Between wraiths and mimes (Poem)

I knew this girl once.

She overdosed on truth and I watched her die.

I saw her in narratives,

I saw her on graffiti

I heard her sing me lullabies when I held tiny sharp knives close to my eye,

In hopes of a glimpse into spectres surrounding me.

Others say the only time you met her was at the funeral,

A mixed affair of hummingbird red lipstick

And miner dust black suits,

Where I sat in the front row of stiff suede chairs

Fingering something sharp in my false pocket.

I knew this girl once.

She overdosed on truth and I watched her die.

It was she who told me the earth bleeds its own special blood when cracked open,

It was she who licked the sweat off my neck,

Awake on a sordid New York night,

Drenched by the day's tears,

And whispered to me:

'Some things which are broken can never be fixed.'

I knew this woman once.

She missed her appointment with death,

And I sat baffled,

Still battling wraiths,

Glimpsing wars between her and a mime

Watching walls splashed in whitewash,

Dreaming up fascinating ends to my tomb-like evening.

A Dream's Clutch (Poem - Shadow Series: Parts III and IV)

Part III

I fell in love with the ability to know

to understand profound.

I traveled to mountain sky-tops

that brushed clouds shaped like smashed blueberries,

I wandered cobblestone streets made like disjointed finger-bones

where gaslights guided their fitful flames into black evenings

soaking up any mirth in my veins.

I flew over roughshod oceans

tempestuous like a mare's mane and heady like a woman's spirit

yet found nothing that could define the ability to know.

Sensing my saga barely begun

I turned to my shadow, that irksome companion,

and asked him what he knew.

His laugh was like metal being scraped across pebbles

and I fled his presence fearing my imminent incapacitation.

Humbled and harried, I hurtled myself upon a jet-stream of depression

hoping my answer lay inside that inky, slick meandering wind.

Instead, I lost my way for two years inside that mess,

while my arms stretched out the bars of my prison like inmates scraping for freedom,

reaching for anything familiar.

Whispers inside that wind told me I was worthless,

they spooked my nightmares into believing they were nothing

and those wispy winds turned down the color of my world.

I had scraped my nails to blood by building that steely structure

of my self-esteem,

and at last a loose laughter floated up into my purgatory.

The sticky winds screamed their fell voices

and in that moment I escaped, pulled through my bars by a smile,

a smile that without a doubt knew who I was,

and not what I was, with skin shredded like a frayed ribbon around dead flowers.

Seeing the end of my saga in those eyes, the color of Sienna dirt

rise up and take my trembling hand,

I followed lovingly, floating,

coming to a rest at those same sky-tops where my journey to know began.

My knees buckled under a profound sadness,

yet my eyes laughed loudly as though my body,

disintegrating like sand through a sift, weren't disappearing into the unknown.

 Part IV

I'd recently ended a week,
one much darker than most,
soaked in tremulous visions most would want to forget,
my mind a labyrinth of troubled butterflies
with wet wings and too much space
yet no exit -
when
one evening I sat on a cliff of sadness holding my shadow's hand.
Serene and motionless
my shadow ran its darkness around my fingertips
slowly
lacing a dangerous caress
its two pale eyes hooded as full moons behind charcoal clouds
staring blink-less at endless questions
perched midair within a grasp at the edge of my cliff.


"Go ahead," I mumbled softly.


And when at last it had its fill,
my neck a drained story,
I asked my sinister smiling shadow,
"what kept you so long?"
as I hung suspended for a beautiful moment
above tar black darkness,
my butterfly wings at last free to flee,
slicing shadow from me
moon from cloud.

Chapter 5: The Shadow Awakens

Dear sister,

Again. Last night nightmares racked me in fear and I awoke so suddenly the pictures on my bone white walls had to right themselves in my sight. It's the same shadow, over and over, coiling and uncoiling itself in many of the rooms in my mind. And I miss you Aryn, I miss waking up hungover on your couch, groaning and listening to you tell your story of hearing me talk in my sleep through the walls. I miss telling you my stories, so I'm telling you one now, for fear it will overtake me and pull me to live in its ink-like night forever. I only hope that in describing this slinking presence, a few more rooms in my head will be bathed in light. Even now I can feel him pushing out through my mouth, eager to tell his own story, thrilled for an audience, and I have no energy to resist. 

 I have dreamed of him (her?) since the time I saw you disappear with dad into a deep hole, your screams bouncing upwards and around the smooth cylinder that was your prison. I can easily remember the moment I awoke from that dream, and how I ran on padded feet quickly to your door with the 'Stay Out!' sign signaling me even then to heed its message. I did not, and took one of those deep relief breaths when I saw you curled up in your bed, Madonna posters staring fiercely down at my trespassing. Next door was dad's, and the moonlight cast its friendly glow over mom and dad sleeping side by side as if to say, 'See? See how I take care of your parents and wrap them in my nighttime embrace? I will not forget you little one, I will not forget you even when storm-clouds burst above you, and the stain of your Id creeps closer to the surface.' 

