HILDA RUEDA

Para el que lo entienda, si lo quiere entender.

DUELE

Hoy duele, duele tu ausencia marcada de recuerdos

duele el sabor rancio de las memorias mustias

y el cristal roto en que se reflejan las palabras nunca dichas.

Duele el tiempo que destrozó en pedazos lo que fuera

Duele la caricia immune que dejó de ser paz, para ser furia

Duele el beso acicalado y yerto que dejamos en el umbral de nuestra historia

Y la esperanza que dejó de ser cuando la lluvia arrebató su espectro

Duele tocar el lastre de este camino atrincherado y muerto

Duele rozar las horas que juntamos para encender el fuego

Y dejamos ahogar en un álgido silencio

Duele retornar a la orilla y encontrar el nido ciego

Duele azotar el viento para robarle un místico hasta luego

Duele sepultar de un todo la risa arrebatada y el caminar ligero

Y saber que todo ha muerto al despertar de un sueño

Duele y me impongo el desapego para llorarte luego

Duele y arrancarme quisiera este dolor sin miedo

pero aunque quiera todo, aún de dolor me muero.

WOUNDED

I am wounded, my heart in thousand pieces has been shattered

I am wounded, broken into flutters of impertinent sparrows.

I am wounded by the breeze that once was breeze and now is thunder

Turning into ashes what I dreamt as paradise, and now inferno

I am wounded by the touch that was caress and now spear

By the kiss that brought me light and now I fear

by the song that once was mine and now wanders

In the pits of a dark hell where sounds are barren

I am wounded by the “truth” that wasn’t true but lies engendered

By the words that never were but I pretended

I am wounded, and in bleeding I am marching light and tender

While the glimpse of vanished stars their light surrender

While I mourn my wounded pride and all is rendered

in bleak colors  like the night that now embraces me

CURIOSITY, DEAD DECLARATION

My hands extended to the sky I pronounce you dead,

dead to my story, dead to the sound of my voice, dead to the caress that I squandered upon you

I pronounce you dead to my skin, my lips and my heart, to the unconditional love I offered you without restrain

Dead to my smile that serendipitously captured your heart at first sight and our hands holding time without time

Dead to the touch that brought your skin to shiver at the rhythm of my breath, to the murmur of my voice luring your name

To the words that feverishly I wrote to spell your dream now forgone and the secluded secret that my heart never revealed

I pronounce you dead, although with you I also die, like the echo on the mountain that fleeing goes over the wind

I pronounce you dead, another ruin crumbling over me, and the weight of your cadaver consigns to grave my mourning soul

I pronounce you dead, and although I sow roses in your garden, now it’s harvest and their petals will embalm your recollections.

Dead, like vagabonds under the bridges of what was, the memories of you will vanish too, trickling down with my sorrow and my pain

But I pronounce you dead, because the piece of me I gave to you has been abandoned beside the trail we once concurred.

And the fainting shadow of your love has vanished like a ghost that wandering aimlessly tear my tears for my lost

Crying rivers, creeks and oceans, I recoil and I will march, leaving traces of my passing, of your passing and our love

So the living once reflecting on the warmth that wasn’t warm, find a verse where lines were written with the ashes of this corpse.

THE ASSASSIN OF LOVE

 You brought to light the darkest hours of my sojourn.

You broke the silence of my muted soul at dawn

And caressed the forgotten corners of my sequestered memory

You spoke the words I have been denying to my mourning soul

And filled the glass with a tantalizing brew that now drowns me.

You took my hand to set me free, I thought, but you handcuff me to my pain

You brought the rain with you to wash away my hopes for survival

And relentlessly prosecuted my desires, my wishes and my needs.

You called my name under the chord of a stale song

And I drank the concoction of your kiss and your serenade at dusk

Waiting at my porch for another dose of your poisonous elixir   

You are the grain of sand that has corroded my spirit

And bent it to the pounding sound of an arrhythmic beat.

You have eradicated tenderness from the thesaurus of my heart

And have built a wall to separate your voice from mine

Without prejudice to your pride and your emancipated ego

You are the reason I can’t recollect my peace, and the admonition of this paradoxical dead sentence.

“Rest in peace” was your last whisper.

BUT THEN IT RAINED.

He kissed me, and I saw the light of dawn in his surrendered smile

He kissed me and I woke up from my eternal slumber to meet his lips

He kissed me and my tears stopped falling to gather in the sky of his eyes

And I smiled because the Promised Land was there where I wasn’t looking.

He kissed me and the World spoke louder than Plato ever did

And at the rhythm of his voice I lulled to sleep under the stars

He kissed me and his heartbeat played the music of the Olympus

And I drenched in the allegories of Rumi and the soliloquies of Dante

And it all came into place, it all became clear before my heart,

It all was faultless, it all spoke of beauty, of grace, of unmarred truth.

But then it rained….

OF MEN AND MONKEYS

Slowly crawling their way up the luscious canopy,

they laugh coldly at the prospects down below

They shriek  frenziedly out of fear, chest upright and voices low

thus protecting them from others, curious  creatures they fear so

For as  dish of rare species  they suspect they’ll end up

if it wasn’t  for tree branches where they hang from dusk to dawn

They laugh loud  knowing nothing, nothing more that leaves would know,

and they bite the hand that serves them, why to risk  a friendly touch?

They are creatures of the jungle, faces growling, fear a breast,

heart and feelings they are hiding on the branches of high trees.

They’re uncanny and pretentious, they are cold out of despair,

they are noisy, rowdy, bluffers, petty thieves  of lower faith.

furtive flingers of foul feces to the unguarded down below,

without knowing that those others are the wings they’re looking for

without knowing that survival  is a matter of pure love.

It’s of  men I talk about, not of monkeys, don’t be fooled

For the monkeys are kind creatures not alike some men I know.

 GLOWING COALS

Anger, under the skin that passion suppurates, transgendered into tears and wild fire

Under the guise of a furtive kiss and a desired caress that arrives late and never fulfills

I break my soul, trying to conceive the thread that led me here and find nothing but despair

I reach for light to see what darkness is ahead and darkness outcries laughter and mockery

And I fall, prisoner of my own chains and my own ground doesn’t hold me

I know it is too late to recover the anvil that was the savior of my soul.

