Trailed Ink

Insipid box

ed

of jailed magnolia
her silk cupola strained
into unnerved veins
hovered
into a lymphatic embrace

her cage a shrine of terror

a leashed expectation

The scarlett smudge of her fruit
a magnetic wish
breached
at the core
by straddled lips
that bequeathed their selves

Instill

ed

in her awkward breeze
that slightest storm
of unspoken memory
it's craving limbs
a strangling hold on reason

a breath lost in place

shoot

Autumn lies
its thick falls
like syrup
stupid and sexual
promising escapeless routes
through such veinless river

the stained pillow
a current of adulterated kindred
spilled astray
by this drowsy massacre
in mid departure

you've resurfaced your existence
like ocean foam
whose white body survives
only by chronic retreat
stringed in a sway
your organs surged
like the nightmare fly
who steals my female sin
and scentless prayers
devouring the ring
of citrus lining
and curdled want

you have never moved

nor been

it's because of me
that you are always spring

chet baker

brass bull has branched its horn
its dizzy tunnel
whirlwind of wistful blows
as brittle as the aim of the
infant's harrow play
cloaked in gentleman wear
from bow to toe

its hollow depth
a goblet for somber brews
that skin the walls bare
and steal the thirst of others

the shell's whispers leaving trails
only to vanish at mid phrase
and rain their overcast secrets
to ears the ones turned soft
by heavy pours
and swallowed pain

eternal fall

in blank
remains
the splintered seed
bandaged of clogged screen
in a garden of perennial blink
where light rose once only perhaps
told in scented breaths
sold in scripts
typed by unearthed infants coiled in
blossomed tales


returning
like moth wings relentless
to drain their flight in burning faucets
kindling their fall
where past pages muddied words
in unreadable sorrows
of legless journeys entwined
with rewound film
bound to return to the calls
of the crackled strip

and the covers cement their names
and spines
the numbers now futile
and turned too cumbrous
like the song of
the tick when its hunger is silenced

the compasses spring inwards
leading a frozen voyage
the idea of the crash far less terrifying
than this

The Aesthetics of Garbage

there rest
the bloodless carcasses of industrial prostitution

an epidemic of exploit hovering the landscape
like the torn pearl necklace scrambled between our sheets
encrusted in the sighs
of a hazy affair wired in soft gauze and tranquilizers

the remains of our hunger
devouring the canvass
where constellations of desire
entrench the sobbing crystals from ancient snowfalls
nostalgic like mascara spilling down porcelain ladies
a stream of mortality tearing open the bounds of perfection
her intranssient beauty slashed into circulation with
the black river's brush across time
choking space to expose our nerves
time crumpled to life

the glass mirages bulging into our cemented fixations with order
fill our pockets with lust,
our souls lost
in this mounting crave to inhale
our lips a cave
for murder and reproduction
the urban crib once virgin and free
we will tame
with colorful ejections of re-sculpted packaging
and the embers of perpetual demand

a provocative site
where destruction of the non-manufactured
will ignite our existence
still

Fall

If even it should ever be
that you loosen the arch of your speech
to shovel up tears
dead in their idiotic slip
like words that fall
out and with no aim
where hours have no fit
and space is too much

to make your tongue a bed
of frozen desire
cementing ancient mirages
like the sin of Rodin's kiss
fatal in the eternity of its past
a hole larger than its own void

we shall expend
the fertile coals
jailed in our guts
where bread breaks down
like the terror of the torn pearl necklace
rolling in infinite scarlet loss
both catastrophes greater than the
fruit they ignite
like your lips flambé
inebriating our strangled talk

the apples in fall
a premonition that keeps our fears awake
if only Sisyphus shouldn't know
our contention against time
would never seem so futile
and awards to guilt would license
love
in time.

Inside (revised version)

There still is life
going on inside
a room,
clogged in its own stale sighs
remembering how my gag gushes
through your lips
interrupted by default
the way a wind paralyzes
and stagnates life
until it stank...

... the room.

The room stank of anxiety,
an anxiety,
(that same anxiety that keeps you awake in those
pseudo nights when you can't manage to dream, or think, or not think, or not dream)
and it permeates your thoughts
leaving trails of sin and warmth
like the whore's milk
crashing against the depth of your collarbone
until it stank.

