Mentonia

Classic Rock from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and Today

2009-12-08T02:38:00.001-05:00

WXYZ

Run, baby, run
through all the clichés

when I’m not
with you. Mid-morning

sunshine and blank
breeze, go on and curtail

the smoky refrain
I used to know, the haze

that eloped to
my conscience from your

figure. You live
through pictures, come

alive in tints on
a screen almost beheld

by my hands, but
your scent is gone, baby

gone, and just
fragments of your voice

when I intone
my thought in C do I

evoke. Yeah, lady,
you were pop, 4|4 time,

like a Beatles’
early song, just as much

of an earworm,
after one play on the stereo,

still humming la
ti da, making up the lyrics

as I go along
with your transmission from

a distant station,
full of static on the radio.

i was too embarrassed to show this to its intended reader, so I'll share with the rest of the world

2009-11-15T23:18:00.001-05:00

Lieber Frau

I wish you’d light the way
just a little bit brighter,
maybe the Ungeziefer in my
mind would shy away then;
such a prolonged stay bugs
me. A naked twist of your
waist, my toes feeling the
velvet kiss of your feet, naked
brushes, all in all the fertility
of your touch upon my conscience
flying home to your touch,
which never happened. Shine
a little bit shinier, so my old
alloyed heart beats and beams
one more sad happening, an
entry gone, written up and
expelled from the noise in my
brain (a hallowed hall, where
I let my notebooks lay to see
the smile beyond your skirt an
autumn day, if you’d only
let it happen). Black on plaid
wool on silk, I can’t forget
the wooden desk, which wasn’t
a part of the package: Freiheit
dear, liberty. At the clang
of the bells before our noon I
thought you thought you found me.

repository

2009-11-08T00:49:00.002-05:00

To The Core

The use and waste
The waste and use
The isle of man
The man of isle
And
For on we go
to no enough
to nothing good
for all the bad
All the sad
And the green
Algae
Upon the seas
Upon oceans
That warm the
Water and
Wind the air:
The moon
Pulls
and Pulls
and Ebbs and
wells
Upon the Land.

(It’s just all the
Sun’s fucking
fault)

ya me he acostumbrado a este crecer

2009-10-17T22:43:00.003-05:00

Azules

Cuando cazábamos
avispas lanzábamos
los sacos al
avispal

Certeros de nuestra
fechoría una muestra
práctica de manía
a la que se escondía

Venus discutía mientras
Marte hacía de esas tras
florcitas y lomitas
de futuras mamacitas

Desamores desde
Letras derramadas
En el lecho
De futuros inciertos;
"No"
A lo largo de
los hechos
"No"
A juveniles
infortunios
"No"
Al placer
De hasta la muerte.

Violent Reprieval

2009-10-14T02:11:00.000-05:00

Stony Virgin

It’s late and I cannot stay;
How long did you gild whores
With your lonesome refrains?
Tears line your walls, not all
fresh, but come on! All I
wanted was a bit of sex!
You’re sweet, but I wanted
your sweat, not your embrace,
not for any longer than your stay.
What’s wrong with you, man?
What’s all that you said when
you saw my clothes up in flames?
Were we not on the floor
that one damn night you felt
an angel flutter by, when
high in disgrace and totally low
on what fills your balls you didn’t
even notice how much I wanted
to scream ‘Oh my God!’? Are you
gay? Passed out and poetic,
I laughed at you, man, I laughed
at your giggling contortions from
a night we could have fucked
away - what did you expect?
You should have filled me with
your poison and forgotten about
the damned page you’d write next.

oh, the fruits

2009-10-14T02:04:00.001-05:00

Upon a Folksy Location

Marmalade expressions anoint the bark
of a hurting willow of lesser charm; the
communal water, that meant for irrigation,
long lost its flow to its distant abode. Upon
an arid knoll, the tree grew short, its leaves
a dissertation on the humility of crying, of
weeping abrogation. Profuse sunlight has
sunk through its wrinkles, creaking in
shudders of dryness and scabs beyond
healing; rousted by blows from every
direction and nourished by fog creeping
up from the wetlands below, where the trees
all grow tall, they tell (the old folks, them
that still saw grass upon the knoll) that a
crane still stands on the willow’s branches,
that sap still flows from its core, for this
one bird to sip up, finally, in love, that
it stands upon a parchment of earth only,
if only, for its crane to find a place to land.

One never really knows with these old folks,
you can’t tell from their tears if they’re laughing
or not.

Totally written under inclement weather

2009-10-08T16:37:00.001-05:00

Thus Boomed

Sweet adrift, beyond contempt
Duress and storms sort out the sort
Tatooed with rain; green-silver
folds of rugs unfold to gray
Along the hills at Zephyr’s sway

Beyond the cries, the dogs’ sweet
look uncovers black in the
pupil’s eyes: Sweet Lord!
Furious Thor insufflates dust,
hair uncoils amid the nymphs’ lust

Sweet pure Yin song, cut down
Metallic breeze: the fingernail
of moon will hardly break the cloud
poled tree, beneath which cows
shelter seek in silent bows.

The cricket’s chirps nurse the
Fallen sheets of steel to sleep;
Faraway, purple winks grumble
Godly refrains: Wake up tonight!
Drum of flash in bottle-light!

antiguas vestimentas

2009-10-05T13:34:00.004-05:00

Clavo

Un gris vespertino
Me insufló de ti
Día mío

Ni tu ni tu
te sientas aludida

Yo sé más
ahora
Vida mía

Leí trazos
de Neruda
sin melancolía

digging digging

2009-10-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

Turning Young

I look at these folks
Enough I

I am the underdog
I miss my collie Bati

You go way round
and round to
understand, only,
there is no turning
back.

My little cuz
named my dog,
he named him
after Gabriel
Batistuta. I call
the dog Babú.
He’s also gotten used
to it, despite
Bati being its
name.

Giant

2009-10-03T00:10:00.001-05:00

Wonderland

Look at that!
The Cheshire Cat
has lost his stripes;
had they been white
and not transparent
they’da gutted
that cat
to its tripes.

Grinning gripes,
Cheshire lost
and lost again
its violet
and its black,
but black is back
yet again
yet again
hard to tell
smiles from
shadows and
miles and miles
from that smile.

Once I caught
a whisker and
thought, if I’da
caught one more,
well…nah, no
way I’da caught
anything whole.

But I saw a grin
Most certainly so
I thought
or so I thought.

not nearly yet

2009-10-01T21:08:00.000-05:00

Hesitation

You can veil it a thousandfold ways,
It’s a Christian god you want.
The songs adrift muddy shores,
That seashells sing to liars, crooks,
Troubadours alike, incarnate infinity
For infinite repentance amid fields
of thorns; you won’t get hurt.

The sky is not always blue, nor is
the night always cold: the fields
wouldn’t be fields if they weren’t so.
The rain upon the flock is just a
little H2O. Thieves know knots like
those folks that tied them to posts
and calves that have yet to wean.

Shake off quivers, darkened eye sockets
behold darker hues than moonless
nights; dancers tire, but spirits dance
to beats untold. Tap the tap
that never tires, so are children
told, before bedtime erodes into
the silent wail of lycanthropes.

Having broken every defense mechanism

2009-09-29T22:45:00.000-05:00

Overflight

Could I endure
Along the way
More on forms?
Adore, Adore
Stillness still
That famish wrought.
Slayed placard,
Something more
Along the way,
Adore, Adore
Health to move on a
Helicopter procession
Along.

Habiendo roto todo mecanismo de defensa

2009-09-29T21:39:00.003-05:00

Y vi más

Veinte años de terapia
En fortuna
Y en harapo
En más
Y antes de antes
Y antes de antes de después,
De después de antes
De la estereofonía, de
ese algor, puédase
llamarse cacofonía
o el escozor tem-
bloroso de lo que sin-
fonía pudiese llamar-
se, las flores las
abejas picaban
como si hubiese
sintonía.

Tertulia, sin temor,
De aves, aves
rapazes y gallos
sin gallinas, y siempre
en sintonía. Siempre
Tertulia
De historia,
Melancolía,
Muhidos
Y mariposillas.
Zumbidos, zum-
bidos de no sé
cuantos zum-
birijillos errantes,
pero esa todas
Ya se la sabían.

Tierra frondosa
y viva, ¿Por
qué te canto

shock me like an electric eel

2009-06-29T17:36:00.004-05:00

Unfinished Thesis

In quiet abandon
I felt easy
I felt happy
when I felt young
being undecayed
without mores;
I had wasted it all

Soggy transmission,
unequivocally pointless,
(from happy eyes
a search
for expiation)
incompetently wasteful
pathetically incomprehensible
stupidly moronic
needlessly stagnant
necessarily unmoved
hopelessly vicious
circularly circularly
circularly cir

(Asleep once more,
Gone mush,
undreaming tomorrows,
suffocating
from yesterday's
throw up
and an imagined
embrace)

ahem...[live][zsg]

2009-06-23T22:45:00.001-05:00

An Unexpected Call

Beyond skin,
Again again,

I tease with
you tease back,

you know what
I know what

Needs and wants,
Needs and wants

pecking my lips
again and again,

again,
out of the sheets,

lights off,
(for me)

It’s good to see you,
again.

this one glistens [live]

2009-06-20T21:44:00.000-05:00

Please Don't Harden

Search the new,
so far nothing is.

Young fateful
becoming,

Young to adore,
I love you.

Look back you
look now.

nothing,
become.

Do you me
more,

I'll look for you tomorrow
today.

Rice [Politics, Gastronomy]

2009-06-16T01:01:00.008-05:00

Rice, Rice Cooker

I only caught
my rice cooker's
song near the end;
it was hard to hear
with Thurston Moore
playing loudly in
my ear; the last I'd
heard of rice on
song was in China,
where I'm sure my
rice cooker was made:

She hums, so I saw
when I saw that she
sings: I had her as
more of a percussionist,
the high clanks
in shades of
rips in space,
metallic bangs,
booms, foreboding
a crescent clatter
slowly clacking
first, then clocking
increased tempo,
climbing, clamoring
martial metallic,
steady, industrious,
drumming.

But she hums, and
there's bass in the
boiling rice, beating,
bubbling, evaporating,
pulsating and breathing
on steam to hum
through a valve on
the lid, steam
on to hum.

And a clack,
most expected,
sets the light
from cook to
warm, and the
hum slowly
digresses,
at the clack,
soon to be turned off,
soon to be chowed down.

Recursive

2009-06-13T19:05:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I stop and look
at the lint in my pocket.

First, I notice it. It's not
every time that I do. I

let it unravel at my
fingers' surrender:

historiographical twine,
threads and symbols

of what I kept, what
I held dear; I write

what I protect, what
I hide, what I write

survived all sorts of dirt
and multiple washings,

needless companions and
misunderstood burdens, cigarettes,

lighters, keys, hands: a
constant mangling from

sweaty, greasy, timid
hands.

