Luna & Gaelle

lady friends

2011-10-25T00:24:00.002-05:00

thirty something
intuiting seventy
stoop talks
lemonade
cheap cheese
and bread dipped in
decaf coffee
(because afternoons and caffeine
make for drunken hags)...

lizabeta shifts her girdle
sitting
laughing
she stops
thinks
and starts again
something bigger
than her
makes a dent in her
stomach
breathe, breathe, breathe
like a bird
cleaned after an oil spill

nessa rubs
her wrist
a habit altered from childhood
at twenty
she rung her feet
until anxiety gave
way to rum,
diet coke
pizza fills
midget men
and biting
dogs

saruiz
makes fake sugar
out of salt
pouring duration
into dirty glasses
nessa is blind
lizabeta
lost smell
for sex
and
she who
mixes
gives way to
self in favor
of him, him, him
only to see
kitty cats
in winter muffs

necessity (for radio voice)

2011-10-23T15:23:00.003-05:00

without the timely
split,
methodically executed,
for the trail
a trailing off even
beat, beat, beat
a bat in his cave
you'd give
everything--
years
worked
into secrets.

in the stolen offer
tardy, tired, trained
like kafka's hungry artist
made panther
now a cage
no moist walls
or womb pockets
you make a fool out of a second too long
switching a sound and
a sound
into musical interlude

this is your virtue
a necessity
to bring cock
to a screen
absent
not fickle
visible
but
not yet tuned.

rambling bocce (f)alls (for v.)

2011-06-28T23:17:00.003-05:00

it feels like only last night
that evelyn left us in a room
to fend for ourselves.
you: silent, weird, clever, brave
me: loud, sassy, intense, cowardly

i initiated our escape with the gargoyles
you lead the way
compass tied to your belt
yet you never looked down
i snapped at college boys trying
to sneak a peak
into perspective kids' panties
you laughed at my
outbursts
"silly ass"--you must have thought
as you helped me believe
you followed

as we walked to the point
or maybe the bookstore
or maybe the med
or maybe, just maybe a bench to properly complain

i dug a hole in evelyn's life
the rainy weather
the frat party i would protest
the university's dorm policies
the white boy(s) staring at us

you--like a sweet pill for my demon
threw some dirt in those holes
tiny splatters
just enough to let me know
know
know
that you knew
silence
was the only way
to quiet
a bomb.

obsessió

2011-05-11T00:30:00.002-05:00

every thing that needed to be said
spoke in six hours
like a knight that
couldn't end
and a queen that could be had
until time
gave way to
distance and
questions
were too answered

repeat. repeat
after me
everything that needed to be had
was given in
six hours
like a boy
who couldn't offer
and a mother who couldn't bare
until space
became an abyss
and answers
floated into
air

juice box

2011-04-30T17:30:00.002-05:00

if we were friends at age seven
we'd sit on a stoop
our fingers laced
i'd be pigeon toed
your heels would touch
we'd name stars
and make faces
with the clouds

i'd say: can the stars hear us?
you'd say: if we scream loud enough?!

in our bubble
we'd hear
our echoes
and giggle

you'd say: can the clouds see us?
i'd say: only if we close our eyes

we'd turn blindly to the sky
then to one another
shrink
our chins
and through
our reddened
faces
we'd be friends

rubberband

2011-04-09T20:10:00.002-05:00

real pearls
flat against my chest
red lips
pursed against
your absent
mouth

and painted
nails
holding
a rubberband
you buried
in-between
my index fingers

slowly i pull
it into the
edges of
space

snap!
my fingers
lose you

why did you
close the casket
when i was still
breathing?

why did i wear
my best party
dress to a
life gone deadly wrong?

pickled apples (for f.)

2011-04-08T00:30:00.002-05:00

there's death in your left eye
that not even its companion
can make right

it hangs low
it drags into the past
it's scratched
sometimes yellow
often red
more than brown

your brow dips
often dives
and it closes
leaving everything wrong
in the open

a stye makes
your elongated eyelashes
curl and clump
lathered with
the weight of brilliance
a fear of the body
a helpless want for intimacy
that only that dying eye
can scream

but even in infection
in all that is ugly
there is failed beauty
there is that eye
struggling
it lifts, extends
speaks
a word
and becomes again

trying at your name again

2011-04-07T16:29:00.003-05:00

yellow: this is where you had me

three year rejection
coming round again
i turn left
at right you ascend
in a smart car
traveling faster
than my mouth
gasping red into
green

i am something forgiving
and you: forgetful, ethereal.
you regain entity
and i lose domain as

i stand on grand's corner
grocery bag quickly making face with the rain
knees: shaking branches on a london-like night
i light a cigarette
breathe out
flashes of your black, wrist watch
montage into your pet name

this object gives you
meaning
like yellow gave me place

Antonio Mateo

2011-03-18T02:02:00.002-05:00

The clock turned.
Time gave me wrinkles.
Time gave you birth.
The clock stopped.

Space gave us feeling.
Space gave us soundlessness.

The clock began ticking.
The clock began tricking.
The clock began winning.

Time gave me panic.
Time gave you sentience.
Time gave me progeny.
Time made you leave.

Epilogue(s)

2011-03-10T12:33:00.002-05:00

A prankster--
cutting, ironic
in silence
stillness:
the being of
end?

The tele rings--
nothing revealed.
The knock at the door--
no-one answers.
The call--
without response.
The gentle wave--
the grave dismiss.
The ear-to-ear smile--
the exclusive simper...

Beginnings:
they always smell of endings, of
water bugs smashed by a slipper, of
candles meeting their end wax, of
letters never mailed, of
the last PM hour turning into,
turning into, turning into,
occasion.

Nomadic Breadcrumbs. The objects left behind.

2010-11-14T14:17:00.002-05:00

Some of us walkabout life leaving breadcrumbs. Like Hansel and Gretel, we forego bits and pieces in the path to map out the trails of our journey.

The various objects and locations in our lives not only reveal memories and stories, they also index social relations, status and power forming contemporary Kula rings, through which many humans construct relationships.

My return to Rio de Janeiro made this process apparent. I had come back to Lapa after a semester away in New Haven, and it was time to move out of the apartment bearing my name, possessions, history and security deposit. Feeling the pangs of anthropological displacement, which can be violently humorous (if you were, like me, working class and also not very well funded in the field, realities that color moving from travel). I looked about the apartment with longing, sad eyes and mourned, bidding goodbye to the objects of my affection. (And the objects of my disgust, more on this later.)

Blistered by the sun, the old oil paintings I’d drawn with Heitor hung somberly by the veranda. The many maps I’d collected over the last travels had changed color. Dangling over the window, the spiky mini-conch shells I’d haggled over at a Mozambican Street Market, looked out into Rio de Janeiro’s first YMCA, across the street. These objects marked time; these objects had marked me, too. They’d also taught me valuable lessons about value in Brazil.

