The Droning Nature

My body hurts from the punches

life is throwing.

An onslaught of haymakers

are trying to finish off

what work with little reward have done…

and are doing.

Hands aren’t calloused yet,

but my soul is buried in scar tissue

and my feet…

those dogs are barking.

I drink some coffee

from a place I tend to frequent

when the sun starts to descend.

Rather than finding my center,

my jaded conscience

is now trafficking in unfiltered thoughts

and unfettered stream-of-conscience

internal dialogue

(when not chain-smoking.)

There is a line in The Old Man and the Sea that goes:

“A man is not made for defeat…

a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Then, I remembered

that Ernest Hemingway took his own life.

Tomorrow is payday,

which for a moment,

lessens the pain of life’s punches. 

©2012 José-Ariel Cuevas

Nonopiod

I step; I bounce.

I’m shot out like a Bulleit.

Another one and I will live again.

Rising from death like the phoenix:  From the slave to the free.

My night wakes up faster than a sunrise and they walk in to brighten the day.

My turn.  The table is set for me to make my run, so I smile like a devil and pull the trigger on cue…

In Search of Destiny (Ending Up Where I Always Do)

The weather is cold,
bitter,
more bitter than my coffee,
more bitter than your
average, jealous fellow.
My hair is jostled,
my wavy,
in-between-haircut hair
moves like a spastic drug addict.
The waves become loose curls.
I pass by this store front
that has been vacant for a while now,
a clump of dirt (maybe it’s a nest,
maybe it’s just a clump of dirt)
dangles and dances
with each thrust of wind.
Couples walk by—
hands firmly held,
stares, distant and cold.
What’s left of an alt weekly
tumbles on by,
momentarily snagged on my foot.
With a gentle kick,
it becomes free,
continuing on with its random destination.
My destination is also random,
or maybe, I am looking for somewhere to go,
or looking for someone
(my destiny, or a random fuck.)
But what I find is time running out,
and where I find myself is the same place
I know where I can be me…
with some coffee,
three cigarettes,
a half-read book
and an iPod in need of charging.

 
©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas

Nepenthe

As I walk home, I hear the leaves blowing across the street.

My childhood comes rushing back, fleeting, grasping, like a bum in the last desperate throes of a Central Park November night. 

The horse kicks me in the arm.

The child is dead, and the leaves  rustle across the San Francisco street in the dark.

A long day and a bullet is on my trail.

Fuck It All

Fuck it all

Fuck it again

I tried to fuck her, she wouldn’t have it

I could’ve taken it, but that just doesn’t get me off.

So I drank in the park until it was time to

I got a ride back from a nigger and a spick

They thought it was funny as fuck.

A white boy in a truck.

Chase the dragon with a demon of noise.

A beer and a brutality.

She thinks I’m cute, so I drink in a park with her.

I’ll fuck her in her house, once, maybe twice, but I leave when we are done.

My best friend doesn’t know what to do with me, so he stays at home and studies and paints.

Your best friend has his kids and his wife.

What do we do, to kill the pain, to kill the brain…

I listen to the screamers, when all I want is the pain.

The regret.

Work and school and family and everyone wants something from me…

Kill them all.

Kill the rich, and kill the cops and kill the bosses till there’s no one left to kill

Can I get a witness?

What more do you want from me?  I’m just a fuck up who’s too smart for his own good.  My father says I am my own worst enemy and I hate the fact that he’s right.  I didn’t talk to him for a decade because he was right, and I don’t know why I do it now.  You all want me to be something but I don’t know how to be anything but the fuck up that I am so fuck you…

What do you want?  I just want to fuck this girl, there isn’t anything more interesting right now and I don’t care about tomorrow…

Nothingness Became a Foregone Conclusion

I think about love quite often, 

but right now, said thoughts are

more empty than sincere,

like a bus that goes from stop to stop

collecting more urban grime than passengers.

My body longs for that touch,

that otherworldly connection.

My soul writhes underneath my skin and bones;

shaking, trembling like a junky,

or like an alcoholic three days into sobriety.

Love is a visceral feeling

that can be confused with

lust and/or wanting

of the most baser instincts:

poets write free-verses about it;

broken-hearted singers sing about it;

painters have painted abstract representations of it;

average people with no artistic inclinations

have been driven to commit murder over it

(wanting to be the first and the last.)

I stare at my phone,

I pick it up,

I look to see if anybody has called…

nothing.

I go through my contacts list

and I stop at a number;

a shred of pride is the sole thing

that keeps my trembling left hand

from hitting the green “call” button.

Existential crisis averted… or prolonged.

She was never mine to begin with,

but her sweet nature (and similar tastes)

made me want her more.

The way she said “hello”-

in her uniquely dulcet toned voice-

was sweeter than the average singer

of an indie synthpop band.

(In my imagination, 

she either played a Casio keytar,

or a Theremin.)

Then, without warning,

the drifting began.

