Ghosts Revisited

Yes, the nerves are like tombs,
but there has been no death --
save the many repetitions
of a strangling in the depths

A submersion
and resurface
and a strangling once again

Four months on,
strapped to my shoulders, it remembers --
still rattling the coins
I scooped up that December

"Just take all that"
from the desk where they sat --
so I scooped them up from you.

Now each time they sound
in their pocketed place --
sift out memories
I'd not dreamed to erase

The clamor I kept just to
go back to you --
but the small pocket wore
and it shrunk -- and I grew.

So I emptied the coins,

but went back to you --

An absence,
a ghost
and echoes without proof.

Tangible the Solidarity

The nights began --

A too-spacious twin bed, all the spaces
of the still square screaming
               tangible the solidarity

suffocating, the openness --

body smell of you clinging
    bittersweet,
          precarious to the pillow.

From inside,
in my place
    against the wall,
with my arm laid across the right side
feeling phantom remnants --

and in the daytime, the remnants were true
in tiny, wiry
black pieces of you
missing from their frizzy whole.


The sheets with all the colored spots
went unwashed
      and unwashed
           for weeks
                   into months --

the scent all but imperceptible
    still --
even after burying deep
and inhaling
full.

Replaced with my own.

Obstinate body laying claim on the space.


And soon I followed suit,
letting me sprawl across
           into your borrowed domain.

while, like the musk,
your memory seeped
from me
with steady takeover
    and desperate push
of my own feeble,
                        needy mind.

October 21, 2012

seven years ago today you died and i imagine they found you in a heap on the kitchen floor but who were they and they told me you had a brain aneurysm but i wondered if they lied to me because i was fifteen just fifteen years old and i lost you i lost you someone you shouldn't lose until you're forty and have a life of your own settled but you're never ready to lose your mother or that gardenia lotion she wears or the constant softness of her skin or the sound of her voice when she calls you maria because that was her name for you and no one else or her laugh that laugh you hear sounding from your own voice box sometimes and you still don't know all of what you share with her what mysteries lie in your own body inside your own head the psychology of someone mentally ambiguous you have inherited a million traits and you miss every single one you shared with her even her bad ones you miss because if you still had to deal with them there would still be a chance to fix her but now there is nothing and she is ashes in an urn under the ground and a memory just a memory and whatever you carry on of her whatever i carry on of her whatever i carry on of you.


eyes open for any sign of you you left me a sign at your birthday the kid's shirt with your tombstone verse on the back i thought i picked the right one because it felt right and i almost cried right there in the store when i saw it the sign i knew it had come from you on your day and today is your day too today and tomorrow and the next day will all be your days because they didn't know what day to pick for your official day of death they thought it was the 21st they found you later they found you on the 23rd so they thought you died two days before that two whole days you were there waiting to be discovered and picked up and taken care of but there was nobody not until two days later and that haunts me mom that haunts me because i am your flesh and i wasn't there and you were gone you passed without notice the world kept turning just like it did after i found out the world kept turning and that was unfair everyone's lives went on and some people were really happy and that was so unfair and i still had everyday thoughts along with the surreal thoughts i had those thoughts that are weightless and the ones about you that weighed me down and wouldn't allow me to move like glaciers that i tried to cry out they were like big cold glaciers inside me that pushed all my organs down and made me 100 pounds heavier and i cried cried cried cried tried to cry it out nothing went away it's just a weight you carry the rest of your life it's just like chains connected from you to me there are chains connecting you and me but it's hard because i'm here and you're there that big "there" that i have no concept of and i don't know where you are but the chains keep me close.

La Llanura Pampeana

Blackened trees line the hills

of la llanura pampeana

expanse of swaying softness

blurred as we barrel on

and I am lost in the blue

where all the tips meet the sky

fixed in a twilight state of mind

then for something in the way

the night cloaks the day

el Rio de la Plata

rushing port side

I am met by a moment

of abrupt infinity.

And I count myself wise

while feeling plenty green

to have arrived at understanding

misunderstood things –

Así it came to me

from behind smudged glass

that every success and

every sadness

all the strangers with stories I’ve passed

all the sheets tucked in and

the how-are-yous

doubts and vices

and coffee spoons

all assemble together in the most

precarious way

to measure a life

fragilely

and with purpose unknown.