It stank
of orchestral beats slamming against my divided legs
encrypting sterile rhythms into that endless crack
where I try to delete life
or consolidate dreams into
the crevice of artificial pleasure

and so it stank.

of relinquished lust.

End of conversation.

No need to go into further details of the
orgiastic consumption clamped on to my smile,
the T.V. set humping behind my head
masculinity crisis
thrusting itself in,
oozing herself out.

The lucid ego, smeared about my face
encaged in the abyss of my own reflection
where ideas are drained and forgotten
like pubic hairs interlaced with toothpaste
because the only market to bank invents beauty as an accomplishment


It's tight
in this room

where decadence and depression have become exhausted terms withered into fashion statements.

where “Drugs and Sex” is the taboo everyone is talking about
between cocked eyebrows and theatrical grins.

The importance long forgotten,
the reason long lost.

You can’t tell anymore what is sexism and
who is racist
where is God and
why me

We don’t believe in romance anymore.
It was just a myth
like everything in the Bible.
a contagious disease we love to spread
like the legs of the back alley whore
slit open like slivers of moonlight
tainting the silence of dark hours

the earth is round
and everything learned never cured us from the fall.


Yes

my dress is falling
lipstick’s run
hair’s all tangled
and my smile is torn
but there still is life
going on

inside.

Possession

With purchase we learned possession
the idea of ownership a morbid lie
serenading us into cages
the way pigeons drop when they
hit their flight against transparent glass.

Our riches are transitory,
the things we bought as mortal as ourselves
the things we own end up owning us
entrapped in the goods that pretend
to tell our tales

words are fleeting
like when a man says "i love you"
and if his love stays for more then a moment
it isn't mine anyways

my breakfast gets shitted out eventually
and romance always ends in pain
my nails break when I let them grow
and people may change as quick as fashion

so nothing is mine
the people i love can hurt me
because they aren't mine
I couldn't even buy them.

THE WEIGHT

For the creatures our kind
it isn't that life seems dark
nor that sarcasm is the legacy which
governs our thoughts
nor is it the "drama" we are accused of inventing

rather,
it is the weight with which
events tumble before our eyes
that makes the heart quiver
in pain or delight
The way perturbance keeps you sleepless
after watching the neighbor
from the building across naked
rocking back and forth on the floor
wakening the night with a dire cry
that repeats itself like his rocking,
wrecked in some sort of attack.
The weigh seeing the ex-love on the street
with the girl he cheated you on with extenuates
the burning terror of the epileptic ceasure you
witnessed that morning and
the weigh the ceasure suffocates the trivial
moans of the wounded heart.
The weigh indifference towards the death of
[emotionally] distant relatives enslave you
in self-doubt
The weigh your friends' love stories
turn your sighs into vast paradisiacal winds
The weigh laughter feels as climatic as orgasms
The weigh fear of bumping into certain people on
the street turn you into an alien
The weigh friends abandoned you in your most
feeble moments and the weigh guilt replaced
gratitude for those who didn't leave
The weigh the sweetness in pineapples make
the day more bearable
The weigh dresses fulfill my child-like princess fantasies
The weigh making new friends feels as thrilling as a new date
The weigh age makes empathy more common than sympathy
The weigh the bruise left by a loved man will be nursed
by an unknown woman
The weigh you can mourn the terminated presence of somebody
whose aura you savor
The weigh sensuality becomes an approach to living
The weigh small sounds are so terribly startling, the
residue of panic lingering even after realizing their
innocuous source
The weigh excitement over simple stories steal
my ability to speak
The weigh a downtown apartment can feel too quiet
The weigh the tragic tales of others will efface loneliness
and sporadic feelings of exclusive martyr
The weigh hearing music on the street
or listening to another's pains will make you cry
The weigh of feeling trapped in mistakes
The weigh buoyancy strikes with the sound of
articulated speech
The weigh internet chat can either thrill or
spill emotion
The weigh accomplishment feels lost in
the passing of time
or gained with the student's learning
The weigh poetry can lose its pretention
and assume to be sentimental
The weigh you desperately want someone
to witness the high of ecstatic bliss
until the weight of the ego brings you down
like colorful balloons eventually fall
or the lover's flower wilts
the weigh my beauty shall wane with time
The weigh thoughts can be dangerous if there
is too much or not enough
The weigh love-making makes me want to cry
and lack of it changing the way mornings rise
The weigh the love-making bed can feel too
large or too small
The weigh games must be played though
no longer fun
The weigh hope keeps you afloat with the same
force with which disappointment buries dreams
The weigh weight can be a burden
or the gift of sensitivity.

