Bloom

For the Saint of Travelers

The Loss of Control

The first glance is the cruelest, taking

Thoughts away from predisposed misconceptions, creating

Lust       desire, undulating

Sense of self with confidence.

Late night tryst, living

In red rooms, hiding

Behind the beat of his heart.

His hand surprised her, rising up her leg.

The passion          no, the excitement of not getting caught.

Tasting the forbidden beneath his tongue

Conversations within pauses

The destruction of need versus want.

Ella detesta su libertad. Su libertad es peor que cualquiera cadena.

Summers in the city that knows how

Hate and love should be taught.

He said to her that there were four types of people,

The pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.

On the golden path, there you feel the air

I play tennis once a month and go south every evening.

What are the elements that bond, what soul is nurtured

from this soft place? Daughter of Lilith,

Can you not guess or answer with something other than the familiar.

Layers of faults, when the world shakes.

The bush gives no warmth, the pulse no satisfaction.

and the black orchid echoes no color. But

there is shelter inside the pink mound.

(head inside the pink mound)

And I’ll let you experience something new.

You might lose your footing and meet your maker

Or forge the path and become one.

I will show you love in a handful.

  Vendo dele escaper do

Mundo por meu punho

Jogando com ela

Em suas fantasias
You brought me pomegranates a while back
earned the name of the pomegranate boy
I chased you into the pomegranate grove
Baskets full of crimson fruit, temples filled with sweat.
We communicated with our movement.
It was neither love nor lust. Undefined. 
Gazing into the stratosphere, I tasted your name.
Je ne Sais plus.

Madame Rouault, famous adulteress

had a bad dream, nonetheless

is known to be gifted with great beauty.

Met up with a gypsy on the edge of Rouen

to pick up a game of cards.

(look at how she sets them up)

The four of swords upside down on the table,

testament to life.

The hand turn the lovers from up to down,

are they still embracing or pushing away?

Slowly the rest of the cards reveal a fortune

of love in forms of fools, hermits, cups, and the devil.

One card falls through the floor boards

Not able to tell the future of poor Madame Rouault.

“I do not fear dying alone, many suitors have I.”

Fate never truly told due to fate.

She should have listened with one ear.

White Island,

Beneath the sunlight of long summer days,

The ferries overflowed with different stories.

She didn’t want to believe emptiness had created so much

Looking to feel something even if just temporary,

all of them drunk with the vibration of one song.

Searching for vacancy in rooms with ruby painted door frames.

Daughter of the oath, protector of few,

called out for her lost girls, “Magdalenha,

Theodora, Nell Gwynn, My lovely dolls.

You are supposed to return home,

the teapot is whistling and you haven’t returned.

Have you lost your path? Will you come back before dark?

Or have you become slaves to the rhythm?

Come back into our shelter.

Where it is safe and soon it shall pass.

You apple tarts, nines hipòcrita.”

Sixteen, June

    
En Triana en Sevilla encuentras un árbol y un río

Brillaba una mariposa en lugar de uma menina.

Ela dançou sozinho.

(She danced as she got ready to meet with him.)

Dabbed her sweet face with rouge the color of happiness.

Reflecting to herself the lines her mama told her.

The roses of her eyes protected her from the breeze.

She had met him at the dance mama had sent her.

He said that she was tolerable

but still he sent her letters.

They communicated through a connection of words

Through the proper ordering of love and fate.

He soon asked to meet with her.

And so she dances.

In jars of copper and silver she houses her beauty

Tonight he’ll dream on her beauty.

He will meet her as the sun goes down.

But the sun went down thirty minutes ago.

The sound of the virgin river trickles outside her window

And she starts pacing.

“I grow anxious. San Antonio Bendito, quedate aqui.

Habla con migo, consejame a lo que tengo que decir.

Ira a llegar, He is Carthusian?

How do I tame his wild soul? Think on it, think?

I think that the horses are hard to break

when they’ve grown too old to ride.

“Is that noise announcing his arrival?

                       The hooves on the cobblestone.

“Stammers and snorts, could the wind be playing with me?”

Anything again anything?

                                        “Do

“You know anything? Do you see anything? Do you remember anything?”

“Nothing”

I remember

The roses in your eyes.

“Are you blind, or not? Is there sight in your eyes?

Guernica

He has a habit; speaks in wild hyperbole

As though he has loved everyone in the world

And come to the conclusion that after savoring every plate

Mine was the least interesting.

I do not understand what love is

Because I dreamed it differently.

He looked at me up and down and said

“The happiest couples all share a similarity.

Meanwhile you and I share bespoke pain.”

Blue Danube, waltzes next in queue.

Blue Danube, waltzes in the storm and in the calm.

He wanted to go East,

and I felt the need go West.

Every letter’s addressed to someone

I don’t want to address any more.

I realized this when the train climbed

passed Mont Cervin

On route to the home

of the famed neurologist in the city of music.

To find solutions to the simple math

How he convinced me that I was poised

Even though Mama stated I wasn’t ready.

Mama said I was born with

roses in my eyes

they gave me eyes of wish fulfillment

He agreed but never told me.

It wasn’t as pretty as it should have sounded.

