MISSING IN ACTION

M.I.A.
(MISSING IN ACTION)

Cecilia Levallois

The first thing my daddy taught me was to avoid trying to hide the sun behind one thumb because of the impossibility of this. That is why today I shall speak to you about War, although I must make it clear that nobody likes to speak about it. Among military terms you can find abbreviations and euphemisms, and in all languages in which aggression is practised. One term in English that has always bewildered me is M:I:A. Missing in action. Disappeared during combat, or while in action.
How much use of abuse was given to this during World wars, or during the French intervention to Chad from where my uncle returned home with no more appetite for red meta, or during the Vietnam conflict from which many blondie gringos never came home, and who knows if it was destiny `s retaliation charging its unpaid bills and on that occasion it deemed necessary that all those lads who went to fight in order to wolf down the southeast should be trapped in tunnels, o water clinks o who knows how…

But War, as I speak to you about it, as I saw it through my astonished eyes, anyways always turns you into a M.I:A. Something from you gets stuck in the slime, which is thickened by blood or that piece of human kidney that you unwittingly stepped on with your boot, over there in the battlefield, without realizing what it was, only that it made a strange and nauseating noise when you walked over it. No, sirs, don `t ever misguide yourselves by humming that tune about beloved, suppose that I go far, so far that I shall forget my own name, beloved, mayhaps I am indeed another man, taller and not as old….

The Sweet Abyss is a masterwork of the new Cuban troubadours, but War is not so. Y beware, the one who stays behind enemy lines is the lady while the male of the species goes to face combat. We always handle War terms in masculine, forgetting the Celtic women who were the best warriors, even outdoing men, or beautiful Boadicea swallowing poison before Paulinus Suetonius could lay a hand on her. Or gorgeous Nzingha of Ndongo and Matamba fighting against the Portuguese so that they wouldn`t convert kingdom into an endless source of slaves for the colonies, or Candace the empress of Ethiopia astride an elephant commanding her troops and scaring away blond Macedonian Alexander the Great, who preferred not to battle than to end up being the laughingstock of everyone because a female would have beaten him.
WE must be clear that War is feminine, it is a man`s game according to sexist males like the paunchy general who, barely fitting into his uniform like a sausage in pork`s tripe, would rudely scold me saying that it was ugly for a women to speak about War, only to mask the fact that he was terribly embarrassed because he couldn`t know who William Wallace formed his troops , ready for battle.

But thus is how things work, and I have told you that we World have a yarn about War and I have been droving the skittish goats of my old spites. There are things in the everyday life of combat, whether you are just a war correspondent as were D`Annunzio or Hemingway, or as a soldier, that turn us into M.I.SA. as veterans of all barbarous actions, we will never again be the same, and no tale ever wrought by Lovecraft, no bizarre tale write by Poe with two liters of moonshine dancing between back and belly, no dead is dead said by Stephen King, can be compared with the horror of War. The photogenic smile stays the same, but behind the light pupil, if we really focus on it, there are the debris of fear, beyond what is never a sweet abyss of memory there is our instinct for survival, tense, drawn tight like a cello string ready to burst. Our bloodiest mementoes are the permanent guests of a memory that still trembles, its mailing address is the last remote corner of our eyelids, next-door neighbours to the oniric World of our dreams. They visit us as soon as we drowse, sometimes in full color, with their own soundtrack and with credits for lights! Camera! Let`s get the action rolling!. All this at the end of the latest session from midnight atwixt the sheets. We arrive punctually for the summons made by our traumas.

And in my dreams I am again in the north, by Jalapa, covered with blood with the rank, dank smell of copper, so drenched that even my bones seem to dissolve amidst the 170 pounds of my Rubensian Venus plumpy, and it is not the wetness of a storm that has abated, but blood, fortunately not mine, but it still pains me. And how can I explain that incident in La Penca, when I spent a whole night gabbing about the most diverse matters with a soldier, in the middle of the darkest night, but when the chopper finally came to evacuate us the man was dead with wide open, and when we brought him to the morgue in Managua the forensic doctors determined that he had been dead for more than 12 hours, and since he couldn `t have opened his mouth to deny that thus ended the story. Conversation with a dead man, and that is not the name of a good Hitchcock flick.

