as I walked across the country the plains lost their green and rendered themselves stone. mountains, once shrouded in sunflower, dried and snow fell, so I reached the top with nothing. love turned out to be a season --not a home.
canción de fantasmas
la canción que tocaba
por los rincones del metro
ahora queda callada
bajo tu piel.
vive en tus huesos
mientras andas para su casa,
y te metes en sus brazos,
bajo la frazada.
la escuchas de ilusión
a veces en la mañanitas,
pero se disipa cuando la luz
toca tus párpados.
durante los dias,
olvidarás lo que por los sueños
se sintió inevitable.
Y una vez en tiempos antiguos
la canción también te acariciaba
el rostro,
con notas ligeras,
te amaba--
suavemente.
es aquella melodía que recuerdas
en los momentos muertos de la noche
y es aquella que choca contra tus labios
cuando tratan de besar.
la canción
respira desde tu reflejo
en el vidrio,
mientras tu te muevas por tu mundo,
que la letra no comparte y así,
tiene pocas palabras,
la melodía cambia lentamente--
por si acaso una melodía sobrara
por toda una vida.
South American Blues
I have finally published the compilation of poetry which has been waiting for this closure for almost four years now.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/natalie-wood/south-american-blues/paperback/product-23914268.html
today
I wasn’t even restless
as I lay
by the window of rain.
Under pretenses of shelter
I stretch my limbs.
could I sleep as deep as daydream,
my skin would glow.
you are tide,
never ebbing.
new water
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 steamy glass and red wine dreams coffee and cream like velvet roller-coasters or black silk 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 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 into me like porcelain.
sighs and words from her tongue
replay 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
erases all her words
so that only whispers cut into me
and the residual luxury of her skin melts into mine
in the maple memory of our sunlit night.
still my soul billows in the wind
like fresh sails on a familiar sea, made foreign
and haunting like ash in my burning mouth;
her cinnamon fingers and amber eyes seize my ribs
crushing me with grace, and the other soft movements
she emits—
this is my heart’s storyline and beat—
my soul’s repose for which
I’d searched forlornly
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…
Through the Rye 