SEA

A friend once said that having
a love is
having a witness to one's life
someone to applaud your mild jokes
and dread over trivial pains
(like a bad haircut
or menstrual cramps)
a love to know every crease of your body
and memorize the subtle gestures that
books will never teach

eyes that see the multi-dimensional
roles of your persona
and the private intricacies that
separate you from the rest

someone to keep a mental diary
of the frailty of your innocence
and the regret in certain thoughts
the endless abyss of your sensuality
the anguish in your guilt

It's like writing on blogs
hoping people will read your soul
or being on stage where
anonymous faces thrill at every skill
and slump with unforeseen mistakes

a love is the closest way to fame
his eyes like the paparazzi lens
guarding seconds of you
worth a million dollars

for living unwatched
is like being dead
if no one will witness our lives
who will we live for?

bird

I had thought about deleting
ancient words
and rosy memoires
of illusions cloaked in velvet masks
allusions left to guess
delusions meant to dress

confusions to confess

the thickened mold
of innocence lost
crawling through our dreams
leaving no cushion
nor space to invest
on soft laments
nor feeble tears
nor nostalgic yearns
nor time to question

its hardened case
the graveyard of hopes
that lets everything be
its inexplicable self

and all the women gather
and huddle their hearts
nodding the heads
pointing the fingers
their eyes enlarged with vile stories
the coffee thick between the lips
the eyebrows exasperated
by the men that huddle around
their hungry looks so easy to compare
their cliche lines that cry worn out
by the rusted paths they've walked
and the aimless circles they've talked

we'll nod our heads
and let things be
for the heart certainly does cure
at wonderful speeds
the repeated falls
making stronger knees
the only terror remaining
in the bird between the legs
its freedom flight
a dangerous journey
the chance of death
a taunting idea
that marks the body with regret
a once sacred site
now carelessly tainted
by child play's mistake
leading to the dingy road
from which we may not ever awake.

SARAN WRAP

I just adore using
tupperware and saran wrap
it makes me feel so north american
plastic to protect
from germs
plastic to cover food stench
plastic to limit the possibilities
of chaotic mess

plastic

I wish they sold a saran wrap
to keep the heart
from spilling out
and causing disaster
as the heart tends to do
and it would make me much less intense
and feel so north american.

The Sounds of Laughter

Bronze dunes made stone
their burnished slivers
a cryptic legend
strangled in its own story of
encrypted heat and hunger

A tale to make hidden
like the crime of a lustful gaze
or a child’s wish on washed out ink
smeared on a sheet crumpled
by her guarding fist

every day will end
with my woman flesh
soiled
and cooked
beneath his scent
Cursed by the truth of touch
and the enigma of secrets unshared
and whispers unheard

every day will begin
with the words of a nightmare
familiar and still daunting
and yet easy to dismiss
and yet difficult to forget
crushed beneath the sands
intoxicated in their beauty
and the impossibility of their numbers

the landscape he inspires
bears no resemblance to this world
and thus the tattered thoughts
lurking through these moonstruck visions
trickling down
the way mud stains
ruin the painting
and give it its own life and story

We are the architects of rain
vanquished by the unsettling
drop of a pause
and once again bolstered
by the euphoria of a sweet embrace
and the sounds of laughter.

21st century for a 22 year old

It's odd to watch
this 21st century
in a city where the sun rarely falls
and cigarette ashes fall in your coffee
from smokers no where to be seen.

There!
a woman playing the tenor sax her
white fizzy pop hair out of order
like a lot of phone booths in Santiago
and making no sense
like the sounds she has destroyed
from my favorite instrument
making me shiver, even on a sunny day.

