Love Perpetuating Clichés / Gordian Knot is an Apt Metaphor For My Life

Early, AM, the consciousness
hides in the white between stations.

Beyond these points
of departure and discontinuity
lies nothing.

I can’t sleep.

& Disquietude

I’m an ocean who yearns
to tattoo its skin
with Pessoa’s verse

turn it into someone else

to tear itself into a showcase,
a map of uncharted territories:
“here be dragons”

Via Negativa

It was still dark when you left
the Hotel Planque lobby,
in a hurry, toilet paper torn,
the bowl unflushed

My back aching, beautiful,
sensitive and hard to grasp,
our dirty hand shadows
etched on the walls

I’m too tired to say I’m sorry,
rambling on, not thinking about negative
theologies and how the path
of least resistance will lead
straight to your door

High-heeled Shoes and Quixotic Dance

There was an exit
and boutique the word to use;
no one in the audience
willing to take me home

The rattling pills, they
help me back to the pavement

Back at our house, I decided
to finally clip off those locks
that make you imperfect,

Take off my turtleneck shirt,
hear the pillows talk, whisper and whine,
watch our streetlight moon, the bars,
our parties’ tomorrow

Labyrinths #1

I’m stumbling past the silos and lone
smokestacks of a city

where pretty girls are a scarcity
they taught me the truth,
this is what you get from wanting something;
a hangover, downturn, an unanswered call and a broken heart

I don’t mind these things
you gave me and I still carry
on in my trunk, my naked possessions,
my own drunken judgment
and my inability to remember the faces

Giuoco Piano

Where I once drank coffee gratis
I now watch a televised performance
of my friend the puppeteer

Knowing I didn’t go to school to learn
to play chess, pot plants, renovate
my house or weave a web

The band’s playing Ástor Piazzolla,
I’m sitting at a fustic table, intoxicated
with a tulip in my hand,

I knew how to write, spell, read and drive
long before hearing a note of L. Cohen

St. James’ Hotel

My nights are filled with
fear of feeling better
and the sound of a kettle boiling

“By following God’s word
are entire ecosystems destroyed”

Nothing like some stolen neon signs
to breathe life into inanimate

“If you’re reading this
your things are probably
pretty OK”