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/