I celebrate being alive!
With a tear here and a smile there.
The walls are empty
and the darkness fills my window.
I turn on the light inside
and alas it is a bright day
on the other side of the ocean.
There is always
another side of this ocean,
where we swim and drown.
Another side of the night
where we turn on the light of day.

The empty walls are projection screens
where time rolls, skips and jumps too fast.
Images and thoughts run through
as an unstoppable reel spinning out of control.
Time is an open faucet we can't turn off.
The water keeps running faster and faster
we want to hold it in our hands
but it slips through our fingers.
More than drops, a stream of tears
we can contain no more
than the afternoon rain,
or a river running to the sea,
and we want to drown the pain.

Images of so many lives
projected on the empty walls of time.
The darkness on my window has vanish
like the dying sun in the night
My naked body is drowning in this room
I can't stop the water from running
running me and I twist my thoughts
to shut off the faucet in my mind
and I can't stop it, I cannot shut off history,
I can't shut off my memory.
I cannot stop time vanishing life
as the night vanishes the day...

You can't shut off the light of day
when you celebrate life.

I discovered love when I was an old lady
love without frontiers of obsolete cultural concepts
love without the bondage of expectations
love without the chains of social contracts

I was just a young lady of twenty something
when I crossed the frontiers of my absent love
and dethroned the king who made me the spy
in the castle of dreams of forever after,
that were about to become the never ever,
with a gold and copper rose that would never wither
as my memory of our life together, I the duchess
who never quite felt I was the queen to my king

I abandoned the bondage of expectations
and embraced the disillusion of broken dreams
in the confrontation of a reality so harsh and plain
as the prison cell of my imagination so bare and yet full
as the cathedrals of ancient rituals of forgotten religions,
as the deep ocean where my ship was sunk under the new
yet so old moon in the night sky, above the fishing ships
sailing away towards the eastern horizon

I abandoned the chains of social contracts
and wrapped myself in the cloaks of non-existence
tied with the knots of fishermen's ropes
left at sea adrift in the night with the debris
of misunderstanding of a life not yet lived
leaving me loveless and starved
as an empty fishing net pulled to shore

But I was an old lady of thirty something
when I wondered if there was more to love
than the wrought iron dreams in paper castles
and locked towers above the sea
where I was a prisoner of my own desire.
Love had to be more than a colored picture
of a perfect moment with the edges of life cut away
to hide the faded borders of our history
and the burdens that brought us here to this moment in time

So I rebuilt my sunken ship to sail to the horizon
amidst the fishing ships that dared to sail under the full moon.
I found a fisherman adrift waiting for the sun to rise
to show him his way to shore and I pulled him to my fishing net.
My tower of isolation became his light house
and I became his sun rising from the east,
and in spite of the light of the full moon
that scares the fish away to the depth of the ocean,
our net was full when we pulled it to shore

The petals of desire pealed away as a rose in full bloom
scenting the deck of our ship sailing into the sunset
of an ephemeral moment that will live forever.
Paper castles burned in the bonfires of the past
as withered pages of an obsolete book darkening the hopes
of discovery and the metamorphosis of time.
A thousand ships at sea quietly fishing under the new moon
while in ancient cathedrals by the shore
prayers are whispered for its safe return

I discovered love when I was an old lady
and I became young and new.
My love is free as a red rose forever red
and eternal as the cathedrals of the mind
yet ephemeral as solemn rituals of religions
from distant continents not yet discovered.

So I embark onto that ship of my desire
with a destination set to new shores
and new discoveries and new metamorphosis,
seeking to find the innocense that was left
in the wrought iron dreams of paper castles
that burned in the bonfires of the past.

And I'll pray in the cathedrals of my mind
for another rose to bloom from the ashes of time,
when I reach new shores and find my fishing net
full with plenty to share my discovery of love
that made me new and full like the moon
high up in the sky above the sea,
where we will sail in between the absent frontiers,
without the bondage of expectations,
and without the chains of space and time.

My love is timeless and free.

Our marriage was an ambiguous
experiment on the edge of the absurd

The ambiguity of my origin,
and the ambiguity of your destination
in the absurdity of time and place.

The surreal Arabian landscape
had pink and white petals of almond blossoms
that covered the January winter hills,
against the background of blue sky.

Its carpet of petals gave the country side
the impression of snow covered land
surrounding the mansion of my dreams,
that collapsed onto the sea of my discontent,
amidst fig trees, and almond trees,
and pines that spiked the indolence of the afternoon
scented with the orange blossoms of a marital bliss
that did not exist.

Time arrested life, breathless,
as each morning you called for breakfast,
Filomena, the cobra that lived in the fireplace.
Samantha, the salamander
that lived behind the bedroom door,
would kill me just by touching my clothes,
absent my fear of reptiles.

The river that run down the hill
had colored butterflies in February.
Philip Butterfly of Lafayette, your dog,
was yellow like the dry empty fields in my heart,
where the lilacs died along with the emerald of hope.

With his gray stripes to the right,
and gray polka dots to the left,
he run free through the meadows of wild flowers
and chased the butterflies by the river
and the birds that sang on my window in the morning.

Your twelve string guitar gave you more pleasures
than I, and I wanted to be your instrument,
I wanted you to play me.

My voice was muted, my fingers arrested,
in the absurdity of my doubts and certainties.

The Arabian nights had no meaning,
while the oversized moon fell onto the Mediterranean sea
underneath the suspended houses against the sky,
surrounding the castle where I hid my heart
amidst the religious art that could not restore my faith,
in the absurdity of that time and place,
in our marriage, and the ambiguity of our life.

So I left! To find my voice and liberate my fingers.
I conducted an ambiguous experiment
on the edge of the absurd, on my own,
and discovered the ambiguous absurdity all around.

I've journeyed on my own.
There was no one except for brief encounters
as travelers under the rain in search of sun
beyond the desert of our existence.
My journey continues and the book of my travels
is still being written, only other chapters
were archived in the confines of memories
obsolete at this moment in time.

One's baggage at times
gets on the way of one's destination,
and interfere with the enjoyment
and appreciation of a place in the moment.
I will not go back to Paris or Lisbon.
Arlon was left in the distance.
Seville was not quite what my brother loved...
My spirit was squelched in Luxemburg,
where I could not breath as if I were
a mermaid in search of the sea.

Pieces of my heart were left
on the other side of the Atlantic.
Yet, on this side of the ocean
I discovered other pieces of me.

I have not found a fellow traveler
to accompany me on my journey.
I ask for more than most men can offer,
their love and desire.
I want a man to write poems on my skin
without leaving me as a scroll in the desert.
I'll be his riverbed if he's my river.
I'll be his island if he's my ocean.
I want the oblivion of social protocols
and obsolete cultural concepts.

I want the freedom that is possible
when we open our windows onto the world.
I want everything that comes from within
and nothing from without.

Like the Japanese tea room, to where one brings
only what is essential for the tea ceremony,
I await the traveler with whom I'll share
the seven cups to ecstasy.
Until then I'll journey on my own.