Back in bed, my high bunk-bed perch, I couldn't shake your pleas for help from my mind. I knew somehow my dream scape had changed irrevocably, that somewhere in the pattern of my nocturnal travels a thread had unwound itself, and I would never weave a tighter knot. I knew that your pale moon-shaped face would stare upwards at me from five meters down for years to come, and that my dad's helpless stare would always burn a hole somewhere in me where holes were never supposed to exist. Then, last night, he awakened with a fury, and I'm now I'm scared. There is no defense, my lovely sister. I cannot halt my imagination from jumping into realms where hammers clang and my shadow, that pestilent presence, crests barns, burns through fields and bounces over telephone lines like the ululating echo of a wolf dancing in between canyon walls, just to find me. 

And it found me when I spoke with my sage, damnit! I was making peace with myself, contentment and tears were mixing an elixir for me and that fucking shadow found me even then. Listen:

"You want it from the beginning?"

"Yes," replied the sage quietly, folding her dress like cirrus clouds around her.

I closed my eyes.

Hunched, thousands of feet in the air at a place of terrible mountainous beauty,

I unrolled my life like a film reel,

decades of life whirring softly, mixing with the air lifting my sage's hair with invisible fingers.

I began: "There were pines whispering,

a fire with sparks crackling under a sky smelling as crushed juniper.

There was a group around this fire, I was one of them, she the other.

Who existed on that small square of earth but me and her?

There was her hair, the color of a silhouetted horizon moments before darkness.

There was her skin and smile tender like a quiet snowfall

There was...

The vision has vanished," I ended,

longing etched in my irises as they closed the aperture between life and dream.

"There are tears damned up behind your eyes, gentle one,"

my sage replied.

"Some teardrops could fill oceans, others a small mountain stream,

though all must eventually flow,

smoothly, as a waterfall of words."

You loved her?" my sage queried as she reached out fingers like daydreams and touched my eyes,

blinding me momentarily.

"No, I have never stopped," I thought to myself

in my mind stunned to see my sage smile in acknowledgement.

I covered my mouth hurriedly, believing I had slipped secrets too deep,

and my sage removed her hand, furling her hand tightly inside her dress,

restoring sight,

her form a nimbus cloud now growing in front of me.

Doggedly I continued, strengthened by the lightning in her eyes.

"I remember a snowy evening.

I remember being in love with snowflakes falling around her,

linen white on her hair black as volcanic glass.

I remember capturing it in a photograph and feeling tears,

tears like a slow fire

film over my eyes when years later, forced to throw the photo away

I sat on a park bench and sobbed and shook.

I trembled for my loss

and silently screamed through the early Saturday mist."

Realizing my eyes had been closed, hooded in memory,

I lifted them, openly crying,

and saw my sage standing silently,

gazing outwards.

I followed her gaze, distracted momentarily by what seemed her shifting shape

now a stratus clouds in front of me, rising to fantastic heights,

where the object of her fascination circled lazily around us.

A hawk I have seen often in my dreams and days.

A hawk with piercing eyes staring not at me or my companion,

but at a shadow hidden in the crags some fifty feet below where I stood.

A shadow eerily familiar, a black stain moving swiftly upwards.

With every pass of lichen smothered granite rock,

the hawk circled lower, while my pacific sage urged me to continue.

"I remember her underneath me, almond colored curves rolling into me,

her two eyes satellites on a face honeyed with tenderness

her breathing shallow like a rain puddle

then river deep.

I remember the small of her neck cupped beneath my hand,

pulling her lips thick with desire towards my hunger.

I remember the earth sinking and the heat of her movements coiling around me.

I..."

Kriiii! screamed the hawk, shattering my reprieve.

And at that moment I saw three things simultaneously.

    My greedy umbra moving closer to where I stood with vicious speed,

    My sage becoming a cumulonimbus cloud protecting my thoughts in rain

    My hawk with shadow-streaked talons then, triumphant.

All around me quiet little raindrops whispered, filling the void.

"Hear my voice, gentle one,

I will cry for you.

I will wrap your enigmas in my own tears,

I will warm you against sorrow."

So it follows me still, Aryn.  Where did he come from? Why is he greedy, sometimes with long saber-like claws, sometimes with blunt edges that thump against my subconscious? Why does he stain stories and chapters with a squid-like streaking, turning blue then purple, then nightmare black. Ahhhh, elusive, elusive, like the outline of my aircraft on my first solo trip on an early, icy Midwest morning. Have I told you about that? About the dawn that bled all over the sky in smudges of gold, rust and Valencia orange?

I could sense the shadow of my plane rather than see it, bouncing along below me through cornfields half-horizon in size. I had completed my first hundred hours, and words even now vanish as wisps of fog through fingertips that could describe my elation at sitting perched six thousand feet above the ground in a machine that blended death and pleasure in a roaring package. Yet, every time I dipped my wings, I saw it slipping alongside me, thousands of feet below, never tired, never fatigued of the chase. It was the same feeling, darling, the one that crept around behind me as I looked down into the hole you and dad were stuck in, eyes rivers of sadness, arms outstretched for you even as he wrapped his arms around me from behind, suffusing me in blackness, digging his long cat-like nails into my stomach, pulling me backwards and out of my nightmare. Even now I can hear his hiss in my ear, and feel my own fingernails digging into my stomach, thin arms encircled around my strangled pillow as I awoke. I don't want to meet him anymore, and know that I will, Aryn. Even as I write this to you at a time when night has cracked daytime in half and spilled it over a different horizon, I know what awaits and I don't want to sleep. My imagination sometimes can be madness.

all love,

me.

