Beads

And the faces that floated in my dreams ceased to exist…they did so in my insomnia and I could finally rest. However, my peace did not last but a brief instant when I suddenly began to think you…to miss you…to hate you…

Without knowing, or caring, that my stars had become cold corpses that adorned the black of the night I let myself be guided by this loneliness and I made a pact of blood with her. In my aloneness I dragged your image across the garden of withered carnations and wept beads

Beads of blood, beads of sweat, beads of dew

The sun falls and the day dies, and the voice of dusk begins to narrate the events of my life: you left, you strayed from me, and I was, by chance, a witness of your goodbye. What’s worse is that, upon leaving, you took with you my thoughts, my winter; you clothe your soul with my clarity and you leave, you fly, you are washed ashore and with you go my bones, my heart, my strength and, above everything else: me.

I would sell the world, even though it is not mine, for my eyes to bathe in you, briefly, just briefly if I could. The impossibility is irrefutable and I’ve accepted defeat. I do, however, keep my words…those not whispered. Words you never heard were the only things you could not take. The irony is, though, that I would sell my soul, even though that also does not belong to me, just to whisper those words in your ear in vain hope that you would stay.

J-Lopez (Dario Mariategui)

San Diego

11.23.09

Dominical Prayers

And it was so that i reconciled my thoughts with my dreams of two Saturdays ago.

It was then that I welcomed the abyss while I, at the same time, forced myself to find any valiant and comforting feeling that maybe, just maybe, still hid in a dark passage of my subconscious where, for a while now, my memories had rotten away.

While the irate drops of water futilely pounded on my window I saw you. And you walked with fluidness, as if gliding, so strange and inexplicable through the halls of my serenity piercing the invisible walls that held up airs and moments of my temperance and past encounters.

Then I dedicated myself, with arduous devotion, to love you more than I could imagine. I found new instances to do away with the void and to fill your eyes with water so that a pure and pacified rancor could bloom.

By Sunday you did not exist. Amongst the prayers of saints and martyrs your name lost its charm, its color. The intense orations dragged your intense and phantasmagorical image towards the plenitude of my being. Blessed.


J-Lopez (Dario Mariategui)


Cuernavaca, Mexico


07.28.08

Breathe. Weep. Exhale

Breathe. I feel her presence in the dark. Then I see her pale profile perforate the shadows. Her dress blends with the background of the high-ceiling room. One thought her to be ethereal but the painful echo of the wood that her needle-point heels produces give her an earthly nature. A soft sob reveals the pain knotting in her chest and lets this guides her to the center of the room—the special point her soul chose to leave its body and rise into an unknown direction. Six steps and she elevates over a steel stool, closer to her final destiny. Weep. The memory strangles her soul and, in vengeance, the rope strangles her neck. The metal stool that once held her body falls defeated against the wooden floor. The air becomes infinitely heavy. The air is too dense and rough for her satin-red throat that, during her last moments of eternity, encloses the minimal space of life. Her sharp eyes point to a roof of a color white. Her eyes, during her last breath, protested against He who makes use of roofs of all rooms, of all prisons, of all hospitals, of all the asylums of the world, in order to avoid the saddened eyes of the beings He made of clay and that now seek His breath; those beings who now claim a speck of hope or a divine hand to scare away the haunting specters forever, the insatiable demons. This never happens and she knows that. The last air held in her lungs can be heard rushing out of her beautiful body. She disappears into the dark. Everything that exists on Earth does shares the same fate. Her death was the strongest and most applauded. The spectators, her witnesses, did not know. By this last act she would be remembered. She, a long time ago, had already known. Exhale.

J-Lopez (Dario Mariategui)

San Diego

11.21.09

To Do

“My life is full of little doves”, her father heard her say over the phone, alleviated by the innocent and candid way in which she referred to happiness. The kilometers that mediated their repeated conversations were many and the telephone, since writing was not a habit of theirs, was a synthetic and direct recourse to keep up to date. She hung up the phone and sank her face, pen in hand, in her agenda where dry cleaning, dentist, studying, dinner with friends, shopping, weeping, where rigorously checked off with a sense of asphyxia.

J-Lopez (Dario Mariategui)

San Diego

11.16

"Go to Hell!" She blurted. Who heard her? Only a man, an old and stern man, sitting on a bench in the park...he continued to flip through his newspaper.

a thought...

her skin was made of paper, my bones were made of glass, our hearts became of stone. Loving each other was a painful affair.

Songs for Afterhours

It is true. I am still alive. All vital sings: normal. The Electroencephalogram shows a slight mental disturbances: insomnia, anger and...heartbreak? And why wouldn't it. It is 2:17 a.m. and as I lay I watch the headlights of the passing cars cast strange shadows through the blinds of my westward facing window. Spirals of light. Among all of the flashing images and thoughts that are keeping me awake she is there. She is getting married soon. Do I care? Perhaps. Another thought: she got married. DID I care? Maybe. If only I could use a machine to measure how serious I was about the girl of my past and of the girl of my future I would be able to assess the situation insightfully. She got away, I let her go, that is that. The other will be getting away, I will be letting her go, that will be that.

Maybe being awake is not so bad. Some say sleep is overrated. This is my time. I thrive in the dark. I feed off the silence and stillness of the night. My senses are more acute. I put on my earbuds, turn on the iPod...Jeff Buckley? I'm obsessed. Wilco, very suiting. Yo-Yo Ma plays Enio Morricone, too dramatic. I can transport myself, as if in a time/place machine, with "Pictures of You", "Last Goodbye", "Mania Cardiaca", and practice my air drumming (on my back) with Michel Camilo. Nothing erases the thoughts of them. I think them. Every second unearths a new memory I thought was successfully suppressed. Fail. I am impervious to them now and conclude they will be the past soon enough. "In My Place" brings me back to the present where the lights keep spiraling, teasing, accompanying me through this seemingly endless night. I am at peace. "That's All I Ask" sends me into literal euphoria and at the climax of my emotions I begin to dream. Silence. Peace. Sleep.

J-Lopez (Dario Mariategui)

San Diego

11.04

mantra

I insist, in infinite idioms, on inquiring insightfully...intelligently.

Big Black Butterfly

Kill it! Screamed my mother. Get it out! Yelled my siblings.

Stampeding on the plastic-covered furniture where sitting was extremely prohibited, we stood and treaded swatting at the beast with brooms.

We wanted to deal with the winged creature as soon as possible, a creature whose black wings were saturated with dust so much so that it would taint our fingers as we reached for it. Finally a splendid swat of the broom and there it went. Spiraling to the floor.

With much disgust, my brother and I scooped the revolting winged creature with an old “New Yorker” and, upon tossing it out the door, we shouted in unison HA! Get out! I don’t remember any other scenes of family panic such as these including the Northridge earthquake of ‘94 or when I sliced my finger with a chef’s knife. In both occasions the hysteria became apotheotic.

Nah, man—as my brother would always say just for the sake of contradiction—this was of tsunamic proportions! Well, that’s not a real word but to each their own terminology. The fact of the matter was that after turning the house upside down with the intent of slaying the fluttering fiend we began to hang the thick cotton curtains, we leveled the picture frames and diplomas and other plaques, and what not, that commemorated, celebrated, and cheered individual accomplishments ranging from high math scores, perfect attendances, and the first college degree of the family. I remember putting my shoes back on and, embarrassingly, noticed that my right big toe peeked through a hole in my sock. My mother, with a hint of shame as well, asked me to hand it over so that she would patch it up tomorrow morning.

No doubt that the brief moment of insanity brought with it a bonding and group solidarity at least in what remained of October, just before celebrating the Day of the Dead. The only person who managed to remain silent, observant, and, it seemed, a little disgusted by the sudden surge of testosterone was my sister Lidia.

She loooooved to antagonize us in any way she could so her reaction was expected: Those creatures never hurt anyone, You could have been more humane and trapped it with a trash bag as to not hurt its wings, You should’ve set it free so it could continue living, blah blah blah. And honestly, God knows what other idiotic conservative concerns of hers that at the time were unfitting for our wild human instincts of superiority over any specie such as these giant black butterflies.

A year went by, I remember it quite well, and the final days of October waved by as we ushered the first days of November. And how could I forget…we got the call, just like that…no warning, that Lidia, my dearly loved sister had had a car accident while her boyfriend drove and that she was smothered and turned to a pulp.

After the burial we all went home in dire sorrow. As the rest of the family prepared dinner, it was the second eve of the dead, as was Mexican tradition, when my aunt warned that a giant black butterfly, so big that its shadow flapped on the walls, had gone in the house. At first, taken aback, there was a contained commotion. My brother and I turned to each other and felt we had the strength to deal with the creature once and for all. Then the memory of Lidia crept into my mind. Her image, sitting there still, immutable, antagonizing our wild urge to extinguish species.

I took a big trash bag the color of our grieving garbs, I approached the butterfly who fluttered its wings as if it were breathing through them, I stood on a stool and caught it with ease. I got down and went outside to let it free and it flew away into the cold November afternoon wafting way into the wilderness of wherever. And then, with more tears coming out my nose than my eyes, I said Goodbye to my little sister whom I loved so much.

On Death and Time

On Death and Time

Your watch stopped forty-five minutes after you died.
Years later I brought it from that shallow drawer
where the futile artifacts resided (donor card, wallet with gasoline receipts, driving cap to hide no hair),
and placed it on my wrist, forced to adjust the link;
unlike you, I have yet to be eaten. Then I waited,
hoping that with each stride I took, with a pulse,
the innards would be granted energy and stir.

In the morning I woke to no change, shaking hard,
willing it on; next seated with mother in a repair shop,
terse glances at the work room. The attendant
returned it with a frown, even a look of hostility,
confirming that it was beyond repair, that somehow
the coils and springs had been wrenched inside-out,
and what precise, violent change of atmosphere
had afflicted me, pulverizing each mechanism clear?

I hurried home, cradled that unresponsive metal in my palms,
awed by the tumultuousness of your passing--
how, so trapped in bed, you struggled within
and surrendered time to the anger of leaving us alone.

Bilingual sweetness

No hay palabras que decir | There are no more words left to say
Tú ya no me quieres hablar | You don’t want to talk to me
Y tu ausencia me hace recordar | Your absence, in pain, always speaks
Que ya no estas | That you, alone, are wishing to be

Justo cuando comencé a sentir | Just when i began to feel
Que por fin podría ser feliz | that perhaps, happiness, could be real
Ya no puedo mencionar tu nombre | your name escapes my chest in blue
Sin saber que estoy sin ti | knowing i am, again, without you

Hoy siento que la tierra se parte en dos | Today i feel that the earth splits in two
De un lado quedas tu, | On one side: me
Del otro lado quedo yo | On the other: you

Hoy siento que caí a un poso | Today I felt i fell in a well
Del cual no se como salir | deep so deep, i climb out of hell

De ambos lados tengo un acantilado | On either side of me, a cliff there is
El viento sopla y amenaza con tirarme | the wind rages and threatens me—abyss

Una caida libre | A free fall
Que parece no tener fin | Seemingly with no end
En esos momentos deseo volar | In these moments i wish to fly
Para nunca mas la tierra tocar | and build my endless walls in the orange sky

Just a thought...

Yesterday the moon fell on her back. Today, the high May sun, two hours before setting, warms my face and I think that sometimes everything inside me hurts: the years, the dissipations, the long-gone bitterness, the memories. They constantly reflect their impermanence like invincible tumors and one, little by little, begins to think more and more about dwelling in the present. Short terms open my intuition: the terrible future with its asphyxia and inquietude. And it’s all because the past time has made me endure a posture, an attitude, and a certain way of life that I must now defend. An attitude not of a frustrated individual but of one individual in a frustrating society.

I called her Julia

I saw her floating in a yellow rain coat, swimming in a sea of wet humanity. She had the saddest look that I have ever seen and her blue eyes showed an infinity of sorrow.

I’ve tried to reconstruct her image, but this comes to me in a most distortioned way and I’m left with the sensation that I lose her more and more.

Ony once did I see her but, for an infinitesimal moment, I felt and feel that I’ve known her since eternity and I’ve never been able to reconstruct that look in her eyes in any other woman I have met…Julia I called her, my solitude named her.

First Blog EVER. YAY!?!?

A bold move. A "blog". Just another thing to keep me busy, slash, entertained. Been trying to write but I realized that the English language grew to one MILLION words a few months ago. How am I supposed to write now?? Just when I began to understand this whole “speaking another language” thing. Oh well, at least I can still look up at the sky and see bunnies in the clouds.