The people you love will hurt you
but you just don't know when
just waiting
like you wait for men
and men are like smoking - an addiction you can't seem to understand or control

A world built of hand-me-downs

Recycling fashions

Re-packaging words

the dollar circling round and round
chained in symbolic power
like poetry
and poetry a petty place
where the dollar will not fit

"everything's been done" the crowds cry
like they all know that we have done
everything we can.

maybe we have

a limit to our imagination

It's the 21st century
and we're still enthralled in our temptation
the exquisit delight of sin enmeshed in sorrow
the delictable sight of a voluntary gaze
days away from destruction
the lusting over mortality
the wishful prance of defeat and gloom
in a Monday afternoon.

It makes no sense

No sense at all.

INA

"oh how I hate short, stubby girls" she'd say
a thick russian accent
travelling in the smoke of her du mauriers
crashing into the red wall
where dozens and dozens of tolstoy and other
favorites sat
eccentric and ageless
like her
and that german face I loved to watch
as she sat in her leopard coat complaining about fat people
her tall body bent over the stroller
and her eyes round
her eyes round

"you must smoke. I highly encourage that you smoke. I encourage all the addictions"
and we'd twist open the wine and talk about whatever she wanted
and I wished I'd be like her at her age
and I haven't called again

always

listening to a cd obsessively
will always take you back to that time
the bodyguard: 1994
dee-lite: 1995
alanis: 1996
marilyn manson: 1998
dinah washignton: 2001
and you will own those songs
as if your life had a sound track of its own
and you cannot replay the tunes
without feeling depressed
and wondering why the past always
makes you depressed
always
so on the bright side
maybe you're not going through difficult times
you just always hated life.

spider solitaire

you can stop living
buried under
the numbing gleam
of sex and the city videos
and spider solitaire on the computer
and that empty email account
you keep on checking
a depression forming
on the green pull-out couch
where you've left your body
to just consume itself
and the mind to stagnate

no more questions nor
sorrows
just that premature sign of
defeat
wallowing in embarrasment
swallowing the crevice of your life
that no one sees and nothing enters
like that fungus creeping through
between the washroom tiles
its innocuous germs an
invisible catastrophe

that is what it's like
the want to want again
to have purpose
even in the unconquered land
and to not dread the rise
of each morning that reminds
you of how dead your life has become
and that it's all your fault.

grinding

and love will come while the sun will blind
shining over your well-schooled smile
and performance kit persona
and that well groomed fear posing
like docility in the chaotic 21st century North America

take off the light
I won't be much, not even less
the closet still stinging black
and eyes swelling like the menstruating crotch
of a chiguagua dog
always purging its foul insides
always looking painful

the leaves turn

away from your last season's rage
it's a system of betrayal
you decide
the congress of want
the society of foreover consume
the fall into cavity I
where the search is circular
and bound to immortality

twisting open the how are you's i'm fine's
in desperate need of oiling
lulled by the watches of
when to do what to do
no whys

I've decided to then become what I hate
a vacuous eggshell
no substance and morbidly fragile
eating animals and slurping at the
Second Cup
full belly, hollow soul
and that forlorn longing
that when the leaves turn
so will I.

OLD BEAT MEN

He was the kind no one would care to
sit beside in the bus
but I had been reading the Beat Reader
so I did
I even smudged my ass closer
cuz his warm alcohol aroma
was like my boyfriend's
and cuz of the Beat Reader
and
every now and then
he would flip his slow and gone gaze
towards me
his matte blue eyes bored

He must write, or have some other genius - I thought
at the fifties grey suit and jazz hat
and the white wife beater clinging fiercely to his beating chest
and I remembered that other 60 year old cat I saw
in highschool,
geared up in his fifties suit and jazz hat
big square shoulders and long hands
and wearing a strut that any young broad would die for
it was cool and chill and smooth and sharp and ready and brisk and oh so styled

The old drunk in the bus then pulled a notebook from his pocket
and wrote in large print letters:

"COMPETITION

WHO IS THE SMALLEST?

