Caballo sobre mi espalda
Mis piernas pegadas a tu flanco sudoroso,
Apretando con fuerza, mis manos sujetando tus crines. Sin rumbo corremos desbocados.
Tus cascos golpeando mi tierra, sonido de castañuelas. Levantando polvo, haciendo camino en tierras de nadie.
Ritmo y movimiento, tierra adentro.
Adrenalina y susto nos recorren, una bestia sin pensamiento me lleva sin destino. El viento silva en mis cabellos y se cuela entre mis brazos tensos.
Nadie lleva las riendas. Corcoveando, tus músculos fibrosos te dirigen.
Coordinamos tu carrera. Subimos y somos aire por un momento, caemos y somos tierra al instante. Llano adentro. Donde todo es verde, vigoroso y equilibrado. Me dejo llevar y me convierto en una amazona griega. Llegamos a donde pertenezco, el límite exterior del mundo conocido y lo cruzó, sin fronteras.
Soy yo sobre tu espalda o tú sobre la mía. Cabalgando como uno.
horse on my back
My legs stuck to your sweaty flank,
Squeezing hard, my hands holding your mane. Without direction we run wild.
Your hooves hitting my land, sound of castanets. Kicking up dust, making way in no man's land.
Rhythm and movement, inland.
Adrenaline and fear run through us, a beast without thought takes me without a destination. The wind whistles through my hair and sneaks through my tense arms.
Nobody takes the reins. Bucking, your sinewy muscles direct you.
We coordinate your career. We rise and are air for a moment, we fall and are earth instantly. Flat inside. Where everything is green, vigorous and balanced. I let myself go and become a Greek Amazon. We reached where I belong, the outer limit of the known world and crossed it, without borders.
It's me on your back or you on mine. Riding like one.
Translations to Taiwanese
Translator's name: 陳美如
Country: 紐西蘭 (New Zealand)
Translations to Igbo
Translator's name: Uchechukwu Onyedikam
Country: Nigeria Uchechukwu Onyedikam / Christina Chin
young stripling
bearing the task
to her side
loading corn stalks
on a cart
na-eto eto stripling
na-ebu ọrụ ahụ
n'akụkụ ya
na-ebu ọka ọka
na ụgbọ ala
少年郎
在她身旁
幫忙扛
把乾草捆
裝手拉車上
*
frigid air
in the porch
the loyal collie
wags at its
master's whistles
ikuku oyi
na ihe owuwu ụzọ mbata
nkịta na-eguzosi ike n'ihe
na-aga na ya
onye ukwu ịfụ
門廊上
寒氣逼人
忠實牧羊犬
聽聞主人口哨
搖搖尾巴
***
prison instead of help
coexistence instead of love
unnecessary reform
one coffee and hotel room per person
there are many ways to show your dislike
Reprint by Crank
***
mom sews a vagina for her daughter like a red rag for tears
mom wants soldiers to give flowers to her daughters
the cemetery is silent about flowers
daughter collects khaki and throws it into the toilet
daughter screams that she does not need such flowers
graves are silent about the dead
Reprint by Rat's Ass Review
***
this poem
will not be written
by anyone because the author
will go to the supermarket for vodka
and never come back
Reprint by Tipton poetry journal
***
the leaves don't resent it when you step on them
the bones barely crunch when you do
people barely crunch on such occasions.
death is like a land mine doesn't resent it when you step on it
Reprint by Tipton poetry journal
***
what does the right pike of a suicide exposed to the wind say?
what happens to the frostbitten left cheek?
mother's biblical face turns silky as son pulls out graveyard surprise box from under his bed
***
internet people live the longest
a dog that died ten years ago still puts
likes on social media
instead of its killed dog owner
***
while God is sleeping, the children press all sorts of buttons on his smartphone
and do not understand what this leads to
angels drink living water meanwhile and get drunk
what is the name of the little boy who will never become Jesus Christ?
