El Mismo Amor

Jugué con canicas de niño.

Con uñas y dedos los hoyitos hacía.

Mi papá recuerdo que aunque falto de cariño

A buscar gallitos me llevó un día,

Tanto árbol y barranco por doquier.

No recuerdo cuanta vaina bajamos

De colores casi negro muy fuertes al caer.

A la casa regresamos

Cosa nueva había que ver.

Habrimos aquello y qué peste

Mis primeros gallitos iba a tener.

Con gallitos jugué alli en el Oeste

Divertido, aunque no podia ganar,

En el mismo hoyo de la canica

Con fuertes golpes me podía desahogar.

Las pequeñas palmitas y sus coquitos,

Aquellos que de verde se hacen rojos

En su tiempo mis favoritos

Me desquitaba las perdidas tirando hasta por matojos.

Y abuelita jugando dominó

Aunque cieguita estaba,

Con capicu en mano otra ficha jugó

Pues por las cataratas se le escapaba!

Y aveces en la playa,

Cuando a las boyas se hiba

Na había ni agua ni toalla,

Que la arena prohiba.

Los vientos aquellos de navidad

Planeando parranda o mañanita,

Te digo con toda sinceridad

Extraño tanto a mi islita.

En mi corazón la llevo,

Junto a mis tantos recuerdos

Y aunque se que no debo

Me enfadan mucho los lerdos.

Opiniones vanas y seguidoras

No del pecho o corazón

Sino de farándula a todas horas

Dándole a todos las razón.

Soy Boricua pero también humano

Y aunque no olvido de donde vine

A todos trato como hermano

Esté en mi casa, carro, o cine.

Tan fácil virar la cara

Cuando apuntan el dedo en tu dirección.

Mejor a veces se callara

Cuando no pone atención

Y en cizaña no abarcara

Ni generarce mas discución.

Tan lindas palabras en el Himno Borinqueño

Describiendo el resplandor de su belleza

Y el que de allí sale, tan pequeño

Prefiere derribar naturaleza.

Cuando mal hablan de ella

Mi Isla, casa, y son

El jidiondo con su querella

Sin punto bueno o dirección.

Pues todos sentimos

Aunque algunos más que otros.

Pero nunca nos rendimos

De eso estoy orgulloso en nosotros.

Y tanto mas que digerir

Cuando verdaderamente se siente

Cielo, monte, colina, y horizonte seguir

Pues lo llevamos en la mente.

Como el correr por las cunetas

En días lluviosos en Mayo

De aguas ellas repletas

Y claro después que no haya rayos.

O de las fiestas de pueblo o Patronales

De mes en mes celebrando

Pasando tiempo juntos en los mismos lugares,

De pie, sentados, o hasta bailando.

Mi isla no es cualquiera,

Ella es Boriquén.

Quisiera yo usted la viera

Poder decir en alto Amén;

Pues sus jardines floridos

De mágico primor

Nos mantienen de corazón unidos

Por isla y patria sintiendo el mismo amor.

Liar then

I have been thinking of dying since I was a teenager. I’m still alive. The culmination of the events that led here, all succinct, making the vast net of alliances that form the past I/we carry from corner to darkness and from darkness to our inner disdain seems perpetual at best but stops at our time of quietus rest.

What if I die and there is another place?

What if I die and there is a vast never eclipsing sun -brown in color- to the north that burns the arid desert waste to every horizon I face. To the south a cold sun that although green in color, devours the landscape with its frozen breath. From the top, above lies resting a never moving body. A meteor that while falling was held in place, in the place of clouds for there are none here, and this black, pale, and unknown entity follows my every step. Eternity here for the tormented soul.

What is eternity? I tired of a life of incoherence, devastating truths that lies could never hope to reach their floor, and an ever continuing respite after every event, as if we must not dwell in the experiences or learn from them for there are many more and each one hides its own dark path. A mere 13 years of life and I abandoned the sense of it all in the utopia of hate, where boredom is awaiting to be lashed, fear is being under the whip, and death is a price to be obtained from surviving it all. Almost 30 years ago now I revisit the continuing gluttony that avast at nothing before obtaining complete surrender from its subject, I, in a life of torment and deceit.

