Three Poems by Eliud Delgado

Those Things Staying Left

You wander the rooms, the empty house 

tainting with verses 

howl-chiseled on the walls. 

Wordly cluster, it isn’t late 

13ager’s angst 

what rage-loads your voice after another 10 years

but the disenchantment, brought by their passing,

that stuffs with melancholy 

the hollow which daily grows as every 

heard speech gets you disappointed. 

Among all of those things staying left, you find 

lighthouses, which your childish hand used to build,

            and remembrance under new light as

            you wander the rooms, the empty house.

Coffee & TV 

(see Blur)

Tell me you also have seen too much tv.

Tell me you’re getting blind, just like me, 

And all nerve cells-dead virtually.   

Tell me you don’t wanna face the abysses, neither I, 

so you would rather spend a whole Sunday tv-watching, 

and bringing me a coffee to drink in bed, instead,   

while we cast our minds away, 

floating adrift on cathode’s rays.

Sounds Like a Detuned Song

              at midnight,

                        it’s an echo in memory;

                        the jigsaw of ours

                        and it’s messed up fragments.

            Two melodies

                        fit your image

                        as it’s obstinately evoked

                        by voices in the breeze

            and whispers

                        repeating your name

                        from crushing leaves

            under my steps, 

so weary of searching 

for pieces we lost. 

(trans. by Eliud Delgado)

Eliud Delgado (Mexico City, 1984) is part of Devrayativa. He studies English Literature at UNAM. His poems have been published in magazines such as Punto en línea and Literal. Just as "What a Cat's Life" by Iván Ortega-López, these poems were translated by their own authors.

Swarming Thoughts of Yore by Tristan des Mers

…And I’m becoming old,
so irremediably old
as deadly it is to breathe.
*
O times of yore
In which my tongue was idle
And discontent…
*
Now I’m a swarming bunch of hypocrisy!
O shame on me!
I’m no beast no longer,
I’m no man anymore…
*
But why do I have to be so numb!?
And why do I have to go so low…?
O I’m irremediably old.
*
I have always nursed all cursed,
The people around me,
With a blanket of lies…
*
Acursèd I am to claim my weight
In all superior matter,
And to spot untamèd blunder
Until I become a bloody martyr…
*
Acursèd martyr…
Distorted anguish…
*
Am I to turn my face to all life’s wish?
Why do I have to be so stupid and so vain
That I cannot see but everybody’s pain?
*
I am soul and matter,
Bearing thorns and arrows
That once splattered
Sorrows from my chest…
*
Quite a deadman I’ve become…,
Quite a burden on my soul…
*
So I’m becoming old,
With growing power
To destroy all fate
From dreary face,
And to blow out my despair
And wake up dans l’enfer…
*
O soul, accursèd soul,
I am slumber and regret,
I am joy and I am pain,
I’m your sorrow and my hell…
My hell, for you that claimed me dead.

(Written originally in English)


Tristan des Mers is the pen-name for an English Literature student born in Mexico City in 1984. He is the lead singer of the Goth-Visual Metal band Nifelvein. You can check some of his work, both poetry and music, in http://tristandesmers.blogspot.com and in Nifelvein's myspace. Tristan des Mers forms part of a growing tendency in Mexican yougn artists to write and sing in English.

Poetry on the Walls

A frecuent visitor of this blog and e-mail pal, Fred from Scotts Valley CA wrote down some poems in his backyard's wall with waterproof ink. One of those poems was "Water in June's Memory", which we published in this blog a while ago. Here are some pics, I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

In English:

In Spanish:

Overall view:

Two Poems by Armanco Ayala Ochoa

Fractal Phrase

Why not saying dawn
and being born healthier
before memory
before losing sight
of the flowers
why not trying
to be a little less
sometimes
and floating on oil
light sorrows
earth
orange trees
That thorns would hurt us
and the daybreak would not find
any reason to give birth
to clouds
being less than less
if after all
on the route
our eyes
looked at
tons of marvels


One-thousandth Stare

…and we are less naïve
than it looks like
before afternoon as those steps
that go back
as they walk more
a cloud
a stream of dead
tension climbing up
our muscles
what is the recipe?
It seems that the leaves
Walk with us
Entangled on the doors
That inhabited us
…and we are less naïve
And however
it hurts us more
and it stops us less
the staring of the streets
and we see ourselves passing by
and so it looks
as if time
gets undone
and it gets
bigger
as the world
that was born
when we were born.

(Trans. by Aurelio Meza)

Armando Ayala Ochoa (1972) Won the 36 Punto de Partida Award.

Blue in Green by Daniel Malpica

There was an evening
─I think I remember─
when we were together

Perhaps you were an encounter
.....................................with the dregs
or the lonely afternoon
─like your own name─
where maple hairs
─long looped curtains
.........................on a cloudy day─
wet the asphalt

On that crust
evening
I put a sad record on
─incense voice reproducing your look─
Kind of Blue – Miles Davis

On that evening
there was a lot of rain
─yes
I think I remember─
I was alone
............just me
............─trumpet solo like a sip on the rim─
............and an almost empty little cup of coffee

Three Poems by Marduk

THE CITY is boiling,
beasts aggrieve with water mist,
they lurk,
they lie in wait for the mob’s shadows.

Then I set the table,
we sit down
and we get along as if this was the last time.

The nightly swipe doesn’t forgive anyone
neither in the wagons,
nor in the cupboard,
nor among high, gray sentinels,

We are not safe anywhere anymore.

……………………………………………………………

THE ASPHALT'S smell between my temples
the journey’s slithering through the vertebrae,
a roar
like the one statues make when they crush
are
a wasted reflection
of which won’t happen again.

……………………………………………………………

I WILL not wait for a firefly’s pulse,
like the streets of this map
in which things are packed and scattered in comets,
neither will I look for a sign of repudiation among the tracks
for every image of the past is tricky.

I will not talk,
I won’t say anything,
and my silence will be a protest,
it will wash itself black up to the celestial page,
it will get your ankles-whirlpool wet
it will say about frontiers:
ship’s traces
in cartographic plan.

(trans. by Aurelio Meza)

We don't know who Marduk is. We just know it is a pseudonym for a young Mexican poet, who has published his texts in some literary blogs, but that's it. Any useful information will be rewarded.

"Flowers" by Yaxkin Melchy

Everything in the same poem

Everything in the same, abandoned poem

Algae grow on it, and flowering animals.


A stripe―a coiled-up reading

A plaited snake,

It is the reading that reads the braids

Like black thunders.


Prose runs from the wagons

The thighs of the poem get ready,

The poem is to lily the field

And our lives, repeated themselves on the flowers.


You stroll about a field

Wrapping yourself with dry ink,


I don’t understand but night is a flower already in bloom

And far in the horizon

The bud of its death leans out.


An orange-beamed flower

And finally you see it, the same poem lying down,

With the letter of another day:

Omnia iam vulgata


Virgil said it two thousand years ago: everything’s already said.


And I planted 2 000 new flowers for the years

And 730 000 flowers for the days

That it cost me to write this poem.

Yaxkin Melchy Ramos (Mexico City, 1985) studies Hispanic Literatura and Industrial Design. He recently won the second prize in the Punto de Partida Poetry Award. He manages the blogs http://destruccionmasiva.blogspot.com/ and http://lacasadeyaxkin.blogspot.com