Every time you laugh
Every time you laugh
a geranium blossoms
on the opposite windowsill
Every time you moan
a red apple
falls on the ground
(Escape attempt 1975-1981, 1982)
The dead man of the café
Years after the Civil war
he’s sitting dead
on the chair of the café
as if they’ve tied him up with his hands behind his back
The Authorities have declared
that he’s not going to stink
It’s such a sparsely inhabited place
Well just in case
they’ve been ordered to stall
the death announcement
as long as they can
So they shy away from the interrogations
and the possible case that
something –god forbid– may go wrong
with the missing evidence processes
The notification of death after all
may raise concerns
and then good luck trying to stop the peasants
if they get wind of it
(From our correspondent, 1985)
The immigrants
When they come
the young immigrants
on the flight of March
whey they come
the cute black kids
with the baby cries of sun
at the edge of the beak
I will explode too
like a morning rose
For now
shed a blast of light
on my dark and gloomy chest
(Body model, 1988)
Che’s luck
Occasioned by a photograph
In a cozy bar
you’re sipping the sorrow
sifting the silence
with lit cigarettes
At the other table Guevara
harvested field
the night blows in his hair
the yellow stars around go out
In a sense you were lucky
my dear Che
You played and you lost
Come and take a look at us
that we’re losing without playing
(Open vein, 1991)
The lie
Up to the neck
up to the edge of the lips
in the caves of breath
in and out
plays the level of the remains
and of thick despair
the bleeding memory
of sunken ideologies
until the sky of the gaze
lowers like a helmet
and the light starves
Then light up the next lie
(The gun of silence, 1996)
The tenant of the third loneliness
If you happen to know an elderly person who lives alone and you call them don’t
rush to hang up no matter how precious your time is no matter how impatient
lifehas made you don’t assume they’re out or dead perhaps because in that case
everything is fine the problem is if they’re alive at home so don’t hang up they may
be dragging themselves towards your sympathy like a snake in a harvested field
they may even make it to the phone poor them a man can be saved just like that
(Stress test, 2002)
The decrepit
This decrepit person that you see
dragging his shadow without complaint
in the hospital halls
desperately looking for a look
to uphold his demolished stature
This decrepit person you know
has birthed Marilyn Monroe
Rosa Luxemburg
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
you that read me
me that I write
(Short breaths, 2010)
The hardships of an execution
I’ve been into photography lately
I take shots that don’t fall into the law of personal data leaning trees like naked
landscapes kneeled houses and stray dogs in parks and streets
I rarely photograph faces not to mention those of my familiars
There’s only one occasion that makes me freeze
When at the grave of my recently deceased father we put a photo of his taken
from my file – exceptional as everyone said – every time I’m about to take a photo
of my mother I can’t help but think if this angle could work in a similar occasion
and no angle is good enough but how can you tell your mother to scootch over
and stand alone to put on her best scarf how can you kill your mother before her
time just so you can have a sense of immortality tomorrow on the undeniable truth
of death
(Low rivers, 2015)
Kids made of stone
for the wild kids we once were
When it was time they ordered us to deal with the execution in cold blood and us
a bunch of strays we dragged cheerfully the poor animal and happily threw it off
the cliff as the old tradition said
And the rocks kept falling from the sky like a storm until the broken corpse stood
there like a ship made of stone in front of our eyes
We would carry it back and we lay down together we woke up together we played
and bled together and later we carried it along with us under our skin and if from
time to time it came back to surface we pushed it back in the basement or we
carried it up and down in the living room and only a few of us asked for mercy
kneeling in front of its agony
Despite what the ignorant may say
Kids have always been made of stone
A confession of faith
The poet fights for the woman, with the woman he fights.
Kostis Palamas
Calm down at last I used to tell him live a little like a man quit overthinking and the
fruitless search and go out in the streets let go off steam get high see the word
instead of being cranky and finding no way out
It’s too late now he used to answer
I believe in the sudden thunder that happens when two eyes first meet and I want
to save this feeling because without it there’s no sky
I’m always searching for a sweet vision he said that keeps coming back from the
depths of the memory but never reaches me
And as I’m reaching the end of my time he said I lock myself inside the poem
looking for her so hard that in the end they may find me hung from my final line
(Vermio rains, 2022)
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