you are swans on a lake glossy water and windowpanes dance in Japantown San Francisco rain blue diamonds and gold chains you're making me colorful rhythmic, tidal, magnetic like subway doors and deep brown eyes you are steely guitar strings skinny paint and city garages steam glass and red wine dreams pounds and screams like velvet roller-coasters or black silk or first coffee and cream my legs spin up like urban waterfalls electric raindrops, over your head wrapping, wrapping around like golden boas, I want to know you like radiowaves crashing on the shore I'll be your shell--glowing conch under the sea only if you'll dive in and swim for me arms outstretched, pulsating, sending words out through the waves like sonar, I think you may have found me. . .
Matches to Ash
my first words from this chamber of my heart,
from these depths of my belly and consciousness–
the first glimpses of my silhouette in an honest mirror,
the first taste of oxygen after life under rushed waves.
once her lips were so close–
now only echoes on my skin.
my chest swollen as my heart tries to leap
through my ribs when she leaves,
my bones know tonight’s solitude–
a manifestation we can’t return to;
matches that burn like dominoes
long enough to enlighten,
then dying quickly in succession,
with fading steps she progresses into the horizon,
pure ash in my pocket
Forlorn city
hiking up Ocean Street sidewalk.
flannel blustering Chinese afternoon
yellow lights and markets, garbage and coffee,
a woman drains my mind
of anything I’d meant to think about today;
I try to romanticize the stark pain haunting my belly,
calculate how couldn’t she think of me.
our deep blue night broke me open and apart.
sighs and words from her tongue
replaying now that I’ve made it
to San Francisco, driven across the dawn,
walked under chipping fire escapes and neon motels,
the whole lot—
lungs drowned in empty air, breezy lights, midnight faces,
rogue broken beauty and forlorn city loneliness,
no place for love;
only lust and nights and loss and sweaty days and docks–
amidst thousands of lips and hats and guitars and hills,
she is still impossibly not.
A resolve despite her loss
She turns our vinyl to its B-side
undoes all the kissing
erases all her words
now her whispers cut into me
and the residual luxury of her skin burns into mine
in fiery memory of our sunlit night.
Still, my soul billows in the wind
like fresh sails on familiar sea, made foreign
by her lips, haunting like ash in my burning mouth;
her cinnamon fingers and amber eyes seize my ribs
and crush me with grace, and other soft movements
she emits—
yes, this is my heart’s storyline and beat—
my soul’s repose for which
I’d searched forlorn
all life long.
is Home truly on the highway? free breezes and fields from the passenger seat view?
when night falls, my soul’s never been so vacant as my eyes fill with blue
Home is where it’s always been
I never knew this before being continents away
before my heart was abandoned in my own lonesome bed
before accomplishing freedom (a deepening loneliness still)
and wearing stories in my skin and mind that
never filled that emptiness, never warmed my bones
for more than one night at a time.
Home is an assured place. soft voices and lightbulbs
Keep to the road
pepsi cap jingles on linoleum floor as it falls from a glass bottle in the afternoon cyber cafe,
I can feel how wonderous life is
from the rusty glass sunny windows and autumn breeze over the computer screens,
raspberry plastic juice bag and crunchy rice chocolate
to keep my belly full on a morning of wind and reality,
always on the move but I sit still here, embracing how life moves by,
at times it´s too slow
to even feel,
so I hope to keep to the road…
Off the City Grid
I am off the grid as always
taking time, wandering,
exploring and simply breathing
sometimes crumbling..
under volcanoes and baking chicken,
cold summer kitchen nights,
shoes beer park lights, cement like we’re young,
free world and alone souls in the Santiago dark,
rain lightly falling over the city, foglights green through mist
and we are leaking boats, holding each other
to stay afloat.
Ocean Water
i will keep you warm when cold waters flood the present with the past
I won’t let you freeze from the glaciers of pain I used to cause
but you’ll have to feel for me with all the empathy you can find
abandoned homes under the sea where tsunamis used to strike
don’t let your heart remember, you’re above water now
I didn’t know you, I didn’t mean to sink your trust again
I didn’t know myself, I didn’t mean to sink so low
there’s no oasis in the middle of the sea
no way to make it up to you but spend every day
steering us to shore.
I waited at the water’s edge, dried by the sun
seeing your shape on the horizon I began to focus
my vision and now my eyes only swim with memories
of the future.
Silent Day
Today I wish to be silent,
and hear only wind rustle over my ears.
My blood cannot handle voices
or it will boil through my skin
which trembles from the vastness
of the Void
which my dreams have become,
stained by reality’s harsh sunlight,
nothing like soft summer,
only jaded delights
and comfortable sadness.
I repose in this silent day,
bathe in the distance and melancholy
I’ve created.
Mountain breeze and car alarms
replace my hometown melodies,
my childhood dream security
becomes anxious tranquility.
I wish to exist outside of my heart,
which owns the broken nostalgia
of my soul
like waterfalls of sun
pouring through windowpanes
that I can never move beyond
or my spirit will burn to ash.
Say you understand me,
and lock me in your arms,
don’t let me go so easily
or I’ll believe you’ve barely wanted me.
I step on white hot pavement,
the road to Central Station,
paths in all directions,
I want to float into the sky.
you don’t know how to handle me,
or how to contain love,
the shortage deep inside of you
disintegrates my empathy.
I sense you walking far from me,
the Void between us widening,
tracing back our steps in time,
back to the lonely beginning.
Drifting Thoughts
One slim glass of coca-cola iceless on wood mueble by my pillow where I rest my skin in motionless tranquility so as not to sweat in summer afternoon
adobe tile room,
150 pesos rusty golden coins, a receipt for tomatos, and old Motorola accompany the dewy glass as I sit
and occasionally miss my city as she drifts through my head like breath or waves,
and sometimes her memory even pounds against my bones like veins of blood trembling with heartbeat,
she will always be fuera de la realidad, for her hospitality is rough like pavement and her heart a jungle of chaos;
but her Dream is like roses, an oasis to my soul’s reality.
her promise has fed me, no matter if I fulfill, for the wind has always pushed me where I need to be…
