Él divaga por la bulla, por las aceras,
imaginando que pronto se topará con alguien,
concibiendo del toparse como puntos suspensivos en la frase de su trayectoria
(que tiene un punto definitivo),
esperando que sea un alguien ya o pronto amado,
preguntándose si debe subir a taxi,
perdiendo conciencia de donde y quien está por el momento,
pasando a mendigos sin saludarles, ya que no le saludan a él,
pisando basura y grietas sin darse cuenta,
olvidando por que ha salido y que tenía que hacer.

Saluda con cejas alzadas a los pasajeros en colectivos,
y imagina como ellos deben de inventarle a él
en sus imaginaciones voraces (aunque no sean así)
en los momentos fugaces antes de que se van
los dos de vista y conciencia.

In the morning I awake
and fake twitching
just to get you itching
to kick me out of bed.
Said trick is all to get
you to roust me
with your sweet kick
and then douse me
with your love’s mock:

“Baby, you are the rock
upon which
I rest my head.”

In the day to kill tired
so wired I drink
an espresso and think
you want to hear my confess-o-
matic malarkey
and that you hark me
because you bark at me
with your crooked grin:

“Honey, you are the wind
beneath my
feathery skirts.”

At night when all light is done,
I reply:

“Darlin’, you are the one,
the sun
that blinds
the twinkle in my eye.“

I sleep with a dulled sword under my pillow
The soft raspings that it once made
While sharpened before battle
Whisper to me in the night
Call to be brought forth again
Call for blood
For the heads of my deep-set distraction: depression, despondence, dejection, diluted diffusion, demanding disillusion, diatribe-filled dissident distinction… damn, perhaps just a dream:

Like samurai of old I leap from utter mountainlakestillness in my bed, from flat to flightful feet in a moment of sweeping splendid smoothness where blankets part like the pelican wings at fluttery takeoff and blade emerges from feathered sheath with a steel hiss as air parts like waves from prow. Snickersnack high excaliber whipcrack of sword through air stale as spent sorries. My hands like light leaves flash the night without worry, caring only for cracks in the oxygen current where these parries and thrusts avert cracking functional and whole molecules and cause such turbulence as to rearrange the whole swirling ambiance, shake up all deep-set situation.

It might be high-noon bright on your skin
when in a flash and with a start
you realize it’s midnight in your heart—
I sure hope the stars will do their part.

You might be standing firmly alone
in sight of the next train out of town
then, at the first slight slip
into unconsciousness, the first
dozing dip into drifting off,
your whole world shifts
and your eyelids lift
to spouse and kids
bringing you home
with a flower for each
year you’ll never again spend on your own.

You may have a career
and on payday go out to have a beer
and drink to being in the clear
when with a sputter and a lurch,
say, you find yourself begging drunk in a gutter
just pray they pass not with a sickened shudder
but with a smile of sympathy to send them
on their sobered and newly steady way.

It might be high-noon bright on your skin
when in a flash and with a start
you realize it’s midnight in your heart—
I sure hope the stars will do their part.

I dropped a tear in the bucket
for every name that slipped my tongue
for every face that skipped my mind
for every friend whom I failed a prayer to find

Bearing the rising reservoir,
I irrigated my garden
of regret, assuming that salt
rendered earth infertile, turned seeds to stone
so this grim gardener would need not atone
for weeds fertilized with lax fault.

I dropped a tear in the bucket
listened to the resounding chime
nodded world-weary head in time
to the oscillating din of high-low echoes,
glanced a rueful grin at my dearest neglected
and whispered a steady, gleaming gaze to
my frail limits…

and then – unexpected –
clear-eyed vision graced me
with knees-in-earth-fertile humility

Duermo por la calle por el barrio por la ciudad
vivo con la gente que no calla con necesidad
y sus voces, vivos, en mi mente translucientes,
me dijeron que ha sido un placer – buena gente.
Me pregunto por qué algunos comen y otros sufren.
Mi asunto es cuidar a los que amo y que
amen.