And I am lost, repeating the same verse to lull my neediness and my sorrow.

Resting my head on the shoulder of a mercenary king that now possess me.

And depositing my bones on the cradle of a pervasive desire that corrupts my heart

I am blind to the agnostic call my soul now perceives as a treat to its survival

And surrendering my future to the undisciplined passions of my blithering skin

Why am I bound to the defaced ruins of my past and seeking comfort on a sunken wreck?

Where are the wings I dreamt I had?  Where are the dreams of flying to the nearest star?

Haven’t I tasted this wine before and decided it was intoxicating and precarious?

Hadn’t I arrested the criminal desires of my heart and put them in the dungeon of yesterday?

How fool of me to believe that a kiss and a surrendered smile could heal my heart and save my soul.

THE FLOOD OF WORDS

My words are cramming too close together inside me and are pushing to get out, out of my sorrow, my pity, my loneliness and coldness.  They flood the land where I attempt to build my peace and speak while I try to contain them.

I am writing to what I left behind, to what used to describe my endeavors and my fights.

I am writing to the eyes that saw me and walked away, to the smile that broke my heart and turned it into tears,

To the hopes I cultivated in an arid garden, to the light that extinguished itself behind the impossible bars of time and pain.

I am writing to my heart now weighed down with the heavy load of despair and unaccomplished dreams.

I am writing to the soft touch that once was my freedom today my jailer.

I am writing to the spaces I trailed leaving a piece of me in every corner, I am writing to those pieces that today seem indispensable, to cover my misery and loneliness.

I am writing to the future today dressed as a beggar, seeking the warmth of a forgotten kiss, starving for love.

I am writing to what could had been, to the doors that closed behind me when I only asked for tenderness.

I am writing to the moments that life put in my hands and took away as fast as the flight of a mistaken bird.

I am writing to the hands I hold and those that hold me, those whose touch I forgot or never felt.

 I am writing to the soft breeze that came to refresh my life and left as fast as it arrived, to the words that like the rain will never be heard again.

The words that I said and like white butterflies disappeared with the wind.

I am writing to those amorphous loves that blended their sounds and their life with the mist of a gone morn.

I am writing to the memories that today I pray to leave beyond my reach, although without them my brittle past becomes a wreck.

SOLILOQUY

I have broken the doors that took me to the lair of your miseries

I let the air infuse the stagnant space where the carcass of your love resides

and in a soliloquy  I rewrote the words spread on the walls of your reticent memories

I have caressed the cold breeze your despondency left behind, and it doesn’t hurt anymore

The stench of your mortician disappearance and the silence of your sinister arrogance

Drew away the curtains of the darkest chambers in which my soul has reposed

And I know you are leaving, steadily, taking with you the snippets left of me,

Without remorse, without looking back because there is nothing to recall.

I am going with the breeze, frolicking between erased memories and forgotten moments

I am going where the empty shell of your existence perishes to bring the sun about.  

UNDER THE FALLEN TREES

Under the fallen trees of the returning autumn I found you

Broken in pieces, silent, pullulated of phantoms and fallacies.

I collected with naked hands the wreckage of your soul

And mended it to the contour of my arms and my embrace

I took the torn clothes of your defaced memories

and with tender pace dressed them in velvet.

Under the fallen trees I bent my bosom to your sorrow

And my untainted heart to the pleading of your desolated past.

Under the fallen trees where darkness corrupts what touches

I deposited the ashes of your sordid trek and built a fire for your hopes.

There under the fallen trees I left the embers by your side to kindle your lost faith

And dried your tears and kissed your wounds till dusk was gone.

HOME

Of love and longing speak your rusty windows,

Of secluded peace your cherished corners.

Of bed stories the untainted years

of warm embraces and forgotten tears.

The now strangers who bare feet walked in

Had gone somewhere to divert and laugh

To create a world of their own and draft

And now someone else by your door stands.

In the shadowed eves of November days,

When the sun goes down to repose and lay

I return to you, recollections fresh

To reside in time, like at tender age.

Now the garden blooms and the hinges creak

And the old love songs that my heart would sing

On the tattered walls of my home I read

The threshold I cross and bare feet I feel.

OH, LIFE

Crippled, my soul sits back at the cemetery of the past.

Rivers flow as always I‘ve been taking with them the perishing savor of what was.

I cry because my feet are wet, buried under centuries of remorse and pain,

and everything seems to disappear without my consent.

I collect pieces of myself and throw them back to the current

to conjure time to take me with it and allow me to run the fields and fecund life,

but I am here, sinking under the weight of  guilt and sulking despair.

Time goes by, singing mourning hymns and the fruits of blushing trees split open,

pouring the semen of new sprouts on the waters that surrounds me

and I know other fields are fertilized and will grow and bloom and thrive,

but immobile as I am, my shoulders reply to the grieve of stagnation with a bow,

recognizing the futility of the battle I am fighting,

reminding me that life is going by while I seat and write, while I seat and cry, while I seat and die.

Rescue me, oh life that waves goodbye, rescue me and take my ashes to the wind so I can dream again,

so I can build castles for civilizations to come and write verses for

troubadours and jesters.

Pull the anchor or this dilapidated ship and take my soul with you,

and if in the process you tear the roots of my existence, I will grow wings to take me afar to save myself.

I BELIEVE IT

And he started bellowing under the light of my September, slipping  the time between his fingers and roaring my name

He said he was my light, my salt, my languid shadow and  my way

and I believed his name, his word, his languid memories and eyes

Then he said he had iron hands to support my bones and a thousand kisses to erase my past

He said he would crown my head of laurels and white bonnets and put silk under my feet

He said a dream had told him of my voice and he sought me to hear my song

And I believed his word, his name, his languid memories and lies.