Bem-te-vi

vôou, vôou 
Bem-te-vi
Deixa voar 

White Island

Beneath the sunlight of long summer days,

Lady Sheba, Marquesa de Ibiza

Unkept, hands full of pomegranate seeds.

Spanish Mann; hidden in pockets

Spoke to me in confused Catalan

To join her at the discotheque

To search for her dolls.

I walk the cobble stone streets

Headed to the harbor to board the

Back to Iberia.

I, Dantes, though tired, take on another role.

Father Wood told tall tales to save me.

In the moment of death gave me mine.

The captain unsure of cargo carried.

Commands the ferry

You asked me to meet you
in the middle of Charles Bridge.
in the middle of Bohemia to tell me

that you could love me
but your words were stolen by the gypsies
who also stole my wallet.

We walked to the Neutral Milk Hostel

on the outskirts of town.

Passed the central station,

passed the boy who tried to sell us junk,

But when we shook our heads,

he asked again in English (you answered: Norsk)

We took this journey

on the side of Europe you chose.

Because you wanted to see how she was doing.

I learned there are no lifts here,

That because I carried the burden,

I had to keep carrying the burden.

The way you say you’ve carried my heart with you.

I turn to you and looked

from the bottom of the stairs

aware that you had made it to the top.

And the first words that flew were,

“Well now, you’re up there: and I’m glad I’m down here.”

When Michal comes,

takes my burden

and carries it into the check in

As he parts his hair

and extends his hand for payment,

he plays and old sevillana on the record player.

“You are Lebanese girl?”

And with that continues with his work in the hostel.

O boy, boy, I can sometimes feel

the cool thin air

Beside the golden bridge on the edge of town.

There is a boy who skipped too many lectures

and sings a song about how he lost his way.

He’s cut off his hair since the last

time I saw him.

The protectors sit and watch;

when they don’t have to protect.

He plays for them, his voiceless audience.

The sea dances

Waltz and flamenco

The harbor wanes

With each crashing tide

Cerulean foam

Illusive

To starboard now delicately

The harbor takes

What the sea has to give

Passed the half-moon bay.

Iaiaiaia ioioioio
iaia ioio

Jane and Davy

danced loudly

the port gave shape

a shaded cast

Indigos and smoke

The riptide angered

Crashed the party from

Southern wind.

Pushed then further

Into the mainland

Of the golden road

Iaiaiaia ioioioio

Iaia ioio

“Is this the way a flower feels

when the vase runs dry? I wanted

to see Kyev in the summertime. But he stopped

me with a letter saying it was not safe.”

“Don’t anger the Bear, with your stomping feet

Insatiable summertime desires are from the mind,

He smiled. He promised ‘Odessa in the springtime’

I didn’t snap back. What else could I say?”

iaia

To Andalusia I headed

Stomping, stomping, stomping, stomping,

Heavenly Father hallowed be your name,

Heavenly Father where art thou?

stomping.

4. Midday in Torrential Downpour

There is a man named Miroslav in Slovakia,

who walks around with an umbrella

more broken than  my heart.

He calls for his Spanish girl.

I’m sure she got stuck at the check point

when they closed the borders

and split his heart in two.

He walks around shuffling through

the streets of Bratislava, passed the puddles of infinite water

to the bus marked 93. Where he waits next to portraits of angry souls

on the columns that hold the safest path to cross the Danube.

When Mentis spoke to Cor

After the last tango in Paris

After 15 hours shared in restricted space

After we looked at each other in a different continent.

The adventure and the excitement

Gardens and bedrooms and conversations

Of catharsis of passion over the pond.

He who could love me stopped

We who loved are stopping,

Without any effort.

I’ve been heartbroken for about a week now,

so I thought it might sober me up

to sit under the stars.

To contemplate all of life’s

All of life.

All of the time I spent

chasing you around the  world

Only to find out in our backyard that

you      could never love me.

All my words

come from old literary novels

rephrased and reformulated

because the words that come out of my brain

The words that I choose to use

are guarded.

Why did he say he worshipped the ground I walk on?

When he chose to break me instead?

I am so tired!

I want to sit.

Cuckoo, Cuckoo,

No, that’s not it.

I am his lover.

That’s it.

Wait, you’re here?

You never believed in love,

you laughed at all we shared,

and little by little,

I stopped believing in us as well.

I don’t know how to separate anymore,

I don’t know how to hold myself in public,

I can’t control my urges. 

You don’t know what that’s like,

to realize you’re a terrible liar.

Cuckoo, Cuckoo,

No, that’s not it …

Remember that cuckoo bird you shot?

A man comes along,

and sees her, and destroys her smiles

because he has nothing better to do

subject for a song.

No, that’s not it …

What was I saying?

Oh yes, love

I’m not pure anymore.

I’m realistic now.

I enjoy seduction,

I crave it, the passion it intoxicates me.

When they touch me

I feel beautiful.

And now, coming back here,

walking for hours with my thoughts,

I feel myself growing stronger.

And now I know,

I understand, finally,

that us —

the pursuing, and the busy,

it makes no difference —

the main thing isn’t love,

it’s not the sound of familiarity,

it’s not what I dreamed it should be.

All it is is the strength to keep going,

no matter the risk.

You have to keep on pursuing.

I believe, and it helps.

And now when I think about you,

I’m not afraid of something better.

©gabby mata 2014