After my third shot of tequila / chased by a lime
sour as my rant: fuck this-fuck that-fuck them-fuck
me-fuck it all / you slashed me / same as your poems’ slashes / slash
me / when you asked me: so, why the fuck don’t you
ever say it in your poems / I took another shot but couldn’t
shoot out a reason / until now, Jan / you’re right, so / fuck \

that my poems never shut out strangers’ glassy-eyed
guh’mornins / fuck their mumbles wishing me
a wonderful day / on not-so-wonder-filled days / fuck
my naïve belief that their mouths and mine
have a heart / fuck my similes that choose to bite
into pleasantries like / buttered bread
for me to taste all day / a lifetime, Jan / fuck \

that I can’t hate kids / that my poems love
the screeches of their awe-filled eyes / that I want
to see whatever it is they see / butterfly spots
as tigers’ eyes winking / moss-skinned stones
as emeralds / snowflakes falling as frozen
stars / palm trees as flagpoles fluttering peace, Jan / fuck \

that my lines don’t lose their patience with
old folks at check-out lines / double-checking the price
of every fucking item / that my poems don’t have eyes
to roll at their yesteryear chatter / Can you believe the cost
of living today? / fuck that I listen to them / see
their wrinkled eyes as maps / roads
I trace toward my own dead end, Jan / fuck \

my mother who’s eighty-six / fuck that I can’t curse
at her / for never reading the poems
I’ve written, aching / for her to sweep away
the ashes / of the Cuban homeland she chose
to lose / fuck that I can’t stop rendering her
as a martyr / who died so I could write
this fucking poem in this country, Jan / fuck \

my father too / who waited until the hour
of his deathbed to whisper: te amo / fuck my poems
that always forgive him / but never myself for
not / whispering back: te amo, papá / fuck that I will never
tire of gathering our silences / into rivers of words
that flow nowhere / spill into nothing, Jan / fuck \

the nightmare that was my grandfather’s dream
of me becoming some baseball superstar I was never
going to be / fuck that my poems only acknowledge
his love’s persistence / the popsicles he’d treat me to
after every game / no matter how many times
I struck-out at bat / at life, Jan / fuck \

the fuck’n faggot my grandmother slurred at me
every day fuck’n faggot / fuck that my poems erase her
words to write her into my best friend
for teaching me how to survive cruelty such as
hers, in such a brutal world, Jan / fuck \

ENJOY MORE

A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle west of Kandy .

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Dec2024 cover RGB

When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us--
touch us and move on.

ENJOY MORE

A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle west of Kandy .

You might say the streets flow sweetly through the night.
The lights are dim so the secret will be kept,
the secret known by the men who come and go,
for they’re all in on the secret
and why break it up in a thousand pieces
when it’s so sweet to hold it close,
and share it only with the one chosen person.
If, at a given moment, everyone would say
with one word what he is thinking,
the six letters of DESIRE would form an enormous luminous scar,
a constellation more ancient, more dazzling than any other.
And that constellation would be like a burning sex
in the deep body of night,
like the Gemini, for the first time in their lives,
looking each other in the eyes and embracing forever.

Suddenly the river of the street is filled with thirsty creatures;
they walk, they pause, they move on.
They exchange glances, they dare to smile,
they form unpredictable couples…

There are nooks and benches in the shadows,
riverbanks of dense indefinable shapes,
sudden empty spaces of blinding light
and doors that open at the slightest touch.

For a moment, the river of the street is deserted.
Then it seems to replenish itself,
eager to start again.
It is paralyzed, mute, gasping moment,
like a heart between two spasms.

But a new throbbing, a new pulsebeat
launches new thirsty creatures on the river of the street.
They cross, crisscross, fly up.
They glide along the ground.
They swim standing up, so miraculously
no one would ever say they’re not really walking.

They are angels.
They have come down to earth
on invisible ladders.
They come from the sea that is the mirror of the sky
on ships of smoke and shadow,
they come to fuse and be confused with men,
to surrender their foreheads to the thighs of women,
to let other hands anxiously touch their bodies
and let other bodies search for their bodies till they’re found,
like the closing lips of a single mouth,
they come to exhaust their mouths, so long inactive,
to set free their tongues of fire,
to sing the songs, to swear, to say all the bad words
in which men have concentrated the ancient mysteries
of flesh, blood and desire.
They have assumed names that are divinely simple.
They call themselves Dick or John, Marvin or Louis.
Only by their beauty are they distinguishable from men.
They walk, they pause, they move on.
They exchange glances, they dare to smile.
They form unpredictable couples.

They smile maliciously going up in the elevators of hotels,
where leisurely vertical flight is still practices.
There are celestial marks on their naked bodies:
blue signs, blue stars and letters.
They let themselves fall into beds, they sink into pillows
that make them think they’re still in the clouds.
But they close their eyes to surrender to the pleasures of their mysterious incarnation,
and when they sleep, they dream not of angels but of men.

ENJOY MORE

A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle west of Kandy .