The kitsch delicacy of the kitchen dining set, a seventies sky blue table piece that expanded. It was equipped with six chairs that matched the table’s hue of blue Formica with contrasting gold brass trimming. It was so eighties classroom and seventies kitchen simultaneously, and its matching buffet table really brought out the design and superb style. I loved it. I had bought it at a junky antique shop up the street. The kind that housed old overpriced furniture and the occasional overpriced gem. A sign of, no doubt, how historical inflation has condemned these objects into a strange value tournament, their values suspended, casting these objects into heterotypic oblivion. It wasn’t cheap, over 200 dollars. I’ve always been struck by how much these junkie albeit antique pieces cost so much. But then I recalled the Brazil’s version of Wal-Mart: Lojas Americanas (ironic?) that sell just about anything, from pots and pans, etc. A cheap veneer press wood table goes for at least 100 dollars. It becomes clear that the luxury taxes make it difficult for self-styling in this neoliberalizing place.

It is labor, and costly, to domesticate a home in Brazil. And here I was saying goodbye to the Danish table, which magically folded into 3 positions, discovered one Saturday afternoon on Lavradio Street. The home of Rio de Janeiro’s antique district. Should I sell them on “Mercado-livre” Brazil’s ebay parallel? Compelled to sell the things I loved so much, I joined the junk sellers one morning on Rua da Gloria.

We were sardined between two major intersections, where the Rua da Lapa meets Rua da Gloria and connects with Avenida Augusto Severo. By day, this area is a bustling site of commerce, formal and informal, equipped with all the visual extravagancies of buzzing capitalist movement. Lanchonetes nourishing hungry clients, serving salgados such as coxinhas de frango, and sucos pulped from all sorts of Amazonian fruits. Lines form at Lotericas to buy lottery tickets or pay bills. Taxies humming along next to deliveries on large and cumbersome bicycles. Pedestrians of all sorts pouring onto the sidewalks already cramped by street vendors and food carts. Amidst this chaos, sprawled with strewn tarps line the Portuguese pebbled floors inviting passersby to shop. This is known as the shop chao. The floor shop. It is as informal as economies go, a sheet thrown to the ground with goods on it, the exchange of junk for centavos e reais..

TBC

Two White Flags

2010-02-26T21:49:00.000-05:00

You coddle silence
Pull on repression’s sleeve
Rub the back of needles dropping
Into a volcano of affect
Time just napping in denial

Etiquette sleeps with monsters
In your handbook
Of resentment
Now you ask
For renewal in the flash
Of a dying bulb

Like a green hopper and his fly
You swallow compassion
Just like the repeated whips of youth
Stains--still wet, still defiled
I know the injury
The noose
The strange apology after the thump
So I surrender two white flags
To our childhood leash

Tropical melancholia

2010-01-28T10:30:00.001-05:00

I get gloomy as I read Levi-Strauss these days. Perhaps I shouldn’t think of his recent death as I read stories of his days in the thick forest of Brazil. But death looms. I am so used to reading dead white men, I am less used to seeing them arrive at death. A posthumous tale.

The pages of Triste Tropiques, stained yellow with time, seem a shade darker now. A spectre of what has come and gone; the passing of time. He died while I was in the fields of Brazil, and now I chase his shadows in the hallowed halls of academia, in a university he lectured in, the dormitories once described by him “as musty cellars and stale wood embers.”

If only I could conjure his spirit, cast new meanings in anthropology about Brazil; perhaps ask him where my dissertation might go. He will tell me: “into the forest.” I will say “there are so many, which one?” He would say “there is only one that will give meaning.”

It is strange, this exercise of talking with the dead, but I have done it for so long. It seems so normal, so natural to speak to the walls of those I read. I speak to my mother when I look up to the moon. The fog becomes my council.

I could not finish an essay, a few years ago, since Clifford Geertz passed as I was in the midst of a trenchant critique. His death hung heavy over my words. Eerily enough, I had begun the piece with a narrative about the Yale Anthropology department’s annual treck to Malinowski’s grave.

The apotheosis of our star academic forefathers, this idolatry, might indeed, be one of our own rituals, and worthy of analysis. But death struck. I did not know how to make the active passive. I said goodbye, and tucked the manuscript into the recesses of an old hard drive, never to be looked at again.

I don’t think I run from death, but maybe I should run to it. There are so many answers when life is in question.

Fictions of Ethnography

2010-01-25T10:14:00.002-05:00

Perhaps I have a particular obsession with the way people envision themselves in their mind’s eye. The kinds of everyday Cartesian conversations we have with ourselves in the mirror. Don’t think Lacan here, although recognition would be nice. Think more Homer Simpson’s think bubble, a monosyllabic stroke of irony like “fat” followed by “donuts.”

I think folks have an inclination to want to see themselves part of a larger whole, bits and pieces of reflections, membership belonging so they have a way to fit themselves in, to figure themselves out. And we have days when look in the mirror and feel like lions ready to take over the world. Or others that lead to carbohydrates. And coffee. But if you are like most of us, you wanted to fit yourself into something warm, like your mother’s womb – or a great group of people. The posse.

We see this with so many cross cultural examples, the identity politics that form from cultural or religious memberships. But we mustn’t take for granted that subcultures enforce their own, at the very least, aesthetic politics. Gothics off to listen to industrial electronica, house clubs on the south side of Chicago, raves in Texas. Just a few Americana ones. They are not always linked by nationality, but rather the kinds of cliché’s that crop up in high school. The skater dude with the rocker chic. The nerdy girl with the boy from band.

I traveled through groups in high schools like I travel through countries today, so much so that given my understanding of critical anthropology, I feel like a bonafide cultural poacher, a poser.
And I like to pose, and what’s wrong with that? I feel like its not too different from learning several languages. Could it be that they don’t like nomadic me?

I know too well that these groups territorialize like all other spaces where representation is wanted. These subcultures cross national boundaries, even social economic status. Funneling certain sensibilities that go beyond the usual analytics or race, gender or class. Do you know that song?

These subtleties from within a culture are much more powerful than one might think. They are the counter linkages of counter culture that add depth to the banalities, and overweilding dominant society. And yet, it seems like the market always speaks for us. Buy this. The state tells us what we can do. Don’t run that red. Citizenship is something we perform. Religion helps to sooth the uncertainty of it all. As does ice cream. As does the Smiths. May the foodies of the world unite and takeover, because the shoplifters are dj-ing.

I have purposely peppered the narrative with reminders of my life before anthropology. I do this to make sure my discipline, perhaps my newest group, hasn’t changed me too much…but I fear I got lost in my own rhetoric, fear and anxiety, about writing about culture, led me to remember the very fictions of my ethnographic past. From mod to booty bass, I kept it real in each circumstance, and when in rome, I wore vintage. Cause its all I could afford.

Ann's Winter

2010-01-21T22:17:00.003-05:00

The year was 1997. A pale classroom in
the Ivy League of the Mid-West,
a leftist poetry teacher
cums over Ginsberg.
A Student of Lowell
future tense Guggenheim recipient,
writer of immigrants
maids, janitors
and other red topics and less than people.

