POEM FOR CESAR VALLEJO

Man, in you I climb the depths of my solitude
discovering that the fabric of my flesh is rent even,
digesting intestines, candles for corpses, defenseless, priceless.

From this vantage how should I view you knocking on my walls,
dropping solid objects on concrete floors? Certainly you annoy me.
I want to meet you. Tell me your name. Talk to you.
To me you are a child who only desires to play.
I will pick you up, tell you stories, offer you
my undivided loyalties. So what then? You and I, we
are just alike, as I see you, bulbous, bland, stocky
and farting furiously. So much the same are we
that I suppose we have already met in the bathroom mirror.

Since I've known you every day of my life, I know
I do not know you at all. Your voice vibrates
frequencies, of which I catch no meaning. I must,
therefore, understand by pressures of blood pulsing
through the auditory canals as you go tap tapping
with your percussion and auscultation on my knees
of pure dance called work and unfathomable sadness.
That is the reason I am so happy. Because every tear
refracts a different angle, until I realize I am

made of sponge, ready to be lit inside a lake
of alcoholic stupor. Life is an onion, yellow as piss,
peeled off layer by layer, stinging the fingers,
stinking up the whole room. I attest to the fact that
you have a mother, and so what if she is dead?
Why are you resurrecting her only to kill her again? If
we are everything we ever were and ever will be, we
are also everything we never were and never will be,
and what will become of us no one is telling.

My heart beats for you passionately, you keep me going,
I love you ever so tenderly, comrade, brother, in your essence,
I hate you, despise and revile your humors and bad habits.
In short I don't give a flaming fuck about you.
We are living, we are alive, we are so much with life,
we are already dead, we've never been, we are ready to live.
Through these hands passes the commerce of the cities,
mountains, trees and airplanes through these organs. If
I am able to look, light may define some discernable shape. If

sight fails me, I am navigating by temperatures.
The extremities are cold, but the viscera warm.
I want to tear you down, make you hopeless
so you can feel by degrees what you are made of.
I want to build you up with material certainty
so that, together, we may make of this a world.


--David Joseph

POEM FOR CESAR VALLEJO

Man, in you I climb the depths of my solitude
discovering that the fabric of my flesh is rent even,
digesting intestines, candles for corpses, defenseless, priceless.

From this vantage how should I view you knocking on my walls,
dropping solid objects on concrete floors? Certainly you annoy me.
I want to meet you. Tell me your name. Talk to you.
To me you are a child who only desires to play.
I will pick you up, tell you stories, offer you
my undivided loyalties. So what then? You and I, we
are just alike, as I see you, bulbous, bland, stocky
and farting furiously. So much the same are we
that I suppose we have already met in the bathroom mirror.

Since I've known you every day of my life, I know
I do not know you at all. Your voice vibrates
frequencies, of which I catch no meaning. I must,
therefore, understand by pressures of blood pulsing
through the auditory canals as you go tap tapping
with your percussion and auscultation on my knees
of pure dance called work and unfathomable sadness.
That is the reason I am so happy. Because every tear
refracts a different angle, until I realize I am

made of sponge, ready to be lit inside a lake
of alcoholic stupor. Life is an onion, yellow as piss,
peeled off layer by layer, stinging the fingers,
stinking up the whole room. I attest to the fact that
you have a mother, and so what if she is dead?
Why are you resurrecting her only to kill her again? If
we are everything we ever were and ever will be, we
are also everything we never were and never will be,
and what will become of us no one is telling.

My heart beats for you passionately, you keep me going,
I love you ever so tenderly, comrade, brother, in your essence,
I hate you, despise and revile your humors and bad habits.
In short I don't give a flaming fuck about you.
We are living, we are alive, we are so much with life,
we are already dead, we've never been, we are ready to live.
Through these hands passes the commerce of the cities,
mountains, trees and airplanes through these organs. If
I am able to look, light may define some discernable shape. If

sight fails me, I am navigating by temperatures.
The extremities are cold, but the viscera warm.
I want to tear you down, make you hopeless
so you can feel by degrees what you are made of.
I want to build you up with material certainty
so that, together, we may make of this a world.


--David Joseph