DEFINITION OF POETRY

A beam of light

Rainbowing through 

The handful of marbles

Some kid holds up

To the sky.

DRUMROLL

 

My life is somber

like those blues of Picas

so

so

I will treat you

to the most beautiful 

of my suicides

I already hear

the staccato laughter

of Rimbaud at dusk

and Giorgione

playing the luth

to a Venetian maiden

and my father a sudden barfly

singing guarachas

to a jiggy Silvia Plath...

May I have a drumroll

while entering

in Hell?

DREAMSCAPES

 

Dusting off the shrine of a goddess 

I forgot her name.

She blessed me once

 in light blue robe, golden nimbus

and myrtle blooms

when I was an outcast 

in an outcast country

(I forgot its name too)

*

A woman in the nude dances

on top of a beached whale in summer,

massive whale as the full moon

on the horizon. A sitar is playing

some kind of monsoon ballad

before a bonfire and silent gannets.

It's eventide. The full moon in yellow dress

dances with the naked woman.

*

 

I come across a top hat

in the middle of the street

dancing with a stray cat

in black fur and yellow feet.

The top hat hops me a scowl,

the cat spins me around a smile,

and the moon waxing awhile

in the golden eye of an owl.

The stray cat nimbly runs away

when some foxes bark to the top

hat now flying up on his way

to the hand of a whistling cop.

* 

 

Under an opaline sky

a wolf not famished 

but philosophical

strolls along the beach. 

Likewise an odd man

 in golden raincoat

 and black beret.

He's the poet of the village

 and never speaks

except to the pebbles, 

the rainbows

and the wandering wolf.

* 

In fine fettle the old lion

Still holds up the sun

with his mane at dawn.

POEM

 

What saves me of topping myself today:

my cat doing a handstand by the window,

Dalida singing Bambino at dawn,

the beauty of contrails streaming along the blue sky,

the smell of horse manure in the streets, 

the fulsome warbles of a thrush in the morning,

the siren-cry of ambulances that carry not my corpse,

the rain-scented beams of the sun,

that William Carlos Williams' line:

the night passes, and never passes,

the loud laughing of mum in 1978

while sawing at her Singer,

the last smile you blew like a feather

into the air before waving a fond adieu,

the last spoor of kiss you left 

on my hoary stubble...

Love passes and never passes.

DREAMSCAPES

 

At the center the Minotaur

waits for me

the winding maze is

my wandering mind

I lost the track of the thread

spun by Ariadne's 

ball of twine

*

A woman in a moon-glossed coif

pours blue milk

into a Dutch oven.

She smiles at me

still struggling at stool

to feed verses into

my tablet.

Suddenly the woman

 flew away

like a moth

*

'Non serviam'-said Satan

to God

'No serviam"-says the Muses

to me every morning

at stool        just about

to be inspired

to be poet

to be

*

At stool

I dreamt of Tizian 

painting you 

with his fingertips

using all the colour-hues

conjured up

 by words

*

Strolling about the Heath

-as was my wont-

Star-addicted and mud-ridden

all coalesced 

in the pool of clarity

today

nothing is out

of kilter

of me

A DREAM

 

Strolling around the river gauche at Quai Voltaire I stopped over one of those bouquiniste stands by the Seine to take a quick glance into the bouquins since I hadn't enough time and was strapped for money. But a thick volume in beautiful binding, rose vellum, gold embossed caught my eyes:

"The Correspondence between James Joyce and Clarissa Holloway(1928-1941)

Hogarth Press (so revealed the ex-libris)was the publishing house. Year of issue: 1953.

At first sight I thought it was a long-winded and pedantic essay about the metafictive connection between James Joyce and Virginia Woolf's styles. But when I started to flick through its yellowish pages there was not the slightest doubt: I was reading the crossed letters between a real person and a fictional character from a very famous novel. 

Well upon my soul!, I muttered to myself smirking, pretty sure that was only a boutade contrived by some two-bit admirer of Georges Perec. 

However, I noticed the book was prefaced by Leonard Woolf himself who spent several years to compile the letters. I read some of them with the growing curiosity of a scholar and that really oozed the aroma of something pukka, not a bogus. 

Enthused with such a rare trove, I asked the bouquiniste(an old blue-eyed geezer with grey beret and Quebec's accent) about the book price. He dusted it off examined the first pages like an expert with a magnifying glass, at the same time he tipped the beret over one ear, then over the other like a madman. "40 euros"-suddenly he snapped without raising the eyes from the book. I was surprised, rather expecting a hefty price, maybe 100 euros, even more. Nevertheless, I only had 20 euros on me, so I nearly entreated the bouquiniste not to sell the book to anyone, that I'd be back in a jiffy with the fric. I nipped to the next ATM and withdrew 60 euros.

 When I hurried back I came across the same stand, the same books, but not the same bouquiniste: this time I met a young and strapping Senegalese with long and colourful dreadlocks. His dark shades mirrored back my face. A kind of piercing glinted on his lower lip. Sat down on a stool, slouchy, he seemed more interested in selling old postcards about Notre Dame de Paris. I asked him about the old man with grey beret and the book he had put me by. I flaunted my 60 euros. His dark shades reflected the sad and overcast sky of Paris as well. He only grinned and gave me the cold shoulder and after billowing out the smoke from an odorous spliff, he got up to attend a gaggle of Japanese tourists. Disappointed, I asked around all the stands, all the bouquinistes but nobody knew anything about the book, let alone about the blue-eyed old geezer with Quebec's accent.

FERROL-GIJON

estoy a bordo de un tren Ferrol-Gijón, 

voy a ver a un amigo enfermo que vive en Burelas. 

Gaviotas, cuervos que emergen 

de una niebla perfumada de eucaliptus

 disputándose unos cotos de claridad o azul. 

Un anciano de Ferrol me comenta:

 "cerca de aquí lincharon al marqués de Sargadelos 

durante la invasión napoleónica, por afrancesado".

 Pensé en mi amigo enfermo-también francófilo-

que me esperaba para leerle algunos fragmentos de

 Proust. Foz. Viveiro. Ortigueira... 

 El tren bordeando un mar que guarda 

en los cofres de la lluvia memorias de exilios, 

leyendas de pescadores que han visto la Atlántida,

 la cola del leviatán. veo acantilados oscuros 

que presagian el Finesterre. veo ninfas desnudas bajo la lluvia 

jugando con la verga de los caballos salvajes 

 gaviotas que limpian sus picos ensangrentados 

en la grasa de una ballena muerta.