Alexis

Destroyer

2010-09-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

It is the light that annihilates orchids.
In the madness of the light, the violet membranes of butterflies are liquefied.
There is no difference between the light and ourselves.
Sometimes we are also afraid of becoming violent, afraid of throwing ourselves
from a bridge into the ocean to become as white as a crane,
afraid of becoming something that we already are – dark fugitives.
We take refuge in the massive shoulders of the buffalo.
If they search for us tomorrow, they’ll find us in the wounds of the sun,
forging dead lilacs.

A Moon Love Story

2010-09-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

In the fourth grade, my mother would kill lice
with her thumbnails.
She would find purpose in their deaths.
My grandmother would sit across from us with a book on her lap,
but she did not know if it was a book of poems or The Bible.

The Great Fall

2010-09-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

That morning in San Francisco
your mother broke her forehead on the asphalt
and hummingbirds spilled from it like small hurricanes.

Finally writing again

2010-06-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

Some Dark Trees

For Frankie Jay

Now that you have sound
open your radiant lungs
to the moon.
Bees rise from your chest
and become the color of light.
The lemon branches turn butterflies
into death,
and the ants fulfill their destiny
to become the coldness of the sun.

Life will be hard.
Sometimes you will be humiliated
by elephants with bleached foreheads.
Because you are discolored by the moon.
Because your brilliant shadow covers your flesh.

You watch our theatrical faces.
I long for their fondness. Their kindness.
They belong to everyone.
I understand their hard beauty.
The wounds that become them are
human creations
like wind or earthquakes.
I have already seen this in you –
that you will outlive mosquitoes.

New Poem

2010-06-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

29

They’re cutting the flesh of the whale, the diminutive fins, the blood.
They bludgeon, without mercy, their dark torsos –
their flesh jumping like the powdered flesh of butterflies.

You used to be an animal like me,
as big as a jaguar’s left lung or a child’s palm.

Laurrèn.
How will I ever feel alive again if you have divided
the wind between your teeth;
if you have tormented the bees to suicide;
if you have taken the bronze shadows out of my mouth.
And love?
What condition does it find itself in –
like a lizard in the early evening.

Part of a poem I wrote today

2009-04-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

I walked into the river that night
wearing your voice on my wrist.
it was the same year
we filled ourselves with fresh marrow.
I wanted to fall in love that summer.
you wanted to die with your body in blossom
and come back as the frozen stillness of the moon.

25

2009-03-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

the dead live in whispers

inside the grey barns
the owls hunt the moon
and carve dark temples
into the earth

wind struggles against wind

every night
the brave fall to pieces
they call the others
who arrive confused and hungry
like us
they fear our stranger’s voice

at work
heads crowd the hallways
and hands slumber, freeze
like carved stone

each failed attempt
becomes today’s disasters

2009-01-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

Existentialism

A diram was driven to suicide for seemingly no reason. He did not make the evening news or the internet.

Just Added To The Collection

2008-12-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

A Dissertation

Meanwhile, a very young diram lies in bed with a clara. Because it is his first time with a clara, he immediately casts his doubts: what if she doesn’t love me; what will her mother’s reaction be when she finds out that I fuck her daughter; is there going to be enough lot space for my car; what of affirmative action babies.

With the sun in his mouth and clara’s white wrist across his chest, the diram undresses the clara to see if the rest of her looks like him. Upon setting his eyes on clara’s breasts, the diram breaks into a flurry of tears that float unnecessarily toward the mirror, and they settle briefly on the clara’s open eyes, and then smash against the windows where the sun turns them into crystals, and an elusive tear singes the flesh of the clara. It is magnificent.

Never had the clara seen a diram weep such perfectly shaped tears. And stirred by her inherent competitiveness, the clara weeps and puts the tears in her hands to try to shape them into perfection. Later that night, after flooding the apartment building with his tears, the diram walks onto the street where he is suddenly struck by a car, and just like that he loses the pleasure of being able to tell the world that claras look just like dirams.

2008-12-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

Still reeling from this work of unrequited genius.

2008-10-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

8

the dream
inside my mouth

who looks like me

visions
the mechanized claws
of jaguar
murder the voice
of my chest
a hurricane of
severed eyes
veins on forearms
two shadows of
crystal
white crystal
white

who looks like me

and you lie
here
your left elbow
a dark elbow
of ants
deceased stars
tearing the sky
of sleepless
dreams

but life
is magnificent
white sunflower

no one
looks like me

dark scorpion
of dark earth
bite my
hands
in your
death
infancy

who looks like me

each time
you said no

only the
rich
understand the
suffrage of mirrors
but millionaires
weep
with their chests
open
golden
foreheads
a branch of wisteria
on icebergs
sunset camel eagle
three sunburned suns
and a glowing multitude
of pigeon undertakers

2008-10-10T10:21:00.001-07:00

This past month, I have realized that peddling manuscripts to open competitions is self-depecrating. It is no wonder that Bob Kaufman wanted to be anonymous, that Salinger's aversion for the process of publication robbed the world of his genius, or that Lorca's warning of "stupid fame" has, to a large degree, manifested.