Often, even after so many years after Teotecacinte, Jalapa, La Penca or Operation Danto, revulsion smacks me in the face with its Tyranosaurius Rex visage, between the preparation of the mushroom sauce and the seasoning of the filet mignon with which I Hill agreeably surprise my family for lunch, and the violent and gaping red meat resembles the wide open, always bleeding wound of War. Even after so many years of not wearing a comfy pair of Jungle boots, Way is like an old pal from kindergarten, it returns with its round-trip ticket and unexpiring visa towards daily terror that lives in my nightmares. I want to say that I have gone back to normal life, and I really do enjoy it when my daughter sees the ad for a new war flick and we go to enjoy it together, saying that the bloodier, the better. I don `t want to affirm that I cry ,hiding so no one sees me, when I wake up, shaking and drenched in cold sweat, with Wide gaping eyes, because it is not really that what bothers me anymore. On November 11th, Veteran `s Day because on that precise date in 1918 ended the First World War , I wear a red paper flower on my breast and I want to convey a cheap sentimentality that I am far from feeling but that is very much in fashion nowadays

If my father were alive, he would dig out his medals and he would put baby powder over his tattoo with the number that was engraved in pain on his elbow in Auschwitz, and he would wink his eye at me. But he would, also, caught at that precise moment without warning, be forced to admit that he as well as myself as well as all war veterans,
Up to a certain point continue to be soldiers who are missing in action, no matter if our bodies did come back and that now, we truly enjoy our nests and our families. Maybe we might never know what we left behind on the battlefield, something that Frederick of Prussia didn `t mark on his military maps, nevertheless something that visits us, from one night to another, in our nightmares or during our day-to-day life with our reflexes and fear of having someone approaching you from behind without making noise. We too, even though we may now enjoy the right to live in peace as so Uncle Ho yearned for, are still M.I.A.