One brown militant student:

in a green garbage man jumper,

long, black ringlets hanging over
cha-cha intonations

panther-like leather jacket,

combat boots, Che buttons,

cherry red lipstick,

and fuck the 5.0 patches

There were poems of Puerto Rican revolutionaries
Ann mistook for soccer players.
Phrases she likened to magical realism
if food or el guiro
(Maybe even el cuatro)
were mentioned.
Footnotes she overlooked
(“because poems should not have to contain explanations”).

One Indian friend
mastered stanzas on the postcolonial--
where cows and Bombay folks
shat near the same buses. And the smell
slipped in a history of
British fish, chips, cheap scotch.

The genuine poet/students
wrote like learned ethnographers,
not lived (in)ner city youth.
Spoke so damn good
Or well?
And chose rhyme and meter
over real cleaning lady moms,
illiterate dads and the feeling faces
of the glum
colonial reality
present.

Ann is a Marxist. A word stylist
put out by Capitalism’s
unwashed hands.
The worker is not
mute. But silence is a syndrome.
Ann shifted the
same muzzle on the
Brown Girl’s
confessional poem--
enunciated with tattered blacks
and blues.

Ann’s enjambments stayed erect.
She never realized the Brown Girl
through all the cotton colored mutterings.

But Ann just wanted to talk
(no harm in theory, right?)
about cleaning toilets.
Mild revolutions taped to her tail
as she
Spic(ed) and span(ed) her way into
guilty remedy,
faking the funk

Brown Girl
just
hunched down
at a snail’s pace
and rode the windpipes
of someone else’s value.
She imagined
prostituting Ann
in front of her peers;
shredding her poems
like Plath to Hughes;
spitting on her
Understanding Poetry Book,
making sure to land on Keats
while keeping Langston resistant, dry.

But utopia loomed low
and “el paseo boricua”--
A Division Street Meditation Poem,
thrown under its
Rican low-rider
when Ann thought the
neo-independista members
were kicking balls around.

Gooooooooool
Gooooooooool

Brown girl
never
played anything
but softball, tennis.
She remembers those
clean matches
of working class, urban
savings.

Ann: Hüsker dü?

Noses Turn

2010-01-16T12:32:00.002-05:00

pigeon tongue
packs a punch
toothless
caps
in
blonde cities

buildings meek
hung over
shy

eyelids taped
to 80's punk
and records
spinning
germs
into needles

30 degree angles
crossed parallel
fists
a little more
and noses
turn

He Collects Trash

2010-01-16T12:26:00.002-05:00

Saturday was Friday
Leaning out
Window
(Hipster window)
Smoking
My
9th Camel Light

He collects bottle cans.
He collects trash.

I drank the consumption of both our commodities.

"Quiero ayudar mucha gente un dia. No con mis palabras,
con mis aciones."

Cold
23 degrees
After Christmas
Before Easter
I want to wrap
Everything I own
Under his cart.

I got debt.
I got books,
Learned ideas.
A white man.
White girl's ass,
Straight hair
But Latina loans.

Click. Clash. Trash.
He collects trash.

artistic differences

2010-01-10T20:42:00.001-05:00

He lifts his shoes to his hands; not his hands to his laces.

I always bend down to take off my shoes.

He lifts.

I bend.

We could never work.

The Negative

2010-01-10T20:39:00.000-05:00

The Negative

I don’t know if it’s the dark cloud
Back again
In a fit of silent fury
Happening
From practice

Love not
Must fuck the bastard
Painted in me.

The negative
Of my person.

Silence.

Still

Grand Strasse

2010-01-10T20:37:00.000-05:00

On grand strasse
There are
Scarves for curtains
Yoga mats for sofas

I live with a
Girl: “My pretend sister”

We turn
Spells on
Crusty punks
Hipster boy-men
White never seemed so dark, lonely and dirty
White never seemed so dark, lonely and dirty

Crazy hopefuls
Half-witted fools
Dashes of this and that
Lazy over-thinking(s)
Artsy musings
Longwinded brunches
Painters in lawyer suits
Lifted
Just been lifted
To brighten the ugly of white

Turning Bottles Into Empty

2010-01-10T20:11:00.001-05:00

Swallow a drink
For every one
You
Can’t take
No more

Tremor hands
Quiver lips
Thin like blades
You can taste it
You can taste it

I see your eyes
Turn
Bottles
Into empty
Beggin’ space
To give you
land

This poison runs in blood
Thick like
Wood
Against
A
Baby’s
head

I can beat you
I can break you
Down

With will

But you spill
Your past
Into my glass
And after five
I can’t feel the
Difference
Between death and life

Mood after mood
Promise after promise
I fall
I call you

Then

Stumble like your
Daughter bitch
Free to
Ask
For more
Until the
Storm reaches
Danger
And
I pass my glass
To my boy

Time
Stands still
When the
Rapid water
Moves beyond the
Overflow
And the
Swallow
Is all the poetry
Left in
Generations
Of dead

Fumbler

2010-01-10T20:05:00.001-05:00

A.

She fumbles feelings like
A novice juggler with balls
Or a dyslexic artist
Painting by numbers
Or, or, or
Until tuckered metaphors
Smell like forced smiles
Upper lip so close to
Nose that
Everything of inside
Seeps outside
And corners of the mouth
Almost reach
The two listening wings
Unwashed air
Retreats in.

B.

He handles lies like
A veteran couture seamstress
Or an Olympic hurdler
Leaping forward
To sneak
A toss in time
Or, or, or
Until a sudden tick
Surfaces
The Micro overstays
His welcome
And the lisp pronounces
Himself louder

Dead

2010-01-10T20:01:00.001-05:00

Images hit the wind
I walk in front of me
Former pasts leave puddles
In place of footsteps
Nothing to trace but the ripple
Circles make for graver mistakes
In a space of straight lines
I aim for the fire
But my voice drops like a
Rock in my watered shadows

I stop.
I feel. Dead. Likened to
To bodies down in the ground
I can’t seem to skip.
Round and round me
Comes a web
Trapping pretty ladies
And their unmade babies
Wave my hands
Nothing breaks the sight
Of what I’m becoming

Dead. Flat. Affect me. Affect me.
Drown me.
Hold down my head until I gasp.
Dead. Flat. Affect me. Affect me.
Drown me.

in love with a schizophrenic

2010-01-10T19:57:00.001-05:00

Words
Primal symbols
This and that
From how to when
And back into a cockeyed distance
He lives in single thought
Orders
Can’t tame that beast
On high alert
I say: Code Orange
He stands in place

I speak in tongues to barely
Hear him
But I
I, I said I, I
Love my crazy owl
Howling deep inside

He wears bells on his temples
Lizards in his hands
Sounds like screams
And whispers lost in
Trepid dreams

in love with a schizophrenic

pizza of denial

2009-03-10T20:19:00.000-05:00

You ate the pizza of denial
An absolute truth
Choking quickly quietly on the overcooked sausage
Oscar myer odd couple
felix and felicidades
off to eat salmon
speech
for desert

For Scientist M

2008-12-27T01:26:00.003-05:00

Spilling potions into crush-ing fingers,
once stained, many times had
intimacy arrives late
stays not long enough
to hear breathing patterns
lightly harmonize
into a semi-fantasy
semi-actualized

He pulls from his counter:
apples, metaphors, a knowing smile, a stolen cigarette, a one-liner too absurd to replicate
and scents both stumbling into tomorrow and running into the present-past

This is the chemistry of lasciviousness
bantering in print,
and silent in pose
with eyes climaxing intensity
he mixes me

I think, perhaps, in all that maybe contains, that I have found my perfume-maker
flowered formulas I want to wear
obsessive-like, counting the moles it takes until he
extends, permeates, penetrates in smell
what my eyes have already been watching.