what with this and that,
with what reason do you get from tit to tat?
the bric-a-brac left by the pell-mell
hustle-bustle will
at the drop of the cat in the hat muddle
your o-so-modern thinking muscle:

neon signs scream fat-faced lies of get quick, rich
cops in cars leer, forked tongue-n-cheeky, make you sit, sick.
can’t stagger no more from bureaucrat
to high-on-shooting-life fat cat;
that semi-automatic affidavit
won’t fast-track you through this one, jack,

this is the proverbial kick-back;
the gun you thought was just quick-cash
crashed your forehead, put the backlash-smack-down your veins,
you better go slack or you’ll crack in pain,
smashed apart by this slam-bangin-
tornado-track-stackeddeck madhouse,
gonna distort-contort-pervert
your every intention my friend
unless you contend, release the tension,
transform the teeming seeming chaos
with collective-necessity-compelled invention, and bend.

blend the booty-shakin’ bop you snatch
as it falls from fifty-fifth floor flats
with jackhammer concussions and cursing convulsions
that strike your harried strut
to provide the street-beat
you need to give your feet that hip hop-step
to propel you and repel that lock-stock-step,
forcefed-barrelvision, dregs-of-drugs, credit-card-incision
mentality and gift you that shift-shapin’, high-flyin’
hard-hittin’ awareness of reality.

what with this and that,
with what reason do we get from tit to tat?
the bric-a-brac left by the pell-mell
hustle-bustle will
at the drop of the cat in the hat muddle
your o-so-modern thinking muscle:

see so many acting like mass-paidoff clones
of apathetic stone, yet all feeling alone
in the shame-game, unable to stomach their own free will,
too comfortable to digest, let others kill-clean-process
in their name while they profess it ain’t complacency,
just another victim of modern-massmurder of agency?

well we’ll sing them strength with soul-imbued skill,
but won’t cut it with that same old pop-slop-swill,
gotta concoct new notion-potions and let ‘em glut on it
distill saintly-spirits to set their blood in motion:
harvest what soul-quaking stimulation scatters our path,
transcend it into life-shaking creation.

We climbed a mountain to grasp at sky,
But as we exalted in reaching, fingers outstretched,
A spirit told us to simply sit in awe:
Wait for Sun to kiss Earth
And be held by air on fire
Then be led by moon washing down the valley.
Why fight for a fistful for yourself
When all the world wants to hold you as its own?

On se casse
allant avec notre autosuffisance,
chacun un tour de Babel imprenable,
les langues dégueulasses de trop discuter malfaisance,

il faut se taire, et la seule manière qu’on sait se tomber,
c’est se convertir en sable
qui refuse devenir le verre,
qui nie la terre, fuyant pour se cacher
dans l’inconscience de l’océan,

il faut se brancher seule, pour bien concentrer
sur la connexion tranchée,
laissant les haut-parleurs communiquer
à nos frères et soeurs l’état de notre âme
fragmenté, les morceaux enflâmes,
électricité courant partout comme une lame:
on avait pensé que c’était sain, sous notre contrôle
dans la main jamais tremblante

mais c’est seulement, mente seule, maintenant,
qu’on sent, dans tous les sens, le fil au cou.

Mais les possibilités étincelantes!
On a des forums mondiaux où tous se trouvent
Partie d’une communauté d’information sainte;
Connaissances d’atrocités (partagé) émeuvent:
On bouge face à cette déluge épouvantable.

Réjouissance enfin: l’organisation d’action
Envoyant des messages d’espoir, idées, fables
D’un monde meilleur où la satisfaction vient
Pour apaiser les protestes des ancêtres
Tourmentés par des objets morts, des simples choses,
Qui n’ont jamais été vivants, mais nos prêtres
Politiques les ont consacrés, les imposent,
Les lèvent en haute technologie, la magie.

La vraie vie, c’est ce qu’on crée avec conscience
de l’harmonie que l’on augmente ou l’on blesse,
de la sagesse possible et du chemin nuisible
du danger toujours présent dans la puissante science
Qui souvent prie à la culte de l’Economie,
La Logique insulaire cruelle, l’ordre inhumain
des intérêts souverains.
Donc notre rythme doit reconnaître des liens plus subtils (soutiens)
entre ce qu’on considère comme le mien et le tien,
parce que n’importe ou l’on va, cela
demeure toujours vrai: on n’est jamais
séparé, encore lorsqu’on part
On est ensemble.