A Dream's Clutch (Poem - Shadow Series Parts I & II)

When dreams come to me they arrive in vivid swirls I cannot forget and invariably find their way onto my pages of thoughts gambling for a bit of sanity. At times they're nightmares and force conversations out of me as if I'm extolling a host of demons to let me go, other times they're flavoured like the honey of a girl giddy with wetness and desire. This time my dreams veered off the road regularly taken, and took me to a land where hammers and walls attack the inside of my mind, and introduced me to my shadow-self, a terrifying umbra that has peppered itself into my deepest evenings. Read, and enter my sleeping world.

--

The muted frenzy of heavy hammers awakened me

late in the afternoon.

Startled, I took a frantic look out my window and gasped in horror.

Uncounted miles of men,

unbroken, unwavering lines and lines of men

chanted in unison:

"We build! We Break! We Build! We Break!"

a roar shaking the very windowsill of my vision,

a roar unnerving in its uniform nature,

a roar accompanying the din of walls being erected in endless miles,

myriads of miles where stone met stone.

and ascended to terrifying heights.

Stone five feet thick,

forcing furrows into the ground with their granite bases.

Stumbling out of my door,

shirtless, breathless, chest heaving in panic,

I ran to the first of these walls,

screaming at the men to stop,

to knock down the walls soaring skywards with their unflinching mallets.

As one, they roared in answer:

"We Build! We Break! We Build! We Break!"

I shivered at this unnatural chant, these men with their backs to me,

corded shoulder muscles lending strength to that which they built

with ever-increasing speed

a dizzying process rushing upwards

the momentum of a hundred horizons shrouded from sun.

Sobbing with fear, I shook one of the workers,

"What are you doing?!" a strangled sound from cracked lips.

The man turned, and I saw only two lidless eyes and a mouth like an un-stitched scar,

Like an eagle in pain he screamed: "I Build! I Break! I Build! I Break!"

His arm a machine unto itself

rising and falling like my heartbeat,

hammering my wings to the tender earth.

I fell to the ground, suddenly realizing I was trapped,

smothered in my unconscious,

scrabbling for fresh morning frost with trembling hands

wild eyes, darting like dragonflies for anything familiar.

Above me,

I saw my former self mouthing a silent yell for me to awaken,

to free myself,

to stop shaking under a dream's clutch.

Part II

I awoke to a blood-orange morning,

where all around me specialists sang songs to cure me.

Below the surface, the men simmered in the sun.

I could hear the clangs of their hammers,

even after clapping my hands to ears.

My former self had receded to the sliver of shadow left in my room,

and stood there sneering.

I tried lifting my shirt to wipe the sweat off from beneath my eyes,

yet discovered there was none.

I saw my shirt, discarded, lifeless like a dead animal,

two inches from where my shadowself stood,

frighteningly long nails clacking a steady tempo on my white walls.

Its sneer turned to a deadly glee when it saw me quail under its gaze.

Scrambling towards my door,

I wrenched the knob in a half-circle,

and flung myself into a locked door.

Laughter like a hiss rose up through my back and entered the base of my neck,

laughter like a turbid cloud filmed over my eyes,

and peaks of terror  like jagged teeth rose up in my throat

as I turned and stared into my faceless companion,

centuries-old scorn swirling around its featureless form in an icy mist.

I pressed so hard against the door I felt splinters split skin

and screamed from somewhere primal,

somewhere lost and aching for love,

a terrified howl that brought lines and lines of lidless men rushing

and crashing against the inside of my skull.

I clasped my head with my hands, racked with nightmarish pain

as my eyes opened involuntarily,

and stared at my former self retreating and lashing out in horror,

one of its filthy nails piercing my neck,

clawing and swinging

at the mind-men of my dream marching of out my pupils,

furious, rage-filled men with mouths like un-stitched scars

filling my daymare with screams:

"We Attack! We Banish! We Attack! We Banish!"

Crowded, cramped, they swayed out of my eyes like a pounding heart

jostling out of me,

the tips of their hammers gleaming viciously

through icy mist dripping in unknown fear.

I collapsed into a hallway

fingers against my neck where rivulets of red sprung,

as a door previously locked swung quietly shut,

muffling strangled sounds from within.

When They Found Me (Poem)

They told me that night the dark moon sang a sad song.

That the trees, hidden in their own thick shadows,

echoed in verse the melody of stars that have lost their way.

It was in this tune I had found myself wandering amongst pines,
giving no reprieve from loneliness nor sadness,

yet holding their own curative powers unbeknown to other mortals.

I sat down, shivering,
teeth chattering wordless tunes, and told the trees looming above me
in elongated, thin shadows, that I had come back, that their darkness
could once again envelop me in its comforting inky solitude.

