Daring One

As always with poems, some of the nuance of her writing is lost in translation. Nonetheless, I think the spirit comes through. One thing remains clear, for those of us who choose the red pill, here we are in good company.

The poem by Rosario Curiel is below:

Daring One

I dare to say that I like life
like I like that tear that runs down the cheek amid
days of fallen eyelashes.

I dare to say that I’m happy.

I don’t say it too much, lest the goblins of the catastrophic give chase and
tell me it’s my imagination
or collective hysteria of ideas in troupe. 

I train myself every day to see the sweet in the bitter

though sometimes it’s hard to sort out the openings from the waiting hours
the rocks from the especially designed moments
so that I stumble
and lament
and lick my wounds
that I’ve known for so long.

I’m a little bit slow

in this stuff of living,
but I’m happy to confirm
that this little crazy girl looking at me since I was three years old
or seven
and who believes that doves are vampires
or that she may pretend to fly
that same woman who collects wrinkles like they were
her treasure map,
who greets the close of each year content with the knowledge that,
if she didn’t
she’d be dead.

I dare to say this is what life is about: to continue alive.

More or less happy, more or less nervous with what we want to procure through the
cracks of time.
We knead through moments as if they were the daily bread:
it’s so simple knowing that history is about nothing more than explaining to oneself
that, when we come out of all the hells
of all the emotional labyrinths,
of all the places that tell us we exist and we defer visiting,
of all the labels we wear over time,
we know that any foolishness
is better than the silence that explodes between our fingers.

Sometimes you don’t speak fearing the monster of the unknown will devour you and turn you into
little beings that shuffle along dragging their feet,
bleeding until screaming,
hopeless.
I too bleed and scream.
Sometimes I scream so feebly that it seems I’m in silence,
but don’t be deceived:
at my feet are spread out flowers so sick to speak
that, every once in a while, I dare
to go out into the field of letters
and to write these verses.

Published by Rosario Curiel, Saturday, 9 February 2019
http://rosariocuriel.blogspot.com/

Loving the Rictus

I believe this poem holds a truth beyond the obvious fact that tests and difficulties help to make us who we are.

Recently, I felt a rictus of unbelief, the feeling when, perhaps due to a misunderstanding, an ally mistakes you as an enemy and, recalcitrant, they remain entrenched. At first, I was saddened by the loss. Then I remembered what really matters. It is the minutes and hours I spend with my kids and my wife, hours and minutes that make up the days and years, forming bonds of love that last more than a lifetime, generations. I am the father of one daughter and five boys. I believe the work of undoing centuries of male chauvinism is done at home: it begins with the education of our children, by our own example. 

Sometimes, I just smile in appreciation of some moment, a conversation with my teenage daughter about school, playing with number and letter blocks with our little ones, helping my teenage sons with their music. I take stock of these abiding reminders of what really matters.

Below is the poem by Rosario Curiel:

Loving the Rictus 

I’ve witnessed the birth of the Last Humans
agreed in word with the Cry of the Wind,
clinging to the rupture of the last questions
because
for a long time, they’ve forgotten the last answers.

I’ve seen what is constructed by worn hands,

the fleeing in the street of the battalions of pain,
the crackle of the bones of the instants in which we
believed ourselves gods.
We create gods. We want them to respond to us,
but reasons never come down from the empty sky.

I have lived beyond myself.

Also, from you.
Because in this we go together:
when you cry, I think of giving you my hand
and believing in the beings that I believe.
Those that,
even living huddled behind the door,
tearing off the skin of their fingers in strips,
they know that
if you bleed, we all bleed
and if you laugh
-ah, if you laugh-
then you have discovered that,
behind the rictus of the lost days,
there are endless flowers spread at your feet
so that you don’t get rid
of that part of you that’s not beautiful like a pink dawn
but
rather
something that’s cooked in the vapor of the breath
of the bitter hours.

Published by Rosario Curiel, Friday, 16 November 2018
http://rosariocuriel.blogspot.com/

Candid Litany

We are the children of the dogs who didn't want to bark,
the bellows from the wings that hell exhaled
under the engines of that plane in which your grandfather cursed
from the World War.

We are the children of the funerals that smiled at death
with the murmur of incendiary soundtracks
tightened against your leg,
steeled in the corners of any rebellion.

We are the mud that you don’t remember
but which lives within you when,
in the middle of nothing,
you ask perplexed why we’re not all dead.