I look to where

the black meets the blue

release the worries

purposes

and belief I have

any clue -

into the river

still rushing on its way

here in this moment

as the night meets the day.

Raindrop Series // No. 003

LOCAL NATIVES "Who Knows Who Cares" • http://youtu.be/6hhE_sqJG3g

LYRICS • http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/localnatives/whoknowswhocares.html

Desequilibrio

With chocolate corners
       like a child,
Pidiendo tu perdón
           and playing grown-up
Shift my weight as the blame in your eyes
   wanes
           and I struggle pushing against the freight train of words
           que no salgan de la boca,
                que se quedan en la lengua --
             
           Induce a hernia from frustration and esfuerzo

like the one you developed
when you ran from Palermo to Puerto Madero
trying to find us.

You always give all that you have.

Raindrop Series // No. 002

Courtesy of Tyler Knott Gregson

tylerknott.com

Goal #2: Write it all out.

"Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper."
-Ray Bradbury

Raindrop Series // No. 001

Time wasted; time lost
Time of underestimated cost

The moments dissolve --

My memory has disgraced and obliterated you.

Goal #1: Be present in the present.

Courtesy of Julian Bialowas
http://julianbialowas.com/

Retrieval

Buddy
is the Golden Retriever that lives next door.
I can't be sure
of the length of his life;
only that it has been scarcely walked outside the fence
                        that cages him --
                        --not a white-picket, but rather
a chain-link
in the square of the back yard.

As he passes
just behind metal diamonds
and noses the grass at the base,
as if looking
for a way out --

his thick caramel-and-white seems
    such a waste
         in that thankless space
and the longing on his face --
         familiar.

Like the need to stretch,
or to breathe;
to walk in the open,

unconfined by the constricts of all one has known.

Corduroy Jacket

still, the corduroy jacket gripped in my fingers,

ear pressed to your thumping heart --

slow breathing --

lingering, holding off…

numb and disbelieving

and grasping on to minutes, seconds as they

whisper past us

your guitar case rests against the wall;

a line of passengers filed

it’s almost 1 p.m.

almost time for you to go,

almost time --

but i am clutching the corduroy still.

your heart faintly beating into my

ears full of blood pulsing --

still among the rolling wheels of luggage bags

and automatic doors…

releasing,

i meet your almond eyes with mine

small pools contorting your face

and without words, a kiss

the second-to-last time i will ever feel the softness

you press your whiskered cheek

to one side, then the other

in that French way of yours

but this time, it's the ache of adieu

in the pressure of your lips

you extract from your pocket

a single sheet pressed into sixteenths

and say to me with gentle transfer,

“read this when you get home”

and stepping back,

the space is tangible.

you make a joke as you gather your things;

a single desperate burst of a laugh,

and it is not enough.

suddenly,

it is not enough.

closing the space, i reach;

my fingers delved into your frizzy black curls,

a single stroke of tongue and pillowed closure --

the very last time.

the promise of contact,

the "call me when you arrive home,"

no goodbye.

we do not speak goodbyes,

and still

i cannot speak them.

i see the radiating pulse of reality --

it does not register.

i turn before i comprehend

before i cannot leave at all

and with the song playing over in my head,

promising things unpractical --

“i will see you again,”

walk through the people

with my face beginning its contortions,

briskly and without looking back, there is no other way,

through the automatic doors

into cold kansas city again...

empty and abruptly without you --

So, Easily the World Rotates on Axis

So, easily the world rotates on axis --

still -- as it had before,

and makes its slow revolutions

as dictated by the sun.

      Our frail little existence --

          paltry.

While millions of stars are held in place

and glow from light-years away,

we lie

we laugh

we tire

we die.

And the marrow of life

has yet to be extracted --

      Our bones brittle

      behind counters,

             cubicles and desks.

The man signs another check.

The woman wipes the table

     with a rag soaked in grimy water

so shallow in the bucket,

                   you can see to the bed.

And returning it, she wonders

how full and dark it is

in bodies

outside her little tributary.

Connections

I saved your cup with the coffee stains and all

and it sat on my bookshelf.

I return to it time and again

        Press my lips to where yours had been --

I never miss you quite as much

      as when I realize whatever touch

            I'll ever have from you again

             is what is stuck to this stark white lid.