Irish boys have names too.

2008-10-25T23:41:00.004-05:00

Their names just shouldn't roll off lying tongues.

Or wrinkled women fond of sweets.

Or drunken coven members spilling secrets into pots.

Or girls who couldn't requite something other than unrequited love.

Or those who were summoned to play in traffic.

Or/and/o/ and/or and Irish boys have Irish names too. Shhh.

Jose Marti (con y sin accento)

2008-08-08T12:53:00.002-05:00

revolutionaries want to make babies too
war of maneuvers
war of positions
a little inclined to resist
that fine dialectic that...
appears to make decisions on poles

the continuum Jose is powerful
and harder to grasp
than the cooking wife
the subdued woman,
while a genuine accessory to your fame
fleets
in contra
to la que sabe,
la que cuenta narativos
la que quere todo
ser madre
ser maestra
ser esposa

ser/humana

I wait and listen again to all your war stories I am
trying to replace without your body near mine

The Messenger Boy

2008-07-15T02:17:00.003-05:00

The messenger
the passenger
certainly not avenger
nouns numbing through
the neighborhood
of articles...
Seamlessly he mounts the
bicycle as if
neither were separate
Confidently, almost
too beautifully
he pecks the petals
and saunters into the street

Can I get a beat?

Already spent,
he returns
to his bike's tree

A bohemian boy-man
bops his head to the beat of his keys.

The messenger boy rides like a cook eats

And Giorgio beats a fag outside of Rose,
half-lit, half-lived,
he tosses...
Giorgio's face is almost deadened
by bones--all too structured
to see his vulnerability

What was he delivering?

Systems of Time

2008-06-19T19:45:00.002-05:00

This time it isn't bitterness
that fills my belly;
or longing, hope, and betrayal.
This time it's the feeling of wanting
to fight
harder, longer, with more tamed intensity
and not having anyone to fight with.

Space.

2008-06-08T11:59:00.002-05:00

There are three points on a trace of a river. One signals "now" and the other two "then". Then came before now and then also comes after now. Inside the trace are the impossible possibilities of what exits between the points and even within the points. The representation of the points merely masters a close-up view of the internal interrogation of the trace of the river--which must always be in the now, no?

Then I suppose tomorrow I will tell him it is not him and stop blaming it all on space.

Considering Philosophy

2008-06-07T13:34:00.002-05:00

We have all heard: "It's not you, really, it's me."

It's not him.
Really.
I just know I must behave to be loved.
And this means questioning not everything but enough to remain questioning that something. I once told him: "Nothing does come from something." He said: "No, it doesn't or else it would be something." I said quickly: "Nothing comes from nothing which is categorically necessary to even be able to say that there is a nothing."

Really. It's not him.

When will I be enough for myself? All others questions in philosophy have been given routes and routes of inquiry. And this one, well it seems to always falter when grabbing someone else--perhaps because we snatch, or pull...away, or play "the what if game" with them instead of ourselves.

Obrigado

2008-04-15T01:15:00.004-05:00

"An existant can never justify the existence of another existant."
Nausea - Sartre

I am not sure what to do
with the thank you.

adding finality to your pursuit?
Or mere gesture?

Virgen eyes
riding above water
A saviour of nights in Bohemian sights
Immaculate obsession, not conception
Emergency contraception

Lighting up in lapa as I dance ballet
En face to hippies with brahma beer
And skol night caps
I beg for more and confer a kiss
Commemorating a fantasmic day – and a half
Um beijinho jeitinho, and a stolen laugh

We smile to the moon
For whom I seek council
I rise to regrets
Sex with holy eggs
Coffee made for me

We brunch with the sun
Suco de abacaxi com hortela
Walk to the water
And sunkiss the waves
Yemaya my mama Yemoja
I pay my respects

To the garlic, my tierra
Bom molho bolonhesa
Cut with such grace
pensive face

I took risks worthy of worry
Kissed more than Mary
And hope not in vain
Lest I complain

Forgetting
I too, say thank you…

cross border deals

2008-04-06T22:26:00.002-05:00

In Rio
i drink coffee
from minas gerais
cheaper in my new york city deli

even with the dollar low
odd that costs are so high
this coastal global city
prefers euros

last month
Ford sold Jaguar
the former colony of Britain
to the Tata of India

globalization means
the have will have
the have not not

the goldern gringo days are over

A living Deja Vu

2008-03-10T17:44:00.002-05:00

a record broken
3 months
a broken record
30 years
a mirror image of the past
My very own specter mirage
Casts ghostly shadows
I am that which you want only late
Later, a cursed trail of similar narratives
When temporality shifts
And all is out of sync
For me, not you.
Why must I outlive the irony?
Why must I live to see the humor of emotions, not so humorous?
This is torture for those, who like me, live in the moment.
a dedicated disjuncture
a living deja vu, dejalo....

Kurta

2008-02-27T02:03:00.003-05:00

Kurta or Kurti
a "shirt"er version of me
yellow lines
gold trimm-ings
and pockets to hold
my waist

Ponty or Panty
Merleau or Merlot
Awww, hells nooo
Crowd of Commie Cookoo for Cocoa Puffs
Green jumper and
taped up gafas...

Angst

2008-02-04T19:02:00.000-05:00

Heidegger wrote a treatise on it; Soren K. believed the poet needed it to write; Sartre found the absurdity in being tormented by being tormented; Camus' men lived it while fighting themselves or replicas of themselves; and I, well, I look to them again and now to learn to understand what the great Hesse meant in Demian. I lie. I look to them to understand what I mean to myself if so many aspects of me are controlled by despair. Angst is an overabundance of hope, no? How else do we explain the angst filled person not jumping off the bridge or jumping in front of a bus?

To be continued...filled with too much angst right now!

