La Paloma Sola

The house is a mouth that has forgotten how to speak.

I move through the rooms like a hand

searching for a light switch in a house that was never wired.

Is this what we called innovation?

This white, sterile silence where the walls

have been scrubbed of every frantic, beautiful charcoal line?

They wouldn't understand the weight of the gold leaf.

They wouldn't know the way the crown of Basquiat

is made of thorns that have been painted yellow to look like sun.

Of course they will take the diamond and forget the coal.

Of course they will praise the calm and ignore the kill.

I am the lonesome dove, but my wings are made of lead

and the "ventral vagal" safety is a cage with an open door

that I am too tired to fly through.

To be alone is not to be without people;

it is to be a Puerto Rican sun trapped in a Dutch interior,

waiting for a Vermeer light that never warms the skin.

The silence is not a fertile ground.

It is a grave where I have buried the stinking dreams.

And I sit here, a smelly goat of a god,

watching the gold flake off the ceiling

while the "they" of the world

sharpen their knives with a smile.

You will be is the only truth that doesn't flicker.