I told them stories of how I never won, how I felt nothing ever went my way,
and that when I looked into the sky's eyes dark as chunks of coal, my
reflections ceased to exist.

I told the trees epics of words intertwined and woven,

tendrils seeking sunshine, month after month.

He had arrived quietly.

I looked at him, straight,

and saw a cowboy's eyes gleaming back,

reflecting nights where the moon held no shelter

and the wind whistled 'round and 'round in circles like a rattlesnake's whisper of death.

It wasn't until two weeks later that they found me, hugging
contentedly onto vines that surrounded me in a final embrace, bark
strewn in shards around me like an old ritual gone wrong.

Chapter 4: Weeping Willow

In my darkest hour,

I can still remember the shape of that willow leaf.

I had taken it,

with soft supplication and a prayer of repentance,

from a looming, monstrous weeping tree in the throes of Fall.

It was sweeping my sullied street

with branches swinging like clothes drying on a line in early Spring.

Slender countless veins raced outwards,

from a center that arched once halfway up,

before straightening out, loose,

wiggling like a snake uncurling from a Summer nap on a hot rock of slate.

My leaf smiled at me with its emerald-boa green gaze,

ecstatic to be in my hands

before a Turkish winter's icy grasp would pry it from its perch,

swinging as a lazy fisherman's line would in still waters.

And between my fingers, rubbing it gently

I coaxed this leaf to tell me its story,

from blazing kiwi to mandarin orange,

from my darkened day to immortality imprinted on my skin.

But the tremendous crack! of my wrist and elbow on firm ground was years before this poem, a moment of terror that conflicted with the comforting buzz of my tattoo artist's needle now tracing slender willow branches along my spine. I could feel damp sweat forming in the concave dent of my chest, dripping down onto the cherry-red vinyl chair from where my stomach pressed against it, my body slung over it in reverse. The clump of needles scraping along what had to be the trunk, brushed over my column sending mini-shock waves into an area of my brain that had been ready to drift off and now remained stung with anger. Yet Cemal talked quietly and worked quickly, and soon memories came swimming, like a lake smoothing out its ripples from a fisherman's trade.

It had taken me and my cousin's three hours to hike up into the mountains far enough to find a ravine suitable for our leaping game. The objective was simple: find vines long and dangerous enough to launch ourselves at least fifteen feet over a ravine. Our two fathers trailed behind, engaged in a discussion on the effects urban moral decay has had on church planting strategy. It was the summer of 7th grade, and I still haven't been able to decide whether God was asleep on the job or merely watching with one eye open when I snapped the bones in my forearm and bent my elbow backwards at a 90 degree angle. Were joints supposed to be able to do that? But I didn't know this screaming pain yet. I knew the fresh jungle air lifting my hair the color of chestnut felt terrific, and I knew I had never known adrenaline like the small peaceful moment at the top of the swing where you either had to swing back or fall down. 

In this particular moment, after a half-dozen successful attempts and the line five deep behind me of cousins panting, awaiting another turn with palms on knees, I backed up an extra amount for that childish attempt at more speed, and hurtled myself outwards with stunning ferocity. "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeahhh!" I whooped, tarzan-ing my body into the open, rocks like a giant's broken teeth tumbled around the ravine below me like a game of godly dice. And that sweet spot, the top of the swing, came too quickly. Twisting my head around to look back, hearing my cousin's whooping congratulations for such a steep swing, I suddenly realized the taut vine I once held had become slack. Or rather, having no prior experience at slack vines, I came to know that the sweet spot had turned sour, and a flash at dazzling speed in my mind threw up the image of Goofy grabbing at a rope and never getting higher. "Silly thought," passed half-way out my lips, interrupted by a scream tearing the Andean calm in half, scattering animals no one could see deeper into their retreats. I could have fallen for hours, days, anything to avoid that crunch of bone on ground and upside down image of my father leaping down and over lichen-smothered rocks towards me and my backwards bent arm. 

I can't tell if the tracing needle skipped a beat, or if I just flinched at the movie replaying in my mind, but Cemal needed to finish soon. "Az kalda, arkadaşım, almost." His reassuring words couldn't dispel the pain, yet moments later, staring into the mirror at a bloodied tree, sun-burnt red skin smarting, it was impossible to hide my ear to ear smile. A weeping willow, branches moving in their ink graced half of my back, tree #3, tattoo number sixteen, my mom's artistry come to life. "Harika, dostum, çok güzel, it's perfect" I told my Turkish artist in half-weary half-giddy breaths. 

Then softly, to the tree, "I've come home. I've come home."

Chapter 3: The silk-floss tree

The Avila, deceptively simple spine of the Andes, forces my city into shadow or throws light upon it angrily as a painter's sunflower yellow paint would splatter after a palette clattering to the ground. Its gently rising swells easy on the eye from afar, lulls you to exhaustion and danger once they are climbed, and it was to these trails, etched between trees suffocated in vines like a shipbuilder's corded shoulder muscles, we ascended on an afternoon hot enough to make slimy snails lazy on limestone rock.

