Night at the Orchestra

He’s not playing those keys,
Just over them his fingers fall.
She’s not bowing those strings,
But flinging them around her like a shawl.
And he’s not smacking those toms,
Just tapping his foot along.
And they’re not plucking those uprights,
Just leaning their necks over the song.

What is this being?

A lazy extension of the limbs?
A burning improvisation of
brain waves?
A weave of clothes to warm
the night?

Listen,
All I know is
The piano player’s not playing
That parchment or those keys
His fingers fall, just fall,
over each other
like the spring breeze

over each other
into air
and ivory.

Comments on Frequencies

Re-updated. Final version:

Comments on Frequencies

You’d never guess it, but—
All my friends
are throwing their phones off of roofs,
these days,

Watching the pulsating glow
trickle, a whistle of water sucked
down a concrete straw.
Everyone is trying to shake the
Electro-magnetic.

The beauty of this age is that
There’s no escaping temptation,
or that sense of lightspeed
as limitation, as finality, as
the sum of our confinements;
That infinity is countable
numbs promise like
acupuncture needles—Yet,

We can reach each other on
frequencies we’ll never see,
Empty shivers, waves white and violet,
that add up to nothing

Except the insomnia, and the feeling that
You are lonelier than before, only
With more people able to watch.

______________________

Old version:

The beauty of this age is that there is no escaping temptations.
There are always bright lights at night
And memories that no longer apply.

I must remember to one day thank his Memory
For pulling words out of me—
It seems they come much faster when
Challenged to be matched, in semi-
simultaneous games of freeing the past…

You’d never guess it, but
All my friends are
Throwing their phones off of roofs, anymore.
Everyone is trying to shake off the
Electro-magnetic hold.
And they are left useless, attempting to
Strangle-hold that pulsating glow.

Yet—
We can reach each other on frequencies we’ll never behold,
empty oscillations that add up to nothing
Except the insomnia, and the feeling that
You are lonelier than before, only
With more people able to watch.

Rugby, truly.

Awesome.

Drawing Circles in Circles

Life is just an exercise in drawing circles. Constantly walking in circles and figuring out how to navigate the endless paths we take to get from ourselves to others and back again. We make messes of our roads and cross-sections and roundabouts that just never stop combining themselves in new ways with new games. We lose ourselves in it, attach and detach and reattach, but we are ultimately left solo. Which games are you good at playing? It is impressive how large these circles can become, in the heat of midday I sweat them out. And disorienting how small they can also become, in the desolate expanse of dark. A city at night is not natural to us, but is true to its condition (as a desert). Think (or strategize): How many ways can you approach, can you acercarse, can you come closer. How many entanglements, how many desires? How many abuses, blemishes, and do you ever tire – of walking in novel ways around invisible circles, with everyone returning sometime. You could not have made this life up, it is too serpentine. This piece of circle is unfinished, but still entwined, and not a straight line. It’s a ven diagram superimposed on a million ven diagrams of your life. If you claim to complete one you’ve already lost yourself in another.
I wonder if the end of your continuum is just the connection of your meandering with itself – the full circle emerged from the lace-work of your lines.

Back from a Hiatus with Haikus

It’s not that I haven’t been writing. It’s that I haven’t been writing online. Getting back to your roots is a nice feeling. As is being in Spain and traveling the world.

Haikus Sevillanos
(Sevillian Haikus)

1.
Calles sevillanas, tras
la tormenta, muchísimas
naranjas muertas.

Sevillian streets, after
the storm, so many
dead oranges.

2.
Cristal y café.
Brisas primaveras se filtran
a través de las ventanas.

Glass and Coffee.
Spring breezes seep
through the windows.

3.
Paraguas engreídos miran
Palmeras empapadas
hasta los huesos.

Smug umbrellas watch
palm trees soaked
to the bone.

4.
Botellas en manos,
Gente glotón, insectos a
la luz líquida.

Bottles in hands,
Greedy lips, insects to
the liquid light.

Sevilla

I like this city.

There is not much visual pollution,

but a lot of dead oranges.