clowns

 

My crusade is to create smiles

out of nothing,

out of dark seas of despair,

out of connivance in awful sins

out of pain.

I am the clown, the jester, the thief

of tears, the collector of broken feelings,

the mender of drums, the tuner of internal instruments,

the door

to a special kind mourning: the death of sadness.

Empty your pockets of pain, your head of drama, your chest of dumbbells

trying to pull you down.

The circus is here, it is just arriving,

conquering your town.

Crusaders of laughter, promoters of joy,

defeating the darkness with make-up and jokes,

we serve you our own blood for cocktails

we feed you our own sad heart.

starfish

 

Blooming

starfish limbs.

Fireworks in the water.

Slowly, my arms and legs unfolding,

like throbbing petals in the living blue.

'tis no good alibi

 

'Tis no good alibi

when night's feral cats are scratching your cheeks

leaving twin defective vertical stair rails

as the blood drops pave the rhythm of your song.

 

'Tis no good alibi

when words beaks pick up the maggots

of your self-infected chest.

 

No, 'tis no good alibi

when there is a dark door obscuring

the path that leads up to your brain.

 

There, in the time

of your ruin

is your glove-disguised hand,

great revenant

of ancient sound and teenage grip.

that couple

they gathered their heaps of feelings

one on top of the other,

to build high piles of dishes

by the sink of life.

Some were sparkling, some dirty,

some cracked,

some were washed up, 

some forgotten,

some glued up, some just bad.

Removing just one

any meaning would topple:

their balance in pieces

to be cleared and dusted 

with hurtful slivers

of their jarred hearts.

I lost a handful of poems

 

I lost a handful of poems

to the winds of creditors blowing at my door.

Trying to escape the constrictions

I erased half of my heart,

a third of my soul

a thousand and one minutes of loving

the world,

of enjoying the sun and the rain.

I saw a ladybird stretching her wings,

and barely recognized her.

In the turmoil of figures blurring my eyes,

wanted to fix on the black dots sparkling on those smooth red domes.

Got only red figures staining my blackened mood,

my tarnished song.

 

skeleton

 

I have the skeleton of a language

and even that has some fissured bones,

that split into pieces

every time I bend them

to fit into my foolish ways.

woman in the mirror

 

While you stand there, praising my face,

that you deem beautiful,

I wonder

what do you see that I don't?

Why is this so difficult to listen to?

Why is this person who stole my mirror

mocking me from the glass?

Who moved in, 

into my image,

and does not look the way your eyes

seem to reflect?