Ismael Garay Floating “I wish I was Bob Dylan he’s got a subtle mind.” -Robert Creeley I am free my love to chase the moon and to gather the white rice in my cups of rain, like this, with every madness that I please, to run away from life, to float in sweet intoxication, cold wine. I’ve spent my life walking unpaved roads. In the end it’s only the soul we keep, or so we’re told by Yoko and the like you must try harder to believe if not in God, then in the miracle of you. Come follow me into tonight, disconnect the wailing phone, you won't need it anymore turn off the soulless tv, meditate alone before you walk the dogs, and bring the wine. I have grown tired of the intricacy by which you swear, the crosses that you bear. When do we become pure and renewed, when can we fly like before, when do the promises come true and why haven’t we expired, turned into the ash with which we pray? In the soft days it was easier to let my hair down and run like teardrops, crazy with youth I have made these streets mine, our. Now it becomes harder to ignore the Greek tragedy of life the music sustains us the words help us see. Come with me my love, ask God to forgive me for the life I never led for the blood I never shed. In the blue waters of sky I can float, float I am free, my love, to float. These Words For Thich Nhat Hanh I want to be remembered as having touched a soul or two with these words these only words. I want what I say to matter to someone for these words to recognize themselves in your eyes, to come alive in your mind. I want these words to change horizons and paint the skies with hues of blue ink, black skull and red tie-dyed images dancing in your rear-view mirror . . . but what I want to say cannot be said here. Perhaps I don’t want to be remembered for these sometimes lifeless words, perhaps I want my silence to speak louder than I do, perhaps I want to teach by saying nothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . like this . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . or like this . . . . . . . . . . . I want the spaces in between these words to find their own meaning, to give life to others, to awaken what cannot be suppressed, I want these words to become little sages, pure soul scattered all over your pages and I want them to say nothing at all, and by doing so say it all. Ink Blots The white out runs down the sensual curves of the clouds. Only I can translate the twisted calligraphy of your soul. Only I can see the ink blots in the haze. Sometimes Sometimes I see my good side inside you, or I see new poems in your crystalline eyes, and it makes me smile as I sit here and I contemplate my white cat’s yawn the way it forms small clouds with each breath that rises and falls, rises and falls. The Lines That Scar Poetry scars my tender skin. Suicidal love notes, little blue jazz notes, fragments and rejected verses that didn’t fit into the forms and meters of your love. Lines Written in Dejection While Sitting In a Café and Pretending Not to Look Drunk I have lost my last cigarette and with it my faith. Old dollar bills are impotent dicks. Cocaine and cold rain, teardrops in cupped hands. We gather in the shadows praying for rain, cold to the touch, dark honey flows with the warm blood inside your river eyes, your thoughts have turned colder that the day’s old coffee still waiting on the table. The mayor in Kansas is high, but the local drunk reads William Blake.