They

were sitting on the ledge of a building
talking about the pursuit of happiness,
how every human action is motivated
by self-love and trying to reconcile
morality with a mechanistic view
of a universe, everywhere ruled
and determined by inflexible laws
the talk went on for some time
they would interject a few modern expressions
to avoid falling into a complete anachronistic conversation
reminiscent of the 18th century philosophes
then the one on the right said,
– What if we jump?
– there’d be a fall
– yeah, and then what?
– who knows
– do you think there’s consciousness after death?
– as much as you can find in the drunk man’s sleep
– should we jump? what stops us from finding out?
– fear, our loved ones, the desire to seek new experiences and store them in the insatiable coffins of memory. But mostly fear.
– if you could have anything in the world before you die, what would it be?
– another lifetime to figure that out
– do you often think of death?
– on rare special occasions, like funerals and that kind of thing
– do you find any consolation in the thought of death?
– yeah in the thought that death dissolves all suffering with the same intensity as life withheld happiness from the individual
– I’m going to jump
– I’ll take the stairs

He did not jump but was he really considering it? They decided to go home. As they walked together over the bridge they both noticed the sea was restless that day.

 

21st_century_poetry_blog

21st century Poetry

barely begun poem

new_poetry

I have a street and no metaphor
a layer of moonlight but
no tremulous..

This is a street and
not a metaphor
not a shivering slate of moonlight

I’ve seen my street bare without metap..

The street is cold without metaphor
drenched in the shudder of moonlight

This street is devoid of metaphor
a meaningless stretch of cold trembling
moonlight

I have a street but without metaphor
even tho I’ve left a ripple on its moonlight

A street sleeps without metaphor
moonlight awake floating away like a trembling mist

these streets are meaningless without metaphor
the light of the moon is afraid but isn’t visibly shaking

A street has no meaning and cannot be a metaphor
because it’s drowning in the yellow of its moonlight

I walk upon a street and find no metaphor
half of its moonlight has been wasted on rats

This street has an absence of metaphor
because moonlight is nothing but the light of the moon

Upon a street I walk without a metaphor
all the while thinking that the moonlight
is the simile of a smile

The street is empty; empty of metaphor
only a light is seen and it’s not from the moon

A street is a place where nobody cares for metaphors
and the moonlight is a spot you leap over

Somehow this street lost its metaphor
but I found the moonlight tattooed on my skin

A street is no metaphor
and a poem is not moonlight

 

 

21st century Poetry

nocturnalist

poetry_of_time

There like a bolt
like a stone amidst
a dust beyond
deep in shine
a pocket w/noon
and no shadow
a golden fury
himself mad
speaking loudly
and evening
with lawlessness
into rivulets a feather
nobody wings
possibility’s a stream
hours whirl
he types ‘whiteness
merge with tear
and this earth
trickled like spark
upon memory’
he listens
apparently
the wind has a mouth
and the same questions
about time.

Contemporary Poetry

a thing imagined

new_poetry_2013

Preferably soft,
jelly-like
but resilient to heat
and the precarious nuisances of the jungle
tender but defiant
able to camouflage among
stones and clouds alike
its softness must be delicate
but decisive not necessarily static
as it can be allowed rigidity at times
equivalent to that of taut velvet
not too colorful nor flaunting
the impenetrability of black or white
capable of evaporating without dispersing
(i.e. losing its cohesion without sacrificing its wholeness)
different from the rest of its kind
without becoming an example of freak
it should waver at twilight at the risk
of turning ambiguous but never incomprehensible
its upper part magnificent
and evasive like the current of time in a dream
its lower part glorious and ubiquitous
like dawn in a desert’s sky
preferably sophisticated without being pompous
straightforward without being wholly divested of enigma
and existing mainly between
the eternal and the transient.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

the origin of birth

poetry_of_origin

 

If you tell a kid
that can’t remember being born,
you were born of your mother,
from your father’s seed
you come from a line of lovers
that started way back
before the instrument of love
when there was only form
forming flux and
the structure of diamonds
everywhere protruding
from the mystery
of dark pulsation.

 

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

against the intellect

astronomy_poetry

In the pissoir I am a man.
(look above)
some sort of distant collision,
where totalities remain crumbs
see those tiny galaxies
crushing their bones
without emotion in a faraway
dissolution of waves.
I am a man leaving the certainty
of proud world.
I thought I knew the world
when shapes were its body
and chaos its breath.
But even that is a view.
The violence of the mass exists
like pink throbbing in the
dynamite of perception.
I leave the toilet and confront
a scroll of measures and a bunch
of mirrors masking the smoke –
at the core nothing is known.
The sky – like a word –
turns black.
And there’s silence,
like a shadow,
following me home.

