And death shall have no dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.


[Dylan Thomas]

Fracaso y Derrota

Estos deben ser posiblemente son los poemas más famosos de Rafael Cadenas. Postearlos es como llover sobre mojado porque deben estar en muchos blogs y páginas en general pero en este momento histórico tienen mayor importancia para mí por lo que significan, así que hola.

FRACASO

Cuanto he tomado por victoria es sólo humo.
Fracaso, lenguaje del fondo, pista de otro espacio más exigente, difícil de entreleer es tu letra.
Cuando ponías tu marca en mi frente, jamás pensé en el mensaje que traías,
más precioso que todos los triunfos.
Tu llameante rostro me ha perseguido y yo no supe que era para salvarme.
Por mi bien me has relegado a los rincones, me negaste fáciles éxitos, me has quitado salidas.
Era a mí a quien querías defender no otorgándome brillo.
De puro amor por mí has manejado el vacío que tantas noches me ha hecho hablar afiebrado a una ausente.
Por protegerme cediste el paso a otros, has hecho que una mujer prefiera a alguien más resuelto,
me desplazaste de oficios suicidas.
Tú siempre has venido al quite.
Sí, tu cuerpo, escupido, odioso, me ha recibido en mi más pura forma para entregarme
a la nitidez del desierto.
Por locura te maldije, te he maltratado, blasfemé contra ti.
Tú no existes.
Has sido inventado por la delirante soberbia.
¡Cuánto te debo!
Me levantaste a un nuevo rango limpiándome con una esponja áspera, lanzándome a mi verdadero campo de
batalla, cediéndome las armas que el triunfo abandona.
Me has conducido de la mano a la única agua que me refleja.
Por ti yo no conozco la angustia de representar un papel, mantenerme a la fuerza en un escalón,
trepar con esfuerzos propios, reñir por jerarquías, inflarme hasta reventar.
Me has hecho humilde, silencioso y rebelde.
Yo no te canto por lo que eres, sino por lo que no me has dejado ser. Por no darme otra vida.
Por haberme ceñido.
Me has brindado sólo desnudez.
Cierto que me enseñaste con dureza ¡y tú mismo traías el cauterio!, pero también
me diste la alegría de no temerte.
Gracias por quitarme espesor a cambio de una letra gruesa.
Gracias a ti que me has privado de hinchazones.
Gracias por la riqueza a que me has obligado.
Gracias por construir con barro mi morada.
Gracias por apartarme.
Gracias.


****


DERROTA

Yo que no he tenido nunca un oficio
que ante todo competidor me he sentido débil
que perdí los mejores títulos para la vida
que apenas llego a un sitio ya quiero irme (creyendo que mudarme es una solución)
que he sido negado anticipadamente y escarnecido por los más aptos
que me arrimo a las paredes para no caer del todo
que soy objeto de risa para mí mismo que creí
que mi padre era eterno
que he sido humillado por profesores de literatura
que un día pregunté en qué podía ayudar y la respuesta fue una risotada
que no podré nunca formar un hogar, ni ser brillante, ni triunfar en la vida
que he sido abandonado por muchas personas porque casi no hablo
que tengo vergüenza por actos que no he cometido
que poco me ha faltado para echar a correr por la calle
que he perdido un centro que nunca tuve
que me he vuelto el hazmerreír de mucha gente por vivir en el limbo
que no encontraré nunca quién me soporte
que fui preterido en aras de personas más miserables que yo
que seguiré toda la vida así y que el año entrante seré muchas veces más burlado en mi ridícula ambición
que estoy cansado de recibir consejos de otros más aletargados que yo («Ud. es muy quedado, avíspese, despierte»)
que nunca podré viajar a la India
que he recibido favores sin dar nada en cambio
que ando por la ciudad de un lado a otro como una pluma
que me dejo llevar por los otros
que no tengo personalidad ni quiero tenerla
que todo el día tapo mi rebelión
que no me he ido a las guerrillas
que no he hecho nada por mi pueblo
que no soy de las FALN y me desespero por todas estas cosas y por otras cuya enumeración sería interminable
que no puedo salir de mi prisión
que he sido dado de baja en todas partes por inútil
que en realidad no he podido casarme ni ir a París ni tener un día sereno
que me niego a reconocer los hechos
que siempre babeo sobre mi historia
que soy imbécil y más que imbécil de nacimiento
que perdí el hilo del discurso que se ejecutaba en mí y no he podido encontrarlo
que no lloro cuando siento deseos de hacerlo
que llego tarde a todo
que he sido arruinado por tantas marchas y contramarchas
que ansío la inmovilidad perfecta y la prisa impecable
que no soy lo que soy ni lo que no soy
que a pesar de todo tengo un orgullo satánico aunque a ciertas horas haya sido humilde hasta igualarme a las piedras
que he vivido quince años en el mismo círculo
que me creí predestinado para algo fuera de lo común y nada he logrado
que nunca usaré corbata
que no encuentro mi cuerpo
que he percibido por relámpagos mi falsedad y no he podido derribarme, barrer todo y crear de mi indolencia, mi
flotación, mi extravío una frescura nueva, y obstinadamente me suicido al alcance de la mano
me levantaré del suelo más ridículo todavía para seguir burlándome de los otros y de mí hasta el día del juicio final.

