For Scientist M

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.

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)

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

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

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.

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

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.