contemporary poetry

on a white couch

white_couch_poem

 

Poetry doesn’t prove a thing.
It disproves the authenticity of language,
the permanence of meaning and the
universality of reason. Suddenly,

I thought, on the couch, while
reading a history of Christianity. Christ!
what if that’s true. Dispensing order
the poet returns to a formulation
of disorder, a verbal approximation to
natural chaos. I thought,

while sinking in the couch. Silly
ruminations, I often say. But not
this time. I think I was on to some-
thing. Poetry as the last human act,
a summary of lived, thought, felt
experience, an attempt to crystallize
our plight in an image of poetic flight. I

thought, while slouching and setting
the book on the table. I wondered.
Have these architectural feats of language,
these monuments to image, any
lasting foundation other than soft voice?
That’s the question,

I pondered, while breathing deeply on
the white but dirty couch. What if this
coagulation of exasperation, these
swollen metaphors of pain, are merely
dissonant echoes drifting in the void?
I hypothesized,

while heavy on the couch. That is white
and somewhat stained.

Contemporary Poetry

you.

truth

You.
And the world
is your shadow.
You pale like
the archeology
of a voice,
of a concept.
You.
Sleeping like
a classical representation
of philosophy.
You.
And the measurement
of the universe.
You
like a visible
collection of
fictions.
You, metaphysically
and verbally a
sign.
You the threads
of an octopus.
You.
My fundamental
posited
truth.

Contemporary Poetry

this alone is clear

pond_of_universe

enswathe me
with the leaf
of another name

if a violet flower
quivers like ornament

on the ephemeral rawness
of this earth
so a tiny poet

cleaves like thistledown
to the thin vastness

of the word

if it was genuine
my standing by the pond
weighing the quantity of universe

in these thoughts

if it was certitude
that clung as cascade
to the branches

of renewing blood

upon exiting the flesh
I thought unto death
to look back toward

this pallid clarity of ash

this has been important to me
to fling final words as anchor
in the hidden plethoric ;

time as billowing toward
some lambent exit

without us,
this alone is clear
all these residual things

will remain
spilled in darkness.

 

Contemporary Poetry

contemplative light

heavy_light

 

Sits against a white wall.
Looks at the window, stares in fact.
Silence is corporeal. Like a slow vapor
gliding through the room. Like a heavy
light falling to the floor and hardening
into a luminous crust. I watch him
think a thought as if it were the
last thought to ever enter his mind.
This is not real, he thinks.
This is not real, he thinks again.
A flutter of figments,
a crossroads for pigments.
This is not real.
Who could have foreseen him
washing his hands in those streams
of thick light. Who could have
foreseen him tying silence to
the weight of a spiral.
This is not real,
he repeats for a fourth time.
Sitting against a white wall.
Like an old portrait, immobile
while staring at the window.
He has become conscious
of the weightlessness of time.

 

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

a song in language

language_and_World

Here is language
standing in the world
like an obese piano

here are my lips
caressing chaotically
a plaintive arpeggio

a strung mass
of sea splatter
struck by mechanical
whim

I sense freedom
in verbal form
that suckles the
shadow behind
vocal foam

here are the colors
aligned in black mountain
& white valley
here the world
trickles in echo

here is language
standing in the immense
like sculpted fluid

here are my lips
opening like rain
the bouquet of sound

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

language as crust

language_as_Crust

really believing
two of the greatest
musical quivers
boundlessly

I burst quite sick
into history
with how many heads
always holding symphony,
art otherwise despair

consider one literary
thing, make it your bed
and invariably perish
simultaneously with every
thing else

really believe
an absolute nature
factually accused
of producing
nothing

to be a seer
more indeed than describe
but misconstrue
into artless paralysis

walking in reality
but in truth
to bear torrential
truth

do not enter
a tree or song
but life

life, nay, breathe
into something featureless
who knows what reasons
mysterious dissolved them
as examples of this process

merely accept this object
as contour groped in darkness

possibly decades
in the making
itself a memory ago
where I promised
to write language
as crust enveloping
experience

Contemporary Poetry

one hundred twenty-one words

abyss_above_us

Yesterday there,
could have written
a poem, a tunnel
to something greater
than what we amassed
in many units
of cyclic century

I could have, yesterday.
Created a segment of fiction
that borrows truth as tool
and made universe
a cog in a bigger dream

Yesterday, there
was only need for one hundred
twenty-one words
to serve as ligament
between the earth
and a single
human heart

I could have, yesterday.
Covered my eyes, my eyes
with pungent dust and
swallowed the interior
of a cloud. Something vague
but elementary, could have
been spoken

Yesterday there,
could have left legacy
to some mad prophecy,
I could have dropped
an ounce of voice
into the hole
that is an abyss
above us.

Contemporary Poetry

through artery

deeper_soul

To peek within,
through artery,
like spying through
a window into a room
with two armchairs
and a book of chemistry.

To capture within
the vaulted length,
the sinuosity of entrails
like a mountain range
that forces trees up toward the sky
with perched birds inside them
looking down toward the earth
for the head of a worm.

To glance within
through dilated ache,
while standing outside a café
in front of a mob that clothe
with invisible meaning
the earth and pretend its
burning bone will survive
the excitement of light
as crystal memory
in the pockets of their hearts.

To visualize within,
through hot telescope,
the distance of our truths,
like studying the clusters
of emptiness inside
an amoeba of hope.

To see within,
through the gate of the mouth,
a deeper hole that is glutted with silence,
like a threshold that opens up
not to soul
but to something even more
lost.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

el fracaso de dios

la ausencia de dios

No fue gran sorpresa el fracaso de dios.
Yo no me pregunto por qué nunca apareció
en su trono celestial
que le cuidamos tanto como fieles centinelas.
Pero nunca llegó.
Como consecuencia de su ausencia
surge mi obsesión
por sumergir mi cabeza
en un distante eón.
Aprendí a ver, sin restricción de tiempo,
la decadencia y caída de la materia,
la rítmica respiración de toda energía y forma
en su catastrófica resurrección.
Me dediqué a estudiar los abismos
y las coincidencias.
Vi cuando un minúsculo electrón
se estrellaba contra el verbo más común,
o cuando las olas del pensamiento
iban reventando contra un horizonte de proteína,
aun escucho el murmullo de los nervios
que reverberan tras la explosión de un sol senil.
Ahora la vida humana no vale mucho,
siendo un invisible trazo que se une
a una repercusión infinita.
Mi acto es participar
en la hermandad del átomo;
yacer en la tierra
junto a la ceniza de un sol expirado
contemplando un espiral enorme
clavarse en el universo.

 

 

Poesía Contemporánea

toward the soft constellation

soft constellation

I can tell you where I’m going, because I’ve been wrestling with remembrance toward the soft constellation and I scream in a loud abstraction: I aim beyond the tedium of destinations and I will tell you. Migrating like ink into the empty apartment, and the warmth of the sun sinks into my bloated pool of blood. The craftsmanship of carving windows onto the pale walls of silence. My voyage is a concentration of shadows amplifying the dominion of dust. The dialect is a purification of vision, to observe the structures that remain hidden behind the brightness of fear. This is where I’m going, dragging behind me the image of the ocean. Because I’ve lifted up the endless darkness that pulsated like an essence on the surface of the world. There is where I’m going, toward the equilibrium of the mirror, in a gigantic leap within.

Contemporary Poetry