He said he would break me out of slavery and freed me to his hand

He said he would awake me to a place where my dreams never imagined

And I believed his call, his word, his languid memories and more

He said he would walk the pastures at my hand and put fresh flowers on my sill

He said he would bring the rivers to my feet to drench my thirst and my desires

And… in truth he never said a word…. But I believed it.

NO CABEN

No caben en un verso mis áridas palabras

Inundadas de recuerdos y de silabas sin tono

Desgastadas de memorias, afónicas de tiempo

Graves de amargura y esdrújulas sin eco

No caben en el ritmo renuente y alfabético

Todos las musas lánguidas muriendo en el silencio

Ni en la arcaica métrica de un popular soneto

Todos los sueños blancos que esperan en mi huerto.

No caben los fonemas insuflados de recuerdos

Que en los renglones mustios de mi pasado encuentro

Ni la elocuencia basta para cubrir de flores

Lo que de escombros habla y de sepulcros yertos.

No caben los silencios que encuadran los sonidos

En páginas oscuras de tintas ya lejanas

La tilde de los años se acerca casi arcana

Blandiendo entre sus manos el alma mancillada

No caben en la pluma que escribe con letargo

Los besos y los brazos que un dia se juntaron

No caben en el nido de tibias golondrinas

La risa moribunda y el transmutado llanto

No caben en archivos eternos y mundanos

Los cálidos reflejos de noches sin estrellas

Ni aquellas rosas mustias que un día se vistieron

De dulce poesía para burlar querellas

MUSA

No te he visto languidecer en mi mirada, ni arremolinar con urgencia mascarada mis momentos

No te he visto deambular desnuda por los callejones baldíos del tiempo, ni remontar la cima desolada de lo perdido en el silencio

No te he visto translucida de inocencia en vilo, ni clareando el cielo bajo el otoño ciego

No he visto los largos lazos que se entretejen de palabras, ni el incapaz recuerdo que recordar olvido

No te he visto ronronear austera entre el olor del viento, ni sacudir los surcos esparcidos en el devastar del tiempo.

No he visto tu rostro enternecido por el rozar de un beso. No  te he visto rondarme, musa, sin prisa y con denuedo.

Te has alejado dejando mi pluma perpetuada en el silencio y aunque callar no quiero,

aunque los sonidos se desbandan como pájaros de cálido verano, tú te alejas y mi verso enmudece, mancillado de olvidos.

Vuelve a mi, musa gitana, que deambulas por los jardines blancos de la memoria y sacrificas sueños en el letargo injusto del abandono.

Retorna lo que a mi pertenece y que has robado sigilosa entre la horda de mis desengaños y desatinos.  

Vuelve con tu alforja a reventar de fantasías y deposítalas imberbes entre mis manos ansiosas de escribirlas, una a una,

saciarlas quiero  de vocablos indecibles y arrancarlas del espectro secular de lo desdeñado para azotarlas al sol de una mañana sin suspiros.

DON’T ASK FOR LOVE

Do you want me to love you?  To write poems to your disaffected love? Do you want me to bend my knee, to kiss the soil you regurgitate and beg?

Do you want me to hold the hand that harms my pride and override my principles to reach your desolated past?

To wait for your smile and avert the piercing sound of your inconspicuous voice before I say my words on your behalf?

Worlds will fall before I succumb to your undecipherable desires and the pantomime of your miserable existence.

I walk the paths of warmth and light and behind you I only find a false rhetoric of despair.

I seek the sublime with an unbreakable tenacity, plucked away by gods from your earthy disentangling.

I surrender to life with undefinable repose, while you struggle to breathe out the breath of life that you received.

Don’t ask me for love, ask me for a tear to wipe your insolence away. That’s all your soul deserves

INTENTIONS

I intend to bloom and my feet die frozen in the frigid winter

I intend to love and my heart rebukes my intentions and my wishes

I intend to gather and I find the pieces of my soul all scattered and torn

I intend to arrive and instead I pace the endless paths of the interminable.

I intend to offer my tender hand to the soul in need

And I realize I crave that hand and the care it once beheld

I intend to share the sorrow of the distressed and quarreled

And I instead cry with despondent ignorance and unrestrained despair

THE OTHER SOUL

It is not the bell of time that rattles inside me, it is the sound of your voice that echoes in my memory like a fish that swims around and around again in a pool of clean water, regurgitating and absorbing its own past.

It is not the memory of you that tortures me, but the implicit desire that I assume is mine by birth right.

It is not the cadence of your movement that accelerates my heart to the unbearable, but the rhythm of the silence that transforms the air in a profound, lacerating distance.

It is not the longing for your caress that conceals my reason under the weight of guilt and suffering, but the knowing that what was, will never be again.  

It is not the irrelevance of the words that constricts my most intimate desires, but the unreachable wall from where our dreams hang in the infinite contempt of time.

It is not the light of your surrendered eyes that builds the illusion of faux love, but the magical smile that surrenders my misery and my pain.

O death that surrounds my soul at dawn and embraces my heart at night, come, join me in the dungeons where the light doesn’t reach and peace is only a muted sound and an unborn symbol.

QUEST

Where do I find myself, spread over the land of thousands hugs, words, mimes?

Where do I belong when my heart has been broken and some pieces thrown to the sea?

That sea that once came to me pure and sweet and today I found polluted with my tears and pain?

Who do I love if I don’t remember all the names to whom my passions one day my heart pronounced?

Who is my partner when I have shared my soul with innocuous bandits and smugglers of desire?

When I have been an accomplice of the crimes I now repudiate and the sins my faith regrets?

How do I walk my path when my feet have been torn apart and my eyes blinded by the swords of time?

How do I remember when my past abhors of my present and is in the present where my memories exist?

How do I know my end has come if I haven’t seen the faintest sign of the beginning?

How do I know my verse is mine if I don’t know the words that have been written before and after me?

If I haven’t heard the sounds that replicate the simple silence to become vowels after dawn?

Where did I lost you if you were never mine and if I don’t recognize myself in your pursue?

Where do I start to forget if remembering you is as far and as close as memory could stretch and by remembering I am anointing you with the sign of the unforgettable?

