The Disappeared

 

Oscar Muñoz dabs

cool water for paint

stone slab for canvas

 

the speed of brushstrokes

chin, mouth, crooked nose, brow, eye

a face emerges

 

personality

in a glint, the slightest smirk

looks back at you

 

he who went to work

typical morning greetings

never returned home

 

his red bike curbside

at spot of kidnapping

left there

 

but painting on stone

dabbling clear water as paint

under scorching sun

 

dooms the portrait

what was painted first, the eyes

brow, begins to dry and fade . . .

 

look for the missing

in the cities, plantations

yucca, pineapples

 

cocoa, plantains

If you’re missing, you’re not dead

or alive

 

missing for decades

unearthed in Colombia

silent mass gravesites

 

near La Hormiga

frantic skeletons with no

place to go

 

it’s nonetheless paint

brush a new jaw line and chin

ear ring and hairline

 

the eyes and brow dissolve

you can’t grasp

the face, never whole

 

Downpour Vendors

 

1.

What’s wrong with you? This umbrella sold for $3 yesterday.

The barking man near Broadway and 37^th. doesn’t budge.

It’s not that I’m having an out of body experience

but I am watching myself, my anger rising.

You should lower the price when it rains!

 

 

2.

Man versus Man, Buyer versus Seller

Hand versus Wallet, Wallet versus Hand

Hands versus inverted Umbrella

 

Earth (chi), Fire (ka), Wind (fū), Water (sui), Sky (kū)

 

 

3.

Today was never going to be about the rain.

 

In front of the Beach Bum Air Brush tanning salon, a mop head girl lunges her flyers

into the guts of 14^th Street passersby skittering in yellow ponchos.  Rejected in the middle

of sidewalk sheen, she stares them down long afterwards like speeding cabs that didn’t

stop for her.

 

• Put your skin in the best light
• 15% off for students
• 20% off for actor and models
• 25% off for our finest and bravest
• 3 or 4 times a week to establish base tan
• 1 or 2 times a week to maintain
• One free platinum tan
• Aqua mist & aroma spray available
• UV tanning on a iBed w/ iPod docking ports

 

The ink runs, the bargains blur, the flyers are ruined.

Fuck it.  She flings the handouts into a graffitied trashcan.

 

She tilts her head back to yowl

mouth so wide open she tastes the rain

and to her surprise – lips smacking –

it’s to her liking.

 

Emerald Triangle Dream

 

Mekong Delta

The sun is a burning billboard.

 

On a break from the plows

white-horned yaks are too hungry to interrupt.

They chew the tedium, the grasses, the lichens.

 

I’ve made another wrong turn . . .

Before me a dusty field that leads

to Laos across the Mekong River

fed far away by Himalayan glaciers.

 

Off in the distance I see

an old man in a smock and clodhoppers.

He plods across this expansive view.

 

The old man notices me from afar, and hurries

awkwardly, from my left to right

a pole over his shoulders

a bucket on each end (water perhaps).

 

Once he’s reached to my far right

a hefty quarter mile in full for him to run, painfully,

he shouts something to me.

 

I step forward a few paces

to hear better in the humid field.

“Excuse me!” he says.

 

 

Under One Sun

 

New York City

Paleontologists can calculate

the exact speed of a sprinting dinosaur

by measuring the bones

the leg length, the distance

covered in the stride

the depth of fossil footprints.

 

You brand the Earth with each step.

For every step, there’s another to take.

Look behind you and see

your bossa nova floor plan.

 

After I’ve left any given moment

how many of my footprints will follow me

or get up and go off into another direction?

 

Of recent, I’ve been running marathons, casually.

A pair of Nikes will take you through

400-500 miles of training.

 

During rigorous training for my second marathon

I gave and gave and gave a part

of my heel to a hungry Earth.

In four hours and 57 seconds

in one run, under one sun, I followed

a Hawaiian blue line for 26.2 miles.

 

The Earth was soft to touch

the night before that race.

I dreamt of eucalyptus salve

malaria shots, itinerary.

I was ready.

 

Cubes Of Light

 

Manhattan 7:18 am

First thought – how many New Yorkers

 

woke up today at the exact same time

in this collective synchronized swimming routine

arms reaching and stretching for their alarm clocks?

 

I can’t wake up or down.

I couldn’t let go of the thought that the morning

will accumulate toward the afternoon.

 

Odd, the toothpaste exploded without a sound.

My hair explosive too.

 

Already this day is getting carried away with itself.

First something inexplicable tried to get out of my half-put-on shoe.

It was  a 2-inch Palmetto bug that once freed

scampered into hiding between the floorboards.

Then I came across a poem my Mirror wrote

mocking me to the fullest:

 

He dresses right, so I dress him left

Love the mind games, get a little rise

Watch the doubt I cause in his eyes

I understand he wants to recognize himself

The parts that make up the whole

Tomorrow he’ll check the face

On the back of his haircut as if what

I show him isn’t enough?

 

Off I go to one of the 468 subway stations.

Fedoras, skullcaps, Mardi Gras peacock headdresses.

I suppose the sport of making observations on the subway train

hasn’t changed over the years.

 

Look at all those cartoon bubbles above their heads

well, that’s what I’m thinking

that’s what’s in my cartoon bubble.

 

Quite frankly, I ascend.  I go to work, where nothing happens.

I am who I am going to be today.

 

Nighttime.  Long day.  That’s me in the skyline

in the midtown marquee in one of those cubes of light

maybe I’m on the 45th floor, or how about the 44th floor

that blinking silhouette, who will never wave back to you.

 

For dinner, I eat at Murray’s Bagel Shop because

when you bite into one of their bagels, it bites back.

I get my “healthy grain” with plain tofu to go.

 

A baseball capped cashier drops my no pulp

Tropicana carton on the floor.

The moment freezes as I ponder her options:

Will she get me a new carton?

Will she check for leakage?

She quickly picks it up and stuffs it into my bag.

Yes, the 5 second rule.

 

Bedtime chain of events:

 

At 12:21 a.m. and looking west northwest

there are 51 cubes of light in the sky.

At 1:37 a.m. there are 22 lights on.

At 2:45 a.m. there are 14 lights on.

At 4:06 a.m. there are 13 lights.

At 5:32 a.m. there are 4 lights.

At 6:11 a.m., 23 lights.