An Evangelical Pastor

An evangelical pastor preaches to more than half a million people at the city’s central park, for free. Under thousands upon thousands of frantic and skeptical stares, he promises -he knows- that this country will soon be blessed with peace and prosperity. The following day, Sunday, three soccer fans are murdered at different matches. Violence between gangs of opposite teams.

Policemen go after evidence, lagging behind. The State claims it is a tragedy, quickly dismissing it as three isolated incidents. More: Punitive measures for the team clubs, promises to double law-enforcement officials for the following weekend. Soccer players lament. Relatives demand justice. Reporters add and neglect.

The pastor keeps up with his agenda and by now he has already flown to another country. He does not devote a sentence to those deaths, or any death, here or anywhere else.

But the common people, the kidneys of the country, they ponder. Some question why this should happen after the pastor made such a contrasting promise. Some diagram conclusions based on a couple of connections and interpret them as a sign of: Something.

Others, the ones we are being punished for, infer not without sarcasm that the three murdered attendees must have not been Believers. Out of this last group, the one we are being punished for, a few join the evangelical movement a couple of months later. And others disappear.

Worries and Weaves

Promise this is just another slip
Lay all your cards in front of me
Deal with the quake when it actually shakes you
Catch a breath to think

Perpetual the aiming of the shot
Shooting down every other dream
Of peacefully sinking into normalcy
Quake after quake…

You say I’m the one making things difficult
I’d rather crash than be all worries and weaves
You say I’m the one making this difficult
Won’t be pulled into your worries and weaves
How can you twill the circles in which we live?
Only fate can knit such intricate things

* * * * *

So dry is my skin in the peak of the summer
Great Plains run adrift to surrender my knuckles
So deft is the force that swallows our passions
If the point never gets anywhere

Life like a lover
Leaves no corpse
Life like a lover:
Remorse, fenced
Off, like a lover

You'll be counting fish by the time I decide to
Let go of the twirl

These are leftovers.

Gardener, you forget that I struggle every time I’m with you
The ground we trail has four our feet on
But you decide which flower to grow
No wonder your favorite plant is the cactus
Like them you never strip your leaves
Spines that shade you from the sun
They protect you from water-seeking animals

Like me

These are leftovers, boy
So get me a good one
These are leftovers, boy
Go get me a better one


In the course of conversation sexual tension
Begins to build up signals float across the room
In fear of loom they prefer to splash pretty
soon nothing is clear and what was near is lost to the crash .


Gardener, I’m the soil you tread upon
Stop acting stupid please be
Careful where you sink the shovel
Removeremove, you would
Pick off the root from the nerve Or quizá estoy over reaccionando...

Prick (draft)

Sometimes you’re a prick, you know?
You don’t give me enough time to grow
Our days, they don’t go by slowly anymore
Like when in my youth
(how cruel of you)

Have you pulled another of your tricks?
Leaving a rare beam of sunshine on my lips
That I can’t taste because it gets dark and I fall asleep
And who knows what you plot while I sleep…

- Steady beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat.

And while we dance, eat, or drink,
Make love, read a poem, play pelota, or sing,
You keep count on the measures of everything
And you accumulate forever,
Not keeping track of anything,
Collecting incessantly, like
Rag pickers in their bunny bags,
Is this too your way to survive?

But that wouldn’t make my heart weep
If it weren’t because you inevitably steal
My idea of making life a permanent dream
No matter what I do, stupid or crucial,
Worthy or worthless,
To you quality is

- Just a tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

Untamable one,
It is me who sets your presence in motion,
Don't forget that
When under my breath I bridle a cry, weep panic to sleep.

memoria y reacción

A punto de volver, it strikes me. Que ya no pertenezco a ningún lado, que ya no le debo nada a nadie.

Y cuánta la desolación al entender que el ritmo se ha perdido - un corazón que recuerda vagamente una imagen de algo pero encoje los hombros cuando uno le pide memoria y reacción, tal corazón es poco más que un musculo. Y a nosotros nunca nos bastó pensar en el corazón como un simple musculo.