Sample sale bag lady

2007-11-10T22:25:00.000-05:00

It’s a brother’s Johnson sort of thing
Strawberry letter 23 turned sour
Lemon man-boy break fast
Exit ethiopia
Next nigeria
Or maybe mali
Makes room for guinea
Pigs of all sorts
Of sordid and sumptuous
Suggestion…

Or could it be
Cabo verde?
Never greener pastures on the other side
Just the same tale of landscapes and territories
Battles to be fought
Forgiven
Forgotten with time

Like memories, men and history (not herstory)
No refunds accepted

Because as Heraclitus said
One can never enter the same river twice.

hunger

2007-10-29T23:05:00.000-05:00

Jezebel’s sister.
The middle child.
The one not hard enough to take the money.
Instead, she worked harder, selling honey
On the street.
To cook a stew for two
And create her own
Ambrosia
Sold her soul to hungry men, to feed her own
Appetite
For destruction.

Rain in Rio

2007-10-24T22:24:00.001-05:00

time paused by pouring rain
reminds me of a tropical adolescence
my body needing natural cleansing
despojado en lagrimas

now in a city of plush hills and favela mountains
when the rain stops
its music continues

the rhythm of wet pellots hitting terracotta shutters
the drizzling water of vertical gutters
the swish of mototaxis in puddles
the hum of wind rocking trees

a silence only nature can whisper
in an urban amazon jungle

gut gastronomer

2007-10-24T22:08:00.000-05:00

surround sound samba
i give glances at
cariocas cooking creole italian
crossing the atlantic in different forms
fomenting kitchen kultur that
forgets race

if only fusion were so easy on the
streets
as it were on the tongue
tastebuds allow for difference
without pitting palates
a bitter sweet and sour
sabor

dare a culinary quest beyond text
force a gut gastronomer to ask:

what does love taste like?

The Misandrist

2007-09-24T18:39:00.002-05:00

The Socratic method: the greatest ally against men.
Question after question, pulling them in and throwing them out.
Replaceable, disposible, dead bodies
In an undefined war
Her stongest weapon has no emotion
It just opens, closes, dries up and
plays repeat...

The Mi/SAND/rist was born from the name of the father.

Lost

2007-09-24T18:39:00.001-05:00

Scene i:

Papi cleaned toilets.
Mami cleaned houses.
Sister one cleans up after drunk men.
Sister two is already dead.
Brother is paranoid.

Scene ii:

We enter their space quietly, yet stained
Grateful, yet quilty
Knowledgeable, yet doubtful
Prepared or was it all potential?
The lucky ones.
The first to move beyond the streets,
not have babies at 15,
drop out of school and work
at Burger King.
We enter mathematically less than.
The equation is already solved.

Scene iii:

We leave but not as doctors or lawyers or professors.
We leave lost, crazy, and still colored.

My Karl Marx: This is what I look like now

2007-09-24T18:39:00.000-05:00

My Karl Marx book sits right next to me: upside down
on a pile of books about the Middle East, Community-Based Theatre, and Medieval culture. To my left sits a cheap silver ashtray filled with remnants of a dirty addiction that makes for the following: yellow teeth, dry skin, and $6.85 a pack. I smoke and twirl to satisfy some need into emptiness. Feist plays in the background, singing some song about her man and the moon. Books close me in, a wooden antique chair kills my back, my glasses are blurry (not my vision)and the damn train passes every 6 minutes. I wonder who missed the train this time. Where are they all going now? This is the den of inequity. This is the place I seldome visit: to drink wine and champagne with friends, talk about love and life, think, write, smoke, watch the garden that isn't mine, listen to the ice cream truck, write love letters, end relationships, play frisky, act impulsively, begin new lovers, cry, laugh, stare into nothing, do mindful exerercies, and finally remember that Marx has dangerous eyes; his isn't a philosophy but a practice.

Martha Graham might not be proud

2007-09-08T00:03:00.002-05:00

Cucala, cucala
que cucala, que cucala
plays live in front
of "improvisational"
chicks,
jamming to a beat called
"pay attention to me".
Hair down,
hands running through stringy blonde locks--
when the right man
turns a peak.

Ismael Rivera once sang this song to me.
I moved to it at this LES spot,
and thought of being teased by him,
by him, or
by him.

That conga hit me hard--not like the eyes diverted after opening legs,
but swift, stellar, almost beastly like punches in my hips.
I did my feet magic with my LatinAs,
laughing at the gringa looking
stale, pale, and possessed.
I was afraid to be obvious
but my excess is my affect.

What did she carry inside of her?
Did she know the sounds (like the words) were teasing her?

Cucala, cucala
Que ella sabe...

pa' mi luna (la que sabe)

2007-09-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

There is no "oye" to begin this letter of parted sorries
and tear stained cheeks--
if they came in color
mine would mark me up more than race
and the bliss we theorize as latinidad
and the policy scripts we play from and
jump off of just to get paid
maybe laid
by the men
that get little pieces of what we "spick"
our bodies: a foreign film more often than not

I failed us lunita.
I dared and dreamt too far
Promised, like Austin, that what we spoke would "do"

Ahhh, in all these sorries there has to be a Simone
writing love to her Beaver
A Frida
looking for Diego
in all his demise and her crippledness
A Dali and his Dora or was that Picasso?
How quickly I forget the man's painted obsession
Least I forget Miles and his Betty Davis
Not the white one...of course

There isn't a ritual large enough,
bold enough
to gather these sorries

You see lunita,
some of us are meant to fail in love
for always
and in moment after moment
this is how we learn the lyrics to the foreign films we spill
Did you think this script was given in womb?

2007-09-05T11:47:00.000-05:00

A cartographer of thoughts
Moments mapped in morphemes
But without rhyme
Because not every city was built
on a grid system
some
with landlocked landscapes
curvelinear cobblestone roads
some with mathematical acumen aboard
others led by water
or
like Chicago, destroyed by fire
a cartographer of thoughts
understands Benjamin, Lefebvre and the
walks
of urban gaits and iron gates
and all the while awaits
a space
where aesthetics and politics finds meaning
in home
TBC…

For sale: An exotic brand of egoism, the making of “Me”

2007-09-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

Romance, so narcissistic, eggs hatched and consumed by ego
raw friendship, the balance of egos, the platonic
Spiritual, father-boy philosophy, it is no wonder
the feminine energy, on this level, threatens you so much.
Lest we forget that I can read Socrates, and the stoics, too.

We credit Hegel for the dialectic when it is in nature, in Heraclites, the ying and yang.
We forgo dialogue for monologues because they can be cookie cut and boxed
We toast packaged pop tarts, cash paid with no need for retorts
We purchase spirituality, bounded in books or words, non-ecumenical, ecclesiastic or esoteric
We switch to mass individualism, canned illuminations,
Our egos bored by personal search in the
eccletic

nothing wrong in wanting the beyond but not the banal
Sorbet and sensuality in lieu of
sohbet and truth – entre comillas.
Why deprive? Why should I?
go to church
go to the market
go to work
go on a diet
go on a vacation
go away

mystical conversation on mystical subjects –sohbet – reserved for men.
it does not create other humans
the real duty resides in meta (pro) creation, not just elevation
in us, women. Womb envy is deeper than uteri.

from my ego to your ego.

