Registry of Air

Madrid 2003

I make lists of things that I've encountered.

Well, not always, I'm a dull sickle of truth.
And what are the memories that I'm struggling to preserve?

Ah, another Friday night
and I'm among the smoking solids and the undrinkable liquids.
Well, there I go again, I'm lying again! There are so many drinkable liquids.

With them I continue to maintain the unkindling of this body.

I make lists, registry of air;
everywhere, I am breathing over and over again.
Things--there they go, there and there, again,
always THINGS, always being without my approval.

In Madrid they say -'te vas sin nada!'
This flips my brain like saute because really,
What is this 'nothing' that I leave 'without'?
aceituna pits in a puddle of saliva,
piles of cenizas in the ashtray!

But before I leave, I make my lists.

In the apartamiento,
the cold water knob is stubborn
in returning backwards
and my memories
glower in long
lazy strides,

longing
to be free from
flesh and finally useless.

In la plaza,
sunlight comes
down upon my brow
like some divine drivel,
drooping and hollow beside
the car exhaust, groping
and blackening the holy curves
and facades of the catedrals.

I sweep the salon floor
because things get in the way

and all the lists I've made are becoming more and more
of what I've expected them to be:
closer and closer to useless.

Even this poem
is just a repositioning
of surroundings,

a trick like profundity,
my crawling aspirations,
the neurosis of our waifish,
unstoppable BEING HERE among
the many THINGS and NO-THINGS.

Its all nothing
that so many wreckless
pints of San Miguel can't fix

and the urge to take inventory
begins to fade.

Ashtray to the side of me,
pack of cigarettes and cantaloupe lighter
properly fitted into the adjoining
degrees of the bar-top,

and my lists, the registry of air,
they have been cast into the night,

stuck somewhere between
the cobblestoned streets

and the soft tissue of my
limited gasping mind!