"animas" poems
Southwestern Dis-United States of Memory
Piñon smoke and sagebrush, voice of New Mexico night driving into an Arizona dawn rising over dreaming pueblos, low-ridden plazas, kivas and ruined cities’ rubble traced and highlighted by sunlight, Anglo angling into Aztec toward Zuni over arid zones… A to Z to El Dorado; a voice covers the high hills with a dusting of snow—every word hangs in the notes of the song: music to fall apart to, breakdown to, hurling the soul into the bottomless well of psychotic nostalgia: música de cavanga, falling into the depths. Melody pushing to the threshold of a bar and leaving you there with cash in your pocket and no ride home. The warmth inside beckons—you step across as the song fills, swells, intoxicates, then excavates the wall of the dam until it collapses. The fatal mistake: you read too much into the lyrics of shallow love songs. The deathwish beast of despair arises, the flooded plains dazzle your eyes, the Indian girl smiles on the rim of the grand canyon, the tattooed cholo pulls a knife in the trailer park, the dark waters under the bridge murmur and surge with regret; el río de Las Animas, Durango CO, Aztec calligraphy on the wall: Las Cruces, NM; Clifton, Morenci, Globe, AZ: stepped pyramids of copper tailings, gang-warred walls in fallen barrios covered in Chicano hieroglyphics, the ruined huts of shepherds and cowboys, pit-house dwellings’ flaked arrowheads and pottery fragments scattered forever in the coyote laugh of desert dusk. Crepuscular colors on the names of mountain ranges: Santa Catalina, Sangre de Cristo, Sandia, each one a separate sunset delirium—then you ride through the night to the city of palm trees and the orange-lined boulevards of Heaven.
The singer herself grew old but her YouTubes live forever.
Feb 23, 2017
Feb 23, 2017 at 9:37 PM UTC
returning
to the place..
to remembered beds
and nourishing breakfasts..
home of
our growing years..
this one nestled
in imponderable
Animas mountains..
these reflections
of an autumn retreat
now daily receding
into November bleak..
a white bench
vantage by streamside
afforded absorption of
the stream's flickering lights..
and later reflected
by a ridgeline full moon
decorating the dining..
life friends together
celebration and renewal
of many good years..
a white bench
also gathered reflections
from distant heights
where nighttime chills
painted evergreen and aspen
setting lanterns aglow..
the glow casting shadows
on the valley's red cliffs
those red markers of our
formative days..
a white bench
now gathered the sounds..
an old train's
whistled announcements
evening and morning..
a reminder of time
enclosed in this
valley of stillness
which we were favored
knowing once more..
a white bench
gathered the guests
from distances afar..
their life glows
and shadows
in conversations revealed..
overlaying past
with present..
end and beginning..
Logwood
we returned...
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 6:14 PM UTC
If the wind is parch white
And the universe stops
And listens to the words
Shape and form on the tip of my tongue
*Vultis nosse?
Vis sentiunt?*
Could I chip away the walls that separate our bodies?
Medio claustra potui dirumpere animas?
It would seem foolish, huh?
Funny, how hurt is so heavy.
Funny, how desiderium clarius est quam amor aliquando
Chant these ancient hymns
And press your lips against the sound of eternity:
*et orate
et orate
Amo te*
Oct 6, 2011
Oct 6, 2011 at 11:22 PM UTC
En la cúspide radiante
que el metal de mi persona
dilucida y perfecciona,
y en que una mano celeste
y otra de tierra me fincan
sobre la sien la corona;
en la orgía matinal
en que me ahogo en azul
y soy como un esmeril
y central y esencial como el rosal;
en la gloria en que melifluo
soy activamente casto
porque lo vivo y lo inánime
se me ofrece gozoso como pasto;
en esta mística gula
en que mi nombre de pila
es una candente cábala
que todo lo engrandece y lo aniquila;
he descubierto mi símbolo
en el candil en forma de bajel
que cuelga de las cúpulas criollas
su cristal sabio y su plegaria fiel.
¡Oh candil, oh bajel, frente al altar
cumplimos, en dúo recóndito,
un solo mandamiento: venerar!
Embarcación que iluminas
a las piscinas divinas:
en tu irisada presencia
mi humildad se esponja y se anaranja,
porque en la muda eminencia
están anclados contigo
el vuelo de mis gaviotas
y el humo sollozante de mis flotas.
¡Oh candil, oh bajel: Dios ve tu pulso
y sabe que anonadas
en las cúpulas sagradas
no por decrépito ni por insulso!
Tu alta oración animas
con el genio de los climas.