We are, in the end,
that hypocritical tear that you did not shed

that day that you let pass by waiting for better days

the grimace of envy drawn on your coffin:

all you, dying meat,

brilliant skeleton of past lives

in the shadow of young girls in a death rattle

eager for the beak of the albatross they drag and promises them unreasoned love;

those that, now, at this moment

claw at their soul thinking if,

for just one instant,

they're going to stop being the face of their youth
burned at the bonfire
of the silk prayer that embraces
them in a choke hold
while, in the not so distant future
their twin sisters are laughing.

Published by Rosario Curiel, Wednesday, 18 April 2018
http://rosariocuriel.blogspot.com/

Fresh Air

It’s hard to breathe and the world

is painful: 
it rambles on and you quiver along the tides of hell or

winter

or

of all the furious hearths that suddenly have decided that the world is not your house

that you are merely leased to your days

that your skin is not your skin 
but only the shell of your days.

Then, suddenly,

you go beyond yourself 
and without hope to survive till the dawn of the hours in white,

but life is a voyage

from which you always return before you disembark.

We are all so superior

and so great

enormously

minds

brilliant that

life becomes small and we dream

of breaking the limits

while perhaps

the only thing that is worth anything is the trembling of watery eyes

before what really matters, to be present, to be here.

Along the way, you cast your burdens:

the self-pity, the fire of rage, the cold of leaving

toward that place where you are no longer more

than the pure longing for

fresh air.

Originally published in Spanish by Rosario Curiel.

http://rosariocuriel.blogspot.com/2017/12/aire-fresco.html 

Eyelash

The minute you get to the other side of the day,

you discover

that you lose an eyelash like time sheds its skin,

like snakes change with the year.

Time passes, yes. You are just a falling leaf.

You fall apart

You disappear in your own humanity

–that which lets you know that this story comes to an end at some point-,

but you know that you have a clear role to play

to navigate,

only one card

in this game:

to struggle

against the sea current of all your deceptions,

of your apathies and empty days,

of your fears and your brushes

with the little hurricane

that each day threatens at the rim

of your little morning cup of coffee,

that boat that you throw yourself into without thinking too much

and without treading unduly

the future

stepping 

stones

of your

counted

days.

Originally published in Spanish by Rosario Curiel, http://rosariocuriel.blogspot.com/2017/09/pestana.html

I, orc

Forbid you all to think

The world will go better if you don’t think.

It will all get easier.

You will all be happier.

It will rain when it should

The sun will be a conveniently

domesticated star.

Join the hoard

Abandon all attempts at

insubordination

Turn on the television

Devour the celebrity gossip

Live in the rubble

Show the monster inside of you:

nothing is more beautiful than to be

united in the rottenness

and the common

dismemberment.

Originally published in Spanish by Rosario Curiel, 20 October 2012

https://rosariocuriel.blogspot.com/2012/10/yo-orco.html?spref=fb

Your Mask

You purse your lips and you force

a smile due to the tiring days.

You arrive late going somewhere. Always.

Along the way it happens

that someone hurt you

you hurt someone.

We are the grimaces from all the days in vain

from the broken hearts

the beliefs

and the doubts

from the drowned hopes

in the clay

from the days that always seem like too much.

Life is a Great Theatre, they say,

but the price we all pay for it

are the confusing  passages

the aching of tired feet

the look that knows that behind the hand comes the knife or indifference.

Behind the eyes the truths are revealed

the brutal ones and silly truths

with which we fill our days

saying tomorrow is a new day

that this will not be in vain

when, in truth,

we are that fool that struggles against gravity:

that which drags us around the corners of doubt

through the shards of lost desires

in the alleyways of any scene.

We do not have daylight.

Just in case, we go disoriented behind the lantern

of whomever we believe will save us

from ourselves.

And we learn to act.

Each day. Each life

Just to forget

that if your scene comes up you don’t return the same

and that,

if you bow, they never applaud enough

they don’t even see you

they don’t even boo.

You are just that shell of a person that hopes to be somebody when you go through the theatre door

when the function is over.

You are your own mask.

That which, from so much feigning, it has stuck to you

and now you struggle to give yourself

that touch of truth

that we look for

when the function begins.

Published originally in Spanish by Rosario Curiel, 27 March 2017 

http://rosariocuriel.blogspot.com/2017/03/