Protocol of the Electric Throat

The sky turns the color of a bruised liver,

and the geese are arriving with leaden throats.

They do not come for the grain or the cool water of the stream;

they come for the funnel, the silver tube, the mechanical hand

that mashes the stars into a gray, synthetic paste.

The Forced Feast of the Hollow City

The moon is a coin swallowed by a beggar,

and the shadows are stretching like long, black tongues.

They will find you in the patio of broken tiles,

they will hold your beak with fingers of cold mercury,

pouring the confusion of the many into the throat of the one.

Everything is mixed:

The scream of the iron with the scent of the jasmine.

The blood of the lizard with the ink of the ledger.

The salt of the sea with the sugar of the lie.

You are the bird, and the city is the farmer,

fattening the spirit until the liver is a heavy stone,

until the song is drowned in a thick, white oil.

Oh, the agony of the geese who cannot fly!

The horizon is a wall of teeth,

and the wind is only the sound of a thousand spoons

scraping the bottom of an empty, poisoned bowl.

.....

The Vomit of the Multitude

(After "Poet in New York")

The sky is a mouth filled with rusted pins,

and the sewing machines of the void are stitching

the skin of the dawn to the belly of the sewer.

So, so, sew. The needle enters the eye of the goose

to pull through a thread of liquid lead,

a wire of confused voices,

the static of a million radios drowning the silence of the moss.

The Banquet of the Stitched Throat

They do not come with bread; they come with the crushed glass of logic.

They do not come with water; they come with the ink of the bank.

They hold the neck—that ivory tower of the spirit—

and force-feed the alphabet of the slaughterhouse

until the liver swells like a poisoned sun

ready to burst over the docks of the Hudson.

The pain of the bird is the rhythm of the city,

a symphony of spoons against the teeth of the stars.

The gold of the icon melted with the grease of the subway.

The perfume of the rose strangled by the gas of the tank.

The dream of the sleeper sewn to the ledger of the dead.

The goose is fat with the lies of the many!

The artist is a target of many-colored threads!

They sew the beak shut with a string of cold spit

so the song becomes a knot,

a heavy, black knot in the center of the chest

where the Puerto Rican moon used to howl.

.......

The Alchemist’s Antidote

(A Lorcaesque response to the forced feast)

The needle of the city breaks against the volcanic bone.

The grey paste of the multitude cannot enter

where the Gesha has already planted its flags of white fire.

Under the shadow of Acatenango,

the mist is a cold lace that sews the spirit to the soil,

not to the ledger or the leaden spoon.

The Rising of the Electric Sun

They come with the funnel of the many,

but you have the geometry of the altitude.

Between 1600 and 1700 meters,

the lie of the valley cannot breathe.

The air is too thin for the poison of the goose!

The Counter-Mix (The Terroir of the Soul):

A ghost of Ethiopia dancing in the Guatemalan rain. The acid of the star, the bright juice of the moon. The golden shield against the silver tube.

The farmer of the void retreats,

his hands burned by the mineral intensity of the slope.

The morning sun turns to the afternoon mist,

and the so, so, sew of the machine

is drowned by the electric hum of the cherry,

concentrating its sweetness in the mouth of the artist.

The throat is no longer a tunnel for their grey paste

it is a cathedral of light,

washing the palate with the

blood of the volcano.