Rara Avis (Ofrecerte un nombre)

para Myrna
 

Ofrecerte un nombre

Una palabra que reconozca
tu existencia milagrosa

que te ayude a reconocerte
que te permita ser
sólo ser

Una palabra
                           que no sea un sustantivo
                           que no dependa de un verbo
                           que no pueda ser adjetivad

Una pirueta del lenguaje
                                                   que caiga
                                                   destruya la ilusión de los límites
                                                   y sintetice todos los territorios

Como lo haces incansablemente
Tú
Rara Avis
Ave Prodigiosa
Vasta y múltiple
como el origen del cosmos

No te ofreceré
un caliz repleto del veneno
de la confusión que no es amor

Tampoco bebería del tuyo
si me invitaras algo similar

Desde la osada honestidad
donde confieso esta cobardía
Cuido el deseo perenne
de forjar
para tí
un nombre
 
que respete tu valentía
y te envuelva en compasión



Título tomado del libro homónimo de Daniel J. García, (Rara Avis. Una teoría queer impolítica) e inspirado por la pieza de teatro documental Trans,  con la actuación de Myrna Moguel.

Un huerto

Murmura al ras
lo que gesta en secreto

Piadoso
mira lejos

Hacia la 1 y 1/2 de la tarde
pinta
forjando el camino del pájaro

Abriendo los ojos
ya durmiendo
rodó sus ruedas de horas ovaladas

Todos los días
                         el calendario

El muro de agua de los ritos

Su engranaje se diluye
pues es su magia algo diferente:

la existencia llevada a cabo
en la porción del ritmo
en el pulso de lo visto
entre el deshielo lampo del instante
que parte
arde
da cuanta forma la forma necesita

En las palabras de los mares
hay lluvia que acompañe su silencio

Andando por ahí
se llega al centro
de algún modo

veredas se transitan en los ojos
                                                   un huerto
                                                   un colibrí
                                                   un pavo real

el vaivén de un sauce
que se ríe sobre el arroyo


Palabras rescatadas de Josué Ramírez's Muda de raíces

Silver

para Myrna

                              

                                But she's just like lightning
                                She goes right through you
                                Then you know you'll never
                                Be the same

                                 - Mazzy Star, "She's my baby"



Mustard. Mustard and black. Mustard and black and silver.

Silver.

Her silver hair.

She is just like lightning.
Her whole self
it does go right through you
Pierces you
                        Leaves you breathless
                        Whole
                        Expanding

As she walks away
                      past you
                      behind you

But also beside you
Right beside you

Mustard and black. And silver.

Her silver self
Traps you
As she walks home, alone.

An entirely new thought

It made her curious
What would it be like
to weave in and out of dreams
an entirely new thought?

She liked the idea of going to sleep
beside the whales
down there
under the sea
where the north wind lives in an ice cave

(it asks for cool breezes
to make you comfortable
while you're getting well
And when you've recovered
they'll take you riding
whale-back

smiling
beyond the skeptical glance of the child
whose faith in fantasy has been shaken)

This afternoon
when I woke up from my nap
I heard you talking
about the air
more freely

Just for a few days
will you leave the thinking?
There's more to your being here

You'll feel the sea
which means
you'll rest a little better


(Built from words stolen -and borrowed- from Laura London's The Windflower)

Les mots I - Palabras como cavernas

Line the word caves
with panther skins,

widen them, hide-to and hide-fro,
sense-hither and sense-thither,

give them courtyards, chambers, drop doors
and wildnesses, parietal,

and listen for their second
and each time second and second
tone.

Paul Celan's Line the word caves, translated by Pierre Jorris

Many other nights

Jasper Gywn mi ha insegnato che non siamo personaggi, siamo storie. 

