Neruda

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Es tan corto el amor y es tan largo el olvido.

Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estas como ausente.

Pablo Neruda. 1904-2004.

long steps/ 8:45

Walking on revolution avenue...
he sees her from afar
a hypersexy blonde with dark roots
wearing sporting gear,
tennis shoes, a small back pack
a large handbag and
a pair of dark sunglasses (at night)...
coming across, looking into each others eye´s
going on different directions
they both turn around for a second glance,
at the exact same time.

He smiles, she worries...
he continues walking thinking that was silly
she continues walking in fear of getting caught
after five more steps
they turn back again,
girl-back stare
flipping spinal...
looking at each other for the last time... in doubt.
She knew-he knew what was in the bag.

Paulo.

role model

Senior year of college I asked my literature professor if she could suggest me a list of authors who were bilingual, to check their backgrounds and try to learn something from them. She gave me three names: Rosario Ferre, Maria Luisa Bombai and Carlos Fuentes (later I learned that Borges published in english too) One of the two female writers was Puerto Rican and had gone completely bonkers, shooting her husband and then herself. My professor was kind enough to provide me with a book of Carlos Fuentes "Myself with Others: Selected Essays". In the book Fuentes talks about many topics: political views, his academic background (which was very interesting considering he was one of the first mexicans to attend Harvard University) and also his passion for literature.

One of his stories that stuck to my head was when he was in elementary school in Washington and somehow came across this new student in class who had just arrived from Europe, escaping from the Nazi opression. He didn`t know what Jewish meant, he learned after other classmates began to isolate him.

I dont know if it sound "corny" to say, that Carlos Fuentes to me is my biggest literary role model (I really don´t care), but, I can honestly say I only wish to be as close as good as he is-one day; it will probably take me around twenty years; but, I still keep reaching for my english dictionary today and continue to struggle to put my self out there everyday. Everyone has to start somewhere-somehow, right? ... I will continue to follow the yellow brick road, to see where it takes me, until I get there. Paulo.

Permanent Midnight

I used to think that there was no way out, that I would just have to kill myself. When I was reeling in some locked bathroom, blood on my shoes, and someone banging on the door ... When my wife was pregnant, and I was sure to my sick soul that the baby would be born some eyeless mutant, vegetative at best, because of all the chemicals I had pumped into my veins before I slammed the seed that fertilized her blameless egg ... When I was in the hospital kicking and my eyelids scraped like barbed wire and my skin felt boiled in oil and every breath was a serrated knife drawn slowly up from my intestines through my lungs and out my gagging throat ... There was no other way.

And yet, here I am, north of one year needle free. Living life no longer like a human pincushion, seeing my beautiful little girl every afternoon, hating myself only because it seems to be my nature and not because, say, I've stolen a handful of crumpled fives from the purse of a women who made the mistake of thinking I was clean and really cared, or because I spent the money meant for milk and diapers on another fix.

The temptation is to be clever. To make it all wildly amusing. I published a story once, at thirty days off the spike, about doing dope in the studio where they shot ALF, banging so much shit in the sound stage toilet I heard the furry little puppet hissing my name and scratching at the door.

I imagined in my narco-dementia, that this three-foot furry TV star - no more than a puppet with attitude - could see right through the bathroom walls. Alf was out there, eyeballing all the blood I'd splattered on the mirror, on my fingers, into tiny, scarlet puddles at my feet. And he did not approve.

People thought my story was funny, hysterical. And I was glad. Just because I'd kicked junk, after all, did not mean I'd kicked being a junkie. And junkies lie. It's their primary addiction. Not that I never skirted cerebral hemorrage imagining a prime-time hairball pawing at the men's room knob while I geezed a speedball and tried to dab the bright red puddles off the floor with paper towels. That happened. But i wasn't laughing about it. I was staring in the mirror and squeezing back the worst tears in the world, tears that came out yellow because, by then, my liver was already telling me what my brain could not accept. I was dying. But not fast enough. I would have to live a little longer, to survive more horror. Which of course meant doing more heroin, the thing that made such horror endurable.

To some extent, this entire memoir is nothing but a history of WRONG SITUATIONS. Behavior so inappropriate it hardly qualifies as behavior anymore. More like some toxic, nonstop twitch .... At Moonlighting, on the Fox lot, I had a corner office where I routinely arrived every morning an hour early, locked the door, and fixed to make myself chipper before the arrival of my wholesome co-workers. Some people stopped to get croissants and cappucino on their morning drive. I stopped for dilaudids. But the transaction, however unlikely or illegal, became just as mundane. As did the whole daily ritual of procurement and consumption.

The thing is, all my heroes were junkies. Lenny Bruce, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Mike Davis, Hubert Selby,Jr .... These guys were cool. They were committed. They would not have been caught dead doing an ALF episode.

*excerpt from Permanent Midnight by Jerry Stahl.

**3** part II

The next morning was the beginning of her third day in there. it was also the wednesday that lisa had hoped for- for so long, since Diana had been helping out in the kitchen, Lisa quickly changed plans to use Diana as a key player in their escape. Nadya during the day went about her usual routine as always: scrubing showers, as well as lisa sweeping the long hallways. It all broke down in the kitchen when the truck began to unload and stack merchandise, ready to be put away in the reffrigerator walk-in.

When the driver asked for a signature from the person in charge the guard walked up to him ready to pick up the pen. Diana intentionally had stayed behind washing and fixing up- around that area to "accidentally" trip over and fall over the many cartons of milk that would last them for the next week. As she did that, it would buy some time for sure on the outside, with Lisa and Nadya crawling themselves over the large packets of meat and vegetables behind the truck, space was the issue at hand once inside. They had to hide behind all the boxes, way in the back, under the frosty air vent system. Kept quiet and motionless, waiting for the outcome.

Diana couldn't act innocent, because she didn't have te capacity of looking "not guilty", instead using her mechanism of defense chosed to act scared, as all of that milk was all over the floor spilled because of her fault. The guard began barking orders to be cleaned immediately, with Diana on the floor on her knees, a small smile was stretching on the side of her ear, making sure nobody else could see it, but her.

The driver went back to the truck and pulled the curtain, the cold darkness embraced Lisa and Nadya, it was at that moment when they began to worry - How long will they take to get out of there? they had not thought about that up until now. Hair quickly became braids of ice, lips full of blisters. The mind slowly shuting off. Anxiety invaded their frozen senses as the truck drove out of the facility.

When the guard figured out there was two inmates missing, it all came back to Diana, the guard knew Diana had something to do with it, and instead of beating her down for some answers, her punishment for not cooperating was getting to 'do' Nadya's and Lisa's duties together with her own, for the next two months, day in-day out, Diana found herself scrubing showers, washing dishes and sweeping the halls everyday for what she had done. That guard didn't get her on her first day, but she knew, she would soon have her eating from the palm of her hand ... she got her. Paulo.