REFERENDUM ON VOCATION AND THINGS
I dress in abundant sea to await the arrival of the hook
I am an imaginary hammock fluttering with the storms
I am a swing imitating the jowls of death
if I survive, it’ll be because I have fresh larvae lost in my belly
if I survive, it’ll be because I don’t start neither do I finish
it’ll be because I erased boundaries and I don’t belong to anyone anymore
I ‘m going to give time to restlessness, to the world, to my words
SHORT ODE TO WITTGENSTEIN
measure loneliness
by the breath of what is born
while everything dies
measure it, talk about it
as though it really hurt
and then, only then
scream and open the door
ESCAPING FROM MYSELF
tell me, oh God of the spectral concrete
with your larval and high-sounding voice,
the whys of my pilgrimage,
from what hole or worm-eaten pit
comes the soul that invades me
and previously possessed another man
why this watery distance
oh, great ferret of ill omen
why is this epilepsy too
in your sterile palace of sclerosis
perhaps it all boils down to publishing my role,
perhaps, shrinking me don, oh asshole
of a being a kidney that keeps on jumping
as if it were a fish recently pulled ashore
A DOG
I lost my voice in a swarm of sadness
and now it’s so dark
and the roads have been erased
and there are only stuffed owls
simulating strange psalms from bell towers
There is a boy with three dogs in the street,
what I could I say to him if my voice
is only a wild cry?
I would like to be a dog
let myself be petted, let the paths sprout
PROPENSITY TO GO ONLY TO MYSELF
between the crashing sound of the naked sea
and the peeling of the ruins of life
my voice prefers to grasp the crust of clumsy years
the incoherence of self-conscious love
forge secrets, even delusions
my voice prefers labyrinths
Correspondences
dentures to forge words
reshape sounds by spitting out stamens
cover the symbol and the idiocy of language
I feel the substance of a cliff
in train stations emptied by death
I dream of the tree of silence
in case you talked and wanted to get closer
you would prolong the distance, you would activate the absurd
my rotten mother-of-pearl corneas: my words
PALMIPEDS
stop flying and listen, it’s too soon to dilute
the suspension compass can be seen in the acacias
stay close for a moment, let’s agree on something fair
to discover, rather than assume, what we sing
when the meretricious branches hide us
or when our breath isbecoming belaboured against the air
or when we rock laughing from so much sadness.
FOREIGN TO BECOMING
I deduce, from the pale doves that resort to infertile calm,
that this is what living is
with the wholesomeness of an endless eclipse, I, pontiff of leisure,
build reflectors, place myself, like a cripple, at the level of the intellect
and deduce, by the rotting apple that sings and reverberates
that to live is
to flap your wings and come back, flap your wings, protect yourself from hysteria
GIVER OF LIFE
one day I will forget my immature voices
the offspring sullied with my shrillness
and I will find my way through disorder and apostasy
by the coolness of gentle underground days
and will slowly die, as the Man did
and the statues erected by my hands
will cast less whiteness and fanfare,
their corners will cry out my name
and I will send shipwrecks to their lives
RAFAEL ROMERO. (Guatemala, 1978) has published in print and digital journals in Spain and Latin America. His thesis “Lexicon, identity and Guatemalan ideology in La Puerta del Cielo and other doors, by Luis de Lión”, earned him an honorary degree of cum laude. He studied narrative at the School of Madrid letters. Founder of the magazine of art and literature journal Te prometo anarquía (I promise you anarchy). He has published Distensión del ansia (Distension of anxiety, Alambique, 2011, poesía), Génesis y encierro (Genesis and confinement,Culture, 2011, story), the fiction trilogy El elegido, Chichicaste, Zánganos (The Chosen One, Chichicaste, Zánganos, Alas de Barrilete, 2012-2014,) and Entelequias (e/X, 2015, stories), as well as the poetry plaquettes El convoy en el que habito se desplaza entre tinieblas (The convoy in which I live moves between darkness (Ultramarina,2013) and Orgánica palabra (Organic word Sin Tecomates, 2014). He currently resides in Logroño, La Rioja.