What is the reason behind a joined hand, the bliss of an embrace that shrouds my heart in pain?

What do I look for in the immediacy of the storm when my body has been thrown haphazard towards you, surrounded by the agony of knowing that what I believed as truth, is contorted, and is monstrous and is false?   

ASI LLEGASTE

Como la sombra imperceptible de un fantasma te acercaste, recorriendo los pasillos de mi desolada historia.

Como el arco iris fugaz de primavera así llegaste, arrancando luces otoñales de mis prismáticos recuerdos.

Como la misteriosa soledad que invade los rincones en sigilo, así llegaste

y llenaste los espacios que jamás en su mortificada existencia la tierra blanca pudiese haber llenado.

Así llegaste! Desbordaste las distancias. Los muros alquímicos que construidos fueron por antiquísimas culturas desmoronaronse en tu presencia.

El ardor de lo enajenado y turbio apagose sin dejar rastro ni bochorno y luego desatado el temporal de la distancia las cenizas arrojadas fueron al viento sublime que nos azotó en el tiempo.

Como una lágrima que se forma fugitiva entre los ojos tibios de un infantil abrazo sin derramarse nunca, sin que nadie note su presencia, así llegaste, sin remover los escombros de lo que se forjo en el fuego.  Así llegaste, como el suspiro que susurra lo innombrable en el silencio, como el sueño que se desmorona cuando la luz del día a la ventana asoma, así llegaste.

Me encontraste muda, desértica y ajena.  Me encontraste recorriendo los espacios que mi carcelero ha puesto y así también te fuiste.

Y vuelves, ahora que el tiempo inmortal ha muerto, ahora que las hojas del otoño se ha llevado el viento,

Ahora que he descubierto el mensaje subliminal de mi existencia yerta,  ahora vuelves, con la cabeza baja a murmurar un sueño.

Ahora vuelves con la oz en tu siniestra mano, mi nombre pronunciando, mis esperanzas azotando y no sé si te seguiré ahora porque la luz  como mi amor ha muerto.

HE HAS CALLED MY NAME

He has called my name.  He says he has been waiting for the time to split the seconds into eons.

He says it’s time to go to that place where fortune and misfortune are unisons, where pain and laugh are just infamous voices of the eternal.

He has called my name and I have lifted the anchor of my past and I followed him to the last murmurs of the soul.

No fears, no regrets, no spaces to fill with insalubrious specters, no time, no pain, just the rustling of the wind of being.

I dream and in this inconspicuous space I awake remembering a time where another dream was dreamt, and I forgo the luring plateaus of fast sojourns and succumb to the slow rippling of time.

He, dressed in black, waving a gentle hand to follow through, rocks my ship into the shadows of nowhere and I soothed by the sound of his voice have dropped my hoe to pursue the fields of his return.

I am not scared, he is my friend and brave companion. He has been in me as he has been with you whispering the indomitable nature of what seems to be but never was.

MUSA

No te he visto languidecer en mi mirada, ni arremolinar con urgencia mascarada mis momentos

No te he visto deambular desnuda por los callejones baldíos del tiempo, ni remontar la cima desolada de lo perdido en el silencio

No te he visto translucida de inocencia en vilo, ni clareando el cielo bajo el otoño ciego

No he visto los largos lazos que se entretejen de palabras, ni el incapaz recuerdo que recordar olvido

No te he visto ronronear austera entre el olor del viento, ni sacudir los surcos esparcidos en el devastar del tiempo.

No he visto tu rostro enternecido por el rozar de un beso. No  te he visto rondarme, musa, sin prisa y con denuedo.

Te has alejado dejando mi pluma perpetuada en el silencio y aunque callar no quiero,

aunque los sonidos se desbandan como pájaros de cálido verano, tú te alejas y mi verso enmudece, mancillado de olvidos.

Vuelve a mi, musa gitana, que deambulas por los jardines blancos de la memoria y sacrificas sueños en el letargo injusto del abandono.

Retorna lo que a mi pertenece y que has robado sigilosa entre la horda de mis desengaños y desatinos.  

Vuelve con tu alforja a reventar de fantasías y deposítalas imberbes entre mis manos ansiosas de escribirlas, una a una,

saciarlas quiero  de vocablos indecibles y arrancarlas del espectro secular de lo desdeñado para azotarlas al sol de una mañana sin suspiros.

NOT TODAY

No, not today.  The sun has set and under the shadows of the broken night I perceive the tantric tempo of your voice.

No, not today.  The space shrinks under my feet and I can hear the whispers of ancient times murmuring your name as softly as the hours pass.

No, not tonight.  I won’t write the words my heart denies, echoing them through the empty walls of undeniable memories.

I obey the calling of obliterated times and breath the uncanny smile of my desires.

No, not tonight.  I will fly away in a carrousel of trickling memories and when I get off at the other side of dawn I will tie my heart down to the unsavory world I chose as lair when you took this trail you call “yesterday”.

SI PUDIERA

Si correr pudiera, si mis pies no se desbandaran al ritmo del sinérgico recuerdo

Si escapar pudiera de las amarras que nunca han amarrado mas que lo imposible

Si mi voz no se quebrara al escuchar el llanto que en el sinfín me ahoga

Si pudiera por un instante,  de lo desolado hacer alas de mariposas blancas

Si pudiera…entonces seguiría aquí para perderte nunca!!

WITHERED

Withered roses in a garden of despair, dragging memories to the ashes of time past,

Withered in the frigid snow that sinks under my tired feet and my sunken dissolutions,

Relegated to the coos of silenced specters and reprimanded molten years.

Withered with the unwilling thirst to drink the impossible and satiate in fear.

Withered are the arcane desires, the substituted rush to get to the pantheon of the forgiven.

Withered are the arid lands where my desires sow the seeds of blunt rejection,

And the kisses an eternal lover forgo without grace and in sinfulness neglected

Withered are the carcasses of relentless dreams that seared of lusty vows my spilled tears.

But I am still here, laughing at the stubborn hours that insist in their transcendence,

At the shadows that perpetrate the crimes and the sand that bore the penance.