But how did that
get there?

Art as a cruel hoax (Economics)

2009-06-12T13:52:00.004-05:00

Marla Olmstead

Play,
Not a game,
Not Art Art

High Low
High High
Not Art

Ha!
Not Art

Low, little darling,
Shapes, No
Low, Later on

Doll, no Zane
Doll, no
Art, no
Later on.

In A minor [another live concoction on zsg]

2009-06-09T16:56:00.002-05:00

Sometimes
I talk alone,

Sometimes, I,
let it grow,

Sometimes
I think about
all the smiles

that took me to,
to think,

to think,
sometimes,

I could
wait it out

and see,
so it goes, that

It could be wonderful
to be here.

Fanfare (the tumblr is taking over)

2009-06-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

On Utility [Economics]

I find myself tonight curiously sipping beer from a wineglass. I am also smoking marijuana from a pipe made out of tagua, when my mother calls to my cell-phone. Drunk, high and slightly peeved, I try to continue writing about economic utility.

It is what will satisfy me right now, to persevere in the expression of my thought, which I thought so witty and relevant that it would satisfy to try and explain it in writing because I might end up with something interesting, a thought that might encourage more.

The beer is so damn refreshing, but it’s not without its flaws. It came from Mexico, so it cost a bit more. In any case, I could have noticed it, I could have not whenever I bought it. I probably did, but since I buy beer so seldomly, I didn’t really mind, regardless of the social norm.

It’s good beer: Negra Modelo (for those in the know), it makes me feel drunk and leaves a good aftertaste in my mouth.

I tell myself this is only a first draft: It’s always a first fucking draft if you’re lonely like me.

You see? That’s what I like, little digressions like that. I guess it might be due to the pot I just smoked, because, clearly I don’t want to digress but stick to the point: utility.

It does not please me at all that I know that most likely this pot does not have the best of origins, but at least it’s locally grown; my purchase of it mostly, at least, goes to help a taxicab driver and most likely, his own fucking vices…I also see it as a very riskless proposition for me, a service he’s providing me with for which he has to save every time he buys weed for me, since I pay him in advance (because I’m an idiot banker).

I know I hope someone will read what I’m writing and undestand what I’m saying: somehow this prospect of an utterly unconfirmable phenomenon brings me a satisfaction I crave for. In many ways, it is the motor of the perpetuity of my satisfaction, I mean, its lack thereof. Might I be a good economic model?

It’s easier not to care. I’ve lit up a cigarette, which I fucking hate. I’ve also lit up some incense so the haze has a little more zest.

I smoke weed pretty much every day. It’s why I thought the cab driver would save.

Atrévete-te-te

2009-06-05T22:18:00.003-05:00

Un Lenguaje Familiar

Debo haber escrito alguna vez/
En español como tanto lo hago en inglés;/
En español, nunca me supe escritor./
No sé. Pienso tal vez, o alguna vez pensé,/
Que se trataba de filosofía tal vez,/
Digo, pues bien podría haber sido/
Una maldita cuestión de brío//

Frío/
En el calor de la confusión/
La multiplicidad de las pirámides/
En el aire/
Como marshmallows,/
Air puffed,/
Como iguanas cuando se enojan,/
Llenas de gas/
aparentando iguanidad/
En el aire//

A pesar de la imagen,/
Me veo reflejado en la televisión,/
pues/
alaluz/
como sol/
me reflejó.

via zsg

2009-06-01T20:33:00.005-05:00

(like finger-fucking with your pinky)

Anyway, so it goes: Clippity-clop. Walk, hop, clack, plop. I'm dirty as fuck: I haven't moved in months and I think it's enough, enough to get bed sores or for some sort of venereal disease...no, none of that, I was barely just born, I don't think, unless momma, but no...I think I'm cool when I'm three because way before schools I was reading and swimming and apparently doing what my father imagined squares to be. I was a virgin/ For such a long time; in some sense I still am, in some sense I never was...in the way that matters I and a whore like me, blazing hot. But I was a virgin, for all intents and purposes, when I saw a wreathed queen that loved me, I thought. I'm such a fucking idiot, but at least I loved: my god did I dream of your golden sunshine for long ! My nymphs, like my bitches and my hos, I will want to paint together with everything I own. I was a baby, you saw? I was pretty golden back in the day. In my pond, I was odd: I can't think I was anything but indifferent to everyone but my own. But I loved, I certainly loved...tenacious since then, I've always loved for too long for my own good. I've had no love, not once, not ever, no one I'd ever consider dying for, no one I'd fuck too, anyway...love as most may see it is ~~certainly~~ uncertainly the most abnegating sort of affection, one which is both endogenously and exogenously decaying in the hopeful attempt at the creation of symbiosis: this symbiosis must confront endogenous and exogenous psychological pressures in order to live as such a symbiosis: Although now I'd prefer not to think about this, but if I had to comment, I'd say these matters could also be quite temporarily and spacially dependent, unless one is to wither forlorn in memories of times and locations of sugary concoctions (flashes of maybe perception plus angst inevitable to our fruitless lifeblood confections in this daze of emotion we call fuck confusion

Titania

2009-05-28T21:58:00.003-05:00

When I write
I follow tradition:
It smells of muskier
Notes, moldier tomes
and recognition
of minds before.

Before Tuk
There was Glon,
Before Glon
Talak
and before
I don't know,
Most likely a bird,
a bloom
a trickle
and a snooze.

A spruce,
my grandmother's
and glorious transatlantics
aboard black and white
pictures of heartfelt
goodbyes on sun-yellowed
pages and lovers
of a young woman
and her voyage.

Mashup Poetry

2009-05-19T10:46:00.001-05:00

Sing Along
(dedicated to my brother)

And so,
the end is near,
and so I face,
Tag team
Back again
the final curtain:
Killing in the name of.

Now you do what they told ya
Now you do what they told ya
No surprise
No alarms
and no surprises,
No alarms and no surprises
please,
back it up
back it in
let me begin,
Nothing compares,
Nothing compares
To you.

Sugar,
Oh, honey, honey,
I've never seen you
Looking so lovely
as you did tonight,
Oh! Darling
Please believe me:
I'll never do you no harm.

When you told me
You didn't need me anymore
Well you know,

Cried,
I'll never do you
No harm.

wwwhere?

2009-05-15T17:57:00.005-05:00

Fortress of Comfortable Discomfort

Home is not home when I'm home
Half-steps on stone
Bare feet on grass
Aloof and blue
Bacon and knowledge
Adrift in the Andes
Barely afoot
Along paths
Along lures

Music, somehow St. John's,
Heals in trills,
Trinities and troves;

Home, where I want to dance freely
Sometimes off-tempo, mostly on key,
Singing unburdened the homegrown
Folk fantasies that cloud from the blue;
Homegrown, in my own little garden of dew.

Written live on ZSG

2009-05-09T12:54:00.003-05:00

                          

Homeboy Drummer                        

The summertime where I was born, well I,
I think it mattered not. The sun shone all
Year round; although it rained in the afternoon,
E’en a fly soon could call a stormy cloud.

Every day was a day off from school;
You could count on a sunny morning and a
Cloudy afternoon; some might have called for
Protests, May Days, but hey, still’s all the same.

The sun shines gloriously on the equator;
Such constant forgiveness nature intended
Showing no turmoil, no transient temperament,
Spoils rather than tempers, equatorial drama!

Hardy weeds survive outdoors, orchids can
be purchased at the mall; as it should be,
gas is dirt cheap, dirt dirty, jungle bled,
Homegrown pride. The view of the hills’s…damn.

But there’s no point, yet the clouds clouddy up
The sky. Tantrums of constancy: here’s to
Hoping you’ll humbly retire at night; day’s
light on the moonshine mutes so lovely.

http://zsg.tumblr.com/post/105511472/homeboy-drummer

Beep

2009-04-30T22:00:00.005-05:00

Words are passengers
In this vehicle
I don't quite know
That I am
Like all the other passengers
The words seem to be
Under the impression
That they are vehicles
Themselves;
Good for them,
I wouldn't know
To recommend
A better motor
For living.

(not)

2009-04-20T20:45:00.003-05:00

I'm

There was an urgency to all my memories.
An invisible voice,
Harmonious and dissonant
Periodic, spasmodic and sometimes
Booming! quite violently
(most memorably);
Nudgingly, I meant
Untouched,
mostly,
Shapely, like none
Other:
An urgency,
but slighter, less understood:
Form taking on the impossibility
of taking shape...
And beauty, always
somewhere down the line:
But I had never owned
It, then
Quite...

Last Flame for Mary

2009-04-14T20:52:00.000-05:00

I twitch,
I sparkle and smile
and, before I know it,
I'm encrusted in diamonds,
I am covered in jewels and
bathed in the finest of gold.

I am so beautiful.

I am so precious.

I am melancholy trenches
for I am meadows of idyll;
I'm baroque, furthermore I'm
anachronistic in a neo-post-modernistic
sense.

Babylon burn inside me;

That's how I hear it.

I longed to be free.
Illusion. Too an illusion;
I feared conscription
Way in childhood, when
Lilliputians strung giants
and mother brought gifts
on her way back from work.

Originally in paper, via ZSG

2009-03-26T19:31:00.000-05:00

Making Ugly

This was a beautiful blank page
This was a beautiful blank book
But now I’ve christened it in lead,
I’ve drowned all of its hope for beauty
At the bequest of a pencil,
Out of fear,
Out of fear.

Leaden fear.

But nothing unwilling
Was ever heard from
The white
or, rather, yellow
blank leaf of white
that opens, unfolds
for me to taint
the thought of whiteness
for eternity, to call
such omnicoloric
presence
a bore.

Shrew

2009-03-21T21:14:00.004-05:00

Musaraña

Que pienso de ti, si
En el fondo, "Sé,"
dices, y crees saber,
"que en el fondo
quiero creer
que alguna vez
me va a querer,
que va a querer creer
que me quiere querer..."

O algo así fue,
Fue lo que entendí.

memorias de autosuficiencia

2009-03-19T17:50:00.005-05:00

Cuando maravilla fui
No, ni entonces me sentí
Que pertenecía a la
Madre Patria. Madre, la
Que hijas nos llamaba,
Madre Patria, sonaba
incongruente, a un
océano, a un charco;
Regina, también Rex,
Mi taita y mama, una
Sombra tamaño Sol

Y maravilla fui,
Ni entonces pertenecí.

Untimely Ear

2009-03-17T15:59:00.004-05:00

One day, I won't call again.
I won't call, believe me love;
You young fool, you tried,
You thought you'd do and then
You'd walk away; touch people,
Claim some cash and walk.
That was the plan.

I can see you grow
I can see you're old
Living a lie is not easy
Not even for thin pretty things.