5 Oct. 2000

THE LOST BULLET

THE LOST BULLET
for Chele Marcos
"The bullet which shall wound me shall be a bullet with a soul...”Salomón de la Selva
I do not know why, but since I was born in the United States, I just knew I was destined to live one of the weirdest romances of all times. Nothing in my appearance or configuration distinguished me from so many thousands, so many like me, I was not anything special, but from that very moment I recall that I told myself I was going to be special, memorable, unforgettable. It was not a Mae West syndrome whispering for you to come up and see me sometime. I would have to go and look for that unfanthomable destiny, incredible, unique, unrepeatable and inevitable. I was just one more golden gringa, that was it, but something told me that I was destined to be a one of a kind protagonist. I spent a lot of time just holding on, bored, I felt tied, like stuck in a case of nothingness, gravitating as I waited for the event, for that magical moment in which I would be catapulted into an unique and decisive event, expected and feared, both at the same time. I understood what the ovules gravitating into maturity in a ovary feel, or what a fetus does while he waits for the waters to flow outward and he can dawn into the world. But the date for my encounter was already pointed out by what the Arabs call kismet, destiny. If you please, call it fate.
In 1984 I met the great love of my life. She was wearing loose camouflaged pants, a video camera slung from her shoulder and she exhibited jungle hair in several shades of mahogany. We met in Jalapa, Nicaragua, so far away from my birthplace in the United States. She was being followed and since she was rather chubby, she had a hard time climbing up the ladder that went into the military helicopter that would return her, other militaries and 4 European war correspondents back to Managua. An amalgam of noise which was made of triggers, whistling bullets and the hissing blades of the helicopter disoriented me a wee bit, but when I was able to find myself, the encounter had already happened.
The woman settled herself inside the helicopter next to a blond Frenchman who was stinkier than all the onions of the world put together. This blondie looked at her in alarm and told her to look al the bloody pants. Instinctively, the maiden looked at her crotch, the logical site if you are a woman in a fertile age. The Frenchman had the decency to blush to say no, it was somewhere lower. That was when the woman looked at the left leg of her pants, all torn, and a sea of blood oozing from behind her knee. ”But I felt nothing, merdouze,I felt nothing and they hit me!” she would recite as if she were quoting Walt Whitman or Guillaume D`Aquitaine if that is who pleases you most.
It was as if her dignity was upset because she had been shot and she had been so stupid as no be unaware of the fact. Beside her, a blond Nicaraguan with the rank of captain took out a big bandanna and a tourniquet was firmly tied in order to avoid further loss of blood. The blond Nicaraguan held her head in his arms and crooned, ”That`s it, fatty, stop it, Bat! We will take you to the military hospital but take it easy, okay?” It was pretty obvious that this man had a very difficult time trying to handle soothing words, but it was evident that he was terrible worried. He continued speaking to her in English all along the chopper`s flight, and I was understanding what he was mumbling. Some of the things he said were not to my liking. Who was he to touch the love of my life, and she to allow him to do so? I did not know that she and the blondie, whom many called Eric the Red, were chums since they were both babies, and a gust of jealousy swept over me.
Once in Managua, the woman was taken in a noisy ambulance to the hospital, Eric the Red went right along with her. Far from the foreign correspondents, the man finally burst into tears.”I shall never forgive myself if your leg gets amputated, Bat. Shit, you have such nice legs, you bitch, your father will kill me for this! ”The woman twisted and turned on the stretcher and she had a strange fey smile on her face, but she would utter nothing more than a hissing shut up! Up to this point, a huge anguish was getting into me.
What would happen to me? Getting the woman into the doctor´s hands, Eric the Red stayed outside promising the woman that he would call her parents. The physicians inmediately stripped her of her boots and pants. They cleaned her up and I heard them say it would be a difficult case. It was not until around 7 in the evening, after countless exams, x-rays, hurries and lots of fidgeting that I could be at peace. The doctors` opinion was that due to the way that things happened, and since the bullet was sitting exactly at the point where femur, tibia, fibula and patella converge, it would truly be an impossible task to extricate the projectile from there. There was a man with transparent green eyes who chain-smoked next to her bed.
There was no question of amputation, and nothing about extricating the bullet. The woman would learn to live with her bullet as of that moment. As weeks and years went by, the orifice of the entry would leave no mark on the perfectly formed leg. She would have a bit of pain during the new moon days, with air conditioners and the cool airs of December, and she would set off the alarms when she visited banks or went through the airport check -up, when the metal would be detected.
