LOVING HOPE

Not the intimacy of your face, transparent as a celebration
Not the habits of your body, still mysterious and undeclared and youthful,
Not the persistence of your life in words or silence
Will be as mysterious a gift
As looking at your dreams entangled
Within my vigilant arms.
Once again innocent through the absolution of sleep,
Quiet and resplendent like a phrase chosen by memory,
You give me this distant coast of your life, which you yourself do not posses.

Pushed into stillness,
I will explore this last shore of your existence
And perhaps I will see you as for the first time,
As God must see you,
Removed from the fiction of time,
Without love, without me.

JLB, translated by wTw

Amorosa anticipación

Ni la intimidad de tu frente clara como una fiesta
ni la costumbre de tu cuerpo, aún misterioso y tácito y de niña,
ni la sucesión de tu vida asumiendo palabras o silencios
serán favor tan misterioso
como mirar tu sueño implicado
en la vigilia de mis brazos.
Virgen milagrosamente otra vez por la virtud absolutoria del sueño,
quieta y resplandeciente como una dicha que la memoria elige,
me darás esa orilla de tu vida que tú misma no tienes.

Arrojado a quietud,
divisaré esa playa última de tu ser
y te veré por vez primera, quizá
como Dios ha de verte,
desbaratada la ficción del Tiempo,
sin el amor, sin mí.

Willie Nelson wrote the soundtrack to life...

"Somebody pick up my pieces
I'm scattered everywhere
And put me back together
And put me way over there
Take me out of contention,
I surrender my crown,
So somebody pick up my pieces
It's just me comin' down

Well, I sure thought I had her
Lord, I know she had me
What I thought was heaven Is just falling debris
Well, I may not be crazy
But I got one hell of a start
Somebody pick up my pieces
I think I'm fallin' apart

Don't follow my footsteps
Step over my trail
The road is too narrow
And your footing could fail
And the fall to the bottom
Could tear you apart
And they'll be pickin' up pieces Of you and your heart
Don't follow my footsteps
Step over my trail
The road is too narrow
And your footing could fail
And the fall to the bottom
Could tear you apart
And they'll be pickin' up pieces of you and your heart
And they'll be pickin' up pieces of you and your heart"

The mountains are calling, and I must go. The siren song - familiar soundtrack of my youth. I am powerless to resist, nor do I want to delay.

The coverlet of stars, each a festering sore upon my soul, illuminates my nocturnal navigation,
Almost as if I existed, somewhere between starlight and daylight.

Nevertheless, Castle Country, with it monuments to human futility – and long history of human dignity – calls my name. Petroglyphs, hieroglyphs – desperate history scratched into the walls of human suffering.

So now, nearly a grown man, pining for what once was. What to make of the mysteries that populate my dreams?

The form, the shape, a reflection of buckhorn, nine mile, Rochester, horseshoe, sego, angels, holy men, and the holy ghost: all haunt me, prehistorically.

"I once loved a girl, but she couldn’t take that I visited troublesome houses. She’d say, when I got home, to leave her alone. She could taste trouble on my mouth. When she was gone I missed her, I did...and still went to troublesome places. I couldn’t withstand a glorious day without seeing these troublesome faces. And quiet eluded me, and keeps from me still, though I need my own bed and it’s solace. Day’s noises steal in and copper my will, and I face the evils that follow us. I once had a house, and my family knew where to find me if ever they needed. Troublesome houses were foreign to them. They thought all papa’s orders I heeded. Now they can’t fnd me; they don’t have my numbers, and just hear reports of my doings. Troublesome houses are not in their minds, though it’s in those I do all my moving."

Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Two Plus me = Three?

Moody, distracted, doubtful

After a third of a century I still don’t know what I want…
After a tempestuous week obsessing over the number three, Jewels, and me (us),
After nights of thoughts incessantly jumping back, and back, and back to you; back to us three
After days interrupted with invading images, unceasingly arriving (un)welcome
After abandoning reason/discipline and embracing desire/chaos…

Pouting and petulant, your face upturned, slightly pink, aglow with longing, your eyes fiercely yielding.

Now – there are dreams yet undreamed, scenes yet unseen, feelings yet unfelt
Now, the question remains – what might this do to us (and you)?

What might this do to us?

“el amor es maravilloso y absurdo e, incomprensiblemente, visita a cualquier clase de almas. Pero la gente absurda y maravillosa no abunda; y las que lo son, es por poco tiempo, en la primera juventud. Después comienzan a aceptar y se pierden.”

Juan Carlos Onetti

A Lover? Or a Muse? Yes, my dearest
the parade of humanity requires
both – else there would be nothing to define
mortality; our humanity is
discovered through a thousand little deaths
interspersed amongst a million wasted
breathes; human history is littered with
frail attempts to document the charade -
poets with their meter, philosophers with their
wisdom; yet none has unraveled more than
that which we find in the narcissistic
entanglement of time and mortal limbs –
which is this – life is ephemeral, and
the lover, the muse, comfort while they may.