Get tits,
And a nose;
Someday you'll smell
Some fool bent on
Singing a lie;
Swing that way
Grow fat then

(that's my advice)

Poet Outspoken

2009-02-20T12:16:00.002-05:00

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Nothing New

The sound of a conversation
is no simple matter.
Words are never words;
In a good conversation
Even meaning
Begins to lack meaning.

An aural phenomenon
Never complete
Without the entire sensorial showcase

But, visually, just the eyes are sufficient
The mouth is lovely
So lovely,
but,
Not so bombastically,
The eyes too reveal
The sex, the lust,
If one’s
paying attention

It’s about connection
It’s trust
It’s edification

Laughter,
Laughter,
living,
darling,

unintelligible, in the end,
a secretion,
sweat,
silence,
“So, what’s new?”
and an awful lot more:

Some Sort of Line in an Abstract Painting

2009-02-09T20:02:00.001-05:00

Some Kind of You

How different,
You and I,
I hardly know
Who I speak with;

I see the molds,
I see the modes,
I see the total
lack of rebellion;

It’s me though,
It’s me,
I’m the one
That doesn’t know better.

Don’t doubt
I heard you tweet.
Don’t think you
didn’t blink.

It feels as though
We didn’t grasp
the moment, botched
Carpe Diem!

But I remember
And I forget
And you are
Not Quite
A Blank Canvas,
but a reworking
Of another
Go.

y'alls crazy

2009-02-05T11:15:00.004-05:00

Volkswagen

I love Foucalt
Right now,
Only for having
Brought Baudelaire
To my modernity
One Spring Eve
A couple years ago.

I could not possibly
Or rather hardly could
Bring forth to mind
Anything that didn’t strike me.

Elation,
well, hardly ever that,
and much more like
whatever seems to work.

Emotion, in general,
generally, maybe.

It takes a lot just to keep up.

Youth
has something to do with it.

frequency
striking a frequency in a note
or two, or three, or four,
perhaps a harmonic,
but certainly some sort
of permutation the peeps
can relate to.

Vielleicht sind das Volk
the antipode.

A Poem, a Reflection

2009-01-28T14:53:00.006-05:00

In the Confessional

I fear my peers
I fear my circle
I fear their ears
I fear their vision

The methodical systematization
The grandeur of glorification
The vigeur of validation

The aggrandizing isolation

Realize, brutally stumbling,
treading, falling mostly,
tearfully incessant,
pursuant convinced
of pursuing convictions,
or pursuing convictions,
just,

You are

that
You are

Dear,
I fear
I lie.

In spanish, Plato's name sounds like 'big dish'

2009-01-24T20:21:00.003-05:00

Allegory

I like the darkness
It makes me feel safe
With all the lights out
The night takes its place.

Dark fills the darkness
Black air soaks the day:
I am no longer blind now:
Eyes are of no care

It’s not the light I’m afraid of
It’s that it dazzles
It’s that it burns
It’s that it blinds you.

I like the darkness
You keep me company then
You don’t see, darling,
The burns, the scars and the flame.

Lonely at the Top

2009-01-20T10:31:00.003-05:00

One-Man Parade

  I.

The ticker tape 
Static, 
Not quite rain,
 Nebulosa 
Escondida 
A cloud of moths 
Dry winged dust 
Pixie dust 
Only static
 Static
 Static 
Static
 . 

II.

  A throng of silence
Thrusts through the air;
 Breathing molasses, 
Barely living at all, 
The heart is a burden 
Beating, breathing, 
Beckoning reason,
 Reason to be;
 Reason to remain; 
Reason to keep walking 
Away, away 
Keep walking on 
Away
 Away from the shadow
 Away from a shadow, 
Never ceases to follow.

Robot - Human 2009

2009-01-10T18:51:00.001-05:00

Home

Daft Punk
Alive, two years back
2007, alive then,
Born, in a way,
In any case reborn.

From reverberating swamps
A remix of that primeval boom;
A bass, a bass,
A beat for the dance:
The dance, that dance
Around the pire,
Around the heart.

Bare feet,
That’s how to feel.

Bare skin.

Can the heart bear?

A beat
A beat
A beat

then one skipped.

My heart, how?
did I find myself on this beach?
Dance
Dans mon cœur:
Pas de questions.

You came to dance,
that’s all I care,
rave along
with me:
lucky me
all night long
to every beat
to one more beat
to that one beat
that took me home
that took me home
home,
home,
to you.

You,
You, my sweet,
are
Love,
Love,
Love is,
Love is my home.

A Beautiful Corpse (quiero decir, un poema)

2009-01-04T21:19:00.003-05:00

Claroscuro

Justo antes de conocerte
Tuvo que ser que leí
a Neruda. No podía
Ser! Acaso él a ti
ya te había amado?

Tus pies
Tu boca
Tu sonrisa

Tu tez, tu voz,
Tú terso pétalo
y tu violeta flor.

Tu sonrisa; tan lleno
mi sol hoy día. Te la
quito, la nublo
un momento
con mi beso,
para poder verla,
otra vez,
para verte hoy,
a ti, mi día.

Humbly:

2008-12-29T06:55:00.003-05:00

Kill Your Idols

Kill ‘em
Kill ‘em all
Kill Man
Kill Beauty
Kill Love

Kill all sound
Kill books
Kill Childhood
Kill joy

Kill that smile
Kill both eyes
Kill all grace
Kill those hands

Patricide. Matricide.
Fratricide.
Drip in blood
And then Kill it.
Blood
Dies into Dust:

Nothing is eternal
There is nothing
that won’t die
It’s all just an illusion
An Addiction that won’t
Die.
Kill it, Kill it too.

Die Killing.
You’re only clay
glorified dirt
merely filth
On a Sisyphean Sole.

Oh,
While you’re at it,
Kill God.

En cuanto a la astronomía...

2008-12-23T08:35:00.005-05:00

Eres sol, también luna.

solía antes
al alba azul
la luz, la luz,
la luz lunar
fecundas las
nubes llenar
escondiendo
a mi estrella
a mi fuego
al grito de
Aleluya!

llovía más,
más llovía,
tanto llovió
y me dejé
mojar todo
entero hasta
aprender a amar
calado el alma,
en el mundo
mi camino
trazar en gris:

La imposibilidad
de un cielo
sin nubes.

¿Fuiste tu
la que movió
la nube o el sol?

Fue el mar y una
brisa.

Mi sol luna,
tu sonrisa.

Blah, o lo que no pude decir in spanish

2008-12-16T16:28:00.003-05:00

Tongue Tied en La Menor

few are the faces whose factions draw fire
and draw blood
in their ravaging beauty.

Oh, yes, perdón,
I forgot we were in your land,
on the clay from your mold, which
usted, mi preciosa, rompió.

Hardly worthwhile
In my non-non-native tongue,
En mi lengua edipal,
Me pierdo en el ritmo
Salgo awkward de más,
Lo sé, y no me es extraño
Sentirme un alienígena
Whistling Lieder
En una estrella fugaz.

What is lost in translation,
Cuando cambio unos pesos
Y la oficina de cambio
Charges in greens?
So I hear you like ballads,
love songs. Don’t you know?
I am drunk in your music
Cuando me das tu sonrisa,
Cuando desciframos secretos
en la profundidad
del iris de unotro,
Estoy borracho,
Sabías?
y es nada más
para beberte
en tu sobriedad;
remember,
an alien drinks
no para entonarse
rather
para no desentonar,
y si quiero beberte
no es por acompañar la bebida
sino porque,
in the waking hours
of a naked morning,
at the dreamer’s matinée
or at the lover’s torment,
nadie más me podría alimentar.

A ti, a ti

2008-12-12T19:40:00.002-05:00

Talco

Quien diría
que en un mineral
encontraría rebeldía?

No hallaba en los Alpes
Lágrimas de árbol,
de arbusto alguno
de aroma que arrulle
Príncipes Polluelos
y las Madres Regentes
que empollan el nido.

Me gusta, me supo,
me supo a algún aire,
algún éter antiguo,
un suspiro suspenso,
más bien suspendido,
Victoriano adagio
perenne embellecido.

Vuelve, tan fácil
vuelve a inundarme,
a encantarme, a acabar
con la cacofonía:
Piano ppianissimo,
Espolvoreada melodía
Blanquísima enseñanza

De abuela a madre a niña.

A Colombia

2008-12-10T10:22:00.002-05:00

Velo Vallenato

Mi pedazo de alma,
Pedazo’el alma mía,
Cahuína amiga, ira,
Digna algarabía:

Acordeón derramas
Calor y aguardiente
En todas aquellas
Nocturnas quimeras;
Serpiente divina
Tanto tomas y das,
Pa’al son del acordeón
Alivia’l mío pesar.

Alma amiga, amada
Música mía, te estoy
Tejiendo un velo, una
Bohemia boína.

Que pena, ay, que tengo
Hasta no abrigar los
Huesos, sin yo poder
Tocar, ay, desnudar
la nota hasta hallar
las notas vibrando
en surcos sub-térreos,
en montes a lo alto.

Es que hoy me quisieron
Paga’el mío dolor,
Pues endeudado ando
A un son tempo de ron.

Y si así no fuera
Y armado mejo’ andar
Y no hubiera un peso
Ni pa’el aguardiente
Ni pa la pistola
Ni pa’el pan, del aire
Soplado’e mi acordeón
yo haré pa’ respirar.

Mi pedazo de alma,
Pedazo’el alma mía
Cahuína amiga, ira,
Digna algarabía.

Suspiro Enjaulado

2008-12-09T12:44:00.006-05:00

No había tenido un momento tan bello como cuando la única verdad para mí fue tu mentira.

Todos mentimos. Lo sé, porque lo vi hace poco en una caricatura en una revista para intelectuales neoyorquinos, para quienes aspiran a serlo, y para aquellos que desean aparentarlo, que se llama The New Yorker.

La caricatura decía que la única diferencia es cuanto te pagan por hacerlo...

pero no recuerdo que me haya mentido alguien tan rico como tu.

y eso de mentir, yo sé que tu sabes, es siempre relativo. ¿Deja de ser una mentira falaz cuando tu sonrisa y tus ojos ya me han dicho toda la verdad?

damn...

2008-12-03T18:30:00.001-05:00

The Suspension of Appropriateness

The game:
Matching wits
holding tight
to our most
recent breath
waiting for
the next dart,
the next shot
at a button
to gnaw at,
to nibble on and
try to undo,
to sight skin
just a twist
more of skin
to plan
the next move,
to plot
what to do
just in case
it’s best not
to go ahead
and succumb
to those
long aching
arms that fit
my embrace
like a new
pair of old
gym gloves.

oh, Wake Up!
it’s not like it’s not
much more fun
to set traps, to pursue,
to fully undress and make sure
that you tingle without me
yet having had
to trace the prim rose
satin that
pains at this, my
restrained touch.

And,
would you know?
I’ve felt tremors lately,
Volcanos erupting
Tectonic plates
adjusting.
Nature
Disposes as I
merely propose:
Would Darwin approve
of our game,
this modernity, this
our natural love?