Behind my father's steady gait I followed, watching in fascination as his walking stick beat out a simply whistled tune that intertwined itself amongst the death vines and left notes hanging around rocky ledges that stared out into emptiness. Carefully I kept myself in step, and every fifth turn would fling a rock into open space to remind myself that the mountainside kills swiftly, immune to the sadness I would face were one of us to slip to the right. At those moments I would force my laughter out, weak and trembling laughter, and run up to reassure myself with my father's full-bearded smile beaming at me as he clambered up the next rise. "Not long now," he chuckled, patting the pocket he had told me at sunrise held a surprise for me "at the bottom of a waterfall." No fourth grader's mind can take that tantalizing of a secret, and mine was no different, casting its imaginative net further and further into the realm of fantasy as to what he could possibly have in his pocket that would connect to a waterfall. "Is it Gollum's ring? Is it the 'one ring?!" I whispered loudly, fearful of disturbing what could very well be Murkwood forest yet at the same time incapable of containing my excitement. My father had been reading "Lord of the Rings" to me for so long before bedtime that entering fantastical woods where wizards wandered in white seemed pretty normal to me at this point. "Ahhhhhh, so you'll see now won't you?"

"Ghollum, ack, ghollum, ack" I imitated, joyfully jumping over some boulders, their lower halves soaked in the tremulous trickle of a stream slowly gathering strength. "My presssssssious, triksy little hobi..."

"We're here," he announced suddenly. I took a last leap, and landed on the other side of the stream with a squelch into the thin coating of mud adorning the sides of a river uncoiling itself suddenly from out beneath a thundering waterfall around the next bend. "It looks like the forbidden pool," I stated in a hushed wonder, as my father put his fingers to his lips and motioned for me to listen to thunk thunk of water slapping the sheer rock face of pelo de bruja, named witch's hair for the slippery, treacherous climb you had to endure to reach the top. A meter from the pool's bank, he crouched low and held out both his fists, curled tightly. "Pick one."

Nervously, without looking at his hands and staring into his eyes glimmering in laughter behind glasses misted over with waterfall spray, I chose the left hand. "I'm left-handed, that's why," I stated, as if to reassure myself. Opening his hand carefully, both of us faces inches apart, "It's your tree son, it's going to be yours." Cupped carefully in a damp paper towel, the seed of a silk floss tree, my favorite tree of all, (slightly surpassing even  my love of Ents) lay in tiny glory. "Oooooooh, dad, it's in perfect shape! Where did you find it?!"

"You're going to plant this, take care of it, make sure its healthy, watch it grow into the spiked giant you love." I had already taken the small spade that had been slapping forgotten against my leg in the previous hours of climbing, and his words were almost lost upon my digging frenzy. "Careful now, it has to be the just the right distance away from the riverbank and depth down to avoid being washed away."

"I know, I know dad!" jagged breaths now, "I've read it a thousand times in the Encyclopedia," doggedly droning the facts on to my father as I dug. He sat on his haunches staring at me like it was the first time he had seen me, the joy I suppose only a father can feel when his son pretends to jump from apprentice to master in a matter of seconds. "It's done! It's finished!" chucking the spade aside roughly only to take the seed lightly in my hands, eyes lit up with a fervor that years in the future would unearth beneath the buzzing humming of an artist's needle. Gently I laid the seed down in the hole, soil like soft peat breathing a peaceful song to me as I patted the clods of dirt back over the seed. I threw my arms around my dad, dark imprints of dirty fingers on his back from my hands, and said, "I hope it grows to be as strong and tall as you dad. Or even Treebeard."

...it was four a.m. when the thunder of
equatorial rain began to pound
the aluminum siding of the church beside my building.
my eyes popped open
brother sound asleep below my top bunk fortress.
irises shifting lightning fast
from chocolate brown to hazel
as slivers of light do to my eyes after midnight darkness...
motionless,
a slow exhausted smile crept across
my face, a veiled snapshot only childhood excitement can attain.
snug and warm as freshly baked bread
i
tuned all my childish senses to
the nature surrounding my concrete city
pouring its heart out in white ribbons
and sound-slashes against my silk-floss seed
emptying its sky in howls that
shake our apartment's sliding living room windows...
and as i lay there,
cognizant of being sole spectator in this trophy display
of Caracas beauty
the dark corners of my mind began slowly to crawl into sunshine.

Mangrove Mornings (Poem)

part I

in post coital sighs
she whispered
"i don't want to fall to pieces, glue me together my morning lover!"

my arms encircled her like
a winter fog
pulling her closer as she began slowly to
lose her way,
and tears began from somewhere far away...
a slow quiet gathering of speed
force
sound
and thunder
towards the inevitable cascade
from where few return.

part II

i'm a nimbus cloud on a sediment choked riverbank,
i hang low to earth
escaping my celestial duties
and
perch between a banyan tree and watery mangrove,
on the edge of a colossally confusing river.

one foggy morning
while watching my earth-bound cousin fog
roll silently by
i chance upon seeing a woman,
old as dreams and young as a virgin's gasp,
entwined in her morning lover
as she crumbles to pieces in the river,
where salty tears are the engine of dreams -

taking pity, i reach out my wispy fingers
and pull her gently inwards
away from her morning lover
who trembles fiercely with his loss,
unable to comprehend why he now approaches
the inevitable cascade alone,
as he sees, too late,
the contentment of his lover in my arms
as she sleeps dreamless between the roots holding me fast.