“At least it did not hit you near the arse, like your uncle who was on D-Day,” said her father when he took her home from the hospital two days later. There had been Eric the Red, whom obviously had not been thrown in jail or anything like it.”Bat, can you forgive me? It was I who took you on mission, ”said the blond, with a tearful look in his gray eyes. ”Fuck off, Eric, stop giving me bullshit ,”said she while I writhed around in jealousy.
From then on I learned to know her. And I started loving her with such a vicious possessiveness that I never believed I could be capable of feeling. She was again out as a war correspondent at La Penca and she almost went lunatic when she yarned with a chap named Rubèn, who had a profound gash on the chest. Bat would affirm that she spent the whole night yarning with him, but it was quite scary when she returned to Managua with the recruit`s corpse and the forensic doctor told her that he had been dead for a good amount of hours. She wept for hours in her father`s lap and Eric the Red snarled at her that if she took the military service recruitsnwho died in combat so seriously, she was going to spend the rest of her life with her stormy eyes as swollen as frogs. Once in a while her mother would have her visit several doctors to see what could be done about her bullet. Once she was given pills which made her vomit even what she hadn`t eaten in centuries, to say the least. I felt guilty because I couldn`t mitigate her pain. I never wished to hurt her, but I adored her so much that I couldn`t bear the thought of being wrenched away from her.
After her parents` death in a plane crash, there was no more mention of going to the doctor. The only one who could have convinced her to visit the hospital was Eric the Red, but the poor chap was so enmeshed in his own troubles because he had to deal with his own psychosis. I get the impression that Bat sometimes got a little fed up of playing wageless psychotherapist, and even though they were together at the same military unit after she decided to become a full-fledged military, Bat never overspent her patience. She deal with Eric the Red with an endless sweetness, just like a mother had to deal with a hyperkinetic baby. Eric the Red would seat her on his long sofa in his bureau, he would hand her a guitar and would ask her to play the instrument. I remembered Farinelli singing to soothe away King Philip V of Spain`s melancholy. “You are my Orpheus and I am the beasts for you to tame...”said Eric the Red.
Years later, when Bat left the army without signing a single document, Eric the Red continued to be hooked on her emotionally. One afternoon, she was translating confidential documents for a multinational when he called her, sunken in despair. Taking into consideration that she had many bills to pay such as energy, water service and phone, with the threat of getting those services cut off, Bat said that she could not abandon the translation because at the same moment that she finished, she would get paid in cash. Eric the Red lost his marbles and he insulted her, yelling at her that if he committed suicide it would be as if she herself put the bullet in his head because she never had time for him. Bat surely had heard similar nonsense after so many years of friendship, so she didn`t do more than hang up. The following day, Eric the Red was dead after having swallowed a bullet in the best Hemingway style. Bat, this time, was unable to cry. She had too many other things to do, and pain was not included n her agenda. She just undertook the burden, a burden which was made of guilt, heavier than anything that Atlas had to carry, including the whole world.
Pain should have been included in her agenda because when many years later she was diagnosed as a diabetic, she would have it. The neuropathies, those shameful bolts of flashing pain that people with diabetes suffer, would be worse in her left leg because of the bullet. Again, it was brought up that maybe by extracting the bullet that she had since 1984 maybe some remedy might be possible. Bat this time wanted to know about the possibility, so she went to the hospital to have an ultrasound performed on her. Lying down on a couch, she turned her duststorm eyes towards the screen. It was the first time that she saw something like that. She remembered her pregnancy, when she was expecting her rowdy twins, and a wave of maternal feelings swept over her. There she was, tiny,well- nooked, shining. Like a fetus. Bat, recalling that on one occasion she was almost aborted, got up from the couch and cuddled her knee. She felt pain, but she smiled. “Under no circumstance am I removing this thing from my body. It would be as if I aborted my kids. I am not a criminal. She stays there. I love her. No more talk about this.”
I could finally breathe, relaxed. I was loved! Here, inside Bat, despite her high glucose level and her pains, I have the honor of being cocooned in an eternal, loving pregnancy. When she dies, I shall be buried in her same tomb, a privilege that not even her own husband will have because he will be laid to rest beside her, in a separate crypt. Well, one thing. Keep me a secret! I will never tell her that the 22- caliber bullet which dashed her friend`s life, Eric the Red, when she refused to listen to him, that bullet was my own sister.