Contemporary Poetry

the philosophy of wood

philosophy_poem

The table
	no time for its
	existentialism
and absurd
chair leaning against
the table’s futile stance.

	I’m a pragmatic man
so I have no use for knowing
myself.

The table
	studies its own nature
by looking at its askew shade.
Chair, somberly
contemplating suicide
because it wants to remove
its painfully ingrown nails.
	Paradoxically they keep it alive,
	in form, in function. 

I have only one reality and the clarity of purpose. 

My furniture’s
introspection
is a trifling problem
in my busy condition. 

The table has begun questioning things. 
	It likes it when I leave Camus
	on its surface. 
I hear the creaky whisper, quoting:
	‘the human wooden heart has a tiresome tendency
	to label as fate only what crushes it.’

Absurdly, the chair stares at the modernity
of my modus operandi. 

I cannot be stopped to wonder. 
	Progress is my mission. 

The table is a stranger to itself.
	The chair competes 
 for my attention. 

I have appetites that the world
cannot satisfy.

Table is dissatisfied with its lucidity,
	through logic the chair has
arrived at the conclusion that
knowledge is a form of chaos.

I’m a man of the world in spite of everything. 

	In spite of poverty, war, injustice or
my furniture’s uncertainty and their long
episodes of incoherent silence.

Contemporary Poetry

we still cling to noise

absurd_short_poem

 

Some people think this thing will burn their eyes.
So brave they stare at the thinghood of the thing.
They say this stuff is a knife of pain and a cutting flame.
So brave they stare at the sharpness of its shape.

Some people think this object will blister their skin.
So brave they touch the surface of the structure.
They say this stuff is a sun of swelling suffering and a sea seething with steam.
So brave they touch the furnace of its frenzy.

Some people think this entity will poison their tongue.
So brave they taste the entirety of the whole.
They say this stuff is a gulp of gunpowder and a drop of death.
So brave they taste the viscosity of its violence.

 

 

 

AbSURd PoEtry

thirst

windows to soul

Sed is Spanish for thirst. Cyrano de Bergerac sat one day to write his tragedy, La Mort d’ Agrippine, for reasons no one will ever know or understand. He wrote, perhaps before midnight:

Ces beaux riens qu’on adore et sans savoir pourquoi….

Beautiful nothings that we adore without knowing why. He was referring to the gods. So there is thirst for absolutes, some people sense it and yet die athirst. For centuries mankind has looked for this totality through a window they’ve called the soul, which is rather unfortunate that today it has been reduced to myth. Not because the soul is an actuality, but because we need the image of the cosmic window. Alma is soul in Spanish. But I don’t want to say, tengo sed de alma (I am thirsty of soul). It is peculiar that in Spanish “to be thirsty” is expressed literally “to have thirst”, as if thirst were a possession, an accretion to one’s being. For this reason I prefer to express myself in a double language: I am sed of soul. That is to say that I AM the thirst of soul, I am the empty dark room desirous of an aperture, of the link between my personal darkness and total illumination; I am the emptiness craving a flood of light that will inundate the cavity of my cavernous being.

In the same play, Cyrano wrote:

Une heure après la mort, notre âme évanouie sera ce qu’elle était une heure avant la vie.

One hour after death our vanished soul will be that which it was an hour before life.

That is to say, the window will soon be shattered.

So quick, let’s raise the curtains of alma.

Contemporary Poetry

terms and conditions

postmodern_poetry_blog

why don’t

YOU
walk down history
as through a great avenue
to deliver the good news
to a decaying world

why don’t

YOU
speak a language
whose every word
is a cup filled
with beatific light

why don’t

YOU
become
the blossoming bud
of fire that will consume
the wasteland of the earth

why don’t

YOU
release mankind
from its immemorial shackles
and carry the heavy light of truth
to the eyes of every man, woman
and child

why don’t

YOU
reveal the gates of salvation,
or the ultimate purpose
of our petty lives

why don’t

YOU
add up all divinities
and multiply them
into one enormous entity

why don’t

YOU
unite all opposites
sensual and ideal
material spiritual
past future
life death
into a totality of all
totalities

why don’t

YOU
wrestle from the grip
of science and religion
the meaning of all
being

why don’t

YOU
lift the veil of illusion
and disclose the essence
behind this all-
embracing chaos

then, only then

I will follow you.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry