scrapofpaper | now i know that sunrise, sunrise, yeah, it's gonna shine on my backyard someday

"A critique does not consist in saying that things aren't good the way they are. It consists in seeing on just what type of assumptions, of familiar notions, of established and unexamined ways of thinking the accepted practices are based...To do criticism is to make harder those acts which are now too easy."
--Michel Foucault

"Waltz"
I touch hatred like a covered breast;
I without stopping go from garment to garment,
sleeping at a distance.

I am not, I'm of no use, I do not know
anyone; I have no weapons of ocean or wood,
I do not live in this house.

My mouth is full of night and water.
The abiding moon determines
what I do not have.

What I have is in the midst of the waves,
a ray of water, a day for myself,
an iron depth.

There is no cross-tide, there is no shield, no costume,
there is no special solution too deep to be sounded,
no vicious eyelid.

I live suddenly and other times I follow.
I touch a face suddenly and it murders me.
I have no time.

Do not look for me when drawing
the usual wild thread or the
bleeding net.

Do not call me: that is my occupation.
Do not ask my name or my condition.
Leave me in the middle of my own moon
in my wounded ground.
--Pablo Neruda

"Fences"
I was six.
The fence was high and as I leapt
the barbs wrote perfect lines
straight across my chest.
My skin ripped easy as a rag.

I dangled there
My blood was thick and red.

That was when
I first began
to know the price
of jumping
over fences.

~~

In love with women
and men, he says they're both
the same: "I could close
my eyes and groan and groan
all night. Hands are hands.
And when they knead
my body like bread
I rise to meet the touch."

~~

Sad and old, she opened her house
to elders knocking at her door.
They promised to visit her
daily. She agreed to join
their church. She was asked
to rid herself of statues
saved on alters in her room.
She told them she was ready
to renounce. Next day, when they
returned, she told them how she'd
thrown her statues out: "I beat
them into nothing." Each day
when the elders left her home,
she took her statues from a closet
and raised them back to life.

~~

A drink in hand, she talks:
"When I have sex
my mind dissolves.
In the everything of touch,
the nothingness of language
disappears. When thought
returns, I am left with sadness
and with words. I want to live
on the silent side of speech."

~~

I stood before
the Torah. I searched
for Yahweh's name whose face
cannot be seen, whose name
cannot be said.
When I found
letters that stood
for his name, I touched them
trembling. Lines on fragile
parchment: what about them
takes us close to God?

~~

I write in English, dream
in Spanish, listen to Latin chants.
I like streets where
Chicanos make up words.
Sometimes, I shout
Italian words to wake
the morning light.
At dusk, I breathe out
fragments of Swahili.
I want to feel words
swimming in my throat
like fighting fish
that refuse to be hooked
on a line.
--Benjamin Alire Saenz

"I Can Write the Saddest Lines Tonight"
I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write for example: 'The night is fractured
and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance.'

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest lines tonight.
I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
To think I don't have her, to feel I have lost her.

Hear the vast night, vaster without her.
Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.

What does it matter that I couldn't keep her.
The night is fractured and she is not with me.

That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,
my soul is not content to have lost her.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.
My heart looks for her: she is not with me.

The same night whitens, in the same branches.
We, from that time, we are not the same.

I don't love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.

Another's kisses on her, like my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.

I don't love her, that's certain, but perhaps I love her.
Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.

Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,
my soul is not content to have lost her.

Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,
and these are the last lines I will write for her.
--Pablo Neruda