I am here, remembering the forgotten wars and forgetting what recollect I must,

Knowing that what was, has disappeared under the unshielded weight of tender soil.

And I, like the roses that the winter ebb, discard the petals that I bloomed one day,

Assured by time that when the leaves all fall under the frigid snow,

My soul will wane in dangled haste to reach the ground to sprout again

To see the sun in gentle ways retrace the path I once have trekked.

ANORANZA

Hoy se han dormido en mis entrañas tus palabras tambaleantes y abrazadas a mi pecho han despertado sin querer.

Hoy un gesto presuntuoso de un ajeno, sepultado en un tumulto me ha traído hasta tu mano que me roza sin saber.

Hoy he charlado con tu sombra, te he contado en mi silencio los susurros de mi piel y mi alma desbocada se ha sentado en tu vergel.

Hoy he sentido vagabundo aquel  espectro que añoré, arrastrando junto al mío de los años un  pincel con el cual pinto auroras donde crezca lo que fue.

Hoy he buscado entre escombros trozos rotos del ayer, y en la escarcha que refresca un arcano amanecer, entre ansias y apatía lo que sé que no tendré.

Hoy te he dicho que tus ojos   en otros ojos encontré y que aun sabiendo que es de hielo el espacio que invente, me he vestido de inocencia para allí poderte ver.

Y te he visto entre la niebla que hoy se tiñe de corcel, navegando en cruel navío que yo sé no ha de volver.

BE STILL

Be still, I hear the rumors of the past loitering in the corners of my mind.

Listen, my lips still pronounce your name when the dusk approaches with its sword.

The essence of your being still swarms in the acts that my soul perform without a compass.

My tears still pour down like an absent child when the hours close without your words.

Though time is merciless and I knew it, the healing of my wounds is slow and hurtful.

Although forgetting I intend I still search for your voice when the storm approaches

And crave the empty space where your uncanny presence rumbled day by day.

Though my will persist in foolishness to overcome the truce of your departure

My heart surrenders to the bows of rapture that became one day my blissful path.

Although I thwart the sounds of your name, they bind my throat to repeat them evermore.

I pursue your hand when the autumn leaves crowd over my dusted soul

and walk the trail of incarcerated  memories to let you free to roam again.

I’m not asking you to come back to the tantalizing light that was our past

Nor I pretend to hide the scars under the subtle tint of your return.

I simply want to say your name before dusk folds over my heart.

DE AMOR Y SOMBRAS

Oh, quien llora por un amor perdido en lontananza,

Oh, quien espera que el tiempo sofoque los sentidos, arrastre los silencios y marque los olvidos.

Oh, quien maldice a un amor lejano. Más vale que arranque su corazón en vilo y lo arroje al mar turbulento de arpías pululado.

Más vale que arranque la piel que ha sido mancillado por el tibio roce de una mano amada y la arroje al fuego tembloroso de los años.

Oh, quien lamenta haber querido. Más vale que destroce aquellos labios que besaron con ardiente pasión y sin medida.

Más vale que recoja una a una las lágrimas vertidas y  sumerja sus famélicos recuerdos hasta que el último suspiro haya muerto.

Irremediablemente amamos, lloramos y sufrimos sin contener el tiempo, el espacio y las esperas

Irremediablemente sangran las heridas a las que hemos sucumbido como guerreros muertos

Insaciablemente perseguimos fantasías preposteras y ajenas y dormimos en el lazo incontenible de lo efímero

Repudiablemente creamos hordas fugaces de fantasmas para azotarnos cuando la soledad agobia y lamentamos lo perdido.

Impúdicamente deseamos ser lo que no somos y repudiamos a aquellos que consiguen abordar el bochorno de ser nadie.

Insufriblemente amamos, maldecimos y negamos, desde el principio al fin de la existencia

Y quien dirá que aquel beso fugaz, aquella trémula caricia, y la palabra que sin hablar pronuncias

Será tu maldición, tu karma o el quimérico destino que la suerte ha puesto como salvación del alma?

Yo, por mi parte he amado con desolada desazón y  destrozada calma. He maldecido a mi pasado, y a un amor al que mi amor no basta, a las musas que me inspiran y a aquellas que soñé vestidas de venganza.

Mi llanto ha ahogado mis recuerdos y aunque pretenda olvidarlo sin quererlo, sus despojos desolados, aun en mi rivera rondan.

Aun mi piel se tiñe de cobardía y sangre cuando los días pasan bajo el rumor del tiempo, de soledad curtidos, de soledad y sombras.  

ANYMORE

I don’t see the fire that ignited my spirit in the past,

I don’t feel the burning marks of secluded thoughts and banned recollections.

I don’t cry any more under the shadows of the impending glory,

Nor I feel the grace that brushed my dreams at night.

I don’t run with the wind anymore and the pastures, where my hopes used to ride at dusk,

have become arid ground for despair.

I am hanging at the vortices of a sunken ship waiting to be rescued by forgiveness

By forgotten words and deceived retrospections, by the sinner and the sin.

I am holding on to time, that knits with golden threats the path I never chose

The path that today barren of desire, my frigid feet once more are treading

I am carrying on my back a thousand years of remorse for the thoughts I never thought,

For all the smiles I faked and the hours I spent in rotund silence

Contemplating the incomprehensible, building castles where innocence is absent

Answering to the inexistent and protruding in grandiose chariots of insignificance.

UNWRITTEN

I don’t know if I always wrote this way, if I was writing love letters when I should had been writing missives of war and disentanglement.

I don’t know if poems were sang at my cot or if my cries have transformed themselves into verses.

I don’t know when the time started to compose itself into rhyme and melody, or when it started corrupting into odes.

I don’t recognize the words that my fingers write like voices of an infinitum soul,

They appear at my fingertips and seem as unknown to me as they may be to you.

I just put the accents to the voices, the shape into the frame and the missing letters into the untold dictation.

I am just the hand that moves at the rhythm of an unrevealed song that pours like water through a worn-out vessel.

I am just the echo that resounds on the walls of an unconquered mountain repeating itself concerned of nothing.