Newfound Mask

2008-12-01T13:38:00.006-05:00

The Cloak

I am, all the unanswered questions
left in my mind,
the epitomes I’ve yet to become,
passions unfound,
frightful beseeching, defunct gods’ fife—

the colors that tinge the veil in my life,
alabaster blues,
pard-black hues and trickles of blood crawling
a Pollock brew,
spirit decrying doubt unto its soul—

incarnation
of a paralyzing bouquet
composed of bemusing orchids
and a memorable scent,
a withering concoction
of petals at the matinée,
webs abandoned by arachnids
inscrutable in wisdom, wordless in intent—

the faithful illusion
of the fateful unknown.

Loveless and out of stamps...

2008-11-26T12:23:00.008-05:00

Epistolary Divagation

Nene:
Who flew away?
Ah! The Nest fell away!
New York?
Exotic locales
exculpating beauty and lust,
fire and empty masks.

Abject poverty:
My feet, my unfeeling feet
are trying to try
treading on dirt, try
giving a hand; no matter
how many, no, no,
how many I touch,
inside me it don’t matter:
escape’s what I sought,
what I seek, what I ignore
regarding what ifs.

Anyway,
How’s life?
At times, a tingle, a touch
on my ribcage feels
like a golden bird,
floating in me, once again;
then I remember
that I’m just hollow,
like the bird that’s not in me.

I Miss You.

poem: Cues for the Disco

2008-11-21T21:03:00.003-05:00

The Paradox of Blood & Water

For every part blood
draw two (or more) parts water.
Men of cloth, drunkards,
heedless to golden ratios,
turn liquid into
vapor, a bloodless spirit,
a faithless mirage.

Drink blood fast enough
so in the cup the rule shows;
the glass of water
will then permanently hold
twice the abundance
(or more) of crystal reason,
purity adored.

Leave water to sit,
imbibe, forget blood runs dry,
err, foolish hubris,
mistake your father’s gamble
for a vampire’s thirst;
Not even a miracle
moistens bloodied dust.

poema y sombra

2008-11-18T10:55:00.013-05:00

Bailamos?

No me confío contigo,
Me quisiste decir.
Recordaste lo que antes
había dejado
que te dejes llevar, licor,
vapor embriagante,
convencida te querías
de tu inseguridad
etéreo espejismo espectral.

Contigo me lastimaré;
Corta tu mirada,
Quema tu perfil, silueta
taciturna, triste,
difusa y bifurcada;
tus ojos destellan
bajo implacables mordazas
que intento desatar
sin más ayuda que el amar.

Mentiré, a uno mentiré,
Casi es ya costumbre,
que enmascarada me ames;
No sé si es para que
tu o yo piense que no es quien
es bajo el antifaz.
Pretendíamos pretender
que el fuego no quema,
más había un leño demás.

poem: at the beach, I thought...

2008-11-11T20:11:00.003-05:00

I’m Slowly Turning Into You
(petit turtle requiem)

Strung out on song,
feeling heavy
and falling off
from side to side,
the winds breaking
on my bare back;
I come upon
a turtle still,
washed up ashore
its swim now done,
I want to cry
but I’m too numb.

The birds of prey
have just begun
to do their part,
peck out the eyes,
imbibe manna;
Blind, then defunct
reptilian being,
forsaken Grace
had left thee, to
unto buzzards
anoint God’s gift:
turtle carrion.

Mother Nature’s
wise in her ways;
aching stupor,
anew vesper
devolved till morn,
I tread the sand
and find not one
but a beach full
of leather-backed
buzzard sushi,
drunk, I think of
fat birds flying.

poema: reviviendo viejos anhelos

2008-11-06T15:01:00.001-05:00

Querida musa:

Anoche quise escribir
Lo más bello que jamás había escrito;
Quería que me acompañase
Lorca y su musicalidad,
Pero solo tenía a su luna,
Que a idilios gitanos optó escapar,
Invoqué antiguos espíritus,
Poetas, músicos y demás:
Quema su subterráneo palpitar,
En vida quienes fueran desangrados
Durante el dolor diurno de su andar:
Querer negar que ni los muertos,
Ni los faunos danzando sobre su lar,
Ante el sueño de sueños,
Quisieron querer ayudar.

Election Night Poetry

2008-11-04T21:37:00.004-05:00

Canned Laughter

(petit republican requiem)

Redistribution
Fox News delusion
Spreading the wealth
Taxing your health
Be afraid of the one
Wright, Rong, we will still run
Vets in the background
Fights in the foreground
Pitbulls and moms
Joe Mammas and terrorist chums
One hundred fifty thousand dollar shopping spree
For the scant few real members of the land of the free
Already waitin’ to be able to shelve
Change infatuation, then resume palin’ for 2012

Canned Laughter.

rock poetry, v3

2008-10-30T15:22:00.004-05:00

Unemployment
(or Alt-Rock Orpheus)

Wait,
You’re already late;
What difference will it make
Now that the vaudeville
Set out on its way?

What will you do?
They won’t take you at the zoo.
All that make-up did no good,
You couldn’t look ferociously
Funny, furry or cute.

Sit still, you’ll spin a mental swirl,
Yeah, sure the bearded girl
Turned down your kiss, your dry lips
In daft careless contempt;
It’s her loss, really,
Don’t you think to make more
Out of a sordid episode;
Don’t fret, I’m afraid
You two won’t one day elope.

The freak show will continue,
In fact, they might soon need you
To replace the side-show;
All in all, I’d still wager
That you still hold in you
All one can humanly hope.

rock poetry, v2

2008-10-27T13:59:00.005-05:00

Amy Winehouse

why does fucked up feel so fucking good?

full circle
the vice of the brevity of life
a bleak fife
the moon radiating raw miracle
the song of a syrupy skylark
soft alarm
pipes of disconcert drawing bee swarms
the ether dark

why does fucked up feel so fucking good?

longing lark
feathered love fight and blood fly by night
no not right
quite right too won’t do won’t strike the mark
sojourning in meadows of idyll cull
frayed flowers
flighty fracases fazed musings dour
tearful lulls.

why does fucked up feel so fucking good?

rock poetry, v1 (revised)

2008-10-21T17:37:00.004-05:00

fuck

my fucking cellar door
turned out to be
a fucking stellar sore!

what fucking praise gave I,
springtime velvet,
fucked up, turned into lie!

did my fucking accent
not convey song?
translation accident.

bullshit. only my voice
will e’er flatter
so dross a fucking noise.

double hinged fucking board
of shitty wood,
fuck you! eat shit! I'm bored.

cellar door I’d adore,
affection fraught,
quiet denial in its core.

son of a bitch, what fucking whore...
(and no doubt I’ll go back for more.)

Jeff Buckley

2008-10-20T19:40:00.000-05:00

when I listen to 'Grace', I can't help but feel haunted by Jeff Buckley's immense whisper of a voice; it is emotionally involving to the point of being distracting. When I listen to it I refrain from doing anything that requires a great deal of attention, because I'll simply drift into the melody and Buckley's croon.

but this is only now, over five years after I first purchased it. For a good part of these, I had to skip this album entirely when it came up, because, through none of the music's fault, I couldn't stand to listen to the first track, 'Mojo Pin'.

You see, the first time I cracked 'Grace' open and gave it a listen, I thought it was quite certainly some of the most beautiful music I'd ever heard. Buckley's singing is beyond the vast majority of singers' velour; vocally, he flies and wafts more niftly than a hummingbird. I, however, made a horrible freshman mistake in setting this CD in my stereo for it to play every morning as my alarm; I thought the sweet saddened tones on this album would soothe me out of sleep into a glorious awakening.

Of course, it is just a fact of modernity that an alarm will inevitably become just about the most obnoxious sound that one can hear. So using 'Grace' as my alarm made no difference in my mornings, and, in fact, ruined Buckley for me for a while.

But the point is, it is an album so beautiful that I would have liked to wake up every morning to the dreamy flux of emotion emanating from it; to feel the tragic fragility of grace permeate my ears. Buckley is a degree more sensitive to the precious and the magic in the world, more attuned to the wistfully fleeting; he manages to entrance with the dramatic beauty of his music.

just in case y'all didn't know.

poem: lonely at the beach

2008-10-14T14:55:00.003-05:00

wave

Death becomes us,
Death becomes me.
A crab’s vacated shell
Grinds slowly into sand,
A thought this crustacean
Went solemnly without;
Sand that fed other shells,
sand makers in themselves,
that helped feed tidal seas
so once again they’d birth
fishy carcasses, me,
dunes of the sun-baked us.

poem: an unspoken whisper

2008-10-03T18:48:00.004-05:00

[Note: Ideally, I would have liked for you who inspired this to have read it first; this poem is, after all, yours. I guess what I mean to say is, please forgive the lonely cowardice that gags my existence.]

to sb

Not the first time,
but the second –
then you had changed your hair,
shortened it, did something
that made it cease to hide
the unexpected class
I’d only vaguely suspected
I’d be surprised to find.

Only in notes
Writ to Nixe
in bad grammar, even worse prose,
silly intimacies, which said
that I wanted you to teach me
your language, to parse your
pursed lips as they pronounced
words I’d pretend to know.

Delicate Deutsch!
How very odd
that a guttural R
rings so divine
when it draws from your breath,
which never dared become
a moistened whisper then
from your mouth exhaled into mine.

Enamored,
masqued or not,
teach, but don’t touch,
five days a week
half past noon, in East Pyne,
I’d be so very close
as to learn longing subtlety
in a teutonic tongue.

Y no vino la musa...

2008-09-28T03:12:00.005-05:00

Por más que quisiera, no pudo ser un poema este recuerdo, este suspiro filosófico que en este momento me supo inspirar. Será porque quería escribir un poema acerca de un poema, cuando al original en su profunda belleza no lo supe superar.

Y bien, al rumiar acerca de mi escualida existencia (y no sé si hago mucho más que eso) buscaba una imagen que pudiese pintar un sentimiento eternamente persistente y trágicamente común a todos los seres que me rodean. Algunos lo sienten de manera más aguda, otros prefieren ignorarlo, pero creo que todos conocemos el dolor visceral de la barbarie existencial.

No es nada nuevo, cualquier artista lo sabrá. En todo caso, al querer yo plasmar en el papel unas pocas palabras provistas de ritmo acerca del tema, se me vino a la mente la imagen más clara de lo que quería decir, pero esta ya había sido creada.

En una de las películas que viene a ser de mi infancia, Roberto Benigni es llevado bajo fusil a su muerte. Inevitablemente cruza en su camino la mirada de su hijo, quien se encontraba escondido para salvar su vida. Al hacerlo, Benigni juega, hace de su último marchar algo grandioso, haciendo reir al niño.

