Through the white, beating Texan heat,
water towers cry out titles
high above the flat land
where kids from the roadside houses
run around in stained tank tops,
dreaming of their own names up there.
The long and burnt grass cuts their ankles
and the dry cement scrapes their feet.
The midday ritual begins in a racing circle
raising dust over the roofs and into the shy afternoon.
Around 5, the roadside families reunite
in front of their houses to watch the daily traffic jam
and observe the variety of faces through the glass windows,
which after a short while do not seem to vary at all.
But today, something else had their full attention.
The sky was never seen this low and the clouds
​turned a shade of black
so dark as to be almost green,
so the eldest women on that single row of houses
declared bad omen. The next early morning,
the closest water tower laid gravely against the ground.
Already, a small boy had climbed on top of the tank,
soles bleeding, and waving
​his shirt into the wide clear sky.

©2018 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

At around this time of year I would usually
start dreaming of girls with shoulder high hair
racing their way into warm summer crossings,
under midnight white skies,
following the shadow of giants ahead
that would never ever fade in the distance.
I stared again into long halcyon lights
shooting straight up from dying cities,
and every street corner turning slowly into the night,
enough time to feel I would yet be missing
another love story this year.

Bayou,
a vague haven
where the sky trembles
when howls the shadow man.




©2014 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

In late year retrospect,

half night suggests,
beyond Darlington junction,
an amber lining at street's end.



©2013 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

Echoes of long sirens
fade in hushed apartments;

familiar passersby
in the vastness of the night.

Now and only can we hear
the soft winter breathing.

©2017 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

These kids celebrate the life
of the dead street pigeon.
Dark streams down their brown faces,
they intone their private lamentation-
One exposes the corpse
to his little circle, holding it up
the wings stretched out.

©2016 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

The last boats of the evening
whistle secretly across the silver nightwaters
like some lonesome lingering men
expecting their daily last-minute pleasure.


©2016 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

Only for an instant
can you witness the parting
of the mist over the ocean.

The heavy
pink curtain collapses,
swallowing the wavering shore
in its fumes

divides the sky in separate columns
          of gold and silver
in a single sensual gesture;


no existing border could be made out:
The dunes were a few meters
higher! The sky reached out to us
in the shadow of the water lines.



©2017 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

A sparkle from afar
over the black ocean line,
and grows bigger
at every wet step.
Evenings she would rip
into the water
and fight the waves
until the waves gave up
and I could figure her out now,
more distinct at every second.
She spoke to me with a composed tone
which would hide something else. There is always
another side to her voice, almost two lines
speaking the same verse. The silky stretch
of water behind mirrored perfectly our shadow.



©2017 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

She tells me about the night that’s young
but it’s been dark for a while and appears
almost yellow and the objects in her room
are too distinguishable yet so different
almost like new objects
in a new room
so she doesn’t feel home
and chokes silently
on the yellow darkness.

©2017 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net