- Alessandro Baricco, Mr Gwyn

Will there be many other nights like
be standing here
watching you
like I could write your portrait
in my mind
while I watch you dance

Like I could listen to some truest self
speaking through your moving body
and come up
with the setting and the props
and characters and plot
that would speak about you
symbolically
like people would read it and say
yeah
that's him
absolutely

Will there be many other nights like
be standing here
trying to spot you among the crowd
of swaying and jumping bodies
trying to listen to your truest self
while I watch you dance

Variation on Paul Blackburn's Listening to Sonny Rollins at the Five Spot and Alessandro Baricco's Mr Gwyn

(Or variation the third on not-precisely-Eleven jazz poems)

Absently dreaming

I have seen them riding seaward
Combing the hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black
   - T. S. Eliot, "The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

The melancholic seaside smiled
absently
dreaming

The waves pretended silences
They understood

Flop

the now
sentenced
to fault

speech
depends on the eyes' voices
your voice
my lips

step and flop

Feather

O the lovely bankteller, like a moose he
Rode my spirit quite outside my clothes
And chrysanthemums sprouted I assure you
Out my nipples when he kissed them.
     -Dorothea Lasky, On Old Ideas

The weightless
svelte
drifting
sexual feather: your body

Your body follows
many a exulting
flows of jazz
It follows them truly

Your body's occasional youth
swallows my hips
(my keen hips)
Your body curves and swallows
my keen hips

It dips into my height
(arched and fragile)
It stings it
Your body dips into my height
and stings it with firm weather

God distinctly has pitied us both
has pitied both our lips
leaving them breathless

God distinctly has pitied my
wise
nifty
half-grown breasts
my laughing body
my lisping flesh

but not my feet
not my bungling
stumbling feet

not my steps
which would rather part
before they tousle your
agile
slid
svelte
drifting
feathery body

Your body
following truly
through a dribbling moan
of jazz


Variation on E. E. Cummings' God pity me whom (God distinctly has).

Happily never after

There are a few exceptions, a few provisos and a couple of quid pro quos.
   -The Genie (impersonating somebody else in Disney's Aladdin)

Don't get me wrong, dear
If I were to make somebody else's pancakes
every morning and afternoon and every morning
and afternoon and again every morning
I would consider myself a slave
(plus, I'm all for a healthier, diversified diet)

I do love going to creperies
and bakeries, and pizzeries
and taqueries
Though I suspect you're not the
we're-dining-out-tonight kind of guy,
hansdome boy

I also love summertime and moonlight
and winter and sunlight
much too much
to be bothered with grief

I would just like to know
all a jazz artists knows about jazz
Maybe play some Django chords
or sing when you're near
there's such an air of spring about it

Still, there is one art
I have come to master - that of losing
(even losing you, the joking voice,
a gesture I love, I shan't have lied)

Variations on Angela Ball's Jazz and Elizabeth Bishop's One Art

Magic Lantern

È già spezzato il fiatto
e ricomincio a respirare
senza sforzo e senza affanno
-Carmen Consoli, Perturbazione Atlantica

A magic lantern could throw the nerves in patterns
on a screen:
of the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
of the sunsets, the dooryards, and the sprinkled
streets
of the novels and the skirts that trailed along the floor
of perfumes from dresses and restless nights
in one-night cheap hotels
and of half-desserted streets
that follow like a tedious argument
of insidious intent

the nerves of braceleted arms and arms in short-sleeves
of windows and tables and shawls
and cups, marmalade, tea
and cakes and tea and ices
of porcelain, teacups, toast

the patterns of the nerves within eyes that
fix all in formulated phrases
of the nerves of formulated men and women
pinned and wriggling and sprawling on walls
and this, and so mucho more!

All to make it possible to say just what I mean:
in short, that I was afraid.

For perhaps we're all meant to be both
Prince Hamlet and an attendant lord.
To somehow both drown,
and not.

Mock Moon

I like the sun
when the sun
is seen through clouds
and disguises itself
as the moon

Hurto

Guardava quella casa, davanti a sé, e pensava alla misteriosa permanenza delle cose nella corrente mai ferma della vita. Stava pensando che ogni volta, vivendo con loro, si finisce per lasciare su di loro come una mano leggera di vernice, la tinta di certe emozioni destinate a scolorare, sotto il sole, in ricordi. 

- Tre volte all'alba, Alessandro Baricco

Sunset shines
A gift
ineffable
and bright

One must watch it almost
with devotion
for it won't last long

It's colors will become pale
and fade
diminishing
into the growing darkness

Night walking

Above all things
your voice
which I struggle to remember

or one of its vehicles
your lips
the kiss you placed
on my head

an unexpected gift
wishing
to speak for you

Known unnamed

There has to be a kind of speech

beyond naming, or even praise,  

a discipline                                  

that locates light and lets it go.   