En mi niñez, me había conmovido este momento por todas las debidas razones. Sin embargo, hasta ahora nunca había visto a esta escena como una metáfora para la vida. Caminamos, bajo fusil, hacia la muerte; el reir y el hacer reir en este caminar es lo que viene por nustra cuenta.

Para...

2008-09-22T04:46:00.005-05:00

La última en irse

Sola,
como tan solo ella
sabe tan sola yacer,
sin acompañamiento
más que el de luciérnagas,
la lánguida luna,
y el latente vapor
de licores de ámbar,
posada en su silla
reposa sus cuerdas
saciadas de sonar
su antigua serenata.

No han partido
quienes entonaron
trances melódicos,
sonámbulos coros
que saben pernoctar
el claro y la ausencia
de luna en añejos
espíritus que quiebran
su sosiego para
verterse salpicantes
al fluvial adagio
del cantar a la vida.

Querer que resuene
eterno el encanto
risueño de quienes
esta noche bohemia
a mi guitarra vieja
la hicieron cantar;
La fiesta ha terminado,
¡No partan, no se vayan!
Sus antiguos pasillos
cual cañón me estremecen;
cantenlos más, otra vez
más, asi indelebles
en mi memoria
para siempre puedan
perdurar.

2008-09-19T02:53:00.009-05:00

A Child's Love

2008-09-19T02:53:00.008-05:00

“One, two, three, four, five, six, nine and ten
Money can’t buy you back the love that you had then.”
-Leslie Feist

Young and full of spirit, the freshman was always keen to savour each and every word uttered in un inglese molto italiano by his POL 210 professor; he even found reason to jot down inspired notes. Despite his inexperience, he knew he’d seldom bear witness to such lucid oratory on political theory as his professor’s, and the ovation the class offered him at the end of this (and every other) lecture was a testament to this. After collecting his pen and notebook, he began to make his way out of the row of wooden seats, but he was stopped immediately in his tracks by a vision that stood in the way of his glance at the exit. Soaked by a midmorning stream of autumn sunshine pouring through the lecture hall’s magnificent floor-to-ceiling windows, a golden Nene delicately turned her neck towards him. Although flustered while concocting her own laborious egress from the lecture hall, she radiated an exotic kind of American beauty. The moment their eyes met, the brief sense of cosmic alignment, gave him a colorful memory that he would hold on to. Years hence, he’d wonder if the siren of fate had sung back then.

short story: Soul Manifesto

2008-09-12T05:21:00.001-05:00

I am the spirit.

Maybe someone’s, but I’m the only conscious being I sense all around, so, I thought, that makes me ‘the’, not just ‘a’ spirit (if that is in fact what I am), so it seems unlikely I belong to someone in particular. Perhaps at some point I did belong...belong, to someone...but I wouldn’t know it, I can’t recall much, to be honest. I certainly don’t recall ever becoming separated from any particular body, traumatic that must be.

“I am the spirit” also has a nice ring to it, nice and ominous.

Truth is, I don’t really know what I am. Lacking any and all mirrors, it’s really impossible to know such a thing. I am a silent voice in a vacuum, or perhaps someone caught in one of the more extravagant cosmic phenomena. I could even be the result of a physicist’s botched search for gravitons.

It’s rather lonely, you see, floating or drifting or trans-dimensionally transforming, or doing whatever I do.

“It’s all light’s and colors around here...
...or so I hear.”

I tell myself, probably the funniest I’ve come up with in a while, but I can’t sense anything (or, to the same effect, there’s nothing to sense).

I have a lot of time to spare. Not that ‘time’ really plays a role in my universe, but it seems like an adequate phrasing of the matter, I think.

I think. Don’t ask how. At least I can string a few words together,

I’m just glad I can at least think to myself.

It would be impossible for me to know how long I’ve been here, or if any time has passed, but sometimes I think I’m fading.

Or am I becoming silent more frequently, maybe for longer.

I don’t really know.

It doesn’t seem important; eventually, something will happen or I get comfy for an eternity with myself.

Odds are, I’m in it solo for the long run.

poema

2008-09-11T18:12:00.003-05:00

Son muchas las razones
del existir de los secretos,
más solo un secreto exquisito,
el que es
un pequeño torbellino
una titilante descarga
y, siempre,
un ensayo en picardía,
justifica su existencia
en la sutileza de la actuación
de sus guardianes.
Solo un secreto así
merece ser tan bien guardado,
haciendo de su custodia
una obra, y de sus guardianes
artistas bajo la luna nueva.

the desert is expanding

2008-09-04T04:56:00.002-05:00

it might have something to do with global warming, desertification I mean...

...but yet another newly dried expanse has been sighted at zsg.

for the time being, i think it's tastier over there, in the way sushi is tasty.

but...
mentonia lives on.

Dispatch from oblivion

2008-08-24T07:14:00.003-05:00

Change

A word, quite frankly, I hope will get someone the presidency.

also, what my internet presence will undergo, but more on that later.

In the meantime, my first commissioned work.

Duvet

Even before memory allows
you kept me warmly through sweet fancy,
through dreary daylight being so nosy,
fended off scary monsters that rouse
amid dirty laundry
I’d rather would not abound.

Is it night or morn? I really don’t know.
All sheathed from the feel of earthly air,
can’t be asked to reckon how i’ll fare;
That cold, hard floor not even my toe
Today, Tonight or Tomorrow
would like to touch.

Except sometimes to eat, get up then,
and for the logical bio needs,
of course, but with so many bad seeds
growing amuck in my mind again,
I’d rather my duvet
smother, numb, and lull me through decay

into nothingness and a cloud of gray.

For these cold, rainy days...

2008-03-14T00:53:00.001-05:00

Hot Shower

Warm water drops falling, covering my lusting skin
comme caramel coats, caresses an apple’s own,
though never hardening, yet warding as a shell,
Anointing my essence then for to sublimate
into specter thin vapor swirling vagabond,
crafting a milky mantle across the thin air.

What sweet soothing breath drawn from the dewy ether,
What pleasure to drift cutting a fabric of mist,
Inhaling moist, wafting crystals of existence
That sifting in my mouth taste of life’s glowing grace,
Eternal rebirth perfusing at every pore,
Aloft cumulus humilis, floating carefree.

Absorbed in the haze, dreaming by daylight of dryads,
Finger-painting abstractions on mirror canvas,
Absorbed by the thought of never leaving this fog,
Immaculate embrace, halcyon chrysalis
Clear confident of my most naked naiveté,
The crisp cold outside could I ever come to face?

El Conflicto

2008-03-09T00:14:00.004-05:00

¿Es este el momento en que el Rafico dio por superado el lío que se había armado con Colombia? Juzgando por su expresión, más parece que Uribe le acababa de quitar el chupete a un niño, a un guaguazo que todavía le quedaba por refunfuñar.

Durante la anterior semana de soberbia indignación por lo acontecido en la frontera, Correa ha desplegado todo su arsenal retórico ya conocido en el país en el foro internacional en que se manejó este impassé. Y de que manera quedaron en evidencia las carencias del actual presidente ecuatoriano como estadista en la cumbre del grupo de Río. Sus cínicas risitas, sus ademanes prepotentes, su rábida lengua y lo que la canciller explicó como una vejiga de (in)oportuno caudal marcaron la participación de Correa en la reunión en República Dominicana. No le bastó mostrar su rostro pungido en el momento en que Uribe se acercó a estrecharle la mano para dar por terminado el conflicto, más siguió (y seguirá) descaradamente emanando demagogia, acusaciones y falsedades que no le convienen a nadie.

Pongamos algo en claro: Nadie está de acuerdo con que se infrinja el territorio - y esto fue claro desde un principio. Correa siempre demandó que sea la incursión Colombiana en el Ecuador el tema que se discuta y sea condenado por los poderes mediadores. Está bien, pero, por más que haga berrinche Correa, este no es el tema de mayor relevancia. Si se quiere hablar de atentados a la soberanía, como tanto se ha hecho, difícilmente se puede ignorar el argumento de Uribe, que como más que en estos mismos términos se pueden entender los más de cuarenta ataques de las FARC perpetrados desde el Ecuador hacia Colombia.

También me parece lógico el que el éxito de la operación militar colombiana dependía de que las autoridades Ecuatorianas desconozcan de que se estaba llevando a cabo. Esto es lo más grave, pues aparte de exterminar a Reyes, las fuerzas Colombianas incursionaron con el objetivo de recuperar evidencia de los lazos entre la guerrilla y las dos naciones aledañas a Colombia. Teniendo en cuenta que seguramente ya tenían conocimiento de estos vínculos (sin tener evidencia solida), la cooperación con el Ecuador era algo lógicamente impensable. ¿Será que la alevosa reacción de Chavez, y a paso seguido la de Correa, se debieron a que se percataron que se desenmascaría su relación con las FARC?

Uribe dio a conocer que en ningún momento el estado ecuatoriano le había informado de los presuntos esfuerzos de Larrea y Co. para la liberación de rehenes, lo cual había sido la excusa para las relaciones con el grupo guerrillero. Ante esta circunstancia, parece que todas estas proclamaciones del gobierno no fueron más que una pantalla de humo para esconder algo que consideraron tenía que esconderse. Existe lo que obviamente le convenía al gobierno que no salga a la luz, como la evidente incapacidad de las fuerzas armadas para controlar nuestra frontera. Pero el hecho de esta deficiencia militar no explica lo que haya entablado el gobierno con las FARC, el hecho de que dentro del Ecuador los guerrilleros podían descansar enpijamados. ¿Que es lo que esconde Correa detrás de sus risitas de menosprecio? ¿Qué más nos podrá decir la vasta correspondencia encontrada en los computadores de Reyes? ¿Hará alguien todas estas preguntas que bien merecen ser respondidas?
Ya estoy esperando el comercial de televisión que nos dirá que no nos dejemos engañar por las mismas cartas de siempre, y que las FARC ya son de todos.

El Ecuador siempre ha postulado la no-intervención en el conflicto colombiano; este gobierno ha llevado esto al máximo nivel de hipocresía con su flagrante intervención pro-guerrilla (los detalles de la cual están por verse). En todo caso, si hay algo que nos debería quedar claro es que las FARC han sido por ya mucho tiempo un tema meritorio de preocupación para el Ecuador, y la misma flaqueza en nuestra política exterior ya no basta. Colombia tiene un líder determinado a lidiar con el terrorismo de estos narco-guerrilleros, dando esperanza a ese país como pocos presidentes lo han hecho. Nuestro propio liderazgo no debería hacer más que apoyar el esfuerzo Colombiano, por solidaridad y hasta por el propio bien del Ecuador y su seguridad. Pero ¿qué fechorías se revelarían y cuántas cabezas deberían rodar si esto se hiciera?