She's

She's not empty.
She just doesn' t like
what she's filled with.
She's afraid of it.
So she dwells on the surface
and amuses herself
with shiny colors and pretty tunes.

I see something else though,
something I can't quite explain.
A fragrance, maybe,
that makes my core
quake in awe.

I'm a leaping cat
blind with curiosity,
I'm a moth
burning with ambition,
I'm a whale
dreaming of a shore,
and I crash and burn and die
of thirst
willingly

M[y]ia

Asfíxiame
o aprende a vivir conmigo
debo crecer dentro de ti
Conmoverte

Causarte la peor de las fiebres
si pretendieras disgregarme

Ulcerarte severamente

Ponerte ácida la sangre
si rompieras mi espíritu

Piel rubicunda
Supurante por mi
Voy a parir
en tus heridas

SOMETREE/ANYTREE?.

BY BEN GREENMAN

- - - -

Say I am a tree and there is another tree next to me.

We don’t talk at first. That’s how trees are: cautious.

But then one afternoon it’s nice in the forest, not too warm, not too cold, squirrels and birds present in plentiful but hardly worrisome numbers, and I decide to say hello, and the other tree says hello in return, and that’s when it begins.

That first day, it’s a long conversation. Have you ever noticed the way the wind comes through here at night? Why are there so many kinds of airborne seeds? Isn’t bark weird? By the end of that conversation, I’m pretty sure that the other tree is not just an interesting and intelligent tree, but a fascinating tree, a lovely tree, a wonderful and great tree, one of the best trees I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I am thrilled to have the other tree next to me, and a little bit embarrassed that I didn’t notice the other tree until now. Sometimes those things escape you: there is a sheet of sky to look at, and the purling of a nearby stream.

The next day the other tree and I talk again, all day long, and it’s as if that second day, too, is the first day. Every bit of the discussion shines like a particularly smooth, flat stone after a rainstorm.

But it’s not nearly as beautiful as the other tree, which I realize the third day, which is spent primarily in contemplation of the tree’s charms. Sometimes a trunk is just a trunk, and branches are just branches, but sometimes a trunk has a perfect thickness, and branches taper just right, and then there are the leaves, so exquisitely arranged along each branchlet, with such lovely fall coloration, that it makes me want to hire someone to come out with an axe and chop me down so I can fall near the roots of the other tree and lay there forever. This is the romantic fantasy that I entertain as I talk to the other tree that third day. My conversation is somewhat distracted, but I come out of my fog long enough to see that the other tree’s conversation is distracted as well, and that’s when it occurs to me that maybe the other tree, too, is dreaming of being chopped down and falling near my roots and lying there forever.