- "Observer", by Nate Klug

It is not lust
(or at least not yet)
which only makes it more beautiful
and more confusing

It is your hand caressing
the cloth that keeps my arm
your face seeking closeness to mine
closeness alone

your hand resting on my bare skin
your whole body resting
beside my uninterrupted nakedness
just resting

even when I feel you awakening next to me
your hand rests
and remains
and keeps the stillness

Jewels and flowers

You were afraid of the god
sitting there among his jewels
and flowers and precious fabrics
all brightly colored
looking you straight in the eye
from the fake sky
of painted clouds

The god of fortune.
You were afraid of the god of good fortune.


But you also sang songs

(and claimed your right to freeedom
asking if I'd join you)

Music for mermaids (ou à la recherche du J. A. P. perdu)

                                                                                       There was nothing in our hands

                                                                                       no history      

                                                                                       no waiting, no memory

                                                                                       no fate

                                                                                       there was only one moment

                                                                                       only one moment

                                                                                       our hearts were on fire

                                                                                       and it burned in our bones.

                                                                                          -Our Hearts, Firehorse

An indeed there was no time
to wonder, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?"
There was time to turn back and ascend the stair,
Time to disturb the universe
with a hundred visions and decisions
that no revisions could reverse.
Time for you and time for me.

For either of us could be Hamlet,
and we've both had our prophet.
We did not let the moment of our greatness flicker,
we just bit off the matter with a smile,
we squeezed the universe into a ball
and rolled it towards some overwhelming question,
We each said: "I have been Lazarus, come from the dead,
I could tell you all, but I shall not tell you all."

And it was worth it, after all, it was worth while
when, settling a pillow by each other's head
we did not need to say: "That is what I mean,
indeed, that is it".

And in short, we were not afraid.

A word which is not

                                                                              ...the whole room swells

                                                                              with the scent of cinnamon & desire.

                                                                              How imprecise the smell of desire.

                                                                              -Mathew Nienow, "Ode to the Belt Sander 

                                                                               & This Cocobolo Sapwood"

To forge a word
                           which is not
to make it out of someone else's breath
to open up and give it a home
                                                 inside
to keep it unspoken among blankets
where there is no room for fear of pleasure
no room for thought

If anything, it would have to be the name of a scent
                                                                                  and of its alchemy
lavender turning into something incandescent and sharp
like cinnammon
                         or crimson red

or a thousand different glasses reflecting one same flame

Paper

A una chica de ojos grandes y cabello salvaje

You resigned
A determination to end a determination
Una determinazione sparita
Sparire
             To disappear
To put on pause, to put on a shelf, or on top of the fridge,
or in a box

To hand in. A paper. Oneself. Ink absorbed and not so perennial. Hands and metal. Metal. It can take so many shapes.

To exchange. Not a city for a city, but a city for a small town. The poli for the mono. Tha vastness for the singleness. A one. One's one. Your one.

Not Life! A Lover!
                                 But life! A husband!

K for work
K for casa
K for cakes and pies and dinner
K for a young woman in a small town

Nothin' but the idea of chocolate. An elegy.

Oh this coffee is really good,
though come to think of it it tastes
like nothing plus the idea of chocolate,
or an acquaintance of chocolate
speaking fondly of certain times
it and chocolate had spoken of nothing,
or nothing remembering a field
in which it once ate the most wondrous
sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese
yet still wished for a piece of chocolate
before the lone walk back through
the corn then the darkening forest
to the disappointing village and its super
creepy bed and breakfast.

With secret despair I returned
to the city. Something seemed to be
waiting for me. Maybe the ghost
I keep choosing, even if it's "nothing
better than a wandering cloud" following me
which of course to me and everyone
sounds incredible.

All I follow is my own desire,
sometimes to feel, sometimes to be
at least a little more than intermittently
at ease with being loved. I am never
at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk
and look at the brightly colored
houses filled with lives, not with night
when I lie on my back and listen,
not with the hallway, definitely
not with facebook, definitely
not with time.

Take this cup full of longing and stay as long
as you want and maybe a little longer.


A personal version of Matthew Zapruder's "The Prelude", written in non-secret despair and longing for the food of the gods.