Chapter 2: Gypsy Wine & Hash

We wandered lost, though this was inevitable in the Gypsy quarter of Grana'. Rorian beside me had already sunk into a tinto verano giddiness, half amused, half-afraid at the shadow play slicing unexpected corners into alleyways that turned us around in defeat. He kept clinging onto my shoulder asking for more jamon serrano, as if this would straighten the streets out and lead us towards the plaza where fresh pulpo gallego awaited us on steaming butter&salt soaked dishes. I began to wonder if being lost was an ordinary occurrence in my head, and what events had been pieced together to lead us into this darkened situation. Surely I had never been physically lost before? Surely the lump of school-eraser sized hash bumping in my jeans pocket had come from somewhere? I stumbled and held onto a flower pot that dangled from the outside roof of a residence in the cave quarter, wondering how the lit cigarette full of "chocolate" had gotten into my hands, and why Rorian kept mumbling about pigs he couldn't eat. I began to sift pesetas in my hash filled hand, mashing metal and drug, creating a song while I did so, lifting the fog far enough in my inner mind to see the beginning of our day...


the bull roars,
but the croooooowd…
lunges over barriers –
sword and flesh swing,
horns covered in sand – 
eyes demon-red
innocent gloom. 


the bull roars
stomps and pounds
jarras crack and spill,
to the sand.
the bull has collapsed, 
the bull has fallen
its knees have buckled. 
but outside the blood is booooooooiling! ending in a broken high note, my song lurched forward with my body, into shutters half-open to mysteries inside, cracking old wood with my fall, the warmth of blood colored like Rioja wine filling my mouth.


"I am mesmerized by the sound of  charcoal sizzling on that aluminum foil," I murmured, hours before, to my best friend who stared apprehensively at the ball of flavored tobacco mixed with hash. "It calms me down, it stops the whirring in my head from words crowding inside my mind, impatient hands on horns, furious faces beet red...." 

Clak, clak, tikka tikka clak clak! went the castanuelas, sounds smoothly wrapped around the smoke drifting up from our hookah, gypsy flamenco dancer whirling inches away from our low table. Her colors reminded me of a monarch butterfly in a controlled spin, a painter's hand of yellows, oranges and blacks deftly wiping the palette of air in front of me with sound and hues of a tradition old as the cave we sat in. "I don't really know where we are anymore," I said, while my hand stood poised above the charcoal, gleaming glowing embers crumbling hour after hour to a fine ash. "You are where you need to be," Rorian replied, now holding a calf-skin bag of wine over his mouth and squirting fresh Sangre de Toro into his mouth. I rolled my eyes in response, taking my eyes off the woman's hands rolling and twisting for only a moment to look over at him and see if he were serious. The sweat of the dancer and thrum of the man's guitar were beginning to fill the air, layer after layer of rich velvety warmth that made the small cave door seem smaller and smaller than ever. I began to sink happily to the voice of the guitarist, smooth chunks of gravel bouncing against each other and skipped into a lake's smooth surface. 

The next morning all that was in my pocket were a few pesetas and a half-empty lighter. Rorian was nowhere in sight and my mouth carried the mineral sour taste of my own blood far back into my throat.

Color of Insanity (Poem)

I sat on a rock the color of insanity.

It spoke to me like a demure day,

and then spat at my feet with sharp pieces of sand.

Then this rock, this tough, bony, shapeless hunk of hardness told me a story.

It sang its way through a hundred years while the tide grew from a whimpering lap

to a vicious conundrum. Its transformation I gazed at through wondrous eyes,

a memory I would never forget, no matter the hum and drum of water in my brain,

no matter how many blue notes I scraped from the sky with my fingernails caked in clay.

In this story I smelled girls that tasted like cotton-candy and had minds like wild horses.

I heard the half of me that's beast awaken in a frenzy to a lento wind winding its way through palms.

I tasted a soft, muted lemon-yellow fish on a woman's lips, delighted to be her swain

I smelled a shivaree as a penumbra swallowed the ocean's sunspots

I saw a cloud bend itself like a chevron over naked notes shifting their way upwards from this song.

Then I died alone floating as a scapegrace would. I died with no music in my ears,

no drums rough like mountain thunder, no curves&lips for my patient fingers to trace.

I died suddenly, without languor, without preamble.

Startled from my reverie, I jumped nervously off this luckless rock,

slapping sand that had risen suspiciously, secretively up my legs

and bolted from that place without a glance backwards.

Alone, minutes later,

I felt the water meet slushy sand and make sucking sounds 'round my ankles

and heaved a gentle sigh in the direction where mermaid's slink around their lairs.

Quietly I began advancing towards the Land of Nod,

when a sharp slice of eternity later I turned my head to say goodbye to that eccentric rock,

and saw perched upon that rock colored like insanity,

an hourglass figure, waving at me to come back,

waving with a smile smothered and smeared with sensuality.

