Love

Who knows what love is?

Has anyone seen it lately?

…

A strange insect of twenty one legs and fourteen  mouths 

cecum to the gut

dead drunk

in constant rehab 

…

If you were fruit

you would have the skin of a peach 

and the flesh of a  pomegranate

but the taste of a mango

if you were an animal you would have a tiger’s head

and a tiger’s body

right down to a tiger’s tail

but don’t be confused 

you are not a tiger

…

Love’s derailed tongue 

licking the wounds

made with its own claws 

today you have stayed asleep

or perhaps hidden tired of battling

…

You are not under the bed 

nor behind the pictures or in the dirty laundry

I have also searched inside the recycling bag 

and in the refrigerator without any luck

…

Out there somewhere

you will be sleeping off your hangover

it is not a suspicion or a hope

is that your smell is not gone 

do not fool me

I smell your insides oxidizing

and the freshness of your lips

I know you are still here

lurking and smiling

waiting for me to drop my guard

to go right for the jugular. 

© Adrián Arias

Trans: Nina Serrano

original poem in Spanish here

Digital image by Adrián

Looking

Looking is all we have to give

sometimes all we have to receive.

Looking is the infinite of ephemeral things

and at the same time it is the end of the permanent.

The only immortality that exists

is written in the things that we look at

which gradually bit by bit fade away

on the horizon of oblivion.

© Adrian, inspired by an old letter of my mother
Spanish version HERE

Bad Idea # 1

I grab a memory 

I look at it

I do not recognize it

I wrinkle it 

making it a crumpled paper ball

and throwing it into the paper trash.

I grab another memory 

and the same thing happens, 

another crumpled paper ball.

And so I spent the afternoon and evening 

wrinkling forgotten memories 

and the paper trash, filled with the balls  

look at me 

with its face of unpleasant memories. 

I look at it

and I see with surprise that the little balls

start moving slowly 

as they stretch 

changing shape 

now they seem like small personages

holding on to something to keep from falling. 

With some trepidation I approach 

and grab one 

I look 

it looks at me 

I unwrinkled it

I can almost feel its relief 

I suspect it recognizes me 

but I don’t it 

who cares. 

I unwrinkle them one by one 

spending all of the dawn. 

and keep them in the box of memories 

that I do not remember.

Translation by Nina Serrano

© Adrian 2014

I am invisible

I am invisible

I move into nothing

my body is made of memories

I am the every day

with my troubles and my sleepless nights

I'm blood cell skin

I am my interior noise

mixed with the silence of my desires

Here I linger to contemplate the light

that cleans all

Here I notice the shadow

my body projects

Here I close my eyes and see the time passing

the tic tac of lights

and my grandmother’s smile

Here I am a child

Here I am old

here I return to being me

amoeba red cell sigh light ray powder nothing

here I am quiet

and only am

© Adrian

image by Todd Brown