The fourth day I discover that I have a tiny wirelike twig that reaches almost to one of the other tree’s twigs, and I concentrate on growing that twig, and while the fifth day is frustrating, the sixth day is far less so, and the seventh and the eighth days are spent in bliss, twigs entwined. “Or is it entwigged?” the other tree says, and this strikes me as the one of the most appealing things I have ever heard, witty and poignant and critical and bewitching all at the same time.

The morning of the ninth day, we discover that we’re entwigged at a second point, this one a bit closer to the trunk.

The tenth day, the other tree loses some leaves, and I offer comforting words, and even point out that a few of my own leaves are falling, that it’s a natural process, happens every year, nothing to worry about. The other tree doesn’t say anything, but there’s a small reward in the form of pressure at that first entwigging point, and that’s enough for me.

The eleventh day is like the twelfth, and the thirteenth, and the fourteenth, and the fifteenth. I only know that time is passing because the sun rises and sets.

Then, on the sixteenth day, I notice something strange. A few of the knots of twigs have undone themselves. I ask the other tree about it, and the answer is vague, something about cold air coming up from the other side of the forest. This isn’t how it works with twigs, and I know it, and I know that the other tree knows it, but I don’t make a big deal about it.

The seventeenth day, more entwiggings disappear, and on the eighteenth, only the original one is left.

By now, I can’t keep quiet any longer, and I ask the other tree a series of questions, trying to keep my tone level and calm but, I’m sure, betraying my anxiety and anger and desire and, above all, my sadness. That’s when the other tree tries to fend me off with a metaphor. Assume, the other tree says, that there are two trees next to one another, and they grew closer, sometimes by almost imperceptible degrees. But then assume that there is a countermovement, and they grow more distant, sometimes by almost imperceptible degrees. It doesn’t mean that the trees are less beautiful to one another, or even less close to one another. It is difficult to move a trunk. It just means that sometimes twigs will do what twigs will do. “There are other trees on the other side of me,” the other tree says. “They have twigs, too.” I explain that I don’t care about that, and at that moment I don’t. Trees have hundreds of twigs. I know that. I’m not an idiot. I just know what I like — what I need — and that’s the feeling of some of the other tree’s twigs entwined with my twigs. The other tree tells me I’m yelling, and I realize I am, and that’s when I go dead silent.

The nineteenth day is a wintry day, the first really unpleasant weather of the year, and I spend most of the morning feeling one of my own leaves working itself free from a branch. Finally a small blast of icy wind dislodges it, and it falls, slowly, with a side-to-side motion, and for a moment it looks as if the leaf might come to rest on one of the other tree’s branches before sliding off and disappearing against the carpet of leaves, the gold, the red, the orange, the brown. I want the leaf to brush across the other tree’s branch on its way down, to serve as a reminder, if only for a moment, of the feeling of twig on twig. I don’t want the other tree to feel guilty. It’s only the fact of my devotion that I want the other tree to feel, and not even all of it, just a bit of it, which is powerful, which is enough. But to feel the fact of a devotion that is, for the moment, detained, this is a form of melancholy, much like the fact that a leaf will fall and lay motionless before sinking into the earth and disappearing forever. The leaf bounces on an updraft. I look away.

The twentieth day I stop looking away. Who has time for petulance? The other tree is just as lovely as ever. The way the lowest, largest branches flow out of the trunk breaks my heart.

________________

Taken from here

Brackish

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been.  But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

 

Excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”

Liner notes de "Ten Silver Drops" - Secret Machines

“Imagine the worst thing you've ever said to a loved one. Now recall the instant you realize you can't take it back. Your stomach drops; your mouth tastes metallic. A short time later you're defiant. That naive, insolent, singular moment is thoroughly explored and set to crystalline music on Ten Silver Drops, the new album from the propulsive trio Secret Machines. Where their debut album Now Here Is Nowhere was tight, spiky, and well-defined, Ten Silver Drops is more spacious-its wide frequency spectrum giving it both frozen peaks and murky depths. Ten Silver drops was mixed with legendary engineer/producer Alan Moulder, who is known for his work with Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine and Smashing Pumpkins.”