I was too lazy to write, so here's a review I wrote for what could be my fav for 2007

2008-03-06T02:08:00.005-05:00

Album: Person Pitch
Artist: Panda Bear
Label: Paw Tracks
Release Date: March 20, 2007

This won’t be easy. You might get a better feel for Panda Bear’s music by looking at the cover art of Person Pitch than by reading my review. Considering said album cover depicts a group of oddly dressed children and a small variety of animals, anywhere from a llama to a tiger, all bathing in what appears to be a very crowded above ground swimming pool, you can imagine this is not your run of the mill release.

After careful deliberation, I found that the best way to describe this music is if you imagine the The Beach Boys forgot all about surfing, the beach, fun in the sun…California for that matter, and they met up with Syd Barrett, and then somehow came upon musical instruments from the past, but the past from a slightly different alternate universe, and then played what their mind under some very pleasant psychedelic told them to play. Or I could just say that Person Pitch is a solo-effort, the brainchild of Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, from the New York experimental rock group Animal Collective. But both descriptions are just as unhelpful. And I don’t really know any Animal Collective, that was just what wikipedia told me.

I won’t single out any one track. This is one of those albums best appreciated in its entirety as a coherent artistic endeavor. Indeed, Person Pitch is an expression of high art, and knowingly so. It sets forth with a lo-fi march, and continues on to explore entirely unknown expanses of the musical universe through magical soundscapes and a symphonic elegance all throughout. Person Pitch is brilliantly composed, and yes that was either a rooster or a baby crying you heard in the background on the third track, and as is the case with most genius art, this might not be for everyone. I’m well aware I’ve done a piss poor job at describing this album, but if you give it a listen just how hard it is to describe this music in words. If you’d like me to pigeonhole Panda Bear, well, you might want to skip this one. But it’s so much better if you keep an open mind, because, in my humble opinion, Panda Bear offers something utterly unique in Person Pitch, a true modern masterpiece that defies categorization. This one’s real special, don’t miss out.

[Ed. note: I wrote this well before it was on top of so many critics' lists. More music writing forthcoming!]

Que tal un cuento cortísimo?

2008-02-27T05:37:00.004-05:00

1612

La luz del elevador llevaba parpadeando ya un par de semanas, lo cual era más molestoso que si estuviera completamente quemada. Como todos los días, José llegaba demasiado tarde como para reclamar que se instale un foco nuevo; en todo caso, desconocía a quien podría llevar tal reclamo. Lentamente ascendía hasta el piso 16, intermitentemente bañado en la luz zumbante que daba a su piel un tono verde pálido y soportando crujidos y ruidos metálicos que indicaban que los demás componentes de la maquinaria carecían de mantenimiento. Arrimado en la pared del elevador, José prefería dar la espalda al zig-zageo escalador de lucecitas numeradas; simplemente sostenía una vacua mirada hacia el vago reflejo suyo en el metal pulido en su frente hasta llegar a su piso.

Un sonoro remezón siempre le indicaba que había llegado. Al deslizarse abiertas las puertas, el largo pasillo bordeado por puertas idénticas y equidistantes se revelaba a las espaldas de José. Una música, que no era música, corría por todo el edificio; de ligero caudal, estos tonos, sintéticos y apaciguados, acompañaban a José todas las noches hasta el 1612, el apartamento donde vivía. Podría haber sido que no era siempre la misma amanerada melodía, pero eran sonidos tan inanes que era imposible distinguir si había diferencia alguna día a día. Se suponía que proveían de ambiente y clase al conjunto. Con la cabeza gacha José recorría la misma alfombra mugrienta, cuyas manchas (salvo adiciones) ya las tenía memorizadas, cuando la presencia de un hombre desconocido al final de su caminar le sorprendió.

“¿Es esta su residencia?”
“Sí.”
“Un mensaje.”

Después de entregarle un sobre, el hombre no dijo más y dio vuelta. La rutina gris de José se había roto con este intercambio. Perplejo, miró al hombre que se alejaba y se desvanecía en el pasillo. Después de retomar su concentración, sacó la la llave de su bolsillo e ingresó a su apartamento vacío. Tras el portazo, José se encontraba sumido en el silencio nocturno y la soledad de la soltería. Se fijó en el sobre en su mano, el cual únicamente portaba el número 1612. Al abrir este, encontró un papel que leía:

“Se le informa mediante la presente comunicación que se le ha asignado una nueva residencia. Para comenzar el proceso de su reubicación, sírvase en contactar al Sistema Unificado de Planeamiento Urbano de la Administración Central llamando al número al reverso de esta hoja.

Su número de identificación es: 4283259648

Con esté podrá recibir la dirección su nueva residencia. Permítase en llamarnos lo antes posible, puesto que se ha programado que el equipo de saneamiento confirme el desalojamiento en los próximos días. Atendemos las 24 horas.

La Administración agradece su cooperación en su proyecto de hogar para todos.”

José abrió la puerta y miro hacia el pasillo por si podía avistar al hombre del mensaje, pero no había más que el pasillo desierto y puertas cerradas. Preocupado por el aviso en sus manos, José volvió a su pequeña sala y tomó el teléfono para marcar el número indicado. Sin timbrar una sola vez, una voz femenina grabada comenzó a emanar del auricular.

“Bienvenido al Sistema Unificado de Servicios Sociales. Modernizamos nuestra atención para servirle mejor. No cuelgue por favor, las llamadas serán atendidas en el orden que ingresaron.”

Una música muy similar a la de su edificio, proveniente de un sintetizador y la falta de imaginación, entonces comenzó a acompañar a José en su espera. Al pasar unos minutos, esta se cortó con algunos pequeños sonidos de interferencia, los que parecían anunciar que algo sucedería.

“Lo sentimos, debido al volumen de llamadas nuestros sistemas se encuentran completamente ocupados. Por favor manténgase en la linea y será atendido próximamente.”

Otra vez, la voz femenina y tan profesional dio paso a la misma música de espera. Para entonces, José ya se había puesto cómodo en su viejo sillón. Ojalá, pensaba él, esto no demore mucho, pues su estómago comenzaba a retorcerse y a opinar.

Después de algo más de una hora de escuchar la misma música periódicamente entrelazada con la misma grabación lamentándose por la incapacidad del sistema, José pensó que no pasaría nada si desatendía el teléfono para prepararse algo de comer. Entonces, fue hacia su pequeña cocina y buscó en los contenidos de su refrigerador algo que le apeteciera. No es que tenía mucho de que escoger, pues al vivir solo descuidaba mucho su dieta. Tampoco era que disfrutase mucho de la comida, solo comía por comer, lo cual era conveniente porque el cupón semanal que recibía no alcanzaba para ser intercambiado por nada que excite al sentido del gusto.

Mientras preparaba su comida, José volvía al teléfono cada cierto tiempo por si había algún cambio, pero nunca lo hubo. Ya con un plato lleno en sus manos, se acomodó otra vez en su sillón para pegar su oreja a los molestosos tonos que no cesaban para nada más que la misma disculpa pre-grabada.

Pasaban las horas y se extendía la espera de José. Sin embargo, José no se impacientaba; los años de trabajar aprobando o rechazando aplicaciones de crédito para la Administración Central lo habían condicionado a aguantar el tedio. Pasaba su día de trabajo entero estampando formularios de aplicación de crédito con un sello de ‘APROBADO’ o ‘DENEGADO’, lo cual dependía de que si después de insertar la aplicación en el lector óptico el número que aparecía en el monitor al frente suyo era mayor a 1,600 o no. Era fácil imaginar como automatizar completamente la tarea de José, pero entonces no existiría esa plaza de trabajo. La mayoría de veces la negación de crédito se debía únicamente a errores diminutos, nada más de naturaleza burocrática, lo cual José notaba muchas veces, pero tanto las regulaciones internas de la Administración como su apatía lo impedían de interceder. En todo caso, las aplicaciones que José procesaba databan a tres años atrás, razón por lo cual carecían de cualquier sentido de urgencia. Eran papeles, en su plenitud numérica llevada al hastío, vacíos e insignificantes, sin cara ni carácter.

Las horas de la noche pasaron y se hicieron las horas del día mientras José mantenía su cabeza pegada al teléfono en espera de una respuesta. En algún momento de la mañana volvió a comer, y lo hizo otra vez más tarde, por costumbre y sin percatarse que ya no quedaba mucho en su refrigerador. No tenía más que hacer que aguardar hasta que alguien le informase de donde sería que viviría. Casi muda, la mente de José pausaba su silencio para preguntarse si la residencia en la que viviría tendría la misma aséptica blancura de la que al momento ocupaba. Miraba a la pared, y mientras tanto proseguía la música, que no era música, y la inerte promesa de que si era paciente sería atendido. José esperó, y esperó aún más para seguir esperando su turno.

Pasaron semanas y después meses hasta que una mañana la puerta del 1612 fue abierta por un equipo de tres hombres vestidos de uniformes blancos y portando instrumentos para saneamiento. Estos traían una larga lista de números, página tras página de ellos, de los cuales algunos ya habían sido tachados. Sobre el solitario sillón en la diminuta sala encontraron a la cáscara de un hombre, ya hace mucho tiempo fría, y platos vacíos regados a su alrededor. Entre lo que quedaba de la cabeza y el hombro de este yacía el teléfono intacto y todavía sonoro. Una voz casi inaudible dictaba un listado al sordo oído de lo que alguna vez había sido José; opción tras opción, miles de instrucciones para marcar combinaciones de números para acceder a subsiguientes listados. Los hombres colgaron el teléfono, y prosiguieron con el saneamiento de la habitación.

this goes out to a special someone, you know who you are

2008-02-15T02:09:00.010-05:00

Ravished
Ravished

In the wake of the storm,
Past the winds that blew off
What the waters didn’t flood
And a Deus deemed be swept,
The steeple and façade
Of a seaside temple
Still stood, barely erect,
Amid crumbling remains
Crawling a hapless town.
Now towering over
A nave sought for refuge
By pilgrims dead and mashed
Beneath rock that once was,
A whisper of Zephyr,
Although beckoning love
As softly as a sigh,
Would finally collapse
The tottering structure.
The inevitable,
The downfall, the final
Relics of the sacred
Face of former glory.
Too weak a foundation?
Perhaps the illusion
Of strength through devotion
Sustained itself no more.
As water that poisons,
As suffocating air,
An altar that crushes
Out of a hopeful fool’s
Lungs a last living breath.
The golden sun forebodes
Unanswered beseeching,
The forces of nature
Recklessly moving on.

Originally titled "Hobo"

2008-02-12T00:27:00.000-05:00

Desperation

Muck, filth and putrefaction,
All line the high walls of the alley,
Where I despair for my inaction.
My wallowing spirit I rally,
For what? I ask,
A nickel? A sigh? A reaction?

Drowned in derision, my heart,
Skips a beat. But what to beat for?
Who will miss a damned derelict? Apart,
From the taint on the wall, but no more.
Only rats draw heat,
From this amoeba and his shopping cart.