Maybe we were star-crossed,

doomed from the start.

Maybe we were never anything to begin with.

As I drifted further and further

from her consciousness,

my voice became an echo

and my body became a blur.

Nothingness became a foregone conclusion.

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas

…On the Brink of Becoming a Nihilistic Pose

Love is not dead,

it is merely locked in its room,

listening to The Smiths

and scrawling the word “why”

all over the walls

with a felt-tip marker.

When it is in seclusion,

it gives the impression

that it is nothing more than a myth,

like a yeti,

or the lost city of gold.

Love is real.

Love is fragile.

Love hangs on to promises

that are more likely to be broken

than kept.

Love strums its acoustic guitar,

penning over-wrought lyrics

that straddle the line

between romantic angst

and cheap, disposable pabulum.  

Love has a self-belief

that is tenuous,

always on the brink

of dissolving into a

nihilistic pose. 

Love is not dead,

it is in its room,

on the verge of becoming a skeptic.

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas

Nephelokokkygia

We met in a train wreck: her car blocked the tracks. 

She stood there and smoked and watched as it burned, licked her fingers and forked tongue and grinned at my sin while the barbs in my flesh stood in defense. 

I offered her whiskey; she offered her bed, so I laughed at my fate while I drank from the stars and ate of the Earth while Mercury rises and falls to the wind. 

Visions of fireflies in rusted out cars cold sleeping in hayfields still flickered and flashed with the words that she said.  

She paused and she screamed, two fists full of hair, and dropped to her knees as the blood she still wept on ochre stained lips showed how I lost her embrace.

Her eyes were long dead before I flew to the sun, molten wax searing flesh as I stared at the passed and forgotten forlorn who sang us the songs of rebellion and scorn.  

The leaders of violence sent wolves to our lair while she rose with the ashes and I gave in to rust for Gabriel’s cries kept the sirens cold silent. 

The felons and jokers all trembled and wept for her laughter and malice were all we had left as she fell to the earth when my dried blood displayed:  The deal had been done. 

I rock on my heels and curse at the sun for it lashes so cruelly at all I have done; the last of her screams still run down my back, her fingernail traces still glistening red. 

The scars of my scars pretend a defense and begin to shut down the feelings I’ve left while the time ran the night all blistered and burned and full of hindsight.

I cradle her hands as her bones turn to dust and the flames in her eyes burn the cities all down as black holes turn to devils and God trades the phoenix for whiskey and wine. 

Cigarettes are burning regrets of a life that’s fading faster than my memory, and these blue and fading tears will wash away dead flowers and the Ferryman.

She tattoos her soul on the back of my neck with her spike in my arm and her rope at my throat and her lust in my heart and her death on my mind: remorse swallows guilt as I chase down the dragon.

The pinch and the press are forgiving and patient, one at a time the fireflies die and clovers cast off  their seeds to the wind where the children are eaten by butterflies creeping. 

She climbs back to her feet and looks down at my grave, then smiles and whispers:

“I told you I saved.”

Solipsistic

I am a caffeine junky

that sits alone

at the patio of a café, 

in a silence occasionally broken

by the writhing and spasmodic fit

of a body that wants to

jump and shout in a way

familiar with Methodists

and snake-handling Christians.

On my second cup,

I am sipping it gently,

uttering to myself,

“I like my coffee like I like my women—nerve-fraying.”

(My nerves are starting to resemble

the cuffs of my well-worn blazer.)

On my third cup,

the sips are more frequent;

the hands, more jittery.

I start to think about time,

how it passes people by,

how the hours overlap the minutes,

leaving the seconds behind to eat dust.

A fourth cup beckons me,

but the mind is in overdrive,

going at a million thoughts per minute,

thoughts that are jagged, disjointed—

a stream of consciousness

barely contained by puckered lips

and self-awareness.

Fidgeting, I reach for a cigarette

with a twitchy eye staring to my left,

weary of the same scavengers

with their same refrains

(“I ran out of smokes and the stores are closed.”)

Today has been hobo-free, 

and aside from an occasional

 misanthropic fit,

I really cannot complain.

But my mind, my mind is racing,

racing somewhere,

trying to keep a date

I did not even know I had.

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas

In Search of the Fabled “Her"

My mind is in the gutter;
there with lipstick-ringed cigarettes butts,
withering leaves and discarded parking tickets.
It rests where it does,
soaking up the murky runoff
of rain water, spit and wind- (and tire-) deposited dirt.
Those grounds are lower
than the desperation of a man
whose celibacy was thrust upon him.
That desperation,
coupled with the lingering sensation of his last sexual encounter,
has become his Sisyphean burden.
I look around to see where she is,
but where she is
is not within my sight.
The streets are cold and vacant
(where it matters most);
there are people, but they still feel empty.
I start to walk,
in search of my destiny,
in search of the fabled “her”.
I end up at a crossroads
where existential doldrums
meets creativity.
I stand there
looking…
          looking…           

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas