the crescent moon did not set for the world tonight
chandelier near a pin-point planet in the void black sky
a giant turtle labors as it carries four elephants
balancing the world on their backs in time and space

many have been to the edge to look over into the depths
there the waters churn, creating, recreating in white vortices
many forms emerge as we aim our red eye further
blinking occasionally to believe or disbelieve what seems

flippers stroke, swimming endlessly in cosmic oceans
while pachyderm memories log in history’s journal
hieroglyphic charts and maps of fleeing galaxies
hungry gravity holes, with dark arms, chasing after

tilt is not in their vocabulary trunks, all or nothing being
in the wake, comets and asteroids weave destinies
stars nova, birth and boil, leaving a frothy foam
of life gazing out, waiting another plunge into sunshine

-cec

Federico García Lorca --

Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.

Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

Those who go out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried under chains and noises
in the impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.

he turns the corner in a slow shuffle
we watch him with persistent questions
mommy, mom, mother now, 'Juaquina'
crosses herself, and utters,”poor man”

poor men, poor women, with basketballs
hanging between legs and shoulders
who is to say what is natural or not
we still reflect and say, “poor old creature”

he walks by occasionally
but we never saw him disappear
dying asks us to relinquish the dark figure’s
corporeality, at the end of the street

-cec

furiously they appear like apparitions
straining their engines and wheels
belted steel, industrial rubber, woven demon fibers
crossing white broken lines in darkness
weaving frozen traffic in seconds
a nightmare of TV movies, ‘juegos de muerte’
while horror etches into glass faces, oblivion

this highway stretches across a city
concrete and metal ready to explode
into oil black, blood red, eighty-seven proof fire
arms, legs, torsos, leaning into death’s curves
steering too slow, certain motion’s end
gathering random unwilling victims
just for the fanatical flight of hellions

-cec

No, the sun radiates
this moon bathed in light
down to despair’s depths
life survives in city’s rubble
myriad hands digging hope
hearing cries for one more day
powdered wigs, faces, clothes
dry weeping in shadows
separated by earth’s broken back
sculpting a landscape of destruction
with miles of piled masonry
under a magnifying lens of tears
hearts and minds, bulwark
against each darkness found
a swarm of humanity tunnels
saving one more precious being
gently carried into distressed search lights
and the arms of a caring world

-cec