WHO IS THE GREATER?"

and then tucked his notebook back in the jacket pocket

I got off before him
and couldn't check out his strut

Black shirt Black

Five years ago
and in another country
the black long sleeved shirt
became mine
drenched in pink vomit
that took countless washes to rid
the night he read me the letter
I would have kept had it not been lost
I would have remembered had I not been drunk

we never were really together
and we never met again
but I still wear the black shirt to bed
but I still love that man now in my bed
who lets me do what I never did
with the black long sleeved shirt

to become a magician
that could turn all her things into garbage
her earrings into rubbish, her socks into trash, her scents into waste, the bed they shared
all disappear in a black plastic bag
to never be seen again
to never exist again
nor before

but I'll wear the black long sleeved shirt to bed.

My mother's aunt
had enough hair to count
and a glass eye
that could see everything my mother said
She had meticulous fingers
and talcum white wrinkles
a hunched back
and an elegance that made you silent
Her talking also made you silent
She had shutting up difficulties
and so she talked all day long and throughout her sleep
telling detailed stories with closed eyes
about Robert John y el pollo

She was old-fashioned and somewhat racist
but I forgave her because
she adored the smell of mothballs
and liked to dance with rags drenched in parafine.

Last thing I knew, she thought she was having an affair with the President.

I don't know why I talk about her in past tense
She's isn't dead yet.

culottes

"Culottes! Culottes! Culottes!" he screams

over and over again

"Culottes! Culottes! Culottes!"


Sometimes he jumps around

kicks his legs

sits up

lays down again

throws punches in the air

screams some more

and when he wakes

it's as if he had never slept

for he spent 9 hours in bed in

intense physical and vocal activity.

One time he pissed in the corner

of his ex-girlfriend's bedroom.

One time he entered her mother's room at night.

One time he said my name repeatedly

and I knew then

that I'd have to remove my culottes some day soon.

some days

One day
the coffee shop
I began to frequent
burned down
and there was no where else to really go
and the people just walked by
as the building disappeared under
a hot cloud

and then one day also
she asked me some questions
and then said:
"I'm very sorry you came all the way
but we do not do research on people
with depression,
but you can have your 10 bucks anyway
and you can spend an hour with the snake anyway"
and I thought to myself:
I can do all of that, but I'm gonna surely be depressed anyway.

and then after
on one day
I decided I didn't care anymore
and I started eating meat.

the sweet rerising

My partner is a sleepwalker
and I greatly enjoy conversing with him
when he sleeps
for he talks about my music contracts
and grand receptions
as if I were famous

I always tell him I'm gonna be famous
and he smiles

My partner is a sleepwalker
so he needn't be awake if I need a kiss
or a little sex
or to squeeze his big arms

I tell him what I did to him while he slept
and he smiles

And so I can't hate him for long
for then I get leg cramps during the night
and my hair turns dry
and bags fall under the eyes
and why the hell do I need him to talk anyway
when no other man can read my mind as he does
he knows what I mean.

bottled

I scream
I scream
I scream to fuck me
and to fuck me harder
and inevitably
the trip becomes trickling down short
and he'll go fetch water
the way dogs do
and I'll press against a pillow
-the coldest and furthest one
from the pseudo-wet mess-
with his panting in the far space between us
my style unimpressed
my eyes unreadable.

Sometimes,
I can love him after it's done
sometimes I roll over to escape his touch and his "you're gonna kill me"s.
and quite honestly, none of this would have any relevance
if it weren't so true to the rest of it
if feeble prose and 'i love you's were not merely art deco
if i had the figure of a beer bottle
and if sex really would make everything better.
but i choose to roll over
and do as him
and forget
that the bottle isn't rolling.

My brain doctor thinks I know exactly what every word I use means
And my poetry becomes incomprehensible at times
and I cherish academic writing which is why I have difficulties reading fiction
and my brother says "I'm not sure you use some words the right way" about my poetry
but I just enjoy how things sound against each other
things make more sense when you can sing them
dictionary definitions are certainly not static
and my world is painstakingly subjective.

