Ground Into Moonlight (--amStrand: August Awaits)

---
Break away from louder company before
hot wind dies down into stale air, to fall
back in my hammock on th hollow'd shore

At full sluggish tide a sea of oil gleams flat
under the blue half-moon, tangled fast
in branches hung with sickly midnight

Aimless motion by any other name
would not rock you to sleep nor shake
me awake but nudge us lovingly o'er
the crumbling cliff's edge

I play catch-up at best & at worst
I second-guess my truest instincts false
to prop the mute fractured fort up
'round about the wary waiting child.

---
(Sept.'01- July '09)

For Hibbing's Age of Wicked

(Fragments for a Paternity Day Ballad -- apologies to Robert Milkwood Thomas)

From that very first morning
after I'd been well-spanked
I looked out to the tracks
quickly receding

From stormchild early warnings
I ran but by degrees
my feet too tight on soles
too loose for beating

I won't give up, you know I won't
I shouted at my elders
who rule the world in terror and in silence
I won't give up I will set sail
against the spiral raging in the balance

From earliest awakening
I stumble against rank
to bury my source back
into its gravel

We have no origins or seed
our sages all agree
there is no whole cloth
from which lives unravel

(I won't give up, you know I won't
I whispered at my schoolmates
who rule the world in terror and in silence
I won't give up I will set sail
against the spiral raging in the balance)

Remember O rememberer
your failures all in bloom
to press your sagging wrinkles
into towers

Remember O rememberer
some saving grace of youth
might yet scream stormy daybreak
into flowers

I won't give up, you know I won't!
I whimper at my comrades
who rule the world in terror and in silence
I won't give up I will set sail
against the spiral raging in the balance

---

Before Science-- a toss of the single die

...
' Un coup de dés n'abolira jamais le hasard'

O my buddies, buds of light
indefinite beyond the rising horizon--
how close are we to our outline's dissolution
in the final shore's tender collapse?

Will we stumble through full recognition
in the threshold time before
the void's absolute, unhinged embrace?

A coward's futile rehearsals
improvise a partner in the mirror
yet all action draws its arc & blade
over the shoulder, in shadowplay screens

I had dreams like muted echoes
that refuse to fade in the unmeasured west--
how far along this track might
they guard, nay, prod my passage?

What is left? What is done?
What is right? What is gone?
...

A Cada Paso Anticipado

...
Alquimia de incertidumbres:
ahora cuaja la fé sus ensayos
y marca un imposible recinto

Toda evasión se paga con dolor
de ausencias, las huellas de su ruta
no hacen senderos en la arena

Agota la mirada una última fuente
para sus fuerzas, fascinada...

¿Qué nos queda?
Ante el cálculo vacío, ¿qué
nos hiere de urgencia, perdido aún
todo peso y volumen significantes?

Hasta aquí traza la ciencia
su contacto de dudosa perspectiva
por un sendero en llamas

Antiguo miedo, un abrazo
y hacemos las paces al repetir
los ojos abiertos
...

Back on the Tarmac Again, or: Am I Born to Runway?

We have an expression in Puerto Rico I am not sure is local or old-country Castillian: 'Al que no quiera caldo, que le den tres tazas'-- which may be translated as, 'whoever wants no soup, gets three bowls full'.
After six years of resisting flying-- or postponing & cancelling already booked flights-- across the Atlantic; after I finally make it into Lisbon by sea; after I finally start feeling better & have my first day of three full meals enjoyed & digested, after a month exhausted by recurrent bouts of anxious colics & diarrhea, sometimes waking me from predawn sleep: I'm flying back to Puerto Rico for medical testing while holding on to a return flight back to Madrid by end of July, with feelings as mixed as a shaken, not stirred, dry Martini.
It all came to a head after calling home from my Lisbon hotel cubicle, at the worst possible time, during yet another spasm. Of course I pushed everybody's worry buttons, besides my own. Not my best idea. Now that I feel as if I could've held the course to Barcelona & tasted some outstanding small-producer natural & BioD wines at Slow Vitis (link to event program in Spanish) --tomorrow!!-- I half-regret my decision, but the whole mysterious workings of my emotional & physical health have been foregrounded so dramatically it feels like I'm getting an intense, in-my-face lesson in accepting & letting go. Trust. It's a bitch.

