The mask, look at the
mask!
How it spits the forest's venom
through the imperfect anguish of New York!
Federico García Lorca,
Poeta en Nueva York
like being on the tenth floor of a building with no windows and no doors.
and without knowing how to fly.
the constant shiver of the abyss
the insolence of its always illuminated streets,
naked,
like an old bar full of urine
lovely and dirty.
silence does not dwell in this city
silence is a death plant that grows its hair under the shell of these streets.
this is the city of noise
of not knowing (not wanting to know)
how to contemplate.
the park is a scream
a violent dove that opens her throat and cries
a bouquet of men and women acting as children
craved with themselves
with their useless and sterile beauty.
manhattan. like being on the tenth floor of a building with no windows and no doors.
without knowing how to fly.
and what for.
if this is a constant fall over the rocks,
over the dirty feet of the beggar that does not know how to be old in this city.
because this city does not know about growing old
because is already rotten in its childish ambitions.
look at her, there, foolish and puzzled in its times square.
feeling prosperous and fertile
with her money dripping off her face like dirty makeup.
behind the neon lights, her misery shows her teeth and has started crying
it is a deep and fetid wrinkle. but nobody wants to see her cry.
look at her, there, pretending to be radical, in its stained streets marked by graffiti.
in her small artists wearing dark glasses, pink lips,
their thin and anxious bodies,
with their tiny stupid dogs hanging from their arms.
rebellion for tattoos. ideology for eccentricity.
there is an umbilical cord cooking our guts,
made out of metal, it has the raw and tense flavour of death flesh.
manhattan. tenth floor. no windows, no doors.
no flight nor fall.
our mouths like a muzzle. our hands like a knot.
gema santamaría
october, 2008.