To those laughs

To the frozen laughter of an old calendar,

To broken hearts and misty women,

That washes out the spirit, like an old ashtray,

I offer them these verses disgorged from my pen.

A trunk of little, I keep from the past.

A few books and these photos of the islands,

A child's dream, a faded memory,

A faded sidewalk in this ancient city,

In the windows, sheets, flags of poor people.

Fanciful illusions of my adolescence,

I was lame very early, and often very changeable.

In a city of coldness, I was incandescent.

I ran to bathe under crumpled suns,

In forest shadows, in waters of mystery.

Then when night fell, like an anguished veil,

I'd return, sheepish, to this termite mound,

Which seemed Breughel's painting of death,

Its certain triumph and human fear.

I also reember the troubled passions of the body,

Where tenderness for sorrow is sometimes lost.

Of frozen laughter from a bygone era

To lost faces, when our soul fogs over

To my old gardens of sparse roses,

I offer them there verses disgorged from my pen.

These faded loves, like a broken vase

And the flower dies, in a cry of distress,

The knife in its heart, when it wakes sober.

The "I love you's" lost in thick stupidity.

Lovers of a moment, that I couldn't keep,

For you too these words, beyond my years.

And everything I've kept quiet, or made up

With the teasing mascara of bygone eras.

I've carved impossible hopes into my flesh

And ridden on fantastical chimeras.

I've seen volcanoes of fire in peaceful lands,

And dark demons, under sumptuous masks.

I've built castles, all made of sand.

But years go by and all falls apart

I remain a wanderer, on an intoxicating path

Of stars and flowers. My hair is snow.