Se sabe: para un corazón nuevo, volver es lo más fácil, ya sea por hábito, nostalgia, o por responder al recuerdo de la sensación del impulso. Para un corazón averiado, volver es lo más difícil, porque al fin se ha tomado verdadera consciencia, consciencia tan asentada que se convierte en parte del (tu) universo:

lo perdido ya no volverá,
lo herido ya no se cura,
lo agotado ya no se resuelve.

Por eso no les creo a esos que dicen haber sido heridos -y claro, al ser ellos quienes hablan, pasan de 'haber sido' a 'haber estado' - pero luego supieron volver - y claro, como son ellos quienes explican, pasan de 'poder' a 'saber'- a amar costumbres, historias, países, personas. Por eso no les creo a esos que dicen haber sido heridos pero luego saben cómo volver a amar ideas, procesos, valores, finales. Yo todavía estoy en 'ser' y 'poder'. Y ni siquiera puedo definir 'amar'. Por eso no les creo.

Some Months Ago I Felt It Coming (Revised)

Let it cook

Slowly

Under pearly gazes

-

Burn new forking paths of

a(n/o)ther/ intense eye-contact sublime

-

Let it sweep

Away

The after whatevers (whatever!)

By giving away, give in 

-

It is always your touch, whoever fondles my skin

Or forever to your lips, no matter whose I’ve brushed mine with. 

Have you acted the same?
Contradictorily, 

Inconsistently amazed

By glitter

Over everything

Because of immediacy

To (l)earn nothing

Like me? 

-

Overcooked, burned out, and swept under.
Back to,
Away from,
In a matter of weeks.
Acceptance is a luminous beam.
-
For the time being, at this time, you have chosen me.
The feeling storms towards to bat me in the face (.)

With a kiss

I anchor

The choice, 

I return

The blaze. 


__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

(previous draft)


Let it cook
Slowly
Under pearly gazes
-
Breathe new forking paths of
a(n/o)ther/ intense eye-contact sublime
-
Let it sweep
Away
The after whatevers (whatever!)
Nobody cares
What the name behind the face is
-
It is always your touch, no matter who fondles my skin
Or forevers to your lips, no matter whose I’ve brushed mine with.
Have you acted the same
Contradictory,
Inconsistently amazed
By glitter,
Over everything,
Because of immediacy,
To (l)earn nothing
Like me?
-
In the present for the time being, at this time, you have chosen me.
The feeling comes rushing towards to hit me in the face (.)
With a kiss,
I anchor
the choice,
I return
the blaze.

Who to blame (2nd draft)

In the morning, when I fling the alarm
I wonder who to blame
Or how to bend the day
There’s always some noise that disrupts the flow
Of my mind trynna breathe
And go through the million things
That I gotta do today and next month and in ten years
The more that you do
The more life that you lose
There’s a pressure that smothers, suffocates everything
And if you make it worse
Becomes irrelevant
At this point…
Today,
I don’t want to create excuses for myself
Or anybody else.

My mother says that in the years to come
I will feel the pain
Crawling down my neck
She says 'trust in God but don’t have faith in people'
And I have to laugh
Cause it’s their faith that have crea-
ted God, Mom.

But Dios,
Today,
I don’t want to justify my faith
Or challenge anybody else’s

But sometimes I wish we hadn’t thought the concept up in the first place.


Still, I have no space to question
Or maybe a little, but not enough
To challenge and change what’s grotesque of
A reality that is not fair enough
Always a fact, a statistic, nature
To some bullshit excuse that is not enough
That doesn’t suffice to answer
The lack of humanity that we show among us

It doesn’t suffice to answer
Why we’re brutal with everything that has been created for us.

Flame,
You fueled my desire
You gave the spin to a life that couldn’t start until it found you
Dreams,
Ignored for the better part
Of a plan that was up to par but not quite to my own values
Pulse,
Engine that fires my heart
I tried to complain to him about the fact that I couldn’t find you

(And I couldn't find you)