“Come back”, it says, “come back to the caves of your undisclosed past.  Come back to the silence of your serpentine path and find the flowers you trampled over in your rush to raise to light”.

“Come back to the rocks where your home was built by your ancestors and listen to the voices they pronounce”.

“Come back to the light that is hidden in the center of your heart, where words are meaningless and symbols only a shadow of regrets”.

And I come back and the voice is gone, my silence so loud I can’t hear myself.

I come back and the flowers are still trampled and their petals don’t exude the perfume that once was.

I come back and my past still obscure looks at me without recalling it, nor my sunken fears.

And the rocks where my slum was built have disappeared under the weight of disembodied memories,

So painful, so sorrowful that my feet deter themselves from the wretched path and break away.

So I just write, don’t blame me for the words…..

SHUSH!

Silence! your voice arrests my heart and your words bury my hope for redemption

Silence! How can I find the echo of my desolation if your voice makes the truth surrender and the frigid winter a luscious summer time?

Silence! Because my verse pours in cascades and drowns the light when you pronounce my name.

The melody of your voice and the vice of your smile deters my reason, my logic and my peace.

Shush, that the echo of this incomprehensible story still rebounds on the walls of the eternal and I scream at the space that imprisons my agony, like a madwoman at the verge of dissolution.

Shush, that I have lost my path following yours, and my hearth denies my morals and my roots.

Shush, that as you beat the drums of the past I sink low into the darkness of Lethe.

Shush, that my voice doesn’t rise to the pitch of your accord and I in a discordant abhor my soul.

Let me free, raise your hands in the air I breath and exhale my name, so I can catch it back, trap it inside my heart and fly away, where your memories are lost and mine never existed.

Let me free.  Open your hands, tangled in the impossible dream that one day was born in you, and let me go.

I will walk away, as long as my feet can hold me and then when they fail me I will drag myself out of the mist of  “you and ours”.

Let me free, to sabotage the fortune god that attempted this inferno.

Let me free to tell what was untold and to unwrap the future with my own hands.

Let me free. I want to feel the breeze that comes with leaving you in the pasture of time.

Let me free so I can dry my tears in the fountain of despair and let my soul swim and my body recollect.

LAST TIME

It is not a voice that shouts inside me, it is the sound of your voice that echoes in my memory like a fish that swims around and around again in a pool of clean water, regurgitating and absorbing its own past.   It is not the memory of you that tortures me, but the implicit desire that I assume is mine by birth right. It is not the cadence of your movement that accelerates my heart to the unbearable, but the rhythm of the silence that transforms the air in a profound, lacerating distance.  It is not the longing for your caress that conceals my reason under the weight of guilt and suffering, but the knowing that what was, will never be again. It is not the irrelevance of the words that constricts my most intimate desires, but the unreachable wall from where our dreams hang in the infinite contempt of time.  It is not the light of your surrendered eyes that builds the illusion of faux love, but the magical smile that surrenders my misery and my pain. O death that surrounds my soul at dawn and embraces my heart at night, come, join me in the dungeons where the light doesn’t reach and peace is only a muted sound and an unborn symbol.

VERSO DE UN ANCIANO ENFERMO

Déjame que te cuente la historia de mis desvalidos huesos, que mis palabras desabrochen el pasado que me agobia, que mi voz ya apagada por el deshilar del tiempo tintinee por última vez bajo el rumor del viento.   Déjame que mis manos ajadas repitan en silencio los recuerdos que he olvidado y las memorias que no existen. Déjame que mis lágrimas derramadas se sequen en el cuenco vacío de tu inocencia imberbe. Déjame que olvide mi nombre y el tuyo y que por tanto desaloje los momentos que se albergaron en “entonces”.  Déjame que camine los caminos azotados por el vendaval del siempre sabiendo que aun aunque te mire, ya estoy muerto. Déjame que mienta, que invente una historia para llenar los inválidos espacios del destino. Déjame que mi voz se quiebre cuando vea entre las sombras el rostro titilante de la muerte, guiñándome una risa siniestra y atrevida.  Déjame que arrastre mis pies hasta la tibia orilla de lo inmortal que ha muerto, y la juventud que hoy no recuerdo. Déjame aquí postrado en este lecho insalubre y gélido a que las palabras ahoguen lo vivido y desaten del futuro lo fantasmal y etéreo.

POESIA

La poesía no se escribe con versos mas con llanto, ni con palabras lánguidas mas con silencios.

La poesía no se escribe con el corazón bordeando la alegría, mas con el mismo en pedazos, destrozado en agonía.

La poesía no nace del nido tibio y mullido de una golondrina mas en el mismo abandonado y torpe de un ave rapaz en desbandada.

La poesía no canta, sino que solloza, se lamenta iracunda y sangra

La poesía no recuerda, pretende olvidar para desafiar al tiempo, para burlar la memoria que se evapora al viento

La poesía no espera, ha rendido sus gimientes pasos al desazonado miedo

Y se burla del amor, de lo puro, de lo perfecto, de lo fugaz y etéreo.

La poesía se incumbe con el olvido ciego, con el lastre sepultado de un recuerdo

Se incumbe con lo mustio, con lo mortuorio y yerto

La poesía arrebata, escribe con sus propios dedos y a sus ansias

Lo que el corazón no puede, no quiere o nunca alcanzar pudiere.

La poesía no se expresa, se desboca, se lanza a quemarropa detrás de lo lejano

Lo imposible, lo imberbe, lo fútil y lo por demás siempre insufrible.

La poesía no apaga el fuego mas alimenta  como un soplo voraz lo insoportable.

No lleva a la risa de un bufón acrecentada mas despliega una sátira socarrona y mascarada.

La poesía, aquella musa que inmortal de lo mortal se mofa

Hoy de mi voz hace escarmiento, de mi corazón estopa, de mi  alma sucinta una ironía

La poesía, en la que  duermen mis acérrimos espectros

Se agiganta al paso de mi fuero decimado por su encuentro y al ritmo maculado de mis miedos.

