Note:I originally wrote this poem in Spanish. Below are both the Spanish and English translations of the poem.
Pasajero
No quiero vivir en el país
de los rostros pasajeros.
Aquel repleto de las almas
que perdieron
las llaves del tiempo
y no recuerdan ni el
delirio ni ocurrencia.
Si el cristal de la mañana
no revienta en mil colores,
me habrán anulado el pasaporte
al país de la intuición.
Para entonces no podré
quejarme
ni enojarme.
Para entonces
ya seré el olvido.
Fleeting
I don’t want to live in the country
of fleeting faces.
The one teeming with minds
that have lost
the keys of time
and can remember neither
delirium nor wit.
If mornings no longer burst
into a thousand colors,
my passport to the land of intuition
will have been revoked.
By then I will not
complain
or be enraged.
By then
I will be time long lost.
Trying to find the peace of my mind that I seem to have lost some time ago
Or maybe I never obtained it?
The piece to the puzzle I’ve dismantled and purposely misplaced
In the hands of a stranger that turned to familiar face
Or to the one who said they’d never leave and yet never left a trace
Maybe to the parents who helped create this space
My mind has wandered for it in so many places
Putting herself through too many phases
One which lead to the discovery of a piece that looked to fit
But chaos can impersonate peace when the puzzle isn’t fully complete
Forced its rigid edges and shallow creases into a part meant for a treat
Only to develop a catastrophe disguised as a masterpiece
With Self destruction and self preservation as the main release
Extirpating the entire mind perhaps is a solution but comes with a cost
Because the chaos is stuck and the peace is still lost
Petrichor smell like your body, i miss.
Sugar taste like your lip on our first kiss.
Your face like blue color that i like much.
Your character little bit misterious, like black t-shirt that i wear.
Your cuddling like wearing my favorit jacket.
I love everything on you till i can't life without.
I need you day by day and will always
My forgotten tongue,
bound, quiet, still
stirs. Heavy with decades of dust, it calls:
do not forget.
A lone, weak voice. Atrophied,
at the edge of hearing.
It's coated in filth-
the filth of the past. My heart
a tabla beating a footfall;
faster, faster, louder, louder. It softens-
just for a second. Enough to hear the call:
do not forget.
Trembling, burning, for the first time
I answer.
My broken tongue,
I excavate coated in fossilized pain and memory;
its grave goods.
I peel them away, layer by layer,
and put them to rest alone.
Then rebuild the missing parts, the broken parts,
with stones cut from longing.
My newborn tongue
trips on the steps to familiar dances;
curls around words like old friends, old loves;
clicks into place beside present and past.
Each day a remembrance.
Each a discovery. I hold them close, and whisper:
do not forget.
Are you safe?
Have you noticed as I have that a bed's edges close in
without two bodies to hold them back?
And no number of instant messages
make distance easy to live with.
The cat left.
It took the first few weeks of soft words & pheromone to settle him and
bang, just like that the first firework ruined everything.
Chasing safety into insecurity, he made himself
a cruel part of the winter nights.
I ride the bus now
to distraction & forgetfulness, on occasion
look up from my book and try to identify what matters most in life,
mark between scarred frost fields & slick slate roofs
some insight 30 years have yet to prove.
I used to sit up top
among the unchecked volume of youth: school uniforms
unbroken voices & the constant tug of war between conformity
& the individuals they're aching to become.
I try to remember how it felt being them –
bodies desperate
to grow, skin as yet unblemished by what they'll one day learn
to think important. I think of the classmates who
joined me in my growing and realise
these are their children.
The top deck
rattles off its routine as the sun
which has risen somewhere beyond fogged hills struggles
greens & browns back into this our home beyond the window, light
moving slow as a yawn down the valley
Really I'm torn
between the past's impressions & the future's promises
To the sultry roll of a mandolin,
your child came.
Not my child, you understand, but yours:
The bastard son of a father who left him
in my fumbling hands,
Outstretched, and ready to receive the head,
just starting to crown.
I thought it would be loud—
The wail of an out of tune fiddle;
a banjo with a missing string.
But the evening is still,
The only sound the mandolin.
Its decaying tremolo,
A silent music, and quiet, as we wait:
You working, I with baited breath,
and anticipation,
Of the cry that’s yet to come.
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