now
place you among the stars.

(A lune poem for the A to Z Challenge)

The Red Shift Room at Inhotim

Cildo Meireles: Red Shift, 1967-1984

Shoes are left at the door.
Shoes are not allowed into the
unsettling burgundy world,
your feet have to touch the ground
before they don't.
One cannot tell
whether Impregnation
happens due to preference,
imposition or circumstance.
Still, visitors move in the chaos.
Follow red into a black hole.
Listen to the Shift in the Entorno,
before they can actually see it:
a precariously angled sink floating in space,
red liquid running from the tap.
This is the room word,
if you are listening:
A redshift occurs
whenever a light source
moves away from an observer.

The light from distant galaxies 

is red shifted,

which means they are moving away from us.
The further away the galaxy,
the faster the separation.

(Today's Cuyahoga County Library prompt asked to describe a room in a museum, I went with the Red Shift Room, at Inhotim. The room is divided into three environments: Impregnation, Entorno and Shift and it's one of my favorite installations in that museum.)

liebe biel

Liebe, Biel. 

For God's sake.

(and I do not mean me)

(This is my attempt at completing Found Poetry Review Impromptu #3 - "Vispo", imagined by Nico Vassilakis, I must say, one of the most beautiful and peaceful writing exercises I've ever tried. I'm gonna turn it into a full poem soon.)

The bearded-man on a tall bicycle

I follow you on foot,
unhurriedly,
staying eight meters away
which is the distance within
I can still tell if you are smiling
and I know by now that when you do,
your eyes smile too.
I'm glad you don't go too fast.
I'm glad you ride above the crowd,
it helps me not to lose track of you.
I also carry a bottle of tea.
I also like to watch the birds
and the people in the park.
I'm also fond of long reads.
I think you saw me the other day,
in the rain, it started suddenly
and I had no place to hide,
so I didn't.
I wonder if you were surprised.
I wonder if you considered
coming join me,
or talk me out of it.
I wonder if I would have been able
to say a word. I don't think I would.


(Written for NaPoWriMo day 2 of A to Z Challenge.)

Periodicals

Dear citizens of planet Earth:
We hereby notify you that
from this date on,
the allegedly faces of progress
will no longer be found in monuments.
henceforward is stipulated
that no stone statue
will ever again be erected
for men made of flesh and bones,
all too faulty men,
all too human.
We find that many of these men
have long lived off their
prestigiously solid immortality
without having actually worked for it
Notwithstanding,
it is our advice that you get prepared 
to see them yellowish,
moldy-toothed figures
in the media and on the streets
ready to lecture you
on the gravity of
all things concrete.
We urge you to not fall for
their empty words.
Sincerely.

(An inspiring prompt imagined by  Patrick Williams for the Found Poetry Review's 2016 NaPoWriMo Impromptu series. I do hope he doesn't kill his prompt generator after April ends.)

Aloneness

There is no
aloneness
in my head.
There is always a
thought of you
that will keep me company,
that will make me smile,
that will surround me
with wonder,
that will cause me to crave
a life I cannot have,
not with you,
not outside my head.

Written for NaPoWriMo day 1 prompt imagined by The Swamp Scribes and A to Z Challenge. 

But I shall not be

I need to say this

you know I'm such a fool for you.

You got me wrapped around your finger

Do you have to let it linger?

- The Cranberries

there was a man
in the land of Uz,

whose name was Job; 

and that man was perfect,

I need to say this:

I am nothing like him.

When you appoint me as

his modern-day translation,

does it make you Satan or God?

Is the suffering you inflict upon me 

your way to break me,

or a means to verify my love?

You'll come look for me in the morning.

(for Isadora's Out of Standard challenge 'What's my line?' over at the Imaginary Garden)

NaPoWriMo 2016

It's 2016 and I've been writing very little. I'm hoping to complete NaPoWriMo this year, thus ending a long dry spell. These are some of my favorite places around the web which will provide special prompts throughout April:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
NaPoWriMo Net 
2016 PAD Challenge
Cuyahoga County Public Library 30 days of Poetry
Paper Swans Press
Mslexia
Found Poetry Review
The Swamp Scribes
The Poetry School
Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Paper Swans Press has already put a booklet together which can be found here.