And so, I have finished my second manuscript and a chapbook. I have a few more ideas. One more chapbook. One short story collection (no story will be longer than a page). And one more book of poetry that meddles in the world of hyper-surrealism. After that, I will probably stop writing. I suppose that is all I have to offer.

Today's Poem

2008-10-10T00:51:00.000-07:00

El viento en la isla

El viento es un caballo:
óyelo cómo corre
por el mar, por el cielo.

Quiere llevarme: escucha
cómo recorre el mundo
para llevarme lejos.

Escóndeme en tus brazos
por esta noche sola,
mientras la lluvia rompe
contra el mar y la tierra
su boca innumerable.

Escucha como el viento
me llama
galopando para llevarme lejos.

Con tu frente en mi frente,
con tu boca en mi boca,
atados nuestros cuerpos
al amor que nos quema,
deja que el viento pase
sin que pueda llevarme.

Deja que el viento corra
coronado de espuma,
que me llame y me busque
galopando en la sombra,
mientras yo, sumergido
bajo tus grandes ojos,
por esta noche sola
descansaré, amor mío.

- Pablo Neruda

Writing Some Prose

2008-09-28T23:03:00.000-07:00

A Lecture On How To Disassemble The Dead

The day he died, there were so many flowers that his body could not be brought out through the front door. They say he died with no pain. How they know this is yet to be determined. But his friends insist that he died with no pain.
He was found underneath his bed, five days after he had died, while on the fourth day of his death a search-party of five hundred volunteers searched the countryside, clearing brush and lifting every stone to see if he was there.
When the coroner arrived, he asserted that he had been dead for five days and that he had died with no pain, but offered no explanation as to how he knew this. He simply said, “No pain. Five days.”
As soon as death overcame him, his body grew long and taut, his head sprouted thick coils of wisteria, and from the edges of his eyes a yellow glow, timid and alive, ran down his torso. And his lips. Those bright lips. Those lips, the color of dark roses.
When they finally decided to take his body to the morgue, six hours later, his mouth had stiffened and filled with moss. The dead man was so beautiful that the coroner did not have the courage to deny anyone that beauty and grace. So, for twenty-five hours, the people just came through the window of the house, some twice, and they permitted themselves to think that the body belonged in a museum.
Instead of covering the dead man, the coroner wept and put his handkerchief in his hands, which were strong and big and warm and beautiful. And when he touched his shoulder, he felt the soft murmur of a pulse. And he could not help but think that the dead man was alive, that his blood sang in the voices of windows, that his heart, like the black stars of the cold morning, shone brightly, and he imagined that butterflies were opening the dead man’s sad eyes and that irises were eating his small, fine chest.
When word had reached the distant villages that a young man had died, the story had been terribly distorted. It was said that upon dying his face softened and, from his back, a set of golden wings sprouted, and from his wounds miracles spilled. And so, long lines of people, afflicted with the weirdest oddities, formed outside the dead man’s window: like the man who grew three rhinoceros horns from his chest or the voyeur whose eyes shifted from his face to the soles of his feet or the Siamese twins who shared a liver or the old woman who traveled farthest in hope of curing the unrelenting pain in her dentures or the child born with the face of an insect or the whore who shouted her catechism each time she made love. This carnival of people, however, found no consolation in the dead man because they realized that he was not a savior but an imposter.
Upon returning to take the body to the morgue, the coroner could not help but notice that the room was now dark. The window was a jet of water. The walls were large shadows. And the bed was no more. The dead man was more handsome than before. His eyes blossomed as large as sunflowers and a faint hum vibrated his mouth. Even in death, his handsomeness grew, and its scent rose and penetrated the tables. The turtles that were digging his chest scattered. His shoulders and jaw broadened. And his hair suddenly smelled of freshly rubbed lavender.
Hoisted on the shoulders of twenty-five men, the dead man was hauled through the dining room, where his feet, elegant and as white as marble, knocked over a vase of purple magnolias, prompting the coroner to decide that he was too beautiful to exit through the kitchen window, so he ordered that the kitchen wall be knocked down.
The men noticed that, instead of decaying, the dead man became heavier, less indignant, and that fair complexion that all dead men wear with pride gave way to that pink undertone of a child. It was incredible! His veins bulged with blood. His eyes reddened. His temples bronzed. His nails whitened. And his heart! His heart stirred like a million echoes.

