13 PIECES FOR A PIANO

The wind is grabbing

trees outside my window

pushing them like an old man

on a wheelchair

Heavy

Slow

Unaware

of the surroundings

and the years that they carry on

their branches

they try to enter my space

invade my cosmic galaxy

with dancing leaves

on 13 pieces for a piano

trying to make the season

last longer than it should

but I don’t let them

come closer

I lock the doors

I close the windows

I shut the curtains

and I patiently wait

and I wait

for the first blossomed flower

giving birth to spring

FEMINISM AND THE OEDIPUS SYNDROME

I was born in the waters of a lake and hit my head on the stones as I came thrusting out of my mother's stomach. I was the first and last son. I never wondered if this had any impact on my life, even though today, when I see lakes, I am overwhelmed by a feeling of depravity, remembering my mother - not the stones. From then on I have to see her. It was like some kind of magic mushroom that made me spring up and now I have to find the way myself and whatever happens. Throughout my life I sucked from various breasts, but never from her own. I never missed mother. There were many women who I made them replace her completely. It was not love, it was exactly what I said: replacement. Did I exploit them? Perhaps. Did they want it? Probably not. That’s what we all do. This is love. To choose the most likely woman who will give you what you can not give to yourself. Love is an act of selfishness and I am its master. Or at least until I met Linda. A woman sweet and bitter, beautiful and foul.

We met at some feminist event. I used to go because I liked watching the angry faces in reddish female youngsters. It offered me some kind of pleasure. I'm not sure if my mother's issue played a role in it. All these filled-up with ideas youngsters, in a few years, will have grown together with their ideas that will remember and laugh nostalgically while drinking tea with their husband, cheating on him with a guy like me. It was a sunny morning just before spring and Linda was more beautiful than ever -of course I didn’t know how beautiful she was before this day-. She held a makeshift sign that read: ‘’THE FUTURE IS FEMALE’’.

I laughed, as she was too young to know that this slogan is from 70s feminists and not from the latest fashion collections that launch feminism as a new fabric from Paris. Yes, I know about fashion, ironic. Linda looked angry - with the world, with her father, with the men, I do not know - but this pretty little face was so exquisite that her anger felt like a delicious cigarette after a long meal. Short hair and dark circles under her eyes made her look like an impoverished French actress. I approached her and asked her if she was politically engaged, acting confident and with an indifferent style that I always knew it works.

- "No, I'm here because I like big crowds" she answered sarcastically without even looking at me. She was busy with the sign she held, which continued to fold in two because of the strong wind that had suddenly appeared.

- "I would not say that this gathering is crowded." It was a matter of 100 people around.

- "Can I help you with something or you’re just looking for conversation?"

Linda was a classic case of hard-faced girl just wanting the right treatment to take the kitty out of her. This finding, of course, was something that Linda would later defeat. I did not answer, and I took a few steps further, as I pretended to be reading a political booklet. I watched her with the edge of my eye shouting and jumping up and down, full of passion, while all I had in my mind was how her breasts would look like under her short t-shirt. The protest was finally over and Linda turned to me with her cheeks still reddish.

-"What are you doing here; You do not seem to be a feminist to me"

- "Do feminists have a specific face?" Linda lost it for a while and looked at me with hatred. Good cover for her defeat in the chat.

I continued:

- "My mother was a feminist. She hated men so much that when she saw she was giving birth to a boy, she just left me there and went to work with her poetry." I was not sure if she would understand the sarcastic nature of my humor but I gave her a chance.

"Your mother must have been a wise woman." Linda had no mercy. Continued:

- "Why did you look at me all the time? What did you expect would happen? "

- "Honestly speaking, I was thinking of how your breasts would look like under the short t-shirt." I took my risks. All or nothing.

"That's how they look like" she said, lifting her shirt up to her jaw, leaving her white, white breasts exposed to my eyes and the other hundred pairs of eyes around.

I stumbled, and then the incredible happened. Dozens of T-shirts were lifted up and uncovered pairs of breasts began to stare at me with no disgrace, making men parallelize, two cars crashing, a grandmother to drop her denture and the sun to change track. Young women between flushing, hatred and adrenaline coming from the unexpected, practical female solidarity, were screaming around me, bouncing and shouting slogans. The protest was quickly transformed into a boop soup and I was hungry. I was in paradise. If that's what Feminism is all about, then I'm definitely an eternal and loyal supporter.

