Cactus Thorns

trains are running
between me and others
without any halt allowed
ghost ships are sailing
in a tall cactus desert

a gaolbird’s chains
get rusty in my palm
right before sunset I’m like an old brick
slowly eroded

I get out from my house onto the main road
I stand up
near the watchmaker’s shop
still undemolished
crying without a handkerchief
out of fashion accessory
hardly breathing in my corset
made of unanswered questions

could this be November
or March?

A Hibernal Corrida

I stretched crisscrossed laundry wires
on my memory canvas
I’m watching the movie through the washing machine’s porthole
a gray helter-skelter
swollen like a castrated ten year old cat

clamped one by one in wooden pegs
black and white mice are swinging
like the first Mickey Mouse cartoons
the wires stretched to the limit spread water drops
the snow on the Tesla TV screen
whispers children good night

not everything can be washed
I pulled the ghosts by the hair
bed sheets gone yellow burned with cigarette ashes
where black days and white nights lay a long time
I take them out to dry before the first rinsing
otherwise they don’t freeze

childhood

those days the sun flew like corn flour
freshly ground at the mill’s race
even in winter it was yellow
when I pressed it down with my thumb
as if it were an unfastened button on my chest

I cut my way hardly with a club
through the tall weed field
until my knee high socks
were filled with thistle tassels
jumping over the fence like a thief
so no one knew where I was

when the Big Dipper rose over the barn
I slipped on the manger’s opening
inside freshly cut grass
stealing my grandma’s small chair for milking
singing for the young foal with a star on its front

those days all hearts were red and warm
in the shape of a ginger bread heart
each star was a story
whispered by fairies in the daffodils’ glade

imperfect (self)portrait

maybe the years are to blame
the age when withered women keep telling her
she is still young

she has a kitchen and a pantry stuffed with spices
a wardrobe with lavender and soap between bed sheets
even a manicure case for rainy days
in her house the flowers she received as a gift
lose their perfume in about an hour

loneliness nibbles with sharp teeth
pain strikes her head at once
like a rake upon which she stepped by mistake
but she can’t cry out
she stays upright with the front touching the wall counting

how many times she got drunk from bubble dreams
like champagne kept cold under a powerful cork
how many nightmares passed by like quicksilver
in the nights with hidden stars
enclosed afterwards in thermometers
kept in her bosom when she was feverish

she’s counting how many times the present
barks or bites like an old pug
with its tongue out
she travels her fingers upon past prints
covered with a pink watercolor film
she thinks about the future as if it were a collection
of tasteless candies pulling out teeth

she is the lady with a soft colored umbrella in summer
and a raven black one at funerals

No Entry

I lost a lifetime
walking always on the road’s middle
between the two ways
following the line drawn with white paint
with a straight back and a forward look
as if I were carrying a basket on my head
with a sleeping bird in it

maybe it would have been better
if life hooked me by the scruff
to shake me completely
like some people seize newborn puppies
keeping them head under water
in a bucket filled by rain

but I walked farther
fearing the bird would fly away
from the top of my head
far from the city the country the planet
deep in the night behind my back
where over someone’s heart weighs
the total eclipse of the earth