sometimes life is standing still
in the middle of an empty suburban square
with the light rain
falling on your face
while you think about the love you lost,
the abandoned fountains
and why the hell there are 4 empty microlax tubes on the dirty cement floor

sometimes life is making love on a cliff over the long lost Atlantic ocean
while waiting for the bus to come to take you back
or looking into her green eyes while she says she’s mad about you
still,
or
watching her driving her bike under the oaks in the
dense hot of the tropical summer

sometimes
is driving through the dessert with the somber halo of the soul-thirst-electrical-train numbing your bones like a blow of dust
dancing bugs
hard beds
and illusions of a glowing blue pool in the edge of the Texan exodus massacre

a reverberating scream in a cave
a bean-sized baby
with saturn-ringed hands
a pain in your nose after a fist fight
or the smell of a horse in pure darkness
sometimes…

an ephemeral text message
hanging somewhere in the room
after a fake name
an almost imperceptible graze in the silky neck
of the angelina night

sometimes is missing
someone
even when you have her,
or running into the same brick wall a thousand times
some…


… sometimes life is a skinny dry feeling
of loneliness that
grows somewhere between the skin of your skull
and the empty white space behind your eyes

Trenes que se han ido,

sueños que se repiten en camas diferentes,
un cigueña camina sobre la orilla del río,
 

gotas de lluvia helada sobre la cara

***

Trains that have already gone away,
dreams repeated in different beds,
a stork walks on the river bend,

cold rain drops on the face

stupid coffee machines

… it's christmas day
on the summer city
and i am listening to endless neil young songs
that linger in the walls for hours until they disappear,
in my narrow cabin
over the dry sea,
while i count every step i failed to take
every delusion
every chord

… it's christmas day
on the summer city
and i count down the drunken kids on the dirty streets,
and the acid wigs,
and the homemade fireworks,
while i think about the snow
and the day we throw our bad luck into the east river,
so she would not come back anymore…
that second comer son of a bitch

… it's christmas day
on the summer city
and i recollect my wet laundry
while i consider which pill to swallow
to get over this headache,
and the deep holes in the streets,
and the war in mali,

and you

X indicates existing damage

in the starving hours of the fake autumn light,
in the city,
the faces melt under the flat screens,
the chinese-made tongs of the
eastern european whores,
the hidden longings of the inner late night bus

every heart is a departure
in the alleyways of this town
where the electric honey blood of the street lamps
vanishes and offers an abyss of
barbwire reflections and dogs barking

so you drive the old blind toyota
and pray for a huge miracle,
a white horse in the black bolshoi  theatre,
a time machine,
a chandler-like spark moment in the cotton fog
a phone call

a word

waking up is not an easy thing when you have your heart rolling
in some other chest
no matter how much you pretend to walk it down
the trembling echoes of those days
come back from the dead
and haunt you like a burning arrow on the throat

the girl in the post office
smiles and talks
all dark hair and lips
and red nails

and i carry my load down to the train station
whistling if-not-for-you
and picking all the dust I can

the queen of england

show your darkness
ghostly shadows of love affairs,
frozen lakes,
fallen trees
in the sour throat of this november night,
show me the reflections of the rainy lights in
an abandoned parking lot,
in the big neon-smell heart of america,
motionless,
beating like a six shooter
before your animated eyes.

a child is coming,
water is rising
and Joan of Arc has been finally tamed
by the mediocre,
empty baboons,
inmersed
in the average dreams
of the self help books

all the turmoil grace of your beatific-sacred-bloody heart,
that made an angel out of you
a savage,
a miracle in this world of dull,
restrained in the heated walls of the dead in life,
your voice
just an opiated lost echo
lost in the dew
and in my tears. 

the trails are vanishing
a dead crow in the rotten dirt
is your last word
and I remember how much I loved you

they haven´t killed you,
it is much worse,
they’ve killed both of us

ghostly shadows of suspended love affairs,
a smile in a cab going East
caught from the wrong side of the window,
no cigarettes or bourbon anymore,
just one more cup of coffee before you go
such bad luck
such...

*

ghostly shadows of pure love affairs
moving in the bright yellow leaves
like a good snake
in the name of the lord

the lava washed away the pain
and the birds fly away under the hellish sun,
a paradise
down under the throat,
throwing stones
and million year spells
while all the black horses
run down the champs elysees
and the money- cavalryman
with blood coming out of their ears
and swords in the arms
and the crystal whips devoured the dreams
that used to hang on your heavenly mouth like a
petal
a blade that now cuts the tongues of those who believed
in the quiet pulse of the northern stars
under the seine’s smog
and the bateaux
and the dogs
and the drunks
and the miserable lovers

and I can still listen to your words
very soft in my ear
while I was kissing your neck

“Oh my love. My life. You can’t imagine how much I have missed you”

P A R (T) I (N G) S

by Amy Mascena

I am leaving for Paris tomorrow my love
and everybody is telling me that is gonna be cold
and humid
and unpleasant
this time of year
they say...

but i long for the long lines of bare trees
at the montmartre cemetery
the valleys of tombstones
the coats
the rain
the skinny loneliness that forms a thin cement like layer in your misty head
your tiny feet behind my eyes
each time I would close them

the sound of them in the wet sand
like a ghost
a smoke track
a half listened goodbye

all of them will know about
the quivers,
that last day on the town feeling
by the dusty loving bones of jeanne and her neverborn son
and that stone wall 
of the dying
and the moss and the bullets
and the cowards,
a hotel room is never home unless...
yes,
all of them know

you
nurturing life
me
looking for it on the road
like a waltz without the music
a horse without the straps,
San Bernardino in the light evening sun,
there are red velvet love affairs  
under the cobblestones
and it breaks your nails to look after them

How to miss someone without a face

drawing by Amy Mascena

Chinatown reveries
in a thin
fake
heart shaped necklace
golden as the day fades away
under the painted nails
and the fruit trucks
all dirty
all rotten
like a bounty killer
for your cloudy soul

downtown LA reveries
in the middle of the day
with all those wax gods
to thank and burn because of you
for the longing
for the words you said last time we had sex
for the words you don't say now

white disturbing plastic dresses to celebrate
that we ran away,
dime stores in the old temples,
collapsing echoes of the Hollywood goddess,
red letters hanging pointless under the curved
chilly
California sky

Children with plastic machine
guns
ice cream
dried tacos for the preacher man
monsters trapped in the swallow brea of your huge green eyes,
the pounding smell of the lilacs leaves
under my nose
and under my tongue
the taste of a tanned neck

this is changing me
I have been stretching the getaways
until I found the bottom
on that grainy morning
through a window in Brooklyn
far away from this cactuses
this rosemary love affair
that stays at night and is tender
and carnal
and distant
while I close my eyes under the shower

now all those days look beautiful in silver
like an old useless coat
at the salvation army counters

those lonely hungry days
in which there's nothing to do but walk around
and kiss someone blindly
and miss someone who
has a boyfriend and a kid
and all her lonely nights and fears

manifestos of the shattered remains of the human being-begging-sleeping
and the melodies for the empty handed
sisters of the broken hearted
linger in the dense air of the evening town
full of ashes, walls of smoke
and whatnot