Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

aka Pablo Neruda born July 12, 1904

Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays–
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.

Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

EDIT: you can add to this mix, my all time favorite sonnet

SONETO XLV

No estés lejos de mí un solo día, porque cómo,
porque, no sé decirlo, es largo el día,
y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones
cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes.

No te vayas por una hora porque entonces
en esa hora se juntan las gotas del desvelo
y tal vez todo el humo que anda buscando casa
venga a matar aún mi corazón perdido.

Ay que no se quebrante tu silueta en la arena,
ay que no vuelen tus párpados en la ausencia:
no te vayas por un minuto, bienamada,

porque en ese minuto te habrás ido tan lejos
que yo cruzaré toda la tierra preguntando
si volverás o si me dejarás muriendo.

todo bien

on sunday, i decided to give the day a color. as soon as i did it felt like the whole world was with me and responded in kind. the color kept leaping out at me in the most unexpected places and with an incredible regularity. for a sec i thought that i was staright buggin out till i realized that i have been doing this for a long time already except i was using grayscale all the time.

it feels good to drop the varying shades of gray and actually commit to a bright color. there is a recipe for disaster snuck in the middle of this. you may want your day to desperately be ______ and the universe says (                    ) instead but i am learning to slapbox fate and even better, willing to call a draw everyonce in a while.

i dont know what color today will be yet. i have been up since 6 with about three hours of sleep. i read recently that drunk people have better concentration than i do right now but i’ve been able to blog about it so that must mean something.

ah, fuk it. i think that today will be a deep blue like the kind you find in southwest corn. yeah, lets see what the universe has to say bout dat.

tonight is acentos with rigoberto gonzález and i am truly excited. hope y’all can come down and share in the fun cuz it is gonna be a partay. promise you dat.

lovbe ya like bob ross loves phthalo blue

let’s get it started

not only do you have the regular bar13 madness goin on tonight

but also this reading hosted by ishle that looks to be very interesting

Serenade
hosted by Ishle.

Candlelight. Italian Café. Rich food. Richer Poetry.
A one-time reading bound to be funny, moving & unforgettable.

The purpose of this reading is to bring your unsuspecting lover, mother, or friend to this intimate, gorgeous café. Then, read him a poem. Or sing her a song. Or come watch others reveal their love with one simple, surprising act.

Serenade.

10 person limit open mic, 1 poem or song each.

Featuring: Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz & Shappy Seasholtz
& Ishle Yi Park

La Lanterna
129 MacDougal Street, New York, NY
www.lalanternacaffe.com
$10 cover and $10 min food & drink
(downstairs. seating is limited, so arrive early!!)

Monday, July 11, 2005
7pm
*to read on the open mic, please contact:
ishlepark at gmail dot com*

"And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost."

You see, there are two ways into another’s dreams. We can go through the dream king; or we can go by the moon’s road. But the dream king has little time for you women, and even less for my kind; while the moon is ever ours. It’s time to draw down the moon.

Thessaly, in SANDMAN #34: “Bad Moon Rising”

I’ve been told that my dreams are interesting or at least my retelling of those dreams. Two recent ones stand out in that I feel like I followed separate paths of the Dreaming to get there.

The first finds me by one of my best friends, a true Casanova prophet, sitting by me and dropping an encyclopedia of knowledge and I listen to each and every word as if mana. I wake up not remembering a damn thing that was told to me. I can tell you everything else about the dream—what he’s wearing, what I’m wearing, where we are, the shape of the clouds, everything but the knowledge. All that was handed to me is stripped as if some kind of transport tax to return to this world of uncertainty.

This just enforces my belief that babies are born with all the knowledge they need. You come into this world equipped with everything you need: language, music, love, rage, a clear sense of friendship, a strong aversion to those who would harm us and the image of our death. And if we maintained all this, what would be the damn point? So we throw it all away in bits and pieces, make believe on destiny and invest in deja vu when we damn well know where we should be and how to get there but are more fearful to reach the end of the story.

My second dream is one I’ve never had before. It was as if forgiveness threw on a plaid shirt and came to visit me. Last time, it came in a more familiar form that of pity. It hid behind the face of my deepest regret but wouldn’t approach me directly. It sent emissaries to broker some kind of peace. Right when I was most honest with myself, an old demon emerged again (also with the face of my deepest regret) and played agitator. All this was way too familiar.

Last night, I was in my old bedroom but now there were trees growing everywhere. They reached to the skies of my last home in every shade of green and yellow possible and in the middle of the room was a smile with arms open like the ocean. I was confessing every wrong thing I ever did to anyone (including myself) and the head nod said “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.” We walked around the grounds. Other people stopped by and I repeated my catharsis to similar results. I waited for the axe to come down but it never did and then even stopped worrying about that. Woke right before the big payoff but still felt happy to know there is a place in myself that I can even forgive myself. Now I just have to remember the way but I think I’ve always known it.

Birds of a thousand colours danced in the sky when I was a boy. They brightened the day with their intricate songs. “We are who we choose to be,” sang the goldfinch, when the sun was high. “I dream about dreams about dreams,” sang the nightingale, under the pale moon.

Master Li, in SANDMAN #74, “The Exile”

All Apologies

a lil whiles back, ver blogs about her gym experiences which set my way back machine in full gear and i lay down a comment that was almost as long as the actual post.

so i offer this public apology, a dope poem by a better poet than me and i strike the jason giambi mea culpa pose

At the Gym

This salt-stain spot
marks the place where men
lay down their heads,
back to the bench,

and hoist nothing
that need be lifted
but some burden they've chosen
this time: more reps,

more weight, the upward shove
of it leaving, collectively,
this sign of where we've been:
shroud-stain, negative

flashed onto the vinyl
where we push something
unyielding skyward,
gaining some power

at least over flesh,
which goads with desire,
and terrifies with frailty.
Who could say who's

added his heat to the nimbus
of our intent, here where
we make ourselves:
something difficult

lifted, pressed or curled,
Power over beauty,
power over power!
Though there's something more

tender, beneath our vanity,
our will to become objects
of desire: we sweat the mark
of our presence onto the cloth.

Here is some halo
the living made together.

     Â© Mark Doty