You

Anytime you say something
it’s like you’re barking an order
loud and clear,
it was bad weather in my area, hail and high winds,
you say,
and that sounds like an order for me to duck,
to run from the boom of the thunder,
from the path of the lightning,
from the rage of the storm,
and take shelter,
although it’s the next morning
and it’s sunny and serene,
the horizon patched up with puffy white clouds,
cheered up by listless, silly birds
who are darting in all directions,
senselessly, whimsically,
cutting the skin of the blue
with myriads of invisible lines
that God could use
to pack the far up sky in a puzzle for his staff,
bored of too much happiness
in their plain Lab of Eden

When you describe something
and want me to listen to you,
you stretch your long arm
like the stout hoist of a scaffold,
you fan out your palm that grew in a boomerang,
a special one,
like a lai-o-mano with the long teeth of a shark,
with your pointy, long, sharp fingers,
which you twist in a claw
like you want to strangle the air,
force it to comply to your judgment,
or chain down the deep silence suddenly stomped in the air,
clung in the shadowless branches of air,
stretched all over around us,
invisible, imperceptible,
getting even thinner by your simple presence

You harbor a wordless world
that’s so easy for you to rule,
because you’re a natural
at intoxicating with the fear of being
my stomach,
with my appetite accustomed to normal life,
where talking freely is just another way
to say
I am

You are simple you
with this I know it all,
I’ve seen it all,
I am all

You
don’t have a hand to show directions,
You
have a claw to kill dissension

Bubbles

I have a bubble called me
a spherical cocoon sewn of thoughts,
convictions, prejudices, loves and hatreds,

You have a bubble called you,
I barely see you through your you-bubble,
you barely see me through my me-bubble

Then you try to extend your bubble over mine,
gobble it up
through love, you say,
and I believe that
because I feel that
by avoiding the failed attempt
to know that

And I’m resisting to your bubble,
and try to break it through,
to reach you
to pull you out like a trophy
and look at you
and your transparent heart

 

Briefcase of Hell

Each one of us carries
his briefcase of hell
attached to his wrist
like a tracking bracelet for inmates

A Spanish train mechanic
who killed eighty people
because he was careless
has a bigger briefcase
then my father teenager
who permanently damaged
the eye of his brother,
my uncle teenager,
through playful mistake,
showing him how a match set alight
can fly
high up in the sky

When I met you
I laid down
my briefcase of hell
on the table between us
and I said:
This is the piece of private hell
I constantly carry with me.
Can you still love me?

And you said:
Each one of us carries
his briefcase of hell
attached to his wrist
like a tracking bracelet for inmates

Then you showed me
your briefcase

Unnoticed

Most of the day,
throughout the long drudge of the hour,
I live unnoticed,
unremarked,
unaccounted for,
not worth the frail, flickering thought
in somebody’s mind,
including those who love me
or just care about me

I believe this means
being a human being
in the human jungle
of human demeanors

It’s daunting to think
that most part of the day
I’m on my own
on this tiny, vulnerable planet
chained down by the whims
of a star,
a regular, boring celestial object
covered
with the thick, heavy crust
of its inhabitants’ thoughts and feelings
stuck to a hard core
of chemical elements

I walk the street
while the others step on my shadow
and they never feel a thing
and many times
they don’t even notice the shadow
that is me
or if they see it,
they take me for another shadow
the shadow of a tree,
or a venerable building,
or a dying dove

The only way
to fix my invisibility
is to keep thinking about you
the one I love, the one I care about,
my partner into a flimsy boat
we paddle together
on the roughed up sea of time.

That makes me feel less lonely.
and less unnoticed,
and more visible
on this noisy, lonely planet
astray in a corner of this taciturn,
cavernous universe