I beat my hand against asphalt
Thinking how I’d love to see
The road’s rough rigidity
Ripple from the force of me.

I don’t seek morse code
But rather primal beat,
To utilize city streets
To soothe ancestors’ feet
With rhythm reaching past hopes
Trapped in chain gangs’ worksongs
That shuffle modern shoes along.
Help me liberate the throngs
Desiring just memory
By drumming this deep plea
By drumming this deep plea
By drumming this deep plea
To know those underneath
Who built these roads for me.

Their road song is long silent
But the beat’s stuck in my head,
Wrapped so thickly around
My thoughts’ hard violence
That seeking rigid chaos
I find rippling rhythm instead.

estallidos del corazón en mente
latidos de bombas en ambiente
y por dentro y fuera dependencia
de creencia en el estado de ánimo.

paseo por las calles y canto -
expresión de me llanto
interior - pero choco con la gente
con la misma mente
con todo el ruido del mundo
que como fluido vagabundo
queda siempre en movimiento
y no me deja sólo con lo que siento:
que como viento me vuelo
al suelo del riachuelo
que es mi alma ya no calma:
el insomnio quema camas
y el llano está en llamas
mientras que la ciudad duerme.

“Current”

How many millions before me
have ridden this train on their way in
on this steel city vein?
Still, I feel none can ignore me
for even if I go under, subsumed in the bloody flow before I done
leaked my peace, I believe my remains will
be exhumed to show
what soft-speaking scars I’ve garnered
thus far along the rough and rowdy ride,
shimmering skin that lightly hints at my inner steel glinting that
steadied my stomach to abide this
that is
current.

“That metal matter,” they will say, “held his fear at bay while
he tried to smile and play with what he had to display.”
Or, even if
someone derides then hides what’s left of me beneath the surface,
the world won’t be bereft of me
because down in the mishmash motley of undercurrent
I’ll dissolve and dispatch into the swirl and swish
of wheelindeals and social spiels
fragments of my feelfully foolish substance
which will imbue this concoction,
scattered to prevent hijacking distraction
and ensure subconscious adoption;
unfulfilled substrata of intentions, to those opposed,
may seem fleeting when I’m no longer on top to give their sleepless seething repose
but no, they will find others to compose their renown
for once they fall, floating through the flow,
from my sad kind of conscious control to the ground,
only then will they lubricate with their slick hope and expedite with their quick calm
the path of those who heed the same call to arms.

So for now, let this vessel carry me on
I will play my part in this far-flung, scarring, scary rhythm
driven by a steel heart that daily feels the come and the go, that frailly heals
the wounds caused by the showy millions scrambling
in and out on the polluting shouting seething of the commuter flow
and that breathes like an iron lung for a comatose millennium.

How many billions before me
have ridden this train on their way in
on this steel city vein?
Still, I feel none can ignore me
for even if I go under, subsumed in the bloody flow before I done
leaked my peace, I believe my remains will
be exhumed to show
what soft-speaking scars I’ve garnered
thus far along the rough and rowdy ride,
shimmering skin that lightly hints at my inner steel glinting that
steadied my stomach to abide
this that is current.

El mismo movimiento que queda implícito, obvio pero al principio subconsciente cuando uno mira fijamente las tilas del piso, las regularidades de cuadrados encuadrados que envian el ojo por ahi y por allá, siguiendo líneas y formaciones arbritrarias pero reales, esta misma agitación quieta yace dinámicamente en tus ojos, esos relámpagos flojos que traversan el ondulando lago de calma de tu alma, esos abismos repletos, completos con sus posibilidades infinitas, donde creo que me caigo – o sería que vuelo? – y traigo conmigo el consuelo que el cielo y el suelo contienen ese mismo dinamismo y que este aire me pasa silbando como voz que me canta con melodias, ideas y sentimientos que me benedicen con el encanto permanente de este momento fluido.