Happy National Poetry Writing Month everyone!

Not afraid

Yesterday I sat for three hours
in front of the man I love
and just stared at him.

I have now memorized
the exact location of
all his spots.

I have drawn a map to
the cheek dimple that
follows his mischievous smile.

A couple of hours later
I had a dream I burned my hand
by touching his face.

I cried as it ached,
but I wasn't afraid.
I am not afraid.

(Setting the mood: Pode vir comigo - Phill Veras)

When I tell him I love him

He does this thing, 

the man I want to live for. 

The extraordinary man I want to share 

all my lives with. 
When I tell him I love him. 

When I trust my heart enough to

scream it. 

He walks away.

He walks toward the silence of the mind.

He lives in a place inside himself I'm not allowed into for as long as six months. 

As if six months would change it somehow. 

As if I were sick and just needed time to recover. 

He does this thing,  

the bearer of my dreams. 

He cuts communication. 

In a way I feel guilty for saying it out loud. 

I love you. 

I love you. 

I. 

Even knowing love is

the one thing no one should ever be ashamed of.

I. 

dead language alive

This is again
a language to say.
Back from the dead

without stories
it remains pure;
The tongue

licks old truths
as it would do
to open wounds

just now with an
improved understanding
of the physiology of taste.

You are standing in a field looking at the stars

I have now renamed
the world around me
after you:
the alarm clock,
the toothbrush,
the stars in the sky at 5:30 a.m.
when I leave for work,
the clouds
(when they are there),
the sunrise,
the empty seat next to mine
on the bus,
the subway stations,
the trains,
every block I have to
walk back from work,
the trees I rush past,
the traffic lights, 
my keys,
the shower,
my own reflection
in the mirror,
the pillows,
the bedroom walls.

Soul and forward

We love who we can love, and the rest stay ghosts. 

- Marty McConnell

I think it's time to fix things.

There's a lot to be done around the world,
a lot to mend in nature and people,
especially in people I guess.

I thought we were all meant to
live cordially together -
men and wolves -
but when we meet,
given the grandeur in one another's eyes,
we don't know how to go about
the enchantment.

We break things, bones, hearts.
Later to ache humanly.

I followed your trail
into the forest
and learned you first
from the top of a tree
because you wouldn't
trust me near.

I think I wasn't ready
to love a creature
as callous and detached as you are,
but I did.

The years run through us,

I doubt I'll ever be able to race you.

But I see you slow down the pace

and walk by my side at times

and I'm honestly grateful.

You keep disappearing among the trees

whenever I try to touch you.
you would expect me to cry
but this time I promise not to.

Every so often 

you push me away
but when I am allowed close,
I think to myself that it's the
fathomless, perfect
quietude of your soul
what draws me to you.

I think I wasn't ready
to love a creature
as beautiful and free as you are.
But I did.
I do.

Image by Chiara Bautista

You might write me nightmares

watch me create my own world out of silence,

granted only half a minute of courage daily.

to love. to need. to hurt.

to forgive. to let go. to repeat.

watch me come back to you.

watch me respond to estrangement 

with proximity.
to mean my promises.

watch me dance around your fire.

it frightens me

you're suddenly so important.

it frightens me

you've already changed me.

it frightens me

you might write me nightmares.

Elephants

the ringling brothers is
ending their elephant acts
eighteen months ahead schedule.

we need to acknowledge it:
the elephant in our living room
doesn't go with the furniture.

maybe it's time to let him go.

The fourteenth

I've taken an important decision:
We're going to be friends,
this lifetime and I.

I promise you patience.

I promise I'll get old
one year at a time.

I promise I'll wait
for you.

Today's been dragging.
Today is the fourteenth day
into my vacations
and I've had a lot of work,
but I'm saving tears for a
rainy day.

Been thinking about my first house and
how much I'd like you to
have a key.

On days like these
to open the door
and scream your name
to know you there

to breathe my dreams upon your chest,
the sureness of being safe.