Monday, February 17, 2014

Auspices At Malecón


Sailing into the wind
vultures form a pentagon
hovering motionless
over shore below.

Silent and unstrung
abiding and descrying
as one five kites bank
left and are gone.


E. A. Costa  16 February 2014 Granada, Nicaragua

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Chatepelose


Caterpillar is a hairy word
with its column of legs
undulating silkily like water,

a concertina of soft and boneless balloons
pillaging Edens,

eating, secreting and sleeping
one long night

with no mortal remains,
without urn or cemetery
catapulting into butterfly.

E. A. Costa 15 February 2014



Thursday, February 13, 2014

Floor 13 (Short Verses With Sharp Teeth)


(13)

In the endless room of twilight
out of nowhere showers a faucet
of electric water

threatening flood.

He rises and goes to the terrace.

Moon shines on the glass river.

She smiles and we dance the night away
on ice.

Why didn't Noah call a plumber?


(12)

Through the clouds in your ears
fly poems with sharp teeth

leaving contrails

in one eye out the other.


(11)

Like a pipe

like Arius in the outhouse

like a world collapsing

he bursts out laughing

to himself.


(10)

In this city of familiar innards and sweetbreads

where streets are canals channeling strangers
in and out

the moon is captive of high walls

with minds barred like tall wooden doors.


(9)

Picture this:

Space
of whatever far horizon
you desire.

Place
of whatever zero gravity
you may cipher.

Room
like Mister Moebius' strip
twisting.


(8)

The roof is damaged.

The sky scarred with cloud

bleeds water.



(7)

What solutions can fictions offer?

They have no nothingness in which to move.

The mirage of prose is to prevent a line that knows.

What does a plant know of Sunday?

What does a toadstool ken of midnight?

They expand without calendars or tongues

and suddenly explode in seed.



(6)

Some place in the where of millennia
are submerged your necessary clowns,
drowned in the inanities of your right
and dutiful hands

and in this land surrounded by ocean

in every false harbor mark buoys

where mothers end and the maelstrom begins.

This is the good and the vicious of Penelope's
widow's walk:

seen dry-eyed from height
these are marriages of the desert.



(5)

Here are no first class seats, only steerage.

Here are no peers—only Harpo and Chico

mooning and diving into spaghetti with bare hands.

Do you know that old wooden table in the mountains

where were engineered hydroelectric dams of corn meal

filled with squirrel?



(4)

After Carvajal
it is not necessary
to drown in a little bit
of water.

After Carvajal
it is not necessary
not to smile at whoever
may.



(3)

Speak easy, machine,
in plain polyunsaturated prose
like a rose of one-way streets
radiating in the rain.

Speak easy, tracemaker,
beginning at both ends
and like a lead charioteer
in the circus take heartbeats
through their paces.



(2)

Don Quijote is the last ever seen
of Agamemnon,

with hollow barrel chest
and homilies.



(1)


The day ends,
play finishes.

Money is counted out,
strongboxes locked

and street flowers
with emptiness.

E. A. Costa 13 February 2014 Granada, Nicaragua

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

El último cigarrillo...


El silencio está maduro
con humo.
El cenicero está lleno.
Cuando el último cigarrillo
se deja de fumar
nos levantamos para ir...
.
E. A. Costa 5 February 2014  Granada, Nicaragua

The Last Cigarette...

The silence is ripe with smoke.
The ashtray is filled.
When the last cigarette quits smoking
we rise to go...

(E. A. Costa tr.)

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Hollow Is Nothing New


Hollow is nothing new.
They were all hollow long ago.
Eliot is the epitaph
going through the motions
with an ocean in between.
After Pound long ago dead to ground,
dead with Chaucer and as obituary
midsummer night's dream.

E. A. Costa  4 February 2014 Granada, Nicaragua