I AM

I am the sum of what I could had been and I wasn’t and that that I was and didn’t want to be.

I am the sum of my repressed desires and the undesired repressions.

I am the fruit of the dreams of my nights of insomnia and the nightmares of my accomplished dreams,

I am the sum of all the empty spaces that others before me and after me left behind.

I am the sum of what I abandoned to arrive here and of what I renounce to, today to go back to the past and rebuild it.

I am at the same time seed, soil, flower and fruit.  At the same time yesterday and today. At the same time what was built during peace and the total destruction during war.

I am what my parents, my brothers, my friends, my ancestors were not, and at the same time the compilation of all of them.

I am my children and the work of my hands, and the desired repose and the children I didn’t have.

I am what I wrote and the words that were potential to be said and were never chosen by my verse.

I am all the places that my feet trod and will tread, and all of those that were inaccessible to my story.

All the lovers who loved me and all of them who, though being loved, walked away, and even those with whom our paths crossed incognitos and disaffected.

I am what history told me; what others wrote in their present yesterday and the constellation towards which I aim my austere wander, seeking a horizon where to anchor my boat.

I am what I was supposed to be, because my steps are the echo of my history, and that, which was not expected from me, I also am, because that molded my existence.

I am the sum of millions of gens transmuting time and space to arrive at the immaterial future that transforms fantasy into dreams and dreams into hope.

SOY

Soy la suma de lo que pude ser y no fui y de lo que fui y no quise ser.

Soy la suma de mis deseos reprimidos y las represiones indeseadas.

Soy el fruto de los sueňos de mis noches de insomio y las pesadillas de mis sueňos realizados.

Soy la suma de todos los espacios vacios que otros antes de mi y después de mi han dejado.

Soy la suma de lo que dejé atrás para llegar hasta aqui y de lo que dejo hoy para volver al pasado y reconstruirlo.

Soy al mismo tiempo semilla, tierra, flor y fruto, al mismo tiempo ayer y hoy

Al mismo tiempo lo construido en tiempo de paz y la destruccion total durante la Guerra

Soy lo que mis padres, mis hermanos, mis amigos, mis ancestros no fueron y al mismo tiempo la compilación de todos ellos.

Soy mis hijos, y el trabajo de mis manos y el reposo deseado y los hijos que no tuve.

Soy lo que escribí y las palabras que existían potenciales a ser dichas y fueron nunca escogidas por mi verso.

Soy todos los lugares que mis pies pisaron y pisarán y todos aquellos que inaccesibles fueron a mi historia.

Todos los amores que me amaron y aquellos que siendo amados se marcharon y aun aquellos con quienes los caminos se cruzaron incógnitos y ajenos.

Soy lo que la historia me ha contado, lo que otros escribieron en su ayer presente y la constelación hacia la que dirijo my deambular austero en busca de un horizonte donde anclar mi barca.

Soy lo que debí ser porque mis pasos son el eco de mi historia y lo que de mi no se esperaba, tambien soy, porque aquello modela mi existencia.

Soy la suma de millones de genes transmutando el tiempo y el espacio para llegar al futuro inmaterial que transforma la fantasía en sueňo y el sueňo en esperanza.

THREE GRACES

Pain, death and age all sitting by my side, murmuring their pledges to override my wishes, my hopes and my desires.

Three graces plotting the next pitfall for my heart and soul, mocking the words I write as continuity of my in-transcendent life.

They laugh at the lost love and the broken promises. They laugh at the years I spent yearning for an eternal "you and I", at the hopes written in indelible pages now burnt by time and boredom.

They laugh at my inability to stop the death that is taking place while I write these words, while I try to stretch my existence further away that existence could portray.

Three graces all dressed in black so I do not see them lurking in the darkness of my soul.

Three graces sitting at the bow of my sinking ship, to erase the wake when the end calls me!

TE HE VISTO

Te he visto caminar sujeto de mi mano tambaleante como un infante  desolado,

Te he visto arrojarte furibundo contra los atacantes que sofocan tu esperanza

Te he visto llorar en mis sueños, apesadumbrado y solitario

Enjugar tus lágrimas en mi regazo y reír de saciedad y  gozo

Te he visto, abrazarme con pasión arrolladora y tremula y luego huir a un norte que no pertenece a nuestra historia.

Te he visto sentado a la orilla de mi camino esperando que mi jumento se acerque a ti y te despierte.

Te he visto sonriendo sin sonreír cuando el otoño llega, y tus ojos he visto buscarme cuando la sombra ciega.

Te he visto a mis pies, besandolos con ternura y denuedo, y te he visto también pisoteando los rosales que juntos hemos cultivado a cada enero.

Te he visto arrogante y altivo, desbocado y necio, sobrepasar los muros que nos separan en el tiempo.

Te he visto y allí entre lo inédito y lo eterno, he guardado esos recuerdos para ti, para lisonjearte a tu llegada y tenderlos sobre el polvoriento espacio para que tus pies se arremolinen con el  viento y me recuerdes.

Te he visto, arrojar versos al aire para que alcancen  la rivera tibia de mi cayado

Te he visto sonreír a mi memoria y reír en lontananza de lo que dijiste y dije

Te he visto recorrer con tu mano mi recuerdo y vibrar de anticipación y ansia

Te he visto convertir tu pensamiento en verso, en canción otoñal, en Brisa leve

Te he visto, susurrar en mi oído, tus cálidas palabras

Te he visto, sonrojar al saber que te escucho y te persigo

Te he visto, cantar una canción que nuestro caminar dibuja

Y te he visto, porque siempre junto a mi aunque lejano vives.

SILENCIO

Tu silencio me arrebata, me hurta el susurrar del viento que refresca mis palabras.

Tu silencio se atraganta en mi recuerdo y gime solitario, árido y exhausto.

Tu silencio mordaz atraviesa mis entrañas, mortifica en sanguinolenta furia el espacio que dejan tus palabras.

Huyo de mi y me pierdo en la infinita vacuidad de lo que fui, fuiste, fuimos.

Me hundo en el fétido pantano de añoranzas y sueños socavados donde dejaste mi esperanza.

