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.

Elementary

Strange, to think of you, far from the desperation of our home town, established in your second city. Your PhD in cryptology, an amusing extension of the games we used to play.

Now, resigned to the human team, we are much crueler and hide behind excuses, fears. Every interaction coded in human deception – at times unintentional, but painfully near.

And of course, I wonder about this longing, this desperate need to connect.
Perhaps, if I find a way to articulate the hours I spend wondering, you in turn can find the cipher and unlock the obsession that is haunting me.

Telephone call, Columbus Ohio, January 28, 2010

Over the last months, slowly, almost imperceptibly, your voice has begun to change…or rather the something behind your voice, the something that I used to hear, and although in disagreement with the content, comforted by the tenor….now it seems as though that something has been replaced by a detached, feigned interest. The new voice deals with the superficial and lacks the range to pose the probing, important, obvious questions…..where did your other voice go….can it be reclaimed??

In the grey light of an overcast dusk, as darkness enters the world, I sit and wonder.

Perhaps, if only I had the courage to articulate my internal despair, you would find your voice and boldly proclaim:

“Son of Mine, I see you from afar – now a grown man – I am uncertain where you are headed, surprised as you wander and struggle; where once I was certain that you had found your way. How can I reach out to you when you are wiser, kinder, and absolutely more lost than I have ever been. And my despair has robbed me of the voice which used to be mine.”

I am Me

I want to walk near the sound of the incessant sea
Anxiously marking my numbered days
Constantly cataloguing each failure
Until the tide lovingly overcomes whatever is “me”

I want to withdraw into the folds of the mighty mountains
Aloofly defining the scale of my mortality
Towering over my feeble (human) attempts
Until gravity tenderly destroys whatever is “me”

I want to wander in the isolated endless desert
Abstaining from comment whatsoever
Declining even to recognize my desperation
Until time kindly puts an end to whatever is “me”

Nonetheless:
I am landlocked, far from the fretting sea
I am under siege, unable to flee even to the foothills
I am encompassed about by humanity, incapable of escape
I am still me

On to Art.....Yes

And so yes, on to art.

“To create art is to define experience.” If you will excuse my ramblings, I would like to explore the idea a little more, along with the beautiful opening line of your poem, which I believe reads “Ya no te amo, queridísimo.” I cannot fathom an English translation that would capture the paradox quite so completely. Well done!

I appreciate your definition of art. It implies that one must, from time to time, “go over the wall”, and then struggle to define what occurred, which then allows for the creation of art from the experience. By discomfiting our lives, we actually live.

One of my favorite poems is Alastair Reid’s Curiosity, where he explores the same idea. He actually termed “going over the wall” as “paying the cat price”, which I think is brilliant. “Pay the cat price, which is to die and die again and again, each time with no less pain.” After we return from over the wall, after we have died, and still hope yet to die again, then we can assess, and make bold proclamations such as “Te quiero, ya soltero, mucho mas que juntos.” And the whole world (or at least those who have paid the cat price) understands your definition of the experience.

But of course, each death, each time we die, is not really a death, but rather, an opportunity to create art. By that I mean, if we gain experience, and then struggle to find the medium through which we will define the event and hopefully convey the experience to others, art is the result. In the struggle to connect what is internal with that which is external, we craft a narrative, an approximation, of what it is to live, to experience, and if done well, the end result is art.

In closing I leave you with Neruda. I am particularly moved by the last stanza, and the idea that love is really selfish and self centered and egotistical, and we humans (or maybe just human me) find it easier to love someone who isn't there, (or is present but, unmoving and quiet), because we (I) can then project into the quiet space what we (I) want the lover to be feeling. “Yo quiero escuchar tu adios.” Yes, that is it, exactly…..And so, somewhere in all of our messy human existence, we struggle to give definition to what is happening, and from time to time we come across something that captures and conveys this peculiar existence back to us in a way that we recognize as life defined – in other words Art.

"Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,
y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado
y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.

Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.
Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.

Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante.
Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.
Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:
Déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.

Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio
claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.
Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.
Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.
Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.
Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.
Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto."

Your thoughts?

Certainty

The cosmos doesn’t consider my insignificant condition.
Nevertheless, I am unable to return the favor.
I can’t help but hurl thoughts, dreams, concerns –
Continually bothering the heavens with agitated inquires,
Sending again and again and again my mundane missives
Out into the vast something that seems to surround this perplexing existence.

Of course,
Whitman’s patient spider explored the same space, but with much greater dignity.

And yet, the desperation – the act of casting, projecting, hoping,
Hasn’t diminished in the noisy century that separates the silent spider and me.