Tú conoces el espanto
de las islas de leprosos,
el domicilio polar
de los donjuanescos osos,
la magnética bahía
de los deliquios venéreos,
las garzas ecuatoriales
cual escrúpulos aéreos,
y por ello ante el Señor
paralizas tu experiencia
como el olor que da tu mejor flor.
Paralelo a tu quimera,
cristalizo sin sofismas
las brasas de mi ígnea primavera,
enarbolo mi júbilo y mi mal
y suspendo mis llagas como prismas.
Candil, que vas como yo
enfermo de lo absoluto,
y enfilas la experta proa
a un dorado archipiélago sin luto;
candil, hermético esquife:
mis sueños recalcitrantes
enmudecen cual un cero
en tu cristal marinero,
inmóviles excelsos y adorantes.
623
psy·che·del·icˌsīkəˈdelik/adjective
adjective: psychedelic
1. relating to or denoting drugs [especially LSD]
that produce hallucinations and
expansion of consciousness.
synonyms: [ hallucinatory, trippy],
dream-like, mind-bending, mind-altering,
mind-expanding, mind-blowing, bizarre, surreal:
"a psychedelic experience"
relating to or denoting a style of rock music
originating in the mid 1960s, characterized
by musical experimentation and drug-related lyrics.
denoting or having an intense, vivid color
or a swirling abstract pattern.
"a psychedelic T-shirt" synonyms: colorful,
chromatic, multicolored, vivid, abstract
"psychedelic design" noun: psychedelic;
plural noun: psychedelics [1. a psychedelic drug]
1950s: formed irregularly from psyche _1_ +
Greek dēlos ‘clear, manifest’ + -ic: psy·che _1_
ˈsīkē/noun: psyche; plural noun: psyches
the human soul, mind, or spirit. "their childhood
made them want to understand
the human psyche and to help others"
synonyms: soul, spirit, (inner) self, ego,
true being, inner man/woman, persona,
subconscious, mind, intellect; technical: _anima_
"getting in touch with your own psyche"
antonyms: [body]
mid 17th century: via Latin from Greek
psukhē ‘breath, life, soul.’ an·i·ma
ˈanəmə/noun ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
noun: anima; plural noun: animas
Jung's term for the feminine part of a man's personality.
the part of the psyche that is directed inward,
and is in touch with the subconscious.
1920s: from Latin, literally ‘mind, soul.’
Jun 22, 2018
Jun 22, 2018 at 4:42 PM UTC
I was walking in the woods
I was followed by your ghost
Your the girl that I had drowned
Face down in my blood
You drank in the spit that I sprayed upon the floor as a texture to paint feelings upon a wall of ribs of a calf to grate your skin and my skin together
An alloy of animas
We shall carve with your cold faded hand into the knot of a heart wood forever in this copse
Wriggling to corpse in
Dead in the soil
Our wedding bed
Flaky shaky and spineless
As we should have been
We've always been the molded crown lining the ceiling watching others live.
The pine mounts the ground
To behead us.
We finally accept and egress towards the detritus floor
The needles shaking as we quake ever closer to the firmament ground where we were born
Becoming the fungus we love so dear
You're my slime mould
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 10:54 PM UTC
Un rimador obscuro
que no proyecta sombra,
un poeta maduro
a quien ya nadie nombra,
hizo este libro, amada,
para vaciar en él
como turbia oleada
de lágrimas y hiel.
Humilde florilegio,
pobre ramo de rimas,
su solo privilegio
es que acaso lo animas
tú, con tu santo soplo
de amor y de ternura,
desde el astro en que estás.
¡Un dolor infinito
labró en él con su escoplo
tu divina escultura,
como un recio granito,
para siempre jamás!
439
Grey fills the sky
The sun gets covered
And everything becomes cold and dark
The animals go into hiding
The flowers close up
Everything is preparing for the impact
Lightning strikes
Then thunder sounds
Then it pours
And pours
And pours
Until all the clouds pass
And the sun can show again
The animas come out
And the flowers open up again
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 3:44 AM UTC
Chemical spill
Into Animas river
Involuntary terrorism
Affecting millions
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 8:36 PM UTC
Animas,
A coin toss
The rippling ends of lungs
Spread as butterfly wings
Carting untreated days of insanity
Between you and me
Seasons no longer fling Rites of time
As days Intermittently
Woven of boiling creativity
Beading atop the surface football scrimmages
Sliding links of clothing, slipping virginity…
They escape between treated fingertips
And run the sun from our lips
Mother Nature dancing from the hip
God’s unauthorized authorship
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 1:51 PM UTC