NEITHER TIPPERARY NOR IXTLAN

.. man was made from a handful of mud and water. Why a woman should not be made of dew, steam and lightning from the condensed residues of a rainbow? Where does possibilities inhabit?…Where does unfeasibilities? (Jacques Cazotte: The devil in love, 1772)


Rainbows are bridges from earth to heaven, which will collapse at the end of the worlds, when the devil crosses them riding a horse.

Proud, freedom, knowledge. We have to pay for everything, either at the beginning or at the end. We have to pay for bravery, too. A great amount of courage is needed to confront God and we develop a lot of tricks to avoid being put face to face with Him. Because we do not have the courage of desperation.

But once upon a time we had a master. We followed Him to his fall, we workers, messengers, servers by office and vocation. Many of us did not examine if it was a question of making choice between slavery and liberty, a question of being on the side of the Creator or on the side of man. Because it was our duty, because of our loyalty, we followed Him who carries the light in his forehead in rebellion and in defeat.

Today we stay not surrendered on this earth to which we fell. Knights without horses in our empty castles, but open-mind fallen angels, we set tramps for the modern slavery servants: religion yesterday, capitalism today. We do it with great effort and content and so we can veil our intimate knowledge of that all the war is fated once more to defeat. And we remain dispersed on the face of the earth, looking for the word of the master that allows us to return home.

And so I am, paying my quota. Each one of us pushes his own stone. The devil is not more than the pain of God, the anger of a dictator lost in His own dream. The breathless dancing of angels for which the music is but oblivion.

I fought for twelve days and twelve nights giving no quarter and having no hope. I reculed without turning back, among comrades that also fell from above. Hoarsely crying in my courage, my fear, my fatigue. After the battle I found myself walking on a solitary swamp, as alone as cold is eternity. And when I close my eyes I always see Her smiling face as if it were for the very first time.

On a poem by Rosario Castellanos: The plunder.

They took away the world’s reason and told me: use up your years composing this senseless puzzle.

There is no more. An act is a broken statue. A word is only a mirror’s misshapen image.

What are you going to love? A body that putrefies -this slow bog in which you drown- or a soul that does not exist?

What are you waiting for? Time is a continuos so if you tell tomorrow you lie cause you say’t today.

Not even one dies. That very slight changes and you go on, hard, stone; growing into vegetal and once more awakening to what you were.

Once more, once more.

They told me: don’t look for nothing your’s lost.

And far away I saw them hiding -and laughing- the plunder.

To my beloved Brother in arms

I have just received your second daughter’s pictures, event for that you have been given so kindly congratulations from all Brothers, which have so much enjoyed your happiness: a new life, a new mercy.

Embrothered by your delight none dares to a bad thought, that means, to a real thought. But me, on this marshland exile, I look up the memories of closer pictures and I find anti-personnel landmines in Mostar and dead children testimonies in Rwanda. I cannot but imagine how easy it would be to open this fragile throat and let its bleeding be the floormat of our live.

May be one day she stars a selective rapping episode in an ethnic washing-programme, whose collaborators will never be prosecuted by international justice -Drago is no Pinochet, any judge can make no headway such popularity.

May be one day she thinks up a normal life for a southern girl, may be she acquires a husband that hurts her so much, may be one day she demonstrates asking for his teeth-away punishment or castration for violators.

May be her twenty years old neuronal networks be operated by supervisory control techniques, as I am now thinking up for irrigation of these swamps; may be the design of hers so unworried as of theirs: it doesn’t matter if there grow pumpkins instead of rice.

It is for all these, and for many other things, that I cannot cheer with you, young Brother. Because from today on there is one more life in hell, what Al-Satan victoriously celebrates in all the taverns of the world.

BIOCHEMISTRY OF LOVE

A hair the colour of copper
as clouds that always vanish
to a vestal warrior, a vessel in the sea
of darkness, dinosaurs living there, and Dyonisian the approach
made to fascination ever flying to the failure of a dream,
of a living decision that dissolves the illusion
of my breath unveiling thy smile.