An excerpt from a lecture that I am working on

2008-09-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

And yet, there has been no mention of Clara. At this very moment, she is stirring within me. And when Clara flows, she rises from our blood, gasping, deliberate, four jets of water streaming across the broken stars, and a solitary wrist flees from our closed wound. Clara is the dark trembling that silences steel pipes, that spirit – yes, that spirit! – that leads my hand through a multitude of headless prostitutes. This is Clara! This is the spirit of poetry! Clara is the spirit of poetry! As one writes, one feels Clara, a haunting and heady presence, a voice of history, the truth, anti-existential, the dialectical struggle of poetry. Under the possession of Clara, one can neither reach absolute truth nor true enlightenment. Therefore, the poet exists in a state of constant disorder, not entirely belonging to the fantastic world or this world. And in this disorder, Clara seeks refuge in our throat and, at the same time, becomes that blurry haze of asphalt that, as you near, travels farther, unreachable.

A Doodle

2008-09-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

2008-09-16T19:33:00.000-07:00

Here is the link for the poems that were published in The Acentos Review:

http://www.acentosreview.com/September_2008/Rivas.html

2008-09-04T15:05:00.001-07:00

I am so uninspired.

2008-09-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

The blonde girl’s pink light is a blank jasmine
and her hands are tiny skeletons of cherry.

Through the white laurels
that weep eternally.
Through the flat and barking rooftops.
Through the mummified courtyards.
Through the clear and procreating hands of American poets.
Through the pregnant libraries.

First Publication

2008-07-23T00:35:00.000-07:00

This morning, a package arrived. Given its bulkiness, I still did not give it much thought. Upon opening it, I encountered a 400-plus paged magazine, named Pembroke Magazine. At that very moment, I remembered that I have sent them some of my poems. To my delightful surprise, I found in the magazine 5 of my poems. Who would've thought? Hopefully they are the first of many.

New Poem

2008-07-16T16:03:00.001-07:00

Fruta

¡Amorrrr!

It does not matter
if your flesh devours my flesh,
if your blood, chemical blood,
cuts my fresh throat
and the canary of my ear.

I love you as I love
the poisoned branches that children
hide in the wide corduroy of the teacher’s suit.
I love you as I love
the multitude of crickets that knock on silver doors
in search of their long, half-eaten wings.

My love,
we all look for something.

But all we find is water sweetened
by the camel’s white torso,
a young boy who does not know the name of the turtle
and who, knowing only that he bleeds whenever he touches a carnation,
searches for terror in the old city of his dreams,
and we find, in the bright corners and in the pool of transparent shadows,
an old woman who refuses to weep with her eyes open.

The bed is a mouth of steel. Your thighs are tiny scales.
Your mouth is a school of persimmons. Your brows are my tears.
Your head is the silent cries of absinthe and the purple fingers of my forgotten hand.

The agony of your dark and worn forehead
is nothing like death.

Because the dead do not talk without the blood
of the dove that discovers the secrets of our wounds.
Because the dead must cut their throats
in order to decay in the pancreas of the duck.
Because the dead, worn by the silence of the bed
and tired from the movement of eyelids,
desperately think that the moon is an ant,
and the ant a pearl, and the pearl a naked tongue.

This is why it does not matter
if your blood is my blood.

Another Excerpt From Lecture

2008-07-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

The poet is never frightened by the image he sees in the mirror because he knows that it is not a reflection of who he is but a singular, shallow representation of what society and basic human instinct deem him to be. And, in many ways, the poet cannot shake loose these bonds because they are the very definition of his existence. As a result, image is often processed first, usurping all other instincts of love and honesty, appreciation and civility – and by doing this the poet wanders through the foreign world, lost, desperate, astonished, unable to find the pleasures of living in people. And so, he turns to imagination as his savior, to give meaning to his travels, to undue those chains that summon the darkest corners – where the newborn woman carries in her teeth the silent ivory and where the young boy who invents the rivers of dreams flees through the dry rain – and imprison the poet who seeks to recreate our faces before the blindness of reason arrived, chisel by chisel, bone by bone, voice by voice.