Cecilia Levallois

LEVEL ELEVEN´S TRIP NICARAGUA IN ENGLISH

as good patriots and even better students of English,we should know our typical Nicaraguan foods, places and legends in any language.My level 11 students from the Saturday course and I took a field trip to Lake Cocibolca, Granada and Catarina last October 31st.

the golden lock

March 28th,2009
THE LOST EPILOG FOR THE COLONEL´S SCRAPBOOK


1660 Georg Ludwig German monarch of Hanover who became the famous /King George I of Great Britain after the Stuart line came to dead end,is born
0193 Roman Emperor Pertinax assassinated, he had been luckier as military than as emperor
1881 Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky Russian officer and composer, dies on his birthday at exactly 42,from cirrhosis, after leaving us with Boris Godunov, Pictures at an Exhibition and Night On Bald Mountain

AFTER ME THE DELUGE SAID LOUIS XVTH

What was that deluge about, I wish I could ask the handsomest king of France. Was there an awful lot of water or just emptiness for you? If people believe god made the world, was this the feeling the deity had after making man? Was he aware of the monster he had created? I sit here, still trembling with rage and chagrin. I´m supposed to be bulletproof, invulnerable, above feeling demeaned by petty things. My mind is reeling with stupefaction.. Is there no end to the silliness of men? I don´t want the make any more questions. I´m the Cheshire cat, smile disappearing in the midst of a windy mist. As I came I go. Not on tiptoes this time but stomping my way out, boots making a lot of noise on the way out. I want to lay claim to my time, to my right to choose and not compromise, to stop leasing the world even if the world is reduced to one single being. Can one person mean the world to someone else? And if that world crumbles at your feet because your idol had feet made of clay and you caught him or her with pants down grunting on the toilet…just like anyone?
I look at my camouflaged uniform,blue and black and light blue,splotches of indigo,and I realize it has been there for so many years and it isn´t until now that notice how well it covers my so many time injured body, this is the first time I see the beauty of its pattern. I´m not wearing a slinky black nightie, not a teddy can compensate for an ugly face, ever. Cheap silk and nylon cling to your body like unwanted sweaty skin, unsexy, undesirable, sticky, yucky. Rather dead in combat than ever being caught in that attire. Why do women want to be so ridiculous? I take out a small hand mirror and scrutinize my thousand ethnias mixture of a face. Still unlined in the year turn 50. “You, incongruously pretty face above a heavy uniform, like a Japanese doll that is so expensive and dear,” said a Honduranian lieutenant colonel to me, a man who sports his grey hairs and wrinkles with such debonair elegance. He sees me, nevertheless, adrift, worrying about my time, there is such a gaping hole in the middle of my painful emptiness. It is so hard to let go. It is so difficult to slam doors and then think about opening them again knowing that you will slam them anew.
I felt like this in July 1996. My best pal was gone, he had committed suicide, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back. Unconsciously, I would lift my hand and dial his number, and then I would remember no phone company has been able to connect to our memories…No longer there. His uniforms and shoes still hung in his closet at home, and at three o clock on Fridays my stomach would rumble in anticipation because at that time we would get together for tea. I know the feeling again. My noontime is mine now and I don´t want it. At 5 pm I get skyline anxious, it is like retreating and kicking a drug habit. You still get the heaves, the shakes, the drop in blood pressure. But somehow you know there is no turning back.
I am left with a long awaited babe in arms, and now born, I just want to give it up in adoption, as if once the father is gone there is no reason for his existence. Babes and kittens can be adopted by others properly without any harm coming after, but a book?
I cannot even drown it…not even in my own tears if I have any left. You remember the scene in Francis Ford Coppola´s Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein when the monster played by De Niro drops into Victor´s nightchamber on the doctor´s wedding night, and when the doc turns him away the monster pounces on still virginal Elizabeth and wrenches her heart out ? That is the exact feeling I have when I leaf through this book for which I am writing this epilog. I was aborted by an unknown hand,torn out of my womb but unlike Zoroaster who was said to have been wrenched from mommy´s womb by a monster and then survived for years eating homemade cheese(who made it? Religious stories are so incongruous and stupid sometimes, they offend our natural intelligence), I have no sense of what to do next. I´ll go back to my short stories, good down to earth money makers and providers of the red and black wings of fame that hover above my uniform and grant me comparisons with Choderlos de Laclos, and Dostoyevsky, two officers turned into writers.
I feel the gentle shadow of Modeste, my Modeste Mussorgsky whose music I have always loved so much, up to the point that I gave him a short story about his wonderful heart. He lays a skinny emaciated hand on my shoulder and upon his touch, the anger flows out. He was born and he died at age 42 on a day like this. Like Michel Praetorius too, great German composer of the Renaissance, born and died on his birthday. Is that the ultimate gift from kismet? His shadow in Russian officer´s uniform sits in front of me, crosses his knees and smiles faintly under his mustache.
Mussorgsly says to me in his Russian accent,” I will take you further into immortality, kitten.. My Russian heart tale will always be a reference, who knows if this crazy hooky diary of this colonel you were won´t be forgotten, is there any guarantee that the entries be kept in order by the person who motivated it? Would it be a bad surprise if I told you the dearest reader might as well lose it, or get it deleted, or never mind it just to show his lady friends boasting how crazy and naïve an intellectual can be? I saw something similar in Russia, something which made a laughingstock of old Peter Tchaikovsky with his famous piano concerto no.1 WE sort of had a courteous enmity with him ,for I was a member of the Group of 5 Nationalists with Rimsky, Cui, Balakirev and Borodin and Peter preferred Western style music….You remember Peter had tailored it for the great pianist Rubinstein, a big jerk if there ever was one, pompous asshole, we hated him. So foppish Peter presents his concerto for his so called friend, and the guy listens in silence, frowning ,grimacing. At the end, Rubinstein gets up and tells the poor Peter he hates every note on it, that the concerto is vulgar and crass and sloppy and stupidly sentimentaloid, so Peter just gets up and storms out of the room in tears. Back home, Peter wrenches off the page with the dedication to Rubinstein, and when the German pianist Hans von Bulow premieres the piece, Peter dedicates it to him. Peter had been so slavishly addicted to Rubinstein, and he discovered like many others did, he had been pissing up the wrong tree. It happens. You have a phrase. Shit happens. No kitten, no need to make your eyes water. Not my intention. I´m just telling you it is not the only case in history, I want to make you feel better. Now I want you to don your uniform again, with no apologies, and smile like your colleague Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia mentioned, that it is good to smile because it existed and never mind that it ended. You have something strong in your hands, never keep the grenade. Throw it or it will blow up in your face. Simply an officer to another officer´s good advice.” I glance at the chair and only a ray of sunlight is there, Modeste has left me again. With a cupful of sound and logical counsels in order not to disgrace myself.
Dead is dead said Stephen King in Pet Sematary. I looked into my file for projects in the short story area. I had three lined up and wasn´t going to practice Nicaragua´s favorite sport: procrastination. If I had the time now it was for my use, and I would lay my uniformed shoulder to the weird wheel of producing phantoms. I just hoped I hadn´t lost my touch. If I had gotten out of a wheelchair before, against all odds, I would get out of this post partum depression sooner or later and the best medication was available: more words, more letters, more literature-I wouldn´t be a writer´s block victim or a literary cripple. It may still bother me to remember what the French said that only when the flower adores does it bear the fruit. But still there was the phrase from that lousy husband but great guerrilla fighter Che Guevara, onto victory always.

