tints

"Once at sea always at sea".

"Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean".

S. Coleridge–Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"East".

"Ovest".

park bench

love's more dangerous when it rests.
when, on a bench, spring air; not quite warm yet,
it lingers by saying:
"don't wait for me, it's going to be long".
but still you do. that's where the danger lies.

in the non-option.

i did not choose, it's the intrinsic definition of lies.
they repeat in time and feed on one another. and only palely
come up, as watermarks on a forgotten bible

when they are repeated on and on.
as if they wanted to say:
"rest assured in cradled arms, summer will be cool, beds will become suddenly larger from now on".

written for Z.D.

Words given and left

I usually believe brown whiskey,
find wind stripes you shot, as to say:

trust voices,
know ice,
and cross water

i knew there was something missing

when all else fails:
pledge and promise
to keep away from what
you can't win, and still you can't lose.

when i gave you my right eye,
i knew there was something missing.

as in any board game, it's seen from above.

written for Z.D.

The Crossing of Panama

Legend has it that Rodrigo de Bastidas, nobleman and direct descendant of the king, was awoken at night by the shiniest of lights in his native Triana. There stood in dream Penelope, his beautiful angel mother pointing west with three fingers surrounded by a luminous aura. Bastidas, scared that it might be a warning of death as punishment for the dissolute life he conducted, fasted ten days and ten nights wondering alone through the torrid Sevillan summer. But upon arriving in the port town of Cádiz he suddenly realized what his defunct parent had meant. There sailed a ship west, headed for what was then, and what is now known as the New World. Rodrigo de Bastidas, was going to be the man who would discover and explore and exploit Panama–the unfathomable isthmus limb of Central America. [...] To this day, adventurers go in search of his "path of gold"; a fabled trail immersed deep in the jungle paved entirely with gold that the very Bastidas had ordered built before the mutiny that took his life. [...] His intense existence never seemed to walk astray from that apparition on a summer night. Many facts remain unknown, but perhaps the most haunting is the way with which the number three recurred in his deeds as a joust between by God and the Devil. Only upon death did he compel his troubled soul to come to terms with his destiny.

Reads his elegy in the Caribbean island of Cuba:

Three were the cities that bore my name,
and each one sat on a bed of gold.

Three were my ships by the shipworm sunk,
three times mutiny, scurvy and malady

Three were my poor mother's blessings
Plagued three times by the Devil's claws

But as long as my gold trail under the jungle rests,
my condemned soul will torment he who charts the uncharted.

written for Z.D.

there are things I see in the darkness

I might be crucified for my actions
exemplified by simple recurrences
and boxed in the tightest of ribbons
but I remain undoubtably the easiest of misses
and catches

I understand no less, the need to intensify
relate and test
a leg that's standing and another flexing

But nevertheless one contradiction remains:
once anticipated the horrid shipwreck–even before my tired eyes
I still had to process, intensify, relate and test it.

And in the darkness, there are things I see. Goodnight and hold hands.

written against Z.D.

solstices

there are distinct times of the year
when two or more conditions meet
cross lines between orbits
of planets, green leaves, potential heartbreaks
and other celestial objects

thus you might have a early-spring solstice
diagonal enough
to close in on the mid spring solstice
unfathered, ridiculous to the eyes of
anyone out of its ellipsis

but what really draws attention
on those days and nights
is the ease with which
shrapnel flies from your eyes
to be received with sparks and speechless
awe by unwary telescopes
pointed to the sky.

written for Z.D.