Callo para escuchar tu palpitar que enmudeció de pronto.

Callo para no perder un instante de tu voz que no llega, que se ahoga, que me aturde y me sosiega.

Sé que me escuchas, sé que mis versos retozan en tu pecho errabundo, ávido de aventura y sangre.

Sé que mis versos te despiertan en tu mortuoria letanía y se agazapan en un rincón en lontananza fria.

Sé que huir de mi palabra no puedes porque tu corazón ha sido preso, deleitado y yerto en mi rivera y tu suspiro aunque callarlo quieras mi nombre grita, se escabulle y hiere.

TIME

Time has showed me the perfection of its work under the light of its savage blade.

It has told me in a quiet voice that it is the hour to grow, to clean my feet and immerse in my own sickening nature.

It has told me to stop running against the wind of my pettiness and to surrender to its will.

It has told me to stop crying about a lost trek and to dream and fly as high as my broken wings will take me.

I know I am dragging my feet and my fly will burst my soul open.

I know that opening my wings will be painful because the ballast of history is pulling me down.

Time still murmurs in an implacable voice and I bow down because nothing in me is casual but the result of its elaborate plan.  

I know that the hours that remain of me are counted and every second I spent trying to bend time, to reach for the unreachable, to perpetrate the crime with arrogance, time laughs at my deliberate ignorance.

Time spits out the order to be executed with or without my consent, and I succumb to its magnificent arrangement of pain, suffering and joy that it stores in my sojourn.

No one knows where and when it will come lashing out against my impotent ego.

No one knows how it manages to drawn my dreams in a pool of dirty water and to bloom flowers from a blank dessert of misery, but undoubtedly it performs, conspiring against all the odds.

Time, my dreadful enemy, my fearful accomplice, I have no ground against you.

I am a blade of grass drinking the bitter dew you care to offer.

I am the blade of grass you trample down, when your soldiers declare war on my desires.

I am the grain of sand that pounded under the fervent sun becomes translucent and fragile to serve ulterior purposes in a story that I fail to comprehend.

Time, inclement and seductive, I surrender, time me down and bring my bones to the verge of my sanity so I can foretold the past and remember my future!

NO SOY MAS

No soy más, ni quiero ser,

Solo blanca esperanza de una esperanza ajena

No quiero ser luna llena en la oscuridad del cielo

Ni mano que acoge cuando la muerte acecha

No quiero ser calma ni paz ni luz ni tierra

Ni faro, ni navío, ni alma que desvela

No quiero ser oasis de un mar que no navega

Ni redentor de sueño que vuela, mas no llega

No soy mas, ni quiero ser

Sonrisa cálida cuando la nieve caiga

Ni mano que acaricia, ni hombro que rescata

Ni luna que ilumina, ni faro en la distancia

Quiero ser espuma de mar y no arena

Quiero ser tormenta y risa que envenena

Quiero ser oscuridad y sangre

Y sinsabor y pena.

SOLAPADO

Solapado está el invierno en el sopor de este verano, en los cardos que se tuercen ingeniosos para alcanzar la luz de un sol eterno.

En los rincones oscuros de la eternidad imberbe y en las alabanzas que se levantan como humo hacia un insensible dios etéreo.

Solapado está el futuro que se viste de presente para burlar los deseos y las ansias que nunca materializaran su espectro

Solapado en sonrisas que se mofan de la insolencia, de la rabia, del miedo, de la verdad incierta y de lo cierto incierto.

Solapado está el recuerdo de lo que fui en el tiempo, un  recodo limitado por los infames sueños de lo que quise ser y nunca fueron

Solapado está murmurando a mi oído el tintineante resoplar del viento en la pradera donde muere el silencio, las dudas y los miedos

Solapado sin que logre divisar del árido minuto su sepulcral misterio, con el arrojo magistral de lo insensible y lento

Solapado musitando que no hay camino al ayer donde se pueda revivir el tiempo, que lo he perdido todo, arando en el desierto

Solapada esta mi mano queriendo construir con versos las imagines inéditas, pululantes e insanas,  de humanidad ajenas

Solapada bajo el manto de mi ignorancia craza, mi necedad, mis ansias de bordear el horizonte para alcanzar el alba tierna.

Solapada con púas escabrosas retozando en la ladera del incognito destino, susurrando pensamientos intangibles y ligeros

Solapada, acosada por la furia impersonal que no libera, que ata, que somete bajo el vendaval tardío de un huracán de enero.

Solapada, sin que se rompan los lazos que se tejieron en inmemorables tiempos en espacios tan lejanos que lontananza olvida

Solapada, presa de la voz que sucumbe al sonido impenetrable de lo mustio, de lo muerto, de lo que reposa bajo tierra malquerida.

LOST

I lost you and me and everything in between.

I lost my light, my hope and my future.

I lost the forbidden dreams that we dreamt and the hours I spent dreaming.

I lost the trail that led to you and found a pool to wash my face after that eternal sojourn.  I lost your smile, and mine fell asleep under the shadows of your grave.

I lost the spark that kept me alive and the life you sparked on me.

I lost my muse and now I walk numbed and unconscious in the sea of dark.

I lost my arms in the battle to redeem my soul and my heart trying to conquer the unconquerable.

My skin is now rough with the scars of unfulfilled promises and untamed desires.

I lost the treasures that you hid behind your unpredictable story and lost the wish to ever find them again.   

The air between us is stagnant and unbridgeable and the words despicable and unreachable.

I lost the north that guided me and I do not mind it anymore.

I find myself mesmerized by the indomitable past and the roads I walked to find you.

I lost my ground and my sense of belonging and my home is now the rustling of the wind in the disappearing trees.

I lost what I thought I had, and never did.

I lost what my ego called mine by birth right and discovered I was never born in you.

I lost my ability to see the soul that bears me and the transparency of time and pain.

I lost the words to come to you and everything has disappeared under the fog of your vile nature.  

Nothing grows under my feet and the path behind me is a desert of desire and hate. I am lost, please don’t come back to look for me…….