Pearls is a collection of poems written in the aftermath of my seven-year stay in the United States, at a moment when the English language had begun to feel less foreign and more instinctive.
These poems wander through the fear of death and the fleeting ways sensuality attempts to overcome it. Eclectic and temperamental, they were written under the inspiration of two muses.
*
sounds from a busy house
to win the relentless race to suicide
it feels foolish to care
but I still remember
when all these sounds were mine
*
I begged for a miracle
and received a vision laced with your gaze
the devil works his own wonders
they’re just as inevitable
our eyes speak only in symbols
and all you wish to be right
is blinded in the fear of dying
while all my lives are you
*
no wonder why everything is ending
if you could see your mother
you would see shame
if you could see your father
you would see fear
and there you are
crying under the nightlight
for the world you were not given
maybe if you turn yourself a mother
you would be fear
or if you turn yourself a father
you would be shame
*
every so often we meet
and I wish this time you stay
but your love is so strong
it always breaks free
love is nothing but leaving
and words in your tears
*
the sun is always setting
in my heart
its dim light
scorched under the weather
the weather we call our own
like no other flesh
noon empties its glass
and we wait
for the sunset
to burn the poems of untruth
for the vengeance of solitude
to break at dawn
the sun is setting in my heart
*
words trickle gentle rainfall
longing for everything that was
and everything that is
beyond me and I
you stand like an anchor of time
a budding memory
*
no other fear beyond yourself
the present loveliness
the handful of tears and confusion
my waning self
and the horizon
the strange nuance that becomes commonplace
and our way of being apart together
giving me a sense of relief
like no other fear beyond myself
*
mateo desant 