Whereas control is the absence of free will, free will becomes a dream to be had every night. The only place where you can hide from the real without losing hope. However, dreams too have much to say about reality, in their own reality, and as it forms its truths. Living a double life where irony, war, the fallacy that is democracy, hunger, servitude and slavery for monies to be obtained for services rendered, all amassing to the desire to see it all cease for a moment of silence in wonderment of how individuals with the gift of thought can think to want, desire, and be a part of any of that through the pursuit of any dream had.

Abstinence of thought is the only peaceful reminiscent thing that quiets the brain for a second. To look at the past, at hundreds of years my predecessors and see through their writings that life in the days of their atonement with the pen was no different than the one we lead today. Caress me cloud for want of lightning in my brain I want in a clear start towards some restitution. Perhaps the inability to see beyond the truths that surround me are the cause for the want that has clouded my ability to wish for more for so long. I yearn not for peace or laughter, or for merit or acknowledgement, neither do I crave death anymore than I do water.

But what is eternity, I beg to question? What, if not a desert with life eternal in solitude wandering the sands of time under, in, and through your toes as you move in naked fashion through the airless vacuum you have achieved. What if instead we are surrounded with ourselves? Copies upon clones, upon similitude and equalness that serve to remind you only for eternity that you too were a compromised asset in this millennial search for answers. For I too have partaken in the things that I hate, done the things that would make a child squander their food, a thinking adult look away in disdainful reprise, and an elder stare in full understanding that life must go on. Therein lies the question perhaps. Is the continuation of evil, if only in parts, the proper way to go again? Should we continue to allow the gangrenous arm to stay attached to its host knowing full well the result? Could we permit the blood of someone who saves lives to be contaminated through a nasty cut, come in contact with bacteria, and eventually perish in a painfully slow demise because we simply don’t like the sight of the wound or become squeamish at the sight of red paint, red linen, red clay or any other red thing imitating blood? I’m afraid that for as long as humanity has been, the answer has been the same: yes we can. There is a monster in each of us that is unfurled to the strands of hair that are humanity as the head, and although we trim the hair, bears refuge and the root remains. This root is then allowed to sparse in the most subtle of ways until we achieve the grandeur of human wonders: us.

Millions of generations of cells morphing and adapting to the most brutal of causes, their code rewritten to withstand the most current of affairs. Within the code the origin, which likely corrupt, allows for the perpetuation of the cells and replicate into the masses that are. Then this strain, being flawed, is connected with another, which while flawed retains aspects of the previous as it forms a newly achieved state of fault. This new individual renders fruitful the achievements of others, and peers praise them, and mates come into the equation as the aforehand perpetuates further into more of us. With rotten core, the fruit may bare a color of wanting to picking hands, it may further avoid scrutiny by hiding its true essence for a while longer, but eventually the core becomes exposed and the worms now feasting on the rotten code are only examined as the cell was merely removed for observation from any one of us.

Look deep and answer frankly the question: how faultless are you? Living in this eternity with an unmentionable number of strains that are I, all whimsically interacting in a never ending dance of lies. For I will laugh, I will cry, I will understand and be confused. I too will want and yet rescind, and I will ultimately kill. Whether it is I or the I which before me lies, it is I nonetheless, all the same code, the same strand, the same perpetuation of futility for an expanse of eternity.

Eternity, should there be one, could be so surprising. Alas the skies will open and beyond the gates the sounds of deep and high tones coming from choirs of celestial beings all in unison and forever loyally painting the lie that is living with their trumpets and harps, and baritones and sopranos. Because to know happiness, feel happiness, and entice happiness from others one must first appear in a certain light. Never can I say that I did not sin, that I did not fail, or that I did not falter. A child is as much in debt to the collector as the ancient being a centennial alive is. A child is not bereft of the evil that with two halves made it a whole.

I will end this here in complete adulation of the believer that hand in hand a given day, say a Sunday, praises the selected entity for a day of life in their life. That with blinders, much like a horse on a race, looks around and sees nothing, and feels all but the so-called truth. Then later, outside of the doors of this solemn place returning to life, like a soldier arriving home after having to slaughter or see others slaughtered, and sees a nurse whom in their day to day has to see, withstand, and never judge women as they demerit themselves and through his or her hands end the life that within them bore a bad code; at them wishing them evil, or talking behind their backs because supposedly words do not kill, and making all kinds of judgment outside a place sanctified for the avoidance of the very thing they can do for a set period of time but must return to hastily.

I dare you once more to -in good taste- revisit the dark corners of your life, those where you don’t even let yourself in, the closet as some call it, and see if it is empty. I will accept I am a liar then.