I stood rooted in icy rings of water that lapped now around my neck,

and listened carefully as a new song floated out lazily towards me from that rock.

Pomegranate Shadows (Poem)

His figure stood alone,

against a pole topped with an iron pomegranate

half husked in shadow

an inchoate lover's silhouette.

A fretful gaslight's glow danced

while he stood silent, stitched to his shadow,

a preying mantis

with dark legs poking out into flickering lights.

Head still, a window's reflection in two pupils dark as a raven's chest

Unblinking, gazing at what wasn't there,

detachment, unhurried away from silence,

and into loneliness, he accepted his finished night.

She had sat flustered,

crumpled layers upon crumpled layers

smoothed out every half-hour,

nervous hands like a lepidopterist's trade.

Yet she couldn't turn her gaze towards the window,

laced with a soft metal that appeared to drip like molten honey.

Moments as hours lifted her hands at last,

to rub circles on the opaque pane

where breath had fogged up clarity.

Shy smile, blushed cheeks the color of red spice

faded quietly with the view of an iron pomegranate,

lone guard over a cobblestone street,

dissolving quickly to a rising film of solitude.

Islands and Green Scars (Poem)

The frail boy sat on the sand,

partly covered in whispering water,

a muddy mix of silt and salt finding its way around his toes and up his legs.

His hair was the color of an almond left roasted too long,

and his hands toyed with the husk of a coconut,

frayed and waterlogged from bobbing on the sea's slippery surface.

As if awaiting a response,

the child peered closely at the coconut

and finally began wondering aloud how he had gotten there.

Only moments later did he recall the watery screams of those taken down deep,

or the soft sobs of those he left behind,

and truly, were it not for those hushed stabs into his mind

he would have stared happily upon the sliver of sand he had been dumped upon.

It was only then that this young boy cast aside his friendly find

and glanced behind him at the emerald slice of unknown,

a dazzling dark green scar that began suddenly a few meters behind him.

Exhausted, and heaving his bony frame upwards,

he shuffled his way down the crescent,

peering down only once when a zebra mussel sliced his large toe,

leaving a swirling, thin streak of red trailing behind.

The blood reminded him that he was alive

and a tiny gap opened on the right side of his mouth,

an excuse for a smile, surely,

though widening into the size of a cracked sunbeam

when he stopped a few feet further down

and watched the sphere above perform an alchemical change

from shapeless endless blue to oven-red contrails

twisting and fighting away from unseen objects,

to become weals on the horizon's fine-point line.

Stunned by its fierce beauty framed by a laconic world,

he contemplated the mania of such a sunset

and wondered who could bask in such a moment and still want to die.

Dreamin' on a Bench with Death (Poem)

My day dawned crisp. Frigid.

The type of day where tiny curled fingers of frost crawl down your neck,

yet flee in the face of weak sunshine like tasteless frosting on a cake.

My walk brought me to a small bench,

where a tired form sat hunched like a crooked branch after a storm.

"Excuse me, sir, may I sit beside you?"

A slight, cautious and weary nod bent its way downward in assent,

though I drew no comfort from a hooded face that gave off no breath.

My own breath drifted out molasses-slow from partially parted lips,

a reminder that the man beside me is either

a stranger to death

or its master.

Either way curiosity overcame me,

and I sat down just as the sun cracked its yoke over streaks of thinning gray.

Sitting silently is not my forte,

and shortly, I began to tell him a story

while watching wisps of my breath whirl happily away from our silent bench.

"I awoke hours ago under the strain of a nightmare," I whispered, scared to disturb his reverie,

yet emboldened by warmth seeping into my blood like a stream finding dry rock,

"and opened my eyes in hopes the vision would fade.

I had been running through a forest,

eyes dinner-plate large in terror,

a shade chasing me in rapid, strong strokes.

I knew for certain what I had stolen was precious,

far beyond diamond and gem value,

yet couldn't place what exactly it was that I held gripped,

bone-white with strain..."

His hand suddenly twitched, at once slow, at once faster than anything I'd seen

and an odor from his movement caught me strongly between my eyes

rocking me backwards, pressing tightly against the  bench.

I caught my breath and continued, not knowing what else to do.

"I lost speed, and hope followed soon after,

tearing at my lungs begging for a pause,

begging for surrender.

Surrounded by trunks thick as fear

and branches like mason's arms hammered with strength,

I turned to face my pursuer.

I saw a film rising up around the darkened glade,

triumphant, inky..."

"It was I." A sound like a clock hissing the seconds further into the day.

Stunned, I jumped off the bench, having lulled myself into peace

forgetting my breathless companion

who now followed his statement with a turn,

cloaked arm reaching out for me,

his once crooked frame straightening quickly.

"I have caught up with you. After all, there is no escape

for your friends have all found my double, my brother,

and now it is your time."

"No, impossible, impossible! You gave me extra, you promised me more!

scrabbling from where I had fallen,

blood and pebble mixing under the skin of my palm,

backing away terrified on hands in knees,

even as he lunged downwards,

wrapping me in a cloak of darkness,

subduing sunshine

submerging day into a night

where all I heard was the laughter of one who has never lost.

Part II

Some quote there is another type of day,

one where the man leans back comfortably,

left arm resting on cracked paint,

the right feeling a soft lapel, face painted in a smile

five oceans wide,

beckoning me to sit, to join.

I notice first he is not bent.

He is not an old man clutching a last days cane

nor a soothing fog that upon entering turns poisonous,

but is laughing!

The laughter rolls across hills like a low boom,

a cannon boom without the blood that follows

and I cannot help but join him,

curious about his mirth.

"Join, join," he chuckles,  barely able to conceal more laughter bubbling up,

"tell me a story that will pass the time."

In answer I pull out fresh fruit from my jacket,

that lies now discarded with sunshine like warm bread

filling the cracks of an evening receding quickly in disgust.

Offering a piece to him,

I tempt a look into his face

only to see planets, stars, trees and dust swirling in a cornucopia

where in the center I stand,

surrounded by noise, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by hurt and pain.

In the last moment of this vision I see myself fall on knees,

soaked in tears, hands falling to ground.

"I caught you. I healed you. I held you in my arms." Voice a mix of harp and morning mist.

Shaken out of this reverie,

the seams of my body begin to glow,

having not seen in my thought's fog

that I held his hand long after handing him fruit,

fingers grasping tightly to a whirling world.

"Let's eat," I whisper,

to the sound of cannons booming, rolling and erasing sadness.

Chapter 1: The Valley Burns

I remember things in chunks. Not chunks like the bites I would take off my mother's out-of-the oven cinnamon bread I had buttered, and then rolled around my mouth, or even the chunks of aluminum siding that sheared off the roof of the church next door in a thunder from my stray water balloon, leaving jagged edges and mouths in stunned O's. No, these memories are chunks like the limestone cliff nose that took my father and sister a half-day to approach on an Andean mountain-side; chunks like the bites of sugar cane stalks I would take and suck on until sticky juice dripped onto  my 3rd grade uniform the color of a bruised blueberry. Then later, much later, when those chunks have been slapped, chiseled and shaped by winds harsh as the Moroccan ones that shook my bus held together with rust, fervent prayer and the sounds of petulant chickens on my way to Fes, my memories shift and shimmy their way onto paper smooth as river pebbles worn by water that licks ceaselessly in search of a destination. And as the water, this story too flows and finds itself hidden at times, under searing sun in other moments and crashing over boulders to a roar that even now has the capability of drowning out the nightmare dream-scapes which grow in color and depth with every passing year.

But this memory is about a valley that burns. A valley that every year rained down ash and smoke. A valley that saw me shutting the windows of my family's apartment, knowing the next day my brother and I would doodle fantastic shapes on the windows covered in a thick soot, whispering about how we wished fires wouldn't cry so much and turn our thumping city into a gray silent yard of hushed movement.
"Is it weird to draw a big fire from ash soot?" my brother would ask, head craned out over our steel railing twisting like grape-vines, arm extended into space with his finger slowly imprinting on our dimmed windows the shape of a cane-field on fire.
 "No, that's where it comes from, right?" I answered, perched even more precariously over the balcony's ledge, where only months before we had hurled down chunks of brick my father had hauled out of the crawl space he was making, oooohing and aaahing at the muffled boom they made and how the small pieces flew across the street.
"What on EARTH on you doing!?" my father had yelled on that sweaty summer afternoon, his body a sheet of sweat from digging and hacking at brick. "You could kill someone!" A yell that rattled around in my brain even then, hanging out over the ledge while I traced long stick figures in the soot on panes that had been clean only hours before the fires had begun.
"Maybe we shouldn't be so far out," I ventured to my brother, but my brother has never known fear, and even this half-hearted warning felt weak to me.
"Come on, I think we have a few boxes of matches left to burn, do you think it's possible to flick them from one end of our room to the other, over the hammock?" I relented, a few moments after our drawing was complete.
"Sure, but if they land, make sure they land on paper soaked in hairspray," Evan responded seriously, "we want the biggest fire ball possible."
Still, silently, the ash fell. The cane fields, amidst far-flung reaches of our Andean valley sheltering Caracas, burned relentlessly throughout the day, enormous puffy clouds of smoke rolling upwards with the fickle wind, then shifting quickly to fall over our city like great balls of dirty cotton. We were forbidden to go onto the roof. "Incidente del bomba de agua" (Balloon incident) was what the church-goers were calling it, and it would be months before we earned enough money from small jobs to repay the coffers. Even so, it would have been nice to take an ash-bath, to smudge it on my childish frame in lines and swirls, like Piggy and Ralph in "Lord of the Flies."

The sun receded quickly, as if shamed from the brightness from the flames, leaving a dark ink to spread across the city while pockets of fire licked upwards on the mountainside. Inside, safe from ceniza de caña, my brother and I flicked matches off the flinty side of matchboxes, watching them burst suddenly into a ball of lit sulfur, then die just as quickly, leaving behind a trail of smoke. Across the room I grinned mischievously at Evan, while match after match sailed over our room's low-slung chinchorro hammock and into darkness. 


The burning season had begun.