Tiles

Tiled
in this gloss walled rage
with no strange worlds to depart
like sins gone
lost
left uncommitted

you live in the spread of light
like renaissance whores
shedding laughter
for the seams undone of a
breaking dress
and the lofty thoughts
of a jukebox mind

Picking up a cloud
the wasp hits the window
in a classic fondling fight
like two lovers encased in their vile hatred
enmeshed in this parasite kiss

a gruesome leaflet of temptation
and paradisiacal hurt.

october 19 1999

We fucked
in holy nights

we fucked and syncopated
the twisted sorrows
that drowned us
from in within
and left behind
eroded and coarse:
the cringe,
the morning,
and the living paradise that
stretched its glossy landscape
until it tore.

found from 1999

With Vodka mingling
between our breaths
My thirsting tongue
it...
cracked

like the snipping sound of grass hit by rain
like the crackling leaps of the automatic
grasshopper

"we could run around naked" you suggested in
shaven legs and
heavy make-up
the plastic strands beaming electric blue

then off you went painting your cream skin nude in
black back she painted in velvet purple
and you called yourself a scoundrel
and you called my hair wild in
her pants
in her pants we envisaged
pink nipples and
ant material and
you didn't cover your eyes
a glance of
hope
over dark bare feet
balanced on those army sandals
you placed your white running shoes beside before
indulging in fuchsia ice-cream and hot
sauce.

All there's left is all there was really:
a couple of you in codes of silence,
your dancing body on screen,
and shafts of strips of threads of memory of exhaling on your every
curl.

Flamenco

I suppose it's similar
to the silence you keep
towards the long lasting lover
when his smell fails to incite
the roll of the shoulders
and his kisses lose texture
like some digital photography.

I suppose it's similar to
dependency on the well known
and the unbearable idea of
returning to solitude and that
impenetrable void that mangles
the persona and his ways.

I suppose it's simply called
falling out of love-
a desperate revenge for things unsaid.
(what was just said?)

And so the ego will of course entice you
to remain in this dull affair
a safe nest built in 6 years
of loneliness
a silk cushioned net meant to feed
the need for emotional fulfillment.
but falling out of love
it will eventually occur
that
one morning
you will allow the nest to
roll from under your limbs
a graceful fall resulting in
heaps of slashed hay
and you will feel absolutely nothing
and you will put the 5 pairs of clicking shoes away
and you will lock the skirts in a suitcase
and remove the b&w pictures from the
electric blue wall
and stop spending money
and sit with wide eyes
enthralled and incredulous
at the utter disinterest
-even boredom-
that stings through the
videos and the burned cds and the people and the words and the polka dots and handkerchiefs and the crossed eyebrows and pursed lips and you cannot fathom how it all became meaningless one afternoon.
and you cannot remember
which afternoon.

Apparently your life was just an obsession.

The next day you take out the soft black shoes
you've been storing for 7 years
and your heart is racing
at the sight of a regained talent
You wonder if it is similar to being on rebound
or if this is really it.
The drive is different of course
especially now that you're getting laid all the time
now it's about endless consumption of cappuccinos
and blinding spotlights
and elbow length gloves
and deafening cries
and the readiness of a big American city
and fuck art
it's gone and it doesn't matter anymore
so is this really it?
It's impossible to know
everything is intolerably uncertain
except the fact that
one day you love something deeply
and the next you will not.

the word ward

It becomes a difficult
nearly strenuous task
to write poetry when
you can sense the upright cock
at the other side of the gleaming screen
it’s bulging beauty detrimental for words
and toxic for madness
And so you become quite aware
that loneliness is the muse of all genius
and that you have surprised yourself
with your lack of professionalism
and the softness in your ways.

I recall the then
when he named me the pineapple
with coarse surface
and gentle fruit
And how I could not hide
the pain
and the horror
that sprawled each time
his eyes escaped
like my lack of understanding.

Now he calls me chocolate
and we amuse ourselves dearly
at the peace of the other’s sleep
the infinite possibilities behind the eyelid
similar to the unpredictability of our lives
similar to the buoyancy of an adventure
A landscape of sins
a nightmare of flight
a calendar fiend
the truth of a murky secret
all raveled in a helium twist
of lofty smiles
and addictive sounds

He’ll never make any sense out of my poetry
The most intimate expression of self
But that’s okay
because I will never quite comprehend
the relevance of color gradation,
or the sublime impact of fonts
or why he gets upset if I cannot decide whether a line is straight or not
And it’s also okay
because no one is supposed to understand poetry anyway.