A Brief Life

Your eyes

are the guarantee

of madness.

Lacan said only lies.

Psychosis

is just

a hungry worm:

to kill it

one must tear out

one’s own insides.

Your eyes,

mother,

are innocent.

Many years

after

you left

I found you

on this side

of death.

You said

you were leaving

again,

you were dying

again.

Turns out

your absence

becomes desire

and death

haunts us both

because

we desire.

You said

he had already

been born,

the one

I desired.

What do I do

now that I’ve found him?

Don’t let him

into your side

of death.

There is what a lady

would have done,

and there is what I did.

I regret it,

but that’s what I do.

Regret keeps me

from doing

what ladies don’t.

Your existence

fractured my life

and the pieces tend

to follow

where you lead.

They pivot

in the search

of the right light

to reflect your image.

My life

might be good

without you,

although

you have explained

why good

isn’t enough.

It’s the effect of you:

the pieces

still look

for your reflection.

In the fog

I confused my hands.

I didn’t know

which one was the left,

which one was the right.

And my shoes got wet

with a rotten dampness.

And my feet were impregnated

by the blackness of the mud.

The right is left,

the left is right.

With which hand do I write?

The left is right

the right is left,

under the fog,

that virgin wool blanket.

I can’t always see you

that’s why I cry.

I walk and I cry

and people ask me

what’s wrong

and I tell them

that it’s because

I can’t see you always,

only sometimes,

and that hurts.

They tell me

not to see you,

so I kneel down

and my knees

get torn

on the hot pavement.

The sun

evaporates

my tears,

and they leave a salty

residue

that burns

the eyes.

The eyes burn,

under the incandescent sun.

The knees burn

over the crackling pavement.

Stop crying, they say.

They don’t understand

I can’t see you.

You came along

after the winter

of the damaged virtues,

You had survived

the moral exile

carrying the burden

of your expired values.

A tide

of utopias

had stripped

you off.

You had been

assaulted

in the desert

of distorted truths.

You were forced to believe them.

You almost believed them.

But you walked away

into bewilderment

and into despair.

Now foreign,

exhausted and bereft

you tried to steal

something

from me

that was already yours.

It was a disgrace

but also beautiful

to watch you die.

The horror

and the beauty

of having

everything to say

and nothing.

Only the daily

administration

of the waiting

for your death.

You sell yourself for money

and that’s ok.

What else would you sell

yourself for?

People have done worse things

and today the necessity

is well regarded.

I wouldn’t work,

however,

if I were you.

I would use

the need

to sell myself

for money.  

I’m entrenched

in my own words:

they have a violent echo.

The one that you defend

doesn’t love you,

he’s not capable.

Your aim is wrong:

they speak ill about you

behind your back,

they could stab you

out of disgust,

they don’t need you

anymore.

The men haters

want you to denigrate

the product of your womb,

only then

will they be satisfied.

The model

is copied

even though

they intend

not to copy.

The one

who doesn’t cry

doesn’t suckle.

I cry

every day

but I don’t suckle

from the breast of censorship:

it doesn’t nourish.

You’ve let them in

and they took your ranch.

Now you are forced to love

in another language.