Taller de Bordados Rubén Darío
Porque también con aguja se hace poesía
Masaya capital del folklore nicaragüense
Tel. 00 505 88236333 , e-mail bordadodario@yahoo.com
Desde sábanas, manteles, ropa de cama, servilletas,cortinas y faldellines
Hasta trajes de boda, guayaberas, cotonas, huipiles, chales y pañuelos.
Bordados a mano y a máquina.Al detalle y por mayor.
Operando desde 1987.
Propietarios: Juan Markovik y Mercedes Brenes de Markovik

FRESH FROM THE OVEN

Newest poems by Adolfo Beteta

THE ANCIENT FEMININE LEGACY
For María Alejandra Jirón Vílchez

In your Herat exists a legacy that transcends the rivers of time,
And this inheritance is clearly reflected in your left eye.
It is the throne you majestically sit upon,
A birthright,
Of the divine being that you are.,

And the delicateness of your touch is pure,
An indication of the tenderness you possess
For those who surround you;
A microscopic glimpse of the inmense compassion
That you carry in your soul-
An ancient soul-
Who spiritually resides in the vast dimensions of such a beautiful moonchild
Who tends to hide behind the dawn
In order to avoid the negative energies
That occasionally attempt to disturb your inner silence.

But you shouldn ´t fear,
Because those anonymous to your frequency will be chased away
Efficientl,
By the lunar eclipse of the amber katana
Of your personal Ronin.
And this Ronin will never rest until you reach your full bloom
And become what you are ordained to be-
A living embodiment of your sublime feminine mysteries.


GENERATION LOST

There´s a strict type of repression in certain times.
And sometimes,
These lines become personal letters of a decadent generation
Who tend to roam foolishly
Like unlearned jaguars in the midst of a Mayan jungle.
(And to what extent?)

This is why I collect your thoughts for future reference,
(Along with the exquisiteness of your stare that penetrates me the furthest)
And this profound knowledge enables us to be,
Together,
In a coffin like state of inner peace.
(This child cries in the penumbral shadow of Isis´ throne)

And despite the fact that I´m invisible,
You can clearly read between my veins.
(Something different)

And the identification of a lost soul
Does not need any savvy technology to be identified.
It´s a lawless rule in a decaying world
That refuses to heal because most prefer to drown
In their private indifferences.

How do they manage?
Most allude to religions
(the easiest escape for self-doubting individuals)
And others to materialism.
(And this materialism comes in all shapes and forms)
This has been the downfall of many generations-
Sadly,
I have been a witness to all of them.
(Particularly my own)

The greatest gift is breathing,
But breathing is NOT easy
And if it is NOT easy,
Then I shall be the first to do so for my generation-
I just hope my efforts are not in vain.



WHEN EYES SPEAK AND LISTEN

The invisible light of Ra breached my right eye this morning
As I was riding the 119,
Sitting on a thought,
Basking in a dream.
This light revealed to me the end of men;
But not an apocalyptical end like you learned in Sunday school
Or from overzealous radicals who attempt to persuade your spirit through fear,
But instead similar to Ragnarok,
Where most men and gods alike will be devoured by a wolf-
A noble wolf.