- "Linda I love you." I told her in the most old fashioned way.

- "I don’t." she said and winked playfully at me.

It was a nice sunny morning.

THE WRITER'S BLOCK AND THE RED LIGHTS

People say that there is nothing more scary for a writer than a blank sheet of paper. I say that there is nothing more terrifying than a writer with a blank mind. A few days ago I shined with pride for my discovery: If I don’t know what to write about, then I will write about the fact that I can not write. A few days later, I also discovered that this had already been said by my beloved Bukowski, something that gave me mixed feelings. "Better write about the writer's block than nothing."

I had the same idea with him, but a few years little later. Does that mean I am just as genius as him or that I am not enough of a pioneer to think something before someone else has already said or thought? The future will tell. The previous one and a half paragraph was enough to take me out of this black hole.

K was angry. -I call him K because I have a lot of difficulty giving fake names to real people-. There was something about his mother, his former relationship with life, his former relationship with me, no one knows and no one ever will. I was going through a phase of self-discovery with the help of pessimistic thoughts, fumes from the past and a few bottles of Casillero del Diablo. A cheap wine, but with a spicy name, a scent like spring bumps and a taste that spoils your tongue leaving an aftertaste of wet stones. He on the other side, remained faithful to his own preferred tasteful delights, mainly derived from black chocolate and lemon flavored carbonated water. Our kisses smelled of all this and many more, entangled with a bit of sweat and Ralph Lauren perfume. Classy and dirty, exactly how it should be.

That night we cried, our cheeks blushed, and then we cried a little longer. We smoked, we got drunk, we paused for a few minutes and then cried again. My tears were charged with liberation and my veins felt like a highway on a rainy day. Pandemonium.

We stepped outside on the street. The air stretched our skins and some smells of the city, made us forget the emotional struggle for a while. We walked and walked and got lost along the neighborhood canals, carefully, without letting romance overtake us. Such a passionate lover that is. I'm talking about the city, not K. We found ourselves somewhere between red lighted displays and a Christian Hostel. We both laughed with the irony of the city’s structure, making some jokes that made us understand our urging need for fun. K was looking at the women behind the window displays while I was courageously looking inside their eyes: Just like scarecrows that are stranded in the misery of a life. His existence next to the half-naked women disturbed me. This nuisance did not come from a comparison between myself and the other women. It was more because of the shallow, childlike expression that his face took while he was chuckling about the hip size of an African prostitute. I smiled at her, as if I had to apologize for his rudeness and dragged him away from the panic of neon, latex, and big hips. We traveled for a while in controversial alleys filled with cheap fragrances and heavy curtains with signs that spelled OCCUPIED until we arrived at our destination: The city’s cultural torture.

- "Do you like it here?" he said. I looked around. No sounds coming from human musical creation, no faces of real people dugged up from life, no profound decision of the owner to put some of his soul in what he calls a bar. No profound decision by the customers to put a little of their soul in their glasses - or in their words.

- "Can we sit outside?" I said. It was my last chance to avoid this feast of bad European Americanism.

- "I will not die from the cold because you want to smoke 20 cigarettes with your whiskey" His answer was just as annoying as his face.

- "Can I have a double Four Roses without ice?" I asked the waitress calmly and in response to his comment about smoking, I lit up a cigarette.

-" Does your dad drink that? "The waitress giggled, losing her tip with this irrelevant comment.

-"Yes. Shortly before he died" I replied, stopping her stupid laugh. I did not accuse her. She was also looking to somehow show her personality behind that glass tray. I used to do the same.

- "You are not satisfied with anything. I'm not good enough for you". He said, making me understand that his macho insecurity, had created him some sort of need to solve all of my problems through his own decisions.

- "I'm not satisfied with half-meters. All or nothing. The right bar or nothing. The right cigarette or nothing. The right life or death.’’ In my last statement I felt a bit more dramatic than I should, but I was pleased with the sound of these words, and that was enough.

The drinks came, the cigarettes finished, he left the night was over, this story is over, maybe not with the perfect end, but that's it.