Pasos en la azotea

Tengo ganas de mentir
y de decir que todo va bien.
Que la lluvia no moja cuando uno sale a la calle,
que los vagones del metro viajan vacíos a partir de las 5.
Tengo ganas de aceptar
y pasar la lengua por los labios menos insensatos.
Que el café quita el sueño y que sin sueños la vida no sabe.
Que muero de ganas de que existas y que no sé siquiera quién eres.
Tengo ganas de tener ganas,
de añorar vorazmente otra vez
y que cuando oigamos pasos en la azotea
no sepamos qué hacer;
si reír o llorar,
o temblar de miedo.
Ante lo inminente y enorme y monstruoso
y hermoso y triste e inevitable
que es el amor.

A Room With Stuff

It came as a sudden realization the kind of things I pile up in those four walls I've come to call my own.
It's just a room filled with stuff.
Some days, meaningless.
Some days, so heavy, absurdly drenched in value.
It has a regular bed with regular sheets (which are never in their right place) and a regular, humble pillow with a regular, humble pillowcase.
A modest, white wooden closet with perhaps too much space for the clothes I carry around.
There's also a dusty carpet in all its grayness ridden with the smell of troubled sleep.
And coffee.
And old books lying on the floor.
There are a lot of empty spaces to fill.
The nights come and go and the moonlight sometimes sneaks through the blinds,
From the lonely window up to the corner where I lie down and close my eyes.
The same corner where Sophie and I used to close our eyes at the same time,
where we would rehearse old crimes,
where we would complete beautiful circles.
And then there's this cardboard box loaded with stupid souvenirs
Like photographs with letters written in the back, and chess badges, and old concert tickets.
A broken camcorder and a few casettes with images of a younger me.
I've locked them all away.
I've sealed them in that forbidden container.
And turned off the lights.
And tried to get some rest.
But I can't seem to understand why this place resonates with so much.
And every breeze feels like a ghost coming back to haunt this memory-mined territory.
Why, if at the end of the day,
it's just a room with stuff.

El ático del Universo

Félix tomó todos sus miedos:

sus angustias,

su atroz desesperación

y su sed por cosas nuevas.

Escribió una carta, 

leyó un libro, vio una película.

Tomó muchas tazas de café, 

fumó mucho, bebió mucho,

fumó mucho, lloró mucho,

caminó mucho, oyó mucho,

durmió mucho, durmió poco, 

rió poco, habló poco, 

sonrió poco, se distrajo un poco,

viajó otro poco, cambió un poco,

miró un poco, intentó un poco, 

se tomó a sí mismo con ligereza, un poco, 

y del mundo que lo rodea, se burló un poco...
quizá más.

Agarró todo eso que nubla y que dificulta y que duele muchas veces

y lo encerró en el ático del universo

de su mente intranquila de dos filos.

Y se sentó en una de las sillas de la mesa que alguno de los inquilinos había donado a la vecindad.

Era un jueves inerte del mes de julio y hacía frío en la tierra debajo del cielo.
Acababa de llover.

Goodbye, Blue Monday!

Dwayne was silent for a while. And then he told her haltingly about a trip he had made to the headquarters of the Pontiac Division of General Motors at Pontiac, Michigan, only three months after his wife ate Drano.

“We were given a tour of all the research facilities”, he said. The thing that impressed him most, he said, was a series of laboratories and out-of-doors test areas where various parts of automobiles and even entire automobiles were destroyed. Pontiac scientists set upholstery on fire, threw gravel at windshields, snapped crankshafts and driveshafts, staged head-on collisions, tore gearshift levers out by the roots, ran engines at high speeds with almost no lubrication, opened and closed glove compartment doors a hundred times a minute for days, cooled dashboard clocks to within a few degrees of absolute zero, and so on.

“Everything you’re not supposed to do to a car, they did to a car,” Dwayne said to Francine. “And I’ll never forget the sign on the front door of the building where all that torture went on.” Here was the sign Dwayne described to Francine:

"I saw that sign," said Dwayne, "and I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for - to find out how much a man could take without breaking."

-Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
Novelista norteamericano. En Breakfast of Champions (1973).

Is tomorrow worth tonight?

I went back to the old neighbourhood.
To the old walks:
The stretched avenues,
the solitaire blocks, the hidden grocery stores,
the small houses showered with leaves.
This was the place where I first lived when I arrived to the city.
This was my first home.
This was the station that saw trains arrive and leave forever.
Somewhere inside there was an apartment building that contained a door,
which hung '303' in rusted steel numbers.
And in its walls, beautiful and hurtful memories lay within.
I don't know why I went there in the first place.
I really don't need another book piled up in my tower.
A tower, that's what I am.
A giant tower of torn out books, covered in dust, trembling, about to fall.
Everything hurts right now, even the slightest things.
And being aware, being too conscious is the worst.
I just feel so lonely.
The afternoon suddenly turned dark,
it started raining fiercely.
But I didn't even take cover. One raindrop fell into my eye.
It blended with my tears.
And I sat down on the sidewalk, unspeakably exhausted.
And asked myself: Is tomorrow worth tonight?