And this end heralds the beginning of
The Amber colored daffodils that rotate piously into oblivion,
And the faster the revolution,
The more it expands-
Like a divine consciousness.
Thankfully,
I´ m not allergic to wildflowers¡
(Although I´m allergic to forced literature¡)

This is why I dream upon pauses that harbor a continuous subtle prowl

That I occasionally scrub off as if they were historic stains,
Like the Crusades.
(this scrubbing usually occurs during the quarter moon of the Autumn Equinox.)
Thus,
The unanimous solitude that envelops me is quite fashionable nowadays,
Especially in selected Egyptian circles where,
If it weren´t for the Christian gossip,
We´d have no identity-
Yet alone an existence¡

This poem is proof that prophecies disappear in the midst of civilizations,
Of how they are ignored,
Like Cassandra´s,
Yet the civilized are the first to burn and plead to the universe for forgiveness-
But the universe is deaf to your supplications
Like you were, on the crucial Saturday dusk
WhenApollo´s warning echoed from the chosen lips of the Trojan princess…
This is why I choose to live with the incurable disease of listening.
And I don´t want a cure,
Or medical diagnosis,
Nor prescribed tablets by unlearned men.
Ok,
Maybe a tablet,
But it better be Emerald.
(Enough ¡This poem must be perpetually halted because it is heading to the unborn tears
Of your next verb!)

“Perhaps the calamities of humanity CANNOT be solved by the daily application of
Shaving cream”.

(This was the academic reasoning of one Billy Flannigan from Worcester, Massachussetts, who, before his fantastic death, uttered these last words of hope for Humanity´s sake with an unmoving godlike conviction.)
I believe Billy could´ve been right,
If he only would´ve learned to listen properly.
But what do I know?
After all,
It is complex(but not impossible)to listen clearly when your left eye is trying
To understand your right one.

POETRY BY ADOLFO BETETA

It is a great pleasure for me, as a writer and lover of poetry, to introduce you to the young poet Adolfo Beteta. Born in Nicaragua but raised in Massachussetts,USA, he is also an outstanding English teacher and a great connoisseur of literature. From his book Autumn Whispers I took these poems he wrote.

Self Portrait

Advancing.
True bigot controlling his element
Forever vibrant in a poetic coma.
Dismal backgrounds encircle the flagrant ghost of his chapters.

Unknown heritage impregnates the jargon of his silence
Leading it to milestones beyond normal.
His katana orbits the mind patiently waiting to decapitate the queen.

Abel felt the wrath of Cain,
Bringing an end to certain rules.
Still elevating.
Runaway scenes tantalize the unchallenged valor that yells with zest.

Spasms of an Impossible Love

My life sleeps helplessly in your kiss.
Never will I be born to see the crystal tulips growing from your hair awake,
Freely, gently flowing, streaming madly in my face.
In a rubber prison bouncing from lunatic rage
Transparent love incarcerated in your eyes partake.

Black sun enter.
Shed misery on the weeping cherry trees leaning towards the sky.
Dying fields nurture withered magnolias falling from the lips of time
To a silver screen of scorching hailstorms trickling from
The eyes of invisible hummingbirds that encircle buried tombs.

I hear you calling from ivory mountains floating blindly in a sea of flesh
Splashing ruby colored water drops extinguishing your fears.
Grab a comet by its tail and make it change its course.
Swim in the forbidden
And as you drown in its erotic fury you will resurrect in bliss
And emerge triumphantly like a golden Phoenix out of ashes you will rise.
Naked immaculate lunar eclipses hail the butterfly rainbow chariot.

Pandemonium sleep!
Pandemonium sleep!
Pandemonium sleep!

Snowflake

You fell…
From an Olympian haven descending slowly you reached
The path I trek alone not knowing where it will lead
My feet listen and never speak
Until the day we met along my journey.

They spoke to you of past lives,
Different phases,
Romantic escapades in the forest of my thoughts
And mythological heroes immortalized in stars.
They spoke of Promethean fates and Heraklean feats,
Poetry’s paradoxical nature and the poetic justice of my life.
Alexandria still prevails in the shadow of time.

They spoke of revolutions that sparked enlightenments
And of cunning philosophers who dared to think,
Of exotic and rare poets who never kept silent
Despite the criticism society links.