***
Dynastic hands of the dead
No one will teach palms to cry
Money can't be earned аnd neither can respect
Money and respect can only be stolen from talent
***
What can poetry be talking
about in the 21st century besides blood?
The ruins warm the bodies
of the future dead
***
death allows itself to be late in the form of rain that washes away all the moles from the body
no one allows you to return to childhood with a cheek turned up for a blow
meanwhile the window is slammed shut wide open
meanwhile the birds sew up the sky tightly
time turns into sand from which we built a house
house is grass house is glass
religion trauma of cold speech
torn tongue crunching leaves underfoot
the breathless unborn god underfoot
and above the heads of the airy sky which is no more
***
the little wolf cub is looking for wolf jesus but can't find him
animals are too humane to crucify each other
animals are just physically hungry
***
Jesus received the resurrection
certificate from the hands of the centurion
the dove sat on the arm of the tree
and silently watched
***
there is no more home
ruins play the stones of a scream
There's no more peace because
someone skipped a history lesson
on Hiroshima at school
***
as soon as
і wake up from sleep
і frantically begin to suck
the dick
of my rifle
as if there was no war
EssayThe Ditch
Man is something thrown into the ditch of world history. One day some guy went to get some alcohol at some store and ended up in the hospital. Judging from the pics on instagram, I would have liked this guy, and he also has nice long finger nails. Only I still don't know for sure if he's gay or if he just dresses so provocatively that he gets attacked by scumbags on the streets.
Once a famous poet went to get alcohol in one of the few stores and disappeared. These were the days of Soviet terror. I never understood what wrong this poet had done.
One day a Jew was walking near the palace (probably looking for where to buy alcohol). The guards came up to him and grabbed him. And then, on Nero's orders, the unfortunate Jew was crucified. Why this happened is unclear to me. Perhaps after such an incident Christianity was born.
That's why I don't drink alcohol and use courier delivery as a rule. I also think it is important to note that I want to dye my hair ashy.
ANOTHER SPRING NIGHT IN FARMERSVILLE, OHIO
The sun is a gong hung low across the sky,
windswept.earthdirty.sunwhipped: farmers wait inside their bones
for the horizon to rise and beat the daylights out of the sun
and call them from their long dungrows for a night.
Your chastity's a song sung slow through long nights
on muffled virginals: muting babies wailing to be born:
golden arrows, a thong-strung bow the dream night.
The night is calling: strong, gung-ho -- black hawk in flight.
(Tonight? When one earthtired husbandman works me in his hands
& periods this dry chaste day, waters these furrows hungry from famine?
But no.
Just one more wrongtongued crow in flight.)
AH! NIGHTS
Ah! Nights you were a harem
and I the unmade Bedouin too long in the thirst.
Past the black eunuch of the night
I would steal to your tent,
unarmed save the single arrow in my quiver.
I'd draw sensuously back your damascene veil
and let fly my shaft
deep into your bulls eye arabesque--
Or: you were queen of the hive
and I a drone among the honeys
getting a buzz on and doing my job
plunging among the dusky clover
trying to pollinate the skies
to flower the night with stars.
To lose my only stinger would be to die--
Or else: you were madonna
awaiting your Jealous Commanding God,
The Spawner Of The Cosmos,
Beam Of Light Made Flesh To Hold You In Your Place
(while you shook in rapture for the coming of your Lord,
i a small choirboy would steal into your unguarded churchyard
and send a solitary firework into the cathedral's secret hole
and hope it explodes high up in those beribbèd vaults
and surprise celibate fathers from their sleep).
EITHER ALZHEIMER'S OR THE LIGHTNING BLAST
Whizzdizzyingly
cruising The Moment,
arrowing past all awareness:
highway,enginewhiine,steeringwheeltrafficWorldsmuginnnngg past
while we, preoccupied, reprise Creation,
absorb Eternity and Logos, Eden/Gethsemane, Genesis-Apocalypse
and the Night the Night,
the private bleeding into the general,
and Ouruniverse proxying for ego.