Through the windows glossy eyes gaze,
At the inhuman reduction of a man,
Ne’er imagined “‘this is how I would fare”.
Softly they turn away, from their sight ban,
This tick, this unfortunate tale,
For whom, in keeping sterility, why care?

I find it odd that I keep tagging these with words no one will care to look for

2008-02-10T04:12:00.001-05:00

Blanket

In kamikaze comfort
A plastic cradle rocks,
To the beat of beeping clocks,
To the lull of a light-bulb's hum.
All children drenched in rum
Drunken and complacent,
Fake and insecure.

In kamikaze comfort,
Sleep again to rise,
Toil for toys new and nice.
But keep it simple, two should do,
One good one evil makes a world-view.
As long as the plastic spirits,
Keep filling up the room.

In kamikaze comfort,
Laboriously depressed,
Mostly with more obsessed,
From plastic passions pilfering a soul.
Pre-packaged opinions, mind on parole,
Don’t really like to shiver, but I,
Fear the fear, so pose a pose.

In kamikaze comfort,
Hear a deafening pop.
A house of cards, a king atop,
Fleeing wind blows the foundations from under.
The bubble bursts, vacuum fills a blunder.
If only I’d ‘a built,
This damn thing out of plastic!

2008-02-08T00:34:00.000-05:00

Wave

Will the wave sing
Its sinusoidal song,
Without the sand
asking to be freshened,
to sing along?

In Apollonian waves,
Life bathes and sways.
The wistful moon flickers,
Wills whistling winds
To soaring wings reaching,
Perennial days.

No time, but a moment,
To soak the air,
Perfuse it with sea-worthy
Salt and foam, then
Return. Demeter calls,
Poseidon yearns
Lovingly debonaire.

Luscious kisses
At the goddess’s feet,
Inspire the shore,
To bare no fruit, naked,
Let itself be.
Longing melodies blue,
The shore awaits
Break and retreat.

Pause and leave, then forlorn,
The sand sings,
Again forevermore,
Under the sun,
For another siren
The sea to bring.

2008-02-08T00:30:00.001-05:00

K

At night, when the winds hum low
And the chirps and croaks become
A mantle of words and whispers,
I remember the ghosts
Of poets past, of longings old;
Tonight, dare I be so bold,
As to praise the moon,
As to sing a song?

Heroes in torment in search of a sign,
Immortal in hymn and elegiac cries,
Play humanly fortunes Homer foretold;
Sunk in the heavens the triremes of yore,
Beacons of beauty forever looked on
By seekers of meaning, passion and soul.
Galloping visions, primeval first notes,
For you, what to do but sculpt marble lyres,
And play evergreen anthems writ by fawns,
Sweeping chords, flames of love, lust and desire?

Ah! To anoint with ambrosia
These words, fledging arrows
From a spirited quiver borrowed,
Caressing the breeze,
On its murmurs riding,
Shot to pierce fleeting wings;
An archer trembling with fervor,
Waiting for the birds of ardor
To fall from ethereal heights.
To aim upon the sky
With tears of emotion
Moonlit and reflecting,
Only a vague notion
Of the proper tension,
Right intension, nether winds;
Time to release the feather.

The words to make a symphony,
A tune which memory ne’er lost;
A marksman of melody,
Forever a teacher of song
In the hybrid art of letters and notes.
To paint thus so very exquisitely
Dramatic travails of antiquity
As to have a name not chiseled in stone,
But one that was writ in water.

2008-02-05T01:50:00.000-05:00

Reality Check

Wandering...but many who have wondered
about meandering through virgin fields,
brushing past dew laden blades
of tall, tall grass. The night glistening in each
drop.

So long sweet vision, sweet, sweet sedition
Against the modern affection of clockwork lives;
A wintry morning, red-cheeked and warmly coated,
I breathe the white exhaust from the car – hanging
Ghost of modernity in the crisp air,
Sweet clouds of refined glory.

2008-02-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

Progress

It has long been known by the poets of old
Cogs keep turning by the turning of more
But some are shaped a lil’ strange,
Some would just like to roll freely
Down sun-baked slopes far
From the machine. And
Some would rather
not turn at all.

There
Are those
Whose spirit,
Not of cog, no,
Rather circular,
All they want is
As much as to
Turn so that it
all just keeps
on turning
on and
on.

Then,
Rotating, as always, some
are beholden to visions
of greater machinations
to engage in the creation
of far more beautiful things.
But in the cog-like mentality
Surrounding the cog kings,
Can a cog possibly ever
Dream of becoming a sphere?

Surely hysterical to hold
such spherical notions,
But in the incessant turning,
and faceless embraces,
There lies art in becoming
A more mused wheel of the graces.

2008-02-02T23:28:00.000-05:00

Glowing Decay

Soft burning ember, don’t gray and whiten.
Blush if you must, but last to quell my lust
For visions emerging naked behind
Silk drapery of chaos, charcoal and dust.

Reddened thinker of wandering musings,
What do you tell in your sinuous tracings?
A dance, an impenetrable tango,
Or do you write in silver and ivory
The ether, in a twirling tongue your own?
Do you whisper history repeating its twirls?
Do you paint without foreseeing,
Never knowing the next turn?
Tell of madness, mental swirls,
or do you summon divining spirits,
for the soul to inhale?

A puff and a lie,
A lie and a puff.
The gray ghost of inspiration pervades
The caverns of living, whimpers and sighs.
A graying redhead ages,
A billowing illusion emerges;
Its thinning threads glisten, then fade,
Leaving behind a memory and a scent,
A presence extinguished and spent.
So arresting a pleasure
The ephemeral inebriation,
Shamanic rite;
Are these godly peaks?
Or a fleeting dream
Dissolving away,
An ashen stain
of formless soot
and fetid dust?

2008-01-30T01:54:00.000-05:00

Original Rock

An ebony lament once heard
‘cross southern fields, marshes and groves,
Many a lonely heart it hurt
Just a touch, but to heal the soul;
And when heard ‘round the day
This cry, this mockingbird
flatly tuned and hard-lucked,
The sky no longer shone azure,
But eight darker hues,
They call ‘em the blues.

Melancholy chants so soulful
As to perfuse the stringed lady
With amaranthine gloom,
And impregnate her in summer,
These titans to beget
Not Zeus, but something Dionysian
A brash enfant terrible,
Fiercely young, crass and defiant,
Peter Pan with a bad do,
Rather peeved by the Man too.

No more the aching everyman,
No more hollerin’ pain away,
No more subdued notions
Of explosive emotions that
Shake up a beastlier within,
Which moans, shakes for raucous
Escape from the noxious tedium
That modern living comes not
without. Cries of juvenal birds,
Reptilian, primordial, in titillating thirds.

With sounds like reefs, in jagged
windswept keys and drenched
By beating waves of intoxication,
The sonic force of a boulder
Rolling down a canyon
Wrecking trodden roads.
Dorian Gray reworking,
All wrinkles and wear marks,
Unafraid of the matured art,
That swoons a renegade heart.

Nuevo año, vieja lengua

2008-01-09T23:13:00.000-05:00

Página en blanco

Hace tan solo un segundo,
Desolado por el pasar del tiempo,
Me encontraba palido, vacío y moribundo.
Inmaculado, cual nieve cubriendo un campo,
Pero falto de rasgos, sin furia,
Sin tragedia y sin locura.

¡Que dolor no teñirme de sangre!
¡No vestir rasguños ni manchas!
¡Yo ruego quien me demacrare!
Asi al fin vivo, de rachas,
De mala suerte, incoherencia,
Del despecho que el alma mata.

¿Cómo más querría que me quieran,
Fuera de platonismos y de panaceas?
Raya en mí los garabatos que fueran;
¡A mi blancura me la laceras!
Roba de mi toda esperanza,
De inmunda perfección, maníaca compañera.

Carente de sus cráteres, la luna
No es la luna. Sin cara y muda,
La hoja de papel sin palabra alguna.
Dando pincelazos negros, la musa suda,
Y libera al lienzo,
De su catatónica blancura.

Madman rather likes this one

2007-12-17T01:17:00.000-05:00

Drum Set

Yes, it’s up to me
To zing like a bee.
On my tracks,
Travel the trends,
To carry the rhythm.
Behold how constant,
A shaken, stirred combatant.
Thundering explosions,
Or lulling rattling river,
Tatoo the soundscape with.
time, trembling and shiver.
Boom your primeval sound,
Erupt when a roar is bound.
Then try to take me,
Through the crescents and the meadows,
To a vibrating tranquility,
Tapping with cheer and fertility.

Guess the album that inspired this

2007-12-15T02:14:00.000-05:00

The Sound That Soothes

To heal is but to hurt a little,
Perhaps tonight with a fiddle
To cast away pain and sorrow,
Or for beats now to borrow.
In peace, perhaps, the sounds to follow,
In a gust of emotion, to forget about tomorrow.
Thus I listen to music.

Strike me with cymbal, hit me with a snare,
Flow through me without a care.
Frighten me all throughout,
Let my mind loose all whereabout.
Thus I love music.

I sway about the rhythm, dance my spirit free.
My soul is aflame. I cry in pure glee.
Let me in to Abbey Road!
There my shaking conscience is sown.
Thus it shall never be.

I shall carry my weight,
Only visit you at night,
Love you, love you,
Rocking to the bones, a fool for you,
Thus I sing to you.

May her Majesty too have a belly full of wine!

Madman on Iran

2007-12-08T19:24:00.000-05:00

The recent US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and the halt of its nuclear weapons program marks an important development in what is the most sulfuric geopolitical zone in the world. It appears that the war drums need not be beaten so hastily, if the intelligence community was prudent in making its assertions.

President Bush is still wary of Iran, as one should be when dealing with the likes of Ahmadinejad and the amalgam of clerical puppeteers that run that country. Iran has rushed to proclaim this development as a victory for their nuclear power program and to denounce spying on it (side comment to Iran: quit while you're ahead - you might just escape getting blown off the face of the Earth). So, Iran plans to continue its uranium enrichment, and Bush, Cheney and the hawks aren't down.

The case for military action against Iran weakened after this week's unfolding; this is for the best for all parties involved. Iran is a country with a vast population under 30, many of which are educated and with friendly views of liberalism, and a military intervention would certainly have the effect of jading and radicalizing this population against America. Moreover, by not allowing the Iranian government to assert that the US is on the war path against them, the politics of fear used by Ahmadinejad will not be as effective on the Iranians, and perhaps it will be the masses that get rid of that nutjob.

The issue of Iranian nuclear energy still remains unresolved, however, and it is an issue with significant implications on a larger scale. The world as a whole needs to take on the issue of clean energy, and one of the options on the table is going nuclear. That is, if you ignore all the risks involved with nuclear power, including the possibility of its diversion to other aims as well as the lack of appropriate nuclear waste management.

