If all has been written under the sun
I climb above the sun
and write
I write letters every day
letters traced exquisitely
letters finalized two hundred years from now
with a hammer’s clean-cut stroke
I write letters to myself
that I religiously respond to
letters that will surf the waves
and climb the mountains
carrying between their wings
the false message of my teeth
I don’t usually violate someone else’s correspondence
the only thing I’ve violated up to now
is the tomb of a Pharaoh
of the lowest grade
I write letters that I head
with a decapitated name
and which I finish off
with a languid signature
much like that silk stocking
hanging drained of blood
on the edge of my overflowing tub
send me back by return mail
the postage stamp that now I send to you
that stamp I plucked with tweezers
from my philatelic collection
a stamp I moistened on my tongue
in order later to attach it to
this lilac envelope
that will explode between your fingers
I am famous for doing whatever I like
I write letters because I feel like it
and because it’s what I do best
I have broken wills of steel
just by saying Citizen Kane:
I wish a streetcar named desire
would bring along on one of its seats
someone who will never dance with me
his last tango
I wish a streetcar named desire
would turn to virtual mush
my capacity to desire
the lover of the woman who loves me
above all else
because she is the executioner
who exhibits my head between her shoulders
she is the recipient who receives
the recycled half of all my waste
she is the one who now
burns incense at the entrance to her temple
and whips forth
the merchant selling
papal indulgences
at twenty percent off
I am accredited by my credentials
as a woman of a certain wisdom
my greatest expertise is in
the so-called Age of Enlightenment
though I would give all that I have
to wash away completely in the dark
the spots of the beast that I become
when I roam the villages
in which nakedness is a green animal
that must be eaten stripped bare
Through the empty sockets of my skull
heads of cattle come and go
branded red
with the sizzling initials of your name
Having passed too close to the sun
all the lies I’d stuck to me with wax
dropped from my sides
and I fell bellowing forth circular cries
into the deep hole in which I keep
the obituaries of all my falls
I am an exile from paradise
that is why I give birth in pain
to populate the Earth
My hips open
the ribs of my barge creak
and I give birth to a light
too unfortunate to be true
I am an exile from paradise
still I nibble at the cheekbone of the fruit
that caused this pandemonium
Still I tremble
remembering the tip of the sword
forcing apart the frozen jaws of my fear
I am a poet in extinction
and yet they still pursue me
to tear the fangs from my mouth
I will use my last drop of ivory
to defend to the letter
my right to trumpet over your bones
After sawing off my fins
they threw me into the sea
after beating me with oars
they stripped me of my skin
converting me into an haute couture overcoat
So that my dead sea does not stink
I cover it with a pious coat of oil
Cranes flew by
the crumbling spires
of my Gothic pride
The years flew by
and I did not migrate with them
but stayed perched on the hat
of an equestrian statue
until winter enfolded me
from ear to ear
In the sweet swallow of her sex
I am an exile from all places
that require formal attire
for one to access the delight
of savoring pink-shelled sea-food
generously sprinkled with wines
pissed forth by time
I settle softly
on the hardened nape of the bull
the bull shuddering
lets forth a long bellow
like the whistle of a train
crossing from one death to another in my temples
The bull settles on my head
beats the wings I lend him
and instead of embarking on a journey to oblivion
he sinks his head between my wings
and draws a red mole from my breast
I sleep tucking my beak
Into the damp fur of my armpit
I sleep while my fever hatches
the eggs of bald eagles
and the testes of hairless little birds
I sleep because my pity is of no use
because it cannot—among other things—
deflect even by a millimeter the arrow
heading straight for the eye
of the child crying pure cancer
I sleep on my back
my umbilicus spread wide
when sleep overcomes it
the ghost that hangs from the lamp
will drop down on me
to drool lecherous
over the grapes of my decomposing wrath.
For the first time I feel shame
walking naked through the streets
for the first time
I close my eyes so as not to see
how the adulteress falls
defeated finally by the stones
for the first time
I cover my belly with vegetal honey
and I sit and watch
how the ants go down my thighs
carrying pelvic honey between their teeth
I sleep like storks
concentrating all the weight of my dreams
on just one of my long legs
I sleep while an army of green ants
smash through
the worn-out gates of cities lost in the mists
I sleep while the cruelty of the invader
drags from house after house
men with arms raised
only to place them then face to the wall
where for centuries the viscous
music of their brains will drip
I sleep face down
while far from here the earth shakes
while concrete dinosaurs
flatten bodies from all the ages
against death’s crinkly putrid pubis
while dogs
go on sniffing the rubble
and throwing their howls to deaf heavens above
I know what happened to Baby Jane
and I know the one
who was afraid of Virginia Woolf
I know where the singers are from
and I know that I know everything
though that omniscience
has made me deeply miserable
After I was banished
I went to live east of paradise
I brought along with me a few belongings
two pairs of high-heeled shoes
a party dress
and a necklace of stinking oysters
quite without pearls
I rented an empty room
in a boarding house that stood
and still remains
quite close to the waves
There I sat down on the edge of the bed and
waited for hours and hours
until someone approached to tell me
that dinner was served
and the only thing missing was my betrayal
for the diners to dip their vile bread
in the death-sweat of the wind
I went down to the dining room and there was no one there
just me
seated opposite an Arab woman
covered to her eyes
by the abject mist
that covers those who in reality do not exist
I ate alone
behind me was a mirror
that exuded images
of lives that had never been
There I waited for hours and hours
until someone approached to say to me
that coffee would be served
in a salon adjoining my own apathy
After three days I left the boarding house
and began my lengthy wanderings
through desert after desert
All that time paradise was there
upon a submerged geological fault
that is why its blue shell
was peeling off
to the point where it finally sprouted forth
the deplumed angel of my banishment
I escape through the sleeves
of a straight-jacket
My anaconda hunger
coils in the sorrow of a centaur
and after swallowing down the torso of a man
it sobs between a horse’s flanks
I return to Eden
I reach the very gate of the lions
carrying on my shoulder a sack
of juicy viscera
I throw some morsels to the beasts
and the passage of return
stands clear
I find no vestige
of an ancient civilization
I find no ruins upon which to found
some other city that will not cast me forth
that will not throw me from its Gothic towers
into waters rife with memories
I do not find a single dirty plate
nor half-eaten scraps
nor an apron stained
by the death-throes of pheasants and hens
I do not find the slightest whiff
of filthy solitude
or the thinnest stench of bubonic rats and plague
I find, however, a slice of cheese
embedded in the rancor that now saves me
Twenty pounds lighter
my face stretched fresh by a scalpel
I return to Eden
but once again hysterical angels
thrust me forth
Now I must depart
I must discover
why so many turtles lie dead along the beach
I leave my handprint
on that fresh cement of anguish
I have my own star
Tomorrow I’ll go down that street
to spit
upon the five points of my name
In the cage of saber-tooth tigers
my exotic bird of paradise
lies there, still, impaled