Glorious cosmic fusion in an infinite minute.
(or so it briefly eternally seems in our infini-tiny microverse)
The ends of love
are but two
:your V8 plunges from the surface
and, crucified like a butterfly in time,
helpless consciousness heightened,
you hover in slowmotion witness
to the juggernaut earth's decay
just as your metal-again grille
begins to embrace solidity
or: doomed foresight eludes
as you rearend that lightless
semi-tr
MY WIFE
My wife is the flag
placed on climbers' highest crags.
My wife is the mirror
who patrols my appearance
and makes sure all is fit
and I'm vetted to grace the public.
She's the armorer
who's forged our love and honor.
My wife is the ear
who grants the pre-clearance
for my poems' weight and wit
so they're ready to face the critics.
My wife is that fire
to kindle and quell desire.
WHAT I DID LEARN
My mansard roof -- its shingles
lost so very long ago.
In Lhasa at Your temple,
at that brave school in Lisbon,
I studied my imago.
My music group's hit singles
stopped so many songs ago.
I've learned my shakes and wrinkles
but still I wait for wisdom.
The Sea is Too Vast My Friend
The passengers gather atop the ship before it leaves the harbour. It’s a ‘thing.’ Other ships are around and I can see right away that there is competition among ship builders to construct the largest one. How something can be over fourteen stories tall and float and manoeuvre confidently I do not know. Each vessel has to wait until the one scheduled to leave before it sails from the harbour. And when arriving somewhere, it is strange to learn that no ship’s captain is allowed to drive, for some kind of insurance and international law purposes, but that a small boat drives out to the giant ship, a boat that holds a person who shall enter and take the ship to dock. But the sea. What of the sea? I am sure that nothing much changes with the sea-goers through the decades other than fashions, styles, the latest talk about the world and their worlds that seems significant at the time but is prosaic in reality. The sea is the thing, no? At night I watch it through a window stationed behind where we are sitting. I cease to hear the conversations then and notice another ship in the distance going the other way. It is large but appears small upon the vast and seemingly infinite sea. I wonder for a second if they look upon us as some of us look upon them. And if so, what do they think? And do sirens or mermaids, ghosts of sailors, or even monsters, live in and about the sea? Though it sounds silly, looking at its space and thinking of its depth then, I just don’t know. I feel fragile, like a skeleton barely put together. Do you ever feel such as that? The sea throws one back upon oneself, or rather can, sometimes. It is like a person that you and I shall never fully know. It is so vast, in fact too vast, my friend.
The golden tree leaves it’s leaves, and they descend like bits of something, their karma being fulfilled perhaps and they moving to something even better. They pass a smaller red tree, on the way down to the ground; and a green one, larger than the first two yet; still waits proudly and full of verdant branches atop. The world is not only ambitious, it is incredibly, highly, impossibly ambitious. Every angle is thought of. And more new angles are created. Nobody notices the tree leaves, for what value has it in their racket? The radio is full of the news of the politician that got caught trying to sell the otherwise protected ecosystem, green land, to his developer friends to create urban sprawl. It’s good he got caught. The deer and coyote, the porcupine and beaver, the woodpecker and butterfly, the moss and agate even, and of course the trees, will be safe for now. For a little bit perhaps. The golden tree leaves blanket the ground. A man beyond them puts out his thumb, in the hitchhiking symbol and sign, and a car stops. But he is just in jest, having fun, because he knows the driver and was waiting for the ride. oh golden tree, who are thee? If the souls that we knew before don’t come up again in talk or something,- we may forget them altogether. hmm. The new developers must already be waiting in the wings. They must be making plans. They surely wake up early. They are ambitious. Their mothers are proud of what they accomplish. They will make so much money one day. Of a poet or mystic, they don’t care and never shall. Pure nonsense. But no matter what they do or say, the golden tree, in early autumn, was there, was there, was there at one time. The Akashic or something kinder than the world and it’s ways, surely knows this also.
