Before your name becomes a wound

Before your name becomes

a wound on my tongue

a scar on my heart

a drowning in my lungs

Before your name becomes

revenge for a past that was never yours

fists that crush the face of your lover the sky

a crumpled man, a prisoner of oblivion

I will hold on to you

I will become your second shadow

I will burst the pus of the sun

To shallow the pain

of these neighborhoods

that push us into the grave

of their pigment.

Your name is a wound

that bleeds from the constellations

that opens into a canyon

where the wild river of your rage

roars into the border and the oceans

Time goes backward

The glaciers are melting

The clouds are engorged

with the moans

of my dying grandfather

of my serene grandmother

who push you back across space

so you can finish living

so you can settle down between horizons

free of walls and ghosts

Your name is a wound

The wound will stop time

Your name will become a cloud with roots

shade from the maddening threat of prisons

an opening to free yourself from yourself

Defying all