Will pushing for further sanctions prevent the Iranian government from attaining nuclear energy? It remains to be seen, but it seems unlikely given what inflows Iran has from its oil. Such sanctions should not play a part in the impoverishment of Iranians, both for humanitarian reasons and because they may be counterproductive in refueling anti-western sentiments.

How about ignoring Iran, at least out loud? In other words, keeping an eye on this nation but ignoring the rants of that crazed premier of theirs. Perhaps the problems the country faces will make Ahmadinejad fall under his own weight. Or, if a western nation feels gracious enough, collaborating with Iran on non-nuclear clean energy alternatives (the old charm offensive). The entire world needs to get in on this anyway, the sooner the better, so why not make an example out the most rotten apple of the bunch?

But war, good God y'all, what it is a good for?

Madman on Romney and Religion

2007-12-07T22:00:00.000-05:00

Today, among the most emailed articles at nytimes.com, I found the paper's editorial in response to Mitt Romney's speech in defense of his own faith. The editors let Romney have it with poignant references to the hypocrisy in his words at the Bush presidential library.

I must say, if there is one particularly disgusting candidate for the presidency it is Romney. The words "Gosh. I love America. I’m afraid I’m going to be at a loss for words..." still pain my mind (for those of you wise enough not to watch the first republican debate, this is what the governor said in response to the question What do you dislike most about America?). This disingenuous naïveté, coupled with his hypocritical wishy-washiness and convoluted views on national security (another heaping of Guantanamo, anyone?) have always cast this man in my mind as particularly distasteful.

Of course, he needed to confront the issue of his mormon faith at some point. In doing so, Romney came up with a muddled speech in which he tried to both defend religious freedom and play the victim of a cultural war (against religion). This snake charmer tried both to conjure up both separation of church and state while defending a profound place for religiosity in the public square, all while disgracing the foundational values of America and the founding fathers' intentions. In other words, he wanted to capitalize on the Christian voters deep rooted insecurities while assuring them his Mormonism didn't make him too much of a weirdo. Despite his sordid attempt at this, it seems even some right-wing commentators aren't buying Romney's brand of religious America (but many apparently are, so guess he'll keep at it).

To be honest, I know very little about the church of latter day saints, basically what South Park taught me. But I don't care to know, nor do I think anyone should consider the issue when electing the leader of the free world. It is the case, however, that the subject of faith has been of primordial importance in American politics, and for the past couple decades the Christian right has written some of the most retrograde chapters in the country's history. But haven't we had enough religion already?

You know what happens without a strict separation of church and state? Ayaan Hirsi Ali had a few particularly disheartening examples of such cases (not to mention her life's struggles). When will Romney & Co. stop reducing America's great roots to being able to practice medieval rituals? At its essence, America was founded on liberty and tolerance, not the freedom to be intolerant under the guidance of some faith. No, it's not called killing babies, it's acting on a woman's best interest under the circumstances. Gays are people too, free to love whomever they want to love, regardless of what went down in Sodom. Stop calling your blind convictions morality and go read some philosophy!

There is little defense for religion's stranglehold on the unknown, and you'd think it'd be radically unacceptable for government to be submerged in religion's murky waters since the Enlightenment. But alas, troops can be sent to war because it's the good war against the others, and if they catch a bullet, God's grace would lift them up to heaven. And I'm not talking only about jihadists (although they are the crazier of the bunch), but soldiers of the free world.

So God Bless America.

Madman Poeta in Equatorial Hell

2007-12-05T15:39:00.000-05:00

EC.

En un microcosmos
Donde el Sol siempre marcó la pauta,
Arde la Luna, la madre naturaleza deslumbra.
Bosques de pasión, furia y agonía,
No falta quien no quiera tocar su flauta.
Montañas de notas, sulfúricas playas,
Temblores, volcanes, sopranos y tenores.
Cacofonía enardecida en mareas de abundancia.
¿Cómo escuchar la música,
Faltando compositor, orquesta y clave?
Afinen sus instrumentos,
El tempo ya está dado.
Y Lorca ya lo quiso verde, sí,
Pues sus razones tenía.
Pero verde es el moho,
Como también el cesped de esta tierra.
Del amarillo y el azul no se hace la batuta verde
Mas el rojo brinda a la memoria
El valor para no repetir la misma disonancia.
Y entonces no formar un verde chillón.
Sino el verde del latir de un corazón en armonía.

Madman Musician

2007-12-04T23:53:00.000-05:00

Among the many things I'm not, musician is what I'd like to be the most. So throughout the past year and a half or so, I've taken to playing around on GarageBand.

If you're bored, have a listen to the few tracks I've made. You can listen to them here.

But keep in mind, I'm no musician. I guess, at the time I made these, I was a dude with a lot of restless free time.

Madman Poet Inspired

2007-12-04T21:33:00.000-05:00

To Fredrick

In a class in a forgotten nowhere,
A man dared not explain the truth.
Were it the government, the teachers, the school,
The shepherds of laymen made child into brute.

But one day, oh Fredrick
Oh Fredrick, you lit up the room.
You brought drums in your backpack,
Boy you gave us a ruse.

During fifth period science,
He blabbed on ‘bout a baboon,
And he’d just put up a tree on the board,
When you started to play.

“Stop it!” He said,
But you kept banging on.
“I mean it now, Fredrick”
But you slapped even harder, boom, ch-ka boom.

Beat by beat by beat,
You angered him further.
His fists on his fat hips.
His stare so to warn of his impending approach.

The children all laughed, all cheered in joy.
Some joined in the fun and tattooed too.
With their pencils, their notebooks, their pens and their paws.
They began dancing and howling, the man frightened froze.

“Behave!” He cried out,
But he had no hope.
They turned their desks over, broke up the wood,
And flooded in flames this philistine fraud.

Turned into satyrs,
Around the pyre they danced,
In a forest of knowledge,
Burned on into the night.

Madman Poet in Love III

2007-12-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

[Editor's note: this is a work in progress, untitled as of yet, and rather crazy]

I don't write haiku,
My golden girl in New York,
but I'll write for you

I'm not japanese,
Five, seven, five I do count,
Albeit not with ease.

but your voice I miss,
your eyes, your face, my lovely,
make poetry a breeze.

How very silly,
I thought I'd be good to you,
so I wrote freely

But do not take me,
All that seriously. For you,
My try at haiku.

I know it's quite bad,
But if you smile at this poem,
Then it was worth it.

Madman Poet in Love II

2007-12-04T20:55:00.000-05:00

Luz de mi vida

Plainly clad in modest robes,
Found I a purpose amongst my woes.
Fair and pristine northern star,
Be my guide and cast away my throes.

Need you no guise but your smile,
To turn to ashes all that is vile.
White flame, fulgor of my soul,
Burning cease not, lest you love defile!

Shed no light upon the land,
Let the giving Moon avail, be grand.
Save your glow, make it my own,
Shine upon me, always by me stand.

Inspire me always, burn bright,
Tend me all throughout the lonely night.
At my bedside keep me warm,
Oh candle of life, the cold do fight!

When the noble Moon has run,
Brighten my daylight, dazzle the sun.
I need you, I need you, love,
Light of my life, ‘till my time is done.

Madman Poet in Love I

2007-12-04T20:52:00.000-05:00

Sonrisa Eslávica

Por cada segundo de tu reír,
Amor mío,
La ilusión empata con el destino.
La luz de tu ser
Rompe la fría cordura,
Revelando tu misterio
En un fugaz momento.
Y por una efímera eternidad
Es serenidad lo que he sentido,
Del creer en un amor,
Solo tuyo y mío.

Madman Poet (with translation)

2007-12-04T20:28:00.000-05:00

I know I'm no poet. No soy poeta.

But I like to think of myself as such, and lord knows I've tried.
Pero gustarme pensar yo as such, y lord sabe intentar.

Not to bore you with the details,
No aburrirlo con los detalles,
I'll let what poetry I've written speak for my mind.
Dejare poemas hablar my mind.

It's not much, so please do read.
No ser mucho, so por favor leer.

It's feeling and thought of an amateur, so please do laugh.
Ser sentimiento y pensamiento de amateur, so por favor reir.

Finally, it's somewhat chronological, so relate to your experience if you like.
Finalmente, son algo chronological, so relacionar su experiencia si querer.

I love spanglish.
Yo amar Spanglish.

Enjoy!

I'm Back

2007-12-04T19:50:00.000-05:00

It has been nearly a year since I began this project. Not that it had a very auspicious beginning, but that shouldn't lead anyone believe this isn't important to me. Nor should it be surprising that I've now decided to retake Mentonia. Put simply, I've been lazy about it; dig a little further and my negligence had deeper-rooted problems. Let's call these problems writer's block.

Ah, yes! Since I last blogged, I have become a writer, thus deserving of a block of the sort.

I have become other things too, most interesting of which a madman, a philosopher and a critic. But I have only begun to become all these things. A madman needs to rave, a philosopher needs to ponder and a critic needs to bitch.

So please, enjoy the becoming.

(Oh, I forgot to mention that every now and then I think of myself a poet, just don't take me too seriously)

Un pedacito del alma

2007-01-04T07:53:00.000-05:00

Carnaval

No sé,
Sí érase Venecia, Río o Nueva Orleans,
O sí era un remoto pueblito,
A donde la Iglesia supo llegar.

Todos llevaban máscaras
De rosa, violeta y verde felicidad.
Y yo portaba la mía,
Solitario escondite para mi dolor.

Fraguada en bronce, bajo los ojos,
por dos ríos de pena había sido corroida.
Trágica contradicción de lágrimas, alegría y metal,
¡Por toda mi vida te habré de portar!

En el más efímero de los impulsos,
Extendiste tu mano y,
De mi pálido y desencantado rostro,
Quitaste mi máscara.

Y te dí la última de mis sonrisas.

¡Bombos , platillos, fuego y serpentina!
¿Me liberas de mi exilio? ¿Me perdonas mis pecados?
Me desarmas y me miras
Me dices, estás a salvo , quítame la mía

En este día Dionisio decidió despojarme,
De mi color, mi música y mi alegría.
Lleno de lágrimas de júbilo, removí tu máscara,
Solo para encontrar debajo otra como la mía.

The Founder

2007-01-03T02:58:00.000-05:00

Quito, Ecuador

No me conocen.

You have never heard of me. I have never shared my thoughts with the public, because I I've been too lazy, because I don't always know what exactly they are, and because I don't really know what it is I want to share.

It's about time I get out of my head and do some blogging. I hear it's all the rage these days.

Podría hacer esto solo, ou numa lingua só, but the blog would suffer.

So you will see all sorts of gibberish in english, spanish, and perhaps even portuguese. Anything really, I may even throw in some other surprises in all kinds of Babel's offshoots. More importantly, I hope I won't be alone in this project; i hope soon some of the free spirits and fellow ramblers I've come to know will contribute to this blog and make something beyond anything I could do for myself.

I don't know what direction this will take, but I will let it take any as long as it's worthwhile.

See you soon.