172. Meninas

Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez (1656)

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Slanted
sits the
artwork: physical
body hidden
in a
temperature-controlled
vault-laboratory
hybrid thing;
exhumed to the present day,
mounted and dissected,
eyes observing,
dissecting;
essays
hum;
editors scramble furiously on the
Wikipedia
page...

Backing away,
curtain falls
as the
chamberlain
clears the exit

Two girls awkwardly caught
half-sentence in
curtsies, well
one –
the other still
unawares,
el búcaro outstretched
from her imploring
arms, fingers of
one curled in
mid-
persuasion

Despite her mourning
garb
the
guardian chatters
animatedly with the
guard, name
lost to
exclusive seats of
history

mumbling,
bumbling,
buzzing mutely:
as Two imported dwarves
form spectacle, one
obviously teasing the
peeved dog,
the other remarkably
solemn,
questioning.

Nineteen years and one
wife
separate the uncle from his
niece,
her arm tucked
protectively around
his?

The artist
rests: self-
portrait,
photograph?
Paint drops speckle his
boots in
real
time

Time ticks:
ribbons like
captive
wildflower
flare on the
alabaster plains;
ethereal, the
five-year-old
serenely gazes into
eternity

Bent knees
hover expectantly,
silk rustling, mute

Centrepiece, she
stands:
the business
frozen, betraying the
Purpose;
yet faces glisten,
inquiring,
else incoherent
of the
Moment:

The high
green-brown
panels silently
concur,
stolid,
enigmatic,
slumbering with the
weight of
centuries

Emptied,
its physical forbearer since perished,
imagination and
interpretation can only resurrect

Quiet,
the
noon
buzzes…

65. Oiseaux exotiques

4 slightly restless tourists,
all smiles          gaze around
curiously:
you can tell they are not lost,
but curious.

Aliens:
we do not know how far
they have come
to buy a cup of coffee
and donuts.

In one moment, they are
fascinating, strange
in their foreign movements,
odd costumes;
curiosity fades though
as they fly from sight,
though not from
mind.

47. I like to party

I like to party.
The alleys of the mind
ignite,
corridors crammed with
Cirque de Soleil.
Dancers set ablaze
the brainstem;
Acrobats paint
this Carnival.

I like to party:
as do you;
together, we in fantasies
could speak in tongues,
but you:
in banal stupor,
drenched in booze
and music BLARING
escape
in your own prosaic
way:

but – I rather think,
I fly higher:
the trapeze is not enough for
me –

Special Note: This origins of this poem has a unique and strange origin.  I am a biomedical science student, forced to take a non-specialist English course for an elective.  The irony is that I actively write poetry on a daily to weekly basis.  Our professor introduced us to poetry on Monday, asking everyone to write a line of poetry on a scrap piece of paper.  He asked selected individuals to read their lines...my fellow classmates came up with the predicted horrendous things, such as: "Roses are red, violets are blue", "I am not good at poetry", etc. The line that stuck with our professor turned out to be the seemingly silly "I like to party."  He sent us an e-mail later that night, claiming to give someone a cash prize for transforming the first line "I like to party" into a poem.  Was it cheating that I accept?  Undeniably, yes.  Hence...I wrote this poem on Tuesday and e-mailed it to him.  On Wednesday's class, he noted that someone went "above and beyond" his expectations and that from now on, whenever this person was seen, they were to be referred to as "the first winner of the first annual English 1--- poetry competition".  He put a print-out of my e-mail on the document camera and it blew it up on two ginormous screens in front of the entire class.  To my horror, he then proceeded to spend a full 30 minutes of our 50 minute class praising and analyzing the poem word for word in front of the entire class.  And at the end of the dissection, the entire class applauded and I sank into my chair, exhilarated and thrilled, but mostly emotionally exhausted, thoroughly embarrassed, and overwhelmed.  The entire time I felt cold and I was shaking involuntarily...it was the strangest thing, like watching people trampling over my dead body or witnessing a live dissection of myself while still alive...fascinating, and really weird.  This is the first time, really, that my poetry was taken out from my personal quarters and disseminated with the real, living, breathing "public" - face to face (instead of through the impersonal Internet).  By the end of the class, I had the feeling that no one had read the poem the way I intended it to be read, but that it had taken on a new immortal life of its own, running rampant in a thousand different directions...I think the strangest thing is that I have never experienced any of the things mentioned in the poem - booze, parties, Cirque de Soleil, etc.  And now everyone thinks I'm some schizophrenic alcoholic.

18. Wedding Day

Lanterns floating overhead,
Bubbles dancing in our path,
This is the first night –
Sparkling laughter, sparkling champagne –
Sweat glistening; darkness dawns.

I am happy for them,
but I am removed from their joy, their love.
It is not that I am resentful –

Trees whisper, some indescribable perfume lifts,
Mingled smiles embalm the honeyed air –
Perhaps it is in their exuberant youth
and hapless grace
That I so clearly see the distance grow –
My lonesome self, twisted by the cynicism of time,
growing weary –
having only celebrated the joy
of others.

16. Morning Glory

the burnt honey brightly trickles,
drops of fragrant translucent liquid
plummet to the jugs below:
Columbian, chocolate macaroon, crème brûlée

aromas fill the darkened hall,
nasal cavities resound with waking sense
(and now we wait, stuffing the trays
like horizontal Christmas stockings)

I am alone for these first shaded moments
crouching in the darkness, thinking;
behind the metal lattice things prepare themselves,
waiting until the moment they shine

it is almost therapeutic,
these exotic beans -
tickling the senses,
emboldening the eyes