What's been going on, by way of backstory--

This is a current draft of my mission statement for my wine project in Mendoza:

AlTo RosSo is a personal wine project named to honor the memory of my late brother, Alberto Tomás Rodríguez Sobrino--

Alberto was an alcoholic who died in the late hours of May 21st, 2005, after being fatally shot in a confrontation with three officers of the Brevard Co. sheriff's office in Orlando, Florida.
Contradictory statements on the part of involved parties point to ambiguous circumstances which have never been fully explained.

AlTo RosSo proposes to make & market the wines that, in a better world, I would have wanted to share with my brother: subtle but deep natural wines, made to be part of a meal.

AlTo RosSo will dedicate all earnings, (apart from the strictest, minimal covering of costs) to a fund dedicated to a dual purpose: proactively, it will seek to match existing monies for the more effective training of law enforcement officers in non-lethal crisis management.
It also expects to be able to contribute in part to defray legal costs in cases where the use of lethal force is deemed egregious & excessive enough to warrant independent investigation of the exculpatory verdict of 'Justifiable Homicide'.

Funny, ha-ha, I'm still struggling with the Spanish version. It's a priority, as Hans Devloo agreed
to retail some of the Merlot I contracted at his B&B, Posada Cavieres, & I need to have a skeleton site with the brand registered as a domain name so he can print the URL on his labels.
Oh, & register as a not-for-profit whenever I get a break from medical testing in Puerto Rico.

Lisboa, what's been going on--

Big mistake to assume Princess Cruises would have some kind of robust wireless broadband on their ships. Could never connect to Skype on their wi-fi service.

My GI tract troubles exploded into crisis a couple of days after my arrival in Mendoza-- as if my mild irritable bowel syndrome had gone ballistic, waking me up middle of the night with anxiety near panic, colics & diarrhoea.
Was stupid & too casual about following some natural medicine prescriptions, got a little better, a little worse, in the end better enough again to let myself get talked into not cancelling my Transatlantic cruise, as I was ready to do.
Managed the nine days at sea on a strict diet & one glass of wine with my meals. (OK, OK, & Fernet-Branca well-diluted in seltzer after dinner)
It was good to digest some food & take solid craps after three weeks of having nearly everything flush out of me only minimally processed!
It also helped in no small way there was a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner on board with an accurate & attentive touch for acupuncture therapy. Thank you, Tamara!

...Then I took a chance on some quiche here at Hotel Ibis-- something like a Euro-MacHotel chain for business meetings-- & my near-permanent intercostal back spasm is screaming-squeezing heart-pumping hard.
This actually gives me hope my friend Leandro & Dr. Whatsis in Maipú are right & it's gallbladder trouble, rather than the worst of my anxiety-fueled fears, which focus on pancreatic trouble-- although my gallbladder showed up plain & clean in a dinky little sonogram I had done.

Sleeping on Argentino NSAID Oxadisten, aspirin, & Valerian root. I guess I'll fly home when I start running out. Hoping against hope I can find the energy & painkillers to make it to Slow Vitis in Barcelona this weekend. Hope dies last.

Terminal Pródigo

---
buscar la cura tal vez
perdido el estricto norte
puede aún dar con salud

como halla justa palabra
la coincidental etiqueta
de mercader o poeta

si es el hombre lo que hace
¿desconocerá por ajeno
al que otra cosa ejecuta?

cada respuesta es añico
sin medida para armar
crucigramas de respuesta

queda el papelón quizás
de un obligado libreto
a duras penas sentido

(la más clara voluntad
-- error o facilidad--
ejerce resistencia pura)

---

ELEPHANT TALK!