fifth floor

fifth_floor

I decided to live on a fifth floor

because I enjoy viewing things from

afar

most afternoons

I watch down

on the swaying of the city

the moody strangers              

the angry cars

a fifth floor is a nest

seated on the branch

of a decaying tree

sunsets are my favorite

when the ooze of night

drips over the frightened lampposts

quickly the children of the day

retreat to their smaller caves

on a fifth floor

there is not much to do

but watch the ambiguous expressions

of pedestrians

and listen to the tired screams

of ambulances

while the cool autumn air

sinks

between the concrete-walled

canyon

I moved to a fifth floor

so I could have thoughts

like these

and to never

become

one of them.

 

 

 

Nihilistic Poetry

Once written on 8.13.09

A night becomes clouded
as we sometimes say
‘things happen’
abstractly, indifferently
that it is suddenly August
2009
a veil of intellectualism
is lifted
a human face looks up
mine, yours, whatever
there are clouds, ideas, philosophies
up there
we look down, you, me, whatever
barren reality
wooden window frames
dusty desks, unsharpened pencils
feeble light, organic darkness
you see the dark
it doesn’t have a name
then there is real silence
scattered coins
uncharged cell phones
a sleeping wife
that it hits you, me, what you will
it is August 13th
2009
what a feeling.

Nihilistic Poetry

More or Less

Twilight and morning are now irresistible  

    they hang above like motherless children 

there is no reason to believe in one or the other 

           all the insects swarm this local abyss 

fortunate, for us, all minutes randomly orbit an hour 

    anywhere is home, or else, unfettered lives would not be possible 

  reentering again a field of silences 

          morning or night or true or false 

were all excluded 

             an intimate void 

more or less… yours.

Trapped in nothingness

It seems to be I am locked inside this excessive silence. That while I look up into the hazy azure of the sky or into the windy skies of night I discover an impenetrable void, a silence that cannot be breached, a solitude that is here to stay. My arms plead with desperation for a sign, my ears are on a pilgrimage in search of a sacred word – a confirmation that life can be trusted. A revelation or miracle that can transform these wild gyrations of nonsense into a lively and trustworthy universe.  Long tunnels of agony and atrophy seem to be the destiny of those that aspire to awaken and revive human life from its muddled lethargy. But being trapped inside an inescapable chasm, I have only the ignoble expanse of space to address and all of creation turns its back on me and answers back in SILENCE. I am not insightful enough to interpret my own frustrations, I cannot tell if it is a general trend in this new age or if I stand alone in this inexplicable confusion. Furthermore, the only remedy comes in strings of lyrical eruptions that at first sight seem vague and meaningless, but are in fact projections of the real ambiguity and hollowness that resides deep within. It is unnecessary to find coherence when one is no longer servant to the tyrant of reason, it is superfluous to propound theories when the intellect is too weak to grasp reality. So, the image is inevitable: floating in cold nothingness, silent solitude. A journey through emptiness, a constant motion through space finding every now and then a naked planet, an aura of beauty and patiently collecting the dust of time in expectation of a glorious sun – surrendering to the all-powerful ground of being.

Immensity

 

Feel free to venture into it,
Those lands of lucid revelations
Upon the contemplation
                        of a tree
                            or an ant
The formation of a cloud
                        or the wind in skies
Submerging into the intimate universe
While our sight becomes a tongue
in warm moist contact
With the immensity that surrounds us

 Oppose it no more,
Engulfed in the tenderness of the night
Surveying the voids of the galaxies
Stand maskless on the precipice of every moment
            In a frightful convulsion of disbelief
Powerless: halfway between wonder and adoration