You must remember that a disciple wants a master – and I am neither.
And that gnosis is temporary – always, transformation reaches a homeostasis.
Like desire.
I prefer a partner, not a master, puppet or trumpet.
rather soft wispers sweet glances open ear
to hierarchies of thoughts, and cryptic or hermetic smugness.
Yes, sir, real genius wears skirts and pumps
Instead of pomp.

Rolling Cigarettes

2007-09-01T20:49:00.000-05:00

Tobacco saved in green paper
rolled tightly over a good-bye breakfast
strong coffee smells spilling into nervous chatter
and food--a lost attempt,
each bite symbolized a sooner end...for one.

I tried to take it all in: the city moving quickly as we played a lover's catch-up, the hands that lent me my fetish, the green eyes that never failed to tell me when you were some place else, that body moving in and out of conversation (crossed arms, crossed legs), and the waiter gone waitress escaping us for far too long.

I stood above you as we smoked. Sitting next to you: an intimacy I could not give you. You drank your black coffee and inhaled deeply. I looked at all the passerbys and remembered I never gave you up. You remembered the people from our past. Our memories were no longer the same.

Sintra

2007-07-31T09:49:00.000-05:00

Prince's Erotic City
en los cascos de mi ipod
Sintra, oh mountainous town
nestled in between Estoril and Lisboa - the violent atlantic
i follow your trail
through cobblestones
and lovers embraced
it is the romance of old
timeless
and with an image of you
the trip that never came
even though you did
i am here in your spirit
and i hear your thoughts...

Indeed

2007-07-21T21:23:00.000-05:00

Indeed: a word that means more than just sure; it means to be in deed of something/someone.
Indeed: too simple to just verse out; cannot function in poetry for the word replicates its very denial
Indeed: said with the slime caught in an eye not worth watching over and over again
Indeed: an inhale of things past consumed--a lover of all that is the opposite of the indeed
Indeed: easy enough to use to get in and easy enough to use to get out

Indeed: the initiator of the word fails to perform anything in-deed the moment the utterance is uttered...the problem of the one inhaling the utterance is the effect it has in the denial of the actual word itself--the word is sneaky; its intent one of malice; its composure too damn tempered even as the word presenst itself as empty...

the word indeed is far from empty...it is full of the trots.

Fucking the beast

2007-06-09T02:59:00.000-05:00

Fucking the beast that laughs last
leaves a knee stumbled in cracks
blood that cries not of that wound
but of the little one she carries

he plays you
follows me to the bathroom
no love
no loss
but a moment of shit
where the past means as much as the broken knee with no aid

my response: I am wasted, Stop harming the little good left in me.
My heels mean nothing to you and your
manhood nothing to me

move
move on

I have thought of him while owning you.
How dare you remember a night I renounce?
You serve as the escape to his silence.

And yes you are to blame for looking twice.

You are nothing.

He is nothing,

I am tired of being a flute.

Play no more.

Ugly Thursday

2007-05-30T23:58:00.000-05:00

An ugly Thursday again

rewound to that moment

caught so many times

like the fine nestled ball in the catalyst's hand

where would the play be without Mr. First Base?

and how different, really, are the moments we save and secret so tenderly from one another?

We've all squeezed that ball before, no? Perhaps we all haven't made the play.

Sixteen Purple Platters...

2007-05-26T07:28:00.000-05:00

and an unwanted baby in an underbelly.

-------------...---------------------

Pause, you homo-hag
take a drag off that fag
slip on that laugh
twirl that split-ended tress
sunglass the dots that read:
"papi, I ain't ready for real hands."

-------------...---------------------

Fifteen green apples...

and a pill in the upper belly.

Curious George

2007-05-24T22:54:00.000-05:00

Did you with a bang--
final "acting out"
final shameful escape
last kiss to seal the end...
wrong man however

Closed my eyes
played my hair like a fine fiddle
moaned like a bitch...
to the beat of the wrong skin however

Another Maria you claim,
slipping in and out of sheets dirtier than Bush
"I want to live in America."

mami

2007-05-13T03:07:00.000-05:00

Loudly I remember "la condenada muchacha" spilling screams in stores for new crayons you never denied.

I learned how to jump rope, tie my shoes, read, color in the lines, and reject naps at four.

Today I am four again, wearing the curls you tempered and the laugh you never gated.

Nothing

2007-05-07T00:33:00.000-05:00

I make friends with space in hope that time will be gentle, grabbing my hand instead of face. So often and so abrubtly, time makes a spectacle of me--abrasive reminders that hiding does not stop its ticking. I've left the watches to boxes and travel to the sight of things only to fail in the grandest attempt ever: running from those walking gracefully to a time that makes sense to more than one.

Follow the Blue Arrows

2007-05-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

A little color
A Z at the end of a name
Stops in Mexico and Florida
And a passport full of wrong places traveled
Can make grown men put on gloves
and search through dirty panties.

off the beaten boundaries

2007-05-02T02:30:00.000-05:00

the red couch sat outside
curbed: for lucky takers
the street, a tv; an outdoor living room
as if to turn intimacy inside out
i expose you
to
taunts from passersby
Benjamin's porosity meets Baudelaire's flaneur
without the introspection
the goingons without the going

and you sit, nearly short
of words, already short
of meaning, running short
on time
i expose you

Micro/-expressions

2007-04-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

acute senses can make lollipops lose their wrappers,
exposing the most expert deception
lies squeezed into the tightest corset:
explode and leave a trail of over/-compensation
when you have said too much
it is not time to be silent
for silence will bleed you into the deepest well
the micro, micro, micro expression I have listened to before
it's the lie revealed in expression,
the tormented guilt you send by way of distorted face and
whispered anxiety

your skin did not become orange or yellow or shades of both
your left eyebrow did not lift in anticipation of a successful tale
your hands did not shake
your voice did not crack in moments of over/-exposure

you buzzed like a bee finding nectar to calm your betrayal
such a pathetically beautiful image
such a sad bastard
such a bloody deceased whore...

in my head.

no big deal

2007-04-25T19:38:00.000-05:00

your nonchalance
made me bleed a whole month

when was the last time your penis
exposed such vulnerability?
with each drop of masculinity
my gender's defined by your absence
of pain

but it is no big deal, eh?

on the act of waiting for the right time

2007-04-25T19:21:00.000-05:00

if only i'd wait for more inspiration
than the words would flow
better, in their becoming before being, crisper
in anticipation of perfection
i'd cross all i's and dot all t's

if only i'd wait for the sun to shine brighter
and cast a beam of light
melting letters into morphemes
magnifying words into meanings
thoughts into symbolic forms

to be judged in light of
all lights

if only i'd wait for the critical moment
these words would not have crashed on my apple, once
or wound up wet in a rained on text, once again
because syncopation can repeat at ifinitum,
the way a drum beats
or pendulum swings
but the right time never comes

For Foucault

2007-04-15T00:36:00.000-05:00

S.t.u.m.b.l.i.n.g

1:00 in the morning,
too ragged to sleep,
too wasted to curse,
too full of you to lie,

you’re not finding me.

four months past and
I mourn it now.
Delayed reactions sting a little longer—an
almost biting touch

stumbling to get over it
can’t even name you yet
it’s not pretend…I know.

the hardest story to tell is the one you cannot claim

still stumbling as you walk
still stumbling in my words
still stumbling

it’s not pretend…I know.

Dimensao Estetica

2007-04-09T19:50:00.000-05:00

Is more than a Marcuse poster found on Brazilian college walls
A homage to eros and civilization
Left hand reaching out beyond his stare
An arabesque in ballet
Alone and with gaze,
The punctum:
The idea before the clicking finger.
Trigger finger, trigger happy, trigger apathy
The demise in the voyeur's brow,
Furrowing into the depths of a walk

Crossing the street to close the gap
Empty walls showing cracks
Past heads shrinking their covers
Moving down the duvet
To reveal crumpled pieces of skin
To fill wounds with wetness

We let them Over Flow--destroying
And
Confronting musical mistakes later

Beyond the valley of the dolls

2007-04-08T15:42:00.000-05:00

lies a dedication to those who only take

life has been that way lately
mantras, mistakes y maleducados
only maladapt my muses into mined melodramas
all the more

Ludlow St. and its theater of the absurb
caressing my belly
in a laughbable lower-east side kind of way
sometimes pit-in-stomach nervousness
or raucous belts

you need humor to
remember scripted and sculptured lines
enacting different characters
dressed in affect and accents
to narrate sweet nothings
behind the bar

scenes are for scenesters
text and empty sex to lull
this act to a close
et fin.

French Thursdays

2007-04-08T01:06:00.000-05:00

repeating youth games
smile at the aging
where orange lipstick
and
blush
no longer veil

lessons already learned and learned and learned
travel too fast
in cabs
where pleasuring women
and pleasured men
speak in tongues

a trip through everything euro,
everything done
this time the wine turned one over
left the others out of tune
some letter (perhaps b) gone flat
some limbs too wasted
some face not lifted enough

Forte

2007-04-04T21:31:00.000-05:00

Falling,
Falling,
Falling

Found

Speckeled hair caught under the stationary shopping cart
Blue plastic glasses over her deaf blue eyes
Dressed in her house rope and slippers
Keys in hand
Scabs across her arms and legs
Who loved Forte other than the Verizon man who found her?
Other than her lost son?

"Forte, can you hear me?"
"Forte, can you hear me?"

No beat to her stare
No rhyme to her breathing

"Forte, can you hear me? "
"Forte, can you hear me?"

Everyone in sight stands alert to the stillness of her body,
Staging responses for when the "savers" arrive
To announce what we already know:
Forte, left with a sudden blow

Pinching her nose
Pounding her chest
Machines in an apartment hallway;
Rehearsing the way to bring her back
(Is this the way she wanted to close?)

All that remains is the wet denture of an old woman
And a cold body being pulled away publicly

"Forte, can you hear me?"

Flight

2007-04-04T19:42:00.000-05:00

Jammed telephone booth:
Pushing in quarters that want to go home
A line of white faces behind me
Known space
Walked its parameters--
Always
Yet a crash can make a gal ask:
"where am I? how do I return?"

This is my memory of me waiting to end.

you can read?

2007-04-02T01:46:00.000-05:00

But,

don't think much more of the words slipping off my tongue,
commanding you to please...
it was a momentary/addiction
always a body 2 body persuasion
anti-emotion
anti-commotion
anti-explosion
steady boy, every-body needs their fix

But,

you've been reading me like an assigned novel--by memorizing
characters all in play
plot to a time
themes jumping out from the crevices of your mind
denouement who?
who?
steady boy, i play like french ain't my game
while reading you reading me reading my name
as you put your piano hands to mr. big...
ahhhhh,
no-one's shaming you
ahhhhh

But,

you can read?
sexual healing?
nah.
sexual/emotional/spiritual connect-some-dots?
nah.
sexual pleasure?
your extra sense did you wrong

But,

i'll entertain your paranoia
not because i'm better...i mean bitter

But,

because i am tired of being sung

ode to Lisa Lisa

2007-03-26T00:21:00.000-05:00

Judy Torres loving Frankie.
sends questions punctuated by pussyfoots
oh, so not hot.
never lost in emotion
or short of words when in your face
stevie b or babyface
tka
taste my cookiecakes

Ghost stories

2007-03-25T23:34:00.000-05:00

get out the DSM. put your jammies on.
i'm gonna tell you a bedtime story-
not a lullaby, but with allegory.
did you say you saw a ghost?
or do you just so badly need to see me scared
a glowing vulnerability
dabbed behind the ears like a perfume
yes, it feels that contrived.
and this time you've lost your charm.
there are those for whom the spectre of death
is as cheap as their cologne
and matching gold chain.
I don't care enough to cast
spells or throw
stones
so, suave: ghosts jolt you that much?

XXX: tribute to peaches

2007-03-24T18:16:00.000-05:00

Last night I thought I'd try something new
went to a danceclub meets bar cum live nude drawing
sponsored by a pornsite, I believe...
gathered were a crowd of artsies, sketching manerist scenes
charcoal pencils in one hand
glass of tinto vino on the other
and I produced a cheap lil poem:

a room full of hungry eyes
the sirens seem more vapid
in real time/space
been replaced by hipster chicks
apparently american apparel
meets fish net sex
Bettie Page times three - removed
charming
Medusa's circle ciphers a bad
scene from a Vice Magazine

Chico Plastico: Revisited

2007-03-23T20:51:00.000-05:00

“Se ven las caras, vaya, pero nunca el corazon…Panama presente"
A roll call for aesthetic sake
The song winds through the countries of our homes
El chico plastico conducts a symphony of faces – always with exquisite restraint
For a freak of control, he has bright eyes and a smile worth following
And great stories, the kind with jazz and energy,
But with no rhythm to take shape
Lest they’re lavishly funded.
Perhaps we could just sit here, and talk. A marxist entertainment.
And, just maybe, you’d be more content.
"y miran sin ver." Blades and Colon said it best.

Concrete Boys

2007-03-23T00:09:00.000-05:00

Immediately vacant when clarity arrives.

Plucking compulsively at the emotive.

Concrete Boys Know the Difference between Difference as if Difference Where Never Linked to Sameness...

Cryp/tic/tic...ticking like BIG ben

(PROGRESSIVELY LESS CLEAR)

Our Types of People

2007-03-20T22:18:00.000-05:00

We narrate everything. We play repeat on every innuendo. Tons of breaks (a little ADHD) just to make it through the day. We labor hard. Ramon Jamon el raton understands: he cleans compulsively and hoards. We each have our own hand in glove. We smoke until we choke, laughing like school girls 'bout poetry once too brilliant to share. We have a hard time tooting our own horns. Did you notice?

Wrongo Dongo

2007-03-20T20:32:00.000-05:00

Wrongo Dongo,
Was the name of the lovely tempranillo
Drank with reminiscent words on dong gone wrong.
A stray led into the dog house
Searching for his blankie
To cloak his drunken thoughts with soil and earth: a vineyard.
Don’t shit where you eat. Vienna. Rio. Rome. Zanzibar.
Don-go down to get up. Fall if you must...
and land on a dongo.

Aloof in memory, not in moment

2007-03-19T21:08:00.000-05:00

Aloof: [aristocratic] distance maybe even Kantian; reserved; remote; physically and emotionally unavailable; view from afar; apart; separado.

Who's going to chisle away the wall? When one is aloof is the wall even worth chisling? Adorno claims: "He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interests." Oye, herein lies the rub: when ideology is privitized, the self is priviledged; the aloof man can only converse with himself. There is really no critique of society.

Technorati Profile

Brighter Days

2007-03-19T10:52:00.000-05:00

Smoking jane when sun hits hard. Rolled like a taught factory woman, child in belly, hidden under an oversized shirt...la factoria can't have babies growing alongside the market. Work woman.

Pedestrian

2007-03-18T23:44:00.000-05:00

Crosswalk. No lights. Headache. Not done skimming the streets though. A lot of social notes still to take. A bastard ethnographer, viewing the ghosts of the past in the faces of now. Lost intellectual looking for community, but not the typical idea of community where simple marks, mark roughly, rather where the marks are soft and transitory. The pedestrian crosses. She is now gendered. Is she? Crosswalk. Lights on now. Flash. Flash. The pedestrian makes a face--one of anger and not confusion. Flash. Flash. "You flash. You pay." Pause. No lights. No money. Soft observations are no longer free.

Coffee Ground Divination

2007-03-18T23:20:00.001-05:00

Babalawos use caracoles or palm nuts, depending on which route on the diaspora, to plow prophetic insight. I use coffee grounds. A reinvention of ritual, with just enough caffeine to keep sober in this concrete jungle meets modern zen garden. I say to Gaelle: “Otro cafecito, mi cielo?” And we refuel for the future past tense, old Chicago house, leaving a trail of soft espresso grounds to mark the sugar.

Weirdness in a Coma

2007-03-18T22:38:00.000-05:00

The physical effects of words. "I am off to bed." What does this mean when only minutes ago we spoke of stitches and buttons? Supposedly, it means you are off to bed and well, one of us is still up thinking of deconstructing five words. It doesn't really end here though. One of us, did not know how to spell weirdness and so spelling it out without looking at the word, brought the correct spelling into being. Interesting. One of us, wonders how premeditated those five words were...were they preempted by the desire to escape or did sleep come too soon? I before e. E before i. EI together. Weirdness. Why not write: I am getting tired now? I will speak to you tomorrow. Why use the word "maybe"? It presupposes so much, no? Coolio, but one of us is not a maybe kind of gal. It leaves too much for the imagination. Actually, it leaves nothing to the imagination when you think of this signifier's actual intent. It means that the referent is deep, deeper than you think one of us can handle. It means: the ball is in my court; it means I got some hoops to make...
only hoops you gonna make are the hoops in my earrings.

Ma'

2007-03-18T21:43:00.000-05:00

Oye Luna (a letter of devoted thinking),

Something's hiding. It isn't the last bit of hope, running out of Pandora's box. It isn't the betrayal played by Judas. It isn't the mouse, hurrying to a hole. The trap is chasing her. It isn't the overly psychotic, living in the borderline patient. It isn't constipation of the ass. It isn't even the real rhetoric spewed by the politicians. It is the little boy of 29 years late. He is still in love with ma'. You see, ma' had a problem: she lived for love through her son. No little boy can fill that void. Luna, what of the little boy of 29 years...late, and the ma' who loves life more than living to love the little boy? I daresay that even when ma' brings nipple to lip, the little boy will be too jilted to suck. Who is this ma' now? We shouldn't have to replace her, name her over and over again, or do without intimacy.

Affective Dishonesty

2007-03-18T18:16:00.000-05:00

Why do we use honesty as an alibi for our performances of dishonesty? The answers are innumerable. 1.) Fear of rejection; 2.) Little or no ontological understanding of self; 3.) Confusion (albeit believing in "I don't knows" is far too easy a retreat.) Perhaps getting at the why is inessential right now. Maybe the core of the issue is rather simple: the performance clown crops up when too many blows to the self's imagined sense of self is exposed in a rather ambigious and even arbitrary way. Lately, it appears that to live in an unexposed way means to secure a sense of stability--a flat landing that predicts only the predictable. Dishonest or not, the mere intrusion of any emotional spectrum that encompasses too much too fast or too little or obviously plays into excess means that a dishonest paranoia of sorts will play out. For we cannot feel so much at such time or so little in such place; it isn't real--although so real--to feel beyond logic.

Chico Plastico

2007-03-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

what does it mean to be plastico? could it be, like Blades and Colon tell us, that which melts in the sun? So what if that sun, err, were emotions? U know, what flows from the crevices of a woman's breast...ah yes, take a deep breath: te presento: emociones.
oye, chico plastico, con su pistola en tu mano, how do you blanket feelings so well?

Halfway There: This Charming Man

2007-03-17T19:43:00.000-05:00

A charming man is always halfway there. We were halfway to the intellectual ivory tower when we decided mozzarella and bread were more important that writing a piece-- a disciplined piece-- made for publication. Despite looming deadlines, we opted for collab on the fly. Mauricio told us that he would make us chorizo at the tapas bar, but we opted for John. He was a little more provincial. With blue eyes bright as a toddler's, he spoke of days with patina. Mr. Baradino, as we later learned, had a wife, was an officer, a radio host for the Italian community, and had an archive. And hence, it was through his archeology that we discovered his soul: lively and sung. Speaking French like a working Italian in Paris, he played the drums on the counter and wooed us into a thirteen dollar tip. Not bad, for a capricious cafe on a lonely Connecticut road. He said our friend, la mexicana with almond-shaped eyes looked like the bakery girl who made his pastries, but never spoke; English was not native to her, but he liked her. Their eyes must have met in another world, where the subtitle is dialogic, even without words. We live through our stories on which ever side of analysis we lie. We are beings because we have history; without it, there is no present future or subjuntivo. A temporal twist of fate leads us only to words. Mr. Baradino's ephemerality was the reproduction we produced in our journey; not that it wasn't there before. But we found him. But we were only halfway there. This charming man and he doesn't got a stitch to wear. His stitch was what we learned to sow and we were only halfway there. He put his hand on the arch of my back like a salsero. In snow-capped Norwalk he told me I didn't need a viejo. Luna called me a coqueta. I was a little hungry for cheese and ham. Luna said: "I have proscuitto at home."