They spoke of great migrations,
Cross continental tides of flux for a dream.
The route of silk they know in texture,
A frozen tundra they’ve endured.
Tropical heat waves they have suffered
And felt soft meadows of green grass grow.
Industrial changes they’ve encountered,
They have adapted to social wars,
In city pavements they’ve been nurtured,
They’ve been oppressed and said no word.

And now they’ve stopped to greet your presence,
To wonder if you’ll respond at all,
But all you did was sit and listen
And watched the Summer turn to Fall.

In spite of this you didn’t melt…

They were amazed by your performance,
A role of Oscar worth and more,
The epic soundtrack of your poise revealed to them the many doors.
They opened one and then another,
Divinely contemplating every room,
Every corner,
Until they knew that it was finally the time to rest.

I’m gently falling like a feather,
In the ravishing emptiness of your abyss;
My feet have stopped their endless journey
To rest inside a prolonged bliss.

Orgasm

Ghastly images sustain the linguistic tongue's
Granite like delivery of the humble poet.
His verses implicate the process of Evolution
Putting it in jeopardy.
But the poet's destiny is unaffected
For it is guarded by the cosmic lectures of truth.

The morbid morale of infinite thoughts brings fear
To the skeptics who doubt the notion of the impossible.
Therefore,
The outspoken poet paves the endless quest for realization.

He frantically writes the words he receives from an inspirational frenzy,
Savagely inflicting pleasure upon the paper.
This is how he reflects his theory of life,
By unloading an exotic realism only a voracious vigilante can conceive.

His weapon is yesterday...
That personal zone that amplifies his addiction.

Emptiness

Living painting,
Dashing through your woods like an autumn breeze,
Encountering the Willoping people
Who dangle like a string.

Vicious vultures circle the wondering spirits
Waiting to feed off the innocent soul.
My range is precise...
Invisible bodies invade the coliseum of Karma seeking triumph
Just to get defeated by the perception of Kronus.

Thoughts hung on emptiness,
In silence,
In the pandemonium of night.
Capricorn dwells in Saturn,
In the home of Time.
No origin is one
Complete
Whole.

Blank Page

It starts from loneliness, from an undisturbed meditative solitude inside.
I sit there curled in a grown fetus position waiting for something to occur, but nothing does.

I am surrounded by space, starless space, colorless lifeless space
Yet in the barren horizon lingers an idea that wants to exist, to emerge from emptiness.
It wants to be grasped, understood and nurtured, but it is still invisible and complex,
And in the process of deciphering it,
I discover a levitating mirror forest lurking in the midst of my evolution.
Confusing images swirl from mirror to mirror laughing, crying,
Yelling silent echoes heard only by windpipes running wild.
I close my eyes and hope to awake…

I’m still here yet not exactly there when I stopped to stare at mirrors speaking to me in strangely familiar riddles. Clink, clink…clink, clink, clink the sound is near, behind the grove the memory fragmented waterfall speaks my years in a tongue only I can understand. Piece by piece they fall like feathers gently to the unconscious lagoon whose banks I am kneeling by reaching down to grab a drink, but the holographic transcendental moments of my life slip through my fingers trickling back where they belong. I thirst, but can only contemplate my collage of nature versus nurture.

Sitting on a thought watching life pass before my eyes in rapid multi-colorful flashes of light dashes that flow within and without you bringing you closer to the glory of death in every breath I inhale, but not necessarily meaning that I will exhale and prevail to escape the clutches of my lungs… but I don’t really care if life is zooming by at such an accelerated haste.

I carefully observe the world from my placid mental state and choose to flow according to my natural rhythm. I’m all about keeping it real to myself for health, but that’s ultimately the biggest wealth one can ever attain, so I won’t refrain to what I just felt in this passing second of my existence, inner peace and great persistence to all those minds out there who demonstrate resistance don’t you fall into the void, stop, get out, and find comfort in your joy. I do declare you sit back, relax, and lend my words your ears and glimpse the process of a particular existential awareness. This is an idea that just wanted to be born from a blank page and become a rhythmic smooth poetic rage, but not against the machine that produces all these dreams of heart pumping, heavy breathing, erotic fiction – before you answer think: Am I turning you on? Wink, wink. You never felt this kind of friction, and if I haven’t satisfied you yet then you weren’t meant to read my diction.