between cupfuls of warmth at an intersection.
We shifted through the foam
And savored the hazelnut flavors of our lives,
Though between sips,
we remember and traded
The memory of coffee
as black as those days
When all the sun revealed
Where dark clouds on the skies…
I do not know
how things end in this world
And so I go back to where
memories begin:
You with your eyes
that gathered the lights of the cars
And flashed them as if your own;
You, garbed in your flesh of white
against the fall of night;
You, the one who was there,
with whom I shared
My first cup of coffee
in a city I am learning to love
A tasteful cup
demands
To be emptied
And deserves
To be filled
again.
ode for eupee
and to find you woman
on the second day of my final years,
when the ghost of tragedies
haunt my every breath and I have started learning
the black acid lessons of forgetting how to smile…
was it I or was it you
who found in the deepest ocean of despair
the whisper of yellow, the laughter of red and the silence of white,
like when stars explode in their silence
or the sensation of the fingers of the sun
caressing the folds of the earth.
Are you the cooing gentle balm
to the violent burn whimpers of my shame and pain,
The proof that one could only define redemption
On the moment of his damnation?
I do not know if angels do exist.
Only that I know that you are there,
Wings, feathers and skin, ripe lips, open eyes and mouth,
Soaring over the currents of sea waves raging
Or basking under the summer sky of pure grace.
I know you exist for the fingers of my thoughts
Are tracing you in the pages of my memory.
I do not remember your voice
And thus
I cannot describe them with words.
But do not despair my maiden of silence,
Though you have never spoken to me
I feel your voice.
I feel your voice
As certain things are to be felt:
In the silence of one’s awe,
In the darkness when the windows
Of the eyes are closed,
Invisible, unpalpable
Yet warm and certain
As blood flowing through
The tunnels and highways
beneath one’s skin;
earthly and aromatic
as the whiff of dawn’s winds
filled with the new memories
of fresh flowers and morning dew.
I went back to where your eyes
Once joined with mine
While the sun gave us
Her final bursts before
Falling to the sea.
Here, were we consoled ourselves that,
Unlike the shoreline and sea,
We could hold each other longer,
Where our souls, through our fingers and lips
Could clamp tighter and drink closer.
I sat, and let the wind, laden
With salt from the waters caress me
While I let the voices of the waves
Coo to me a lullaby more ancient
Than the first ears that ever listened
There were dark clouds
Fathering at the horizon,
And behind them I did not see
The sun plunging to its absence
Until I saw the first smiles of the stars,
Distant and silent
As we are now.
And so I left,
And the chair were we once
Kept each other was laced
With the dust of yesterday.
Only silence is enough
To speak of the beauty
of Love’s birth,
of how its infant cries
defy time space and chance
that angels and beasts,
bees, leaves and trees
strain through the screams
to listen to its every whimper that,
when joined together,
spawns a sonata the world
will hear unlike any other.
Even gods would pause, and breathe
And as if the sole bonfire
At the height of winter’s fury,
many are drawn together,
many would gaze at the stars
amidst its ocean of silence
and the same many would find
their chilled blood infused
with more than just warmth.
Only silence is enough
Only silence while comets chart their maps
Only in silence when paintbrushes
Are held still in space,
Only in silence where the poet would gaze,
Close his eyes, breathe,
And write once again.
I could not remember
Yet I know
I was once cradled
As I was:
A baby, firm flesh,
Soft like rising dough of bread
From the heat of mother’s love
And to be cradled
Stolen from the clutches of life’s storms
Into the soft warm arms of you woman.
There is no poetry
For the sensation
Of a woman’s touch,
Of how it flows on my skin
And washes away
The stains and dirt
Of fears and loneliness,
Of how they awaken
My fingers to caress
More than just empty space
To discover the shape
Where your soul lies underneath.
There is no poetry
For the contact of your lips,
Kissing so much more
Than just the mere flesh
Of my cheeks and lips.
There is no poetry
In the absence
Of your touches and kisses,
There is no poetry
In the faint shimmer
From the former glory
Of your burning eyes,
Save for the ashes of memory
Held between my palms, fragile,
Sought after as breakfast
By the hungry mouths of time
When I wake up each day.
What d you see with your eyes?
Do you see beyond
The surface of things?
Or does your sight betray you,
Blinded and jaded
By colors and textures
Who hide the tempered flesh
From the season of heat and cold.
The light is kind to you.
They play with your eyes with such fervor
You cannot deny but gaze into the world,
Your glance falling into things, tracing their forms,
Making them known.
Perhaps, you have enough memory of darkness,
Of how she cloaks everything, and anything
That your eyes find now find delight
In what they see.
Where did your smiles go woman,
Who is the sadness, who is the thief,
Who saw your happiness as diamonds in the night
And stole them for himself?
The landscape of your face that is empty
Of the flowers and fruits of your smiles
Is a mad season I am loath, but willing, to endure.
The air is parched without your blossoms.
I would cross the fields of night with open eyes
Until I have your thief in chains,
And by the light of day I shall banish him.
And my shadow would walk far away from yours
If in the silence you tell me the name
Of the one who stole your smiles: mine.
Do not go with the migration of birds,
Do not be a season soon to end
For the sky would be empty and infinite
And my eyes would be lost in an ocean of darkness.
Do not be a voice thrown into the wind
And scattered among distant shores
For I would walk and dive to find the pieces,
Impossible as it may be to find them all
I do not ask for you to be so close to me,
Nor do I demand that my hands could discover you
As a child would after leaving the womb-
Only that you be the stars to my eyes,
Distant and silent but there, with your smiles,
There, so that I could believe I am here.
One day,
The children of my soul,
The daughters of light and dark
Will spend their last of summer.
In the change of season
They will leave me
For they could no longer breathe the air
And they would never return.
Should the arrival of that day
Find me all alone and not
In the warm arms of a woman,
May it not be too much to ask
Of heaven, of hell
For that day to find me
With my paper and pen
As I am out
Hunting for metaphors
If you would leave me, do not hesitate
Set like the sun
when it drowns on the horizon of the west
Unflinching, Unblinking
Until it carries the light to its watery grave
And the darkness and cold would descend
to claim me once again
If you would leave me, do not speak to me
Whisper your words far, far away so
That the wind may not carry them to my ears
For your words will be like seeds planted inside of me
Its roots burrowing into my heart where it will take its hold
If you would think softly of it
As soft as you breathe in your sleep,
With your every breath,
Prolonging the agony is cruel
An end does not ask for another lease of life
But only death
If you would leave me, forget me
Spare not a moment to remember, to forget
But let my absence be the altar of your desire
To be left alone, without me
Unintruding, Unbinding, non-existing in your life
For what good is it to keep me in memory
If it would only be a reminder of one’s folly
But if you would wake up one morning
Cold and hungry for the warm kisses that we once shared
And that your breath is half missing
what you once inhaled from me,
Then speak to me, remember me
Remember all that I was once, all that I will forever be
And love me as you search for me
That even if the light of this world may
Never reveal me again to your eyes
It will be as if we never parted,
As if we never said our goodbyes.