Another Excerpt

2008-07-10T00:24:00.001-07:00

I must not continue any further without mentioning Marylou Lewandowski, who, very early on, gave me the encouragement to keep writing. I remember sitting there, trembling with both fear and anxiety, as she read through some of the poems included in this collection. I still recall, very clearly, the excitement in her voice as she discussed the poetry. Oh, how her hands trembled with art and with the poetry that is hidden in our veins.
I will never forget her marvelous charm and those names which surrounded her, plastered against the walls of feverish anticipation. I remember that we all wept upon hearing the news that her tree had died. In a home so full of passion and love, it is difficult, almost impossible, to believe that death would drape its ponderous cape upon her glass of sparkling apple. That day, Roethke came alive and filled our brimming eyes with passion and shadow and suicide. I would say more but I think that the other things discussed that day should remain private. The following poem would have never come to fruition had it not been for that splendid afternoon.

Disappearance

For Marylou Lewandowski, a heart above the rest.

A little girl
informed me
of your death.

Now,
the poplars spill their blood
on the temples of children.
Rain seeks
the tears.
Horses grieve
in cabinets.
Poets weep
in jars.

My mouth is for sand.
My thigh is for dark needles.
My tongue is for candles of crystal.

The terrible
and eternal sadness
covers the maple
with corduroy.
The grass
pretends to be alive.

Oh,
how it hurts
to remember
the sparkling apples.
Oh,
how lovely
Roethke spoke
under the arch
of photographs.

Outside,
not a pine
in sight.

What does the wind say?

The world is a tiny drop.
The world is a charred feather.
The world is a river of candy.

A little girl
sang in the cradle.

The moon
brings your moaning
of lace.
The moon
throws garlands
at your waist.
And a cape,
protects you from
my dreams
and my imagination.

But your imagination
is my imagination.
My mouth your mouth.
My voice your voice.

I can hear the oranges
talking inside the white leaves.
I can hear the crabs
choking on the sun
that fills their mouths.

Our mouths are filled
with sun and moon.

Roethke!
Roethke!
Roethke is dead
but not his shadow!

With the grey violins,
tears gathered the heads
of dissected ants.

In the corners of cemeteries,
lilies beg for criminals
and saliva,
bulls shout
for handfuls
of ash,
oceans forget
their preserved temples,
stars die of agony,
forming streets
of cold fog
and thirsting strings
of guitar.

It’s true.
It’s true.
Roethke could not be found
in the veins of sparkling water.

The Prediction Of Clara

2008-03-27T21:57:00.000-07:00

A Shadow…

It is impossible to forget you
in the vein of the deer,
in the broken vein of the sky,
and I hear a landscape growing in your ear,
where ants commit suicide with their mouths filled with salt,
where the camel’s blood smashes its tonsils against sheetrock,
where the children confess the murders of yesterday’s crickets,
where the fountain seeks the blonde eyes of the volunteers,
and where the magnolia tree weeps inside the tortured fig of the quail.

Twenty computers opened their mouths of burned silver.
Women guided their guilty hands over poisoned throats
and opened the veins of children where it rained shadow and closed lilac.
Bowls of ripe fruit were seeking the blood of mermaids in the heart of the toad.
My death grew and slept in the trunks of dark trees
and near the fountains of moss and marble and tongue.

There is no refuge to be found in the dark lily of the horse,
in the stains of your white walls,
on your dark breasts that moan under the blinds
and cover the sun in vomit and one dried pencil,
in the tasteless marmalade of your profile.

Ancient windows were shouting for the poet’s death.
Deformed elephants, with dead eyes and cold tongue,
celebrated the birth of a thousand dying virgins.
And in the giraffe’s liver, a child wept without his shadow.

Oh!
Worms of dead wounds!
Oh!
Cold column of ash!
Oh!
White street of dull pink, of trembling skulls!
Oh!
Butchered skull without death,
without the putrid mouth of flower,
without the hummingbird’s frozen wings!

There is always a rainbow
on the brows of war
and a pool of live poets.

A Lecture On How To Film A Short Movie

2008-02-22T00:38:00.000-08:00

PROLOGUE

1. Horses vomit – (0:00-0:10)
2. Butterflies resurrect – (0:11-0:30)
3. Caskets weep – (0:31-0:40)
4. Children paint on cabinets – (0:41-1:41)
5. Still shot of aluminum fence – (1:42-2:00)
6. (Camera not moving) Women having a conversation – (2:01-2:30)
7. Orange tree – (2:31-3:00)
8. A procession – (3:01-4:00)
9. Laurrèn’s mouth in profile – (4:01-4:30)
10. (Camera not still) A small building – Filmed in blue film – (4:31-5:00)
11. A naked woman being viewed through a window – (5:01-7:00)
12. A theatre with no actors (Red Curtain) – (7:01-7:45)
13. A mute choir – (7:46-8:30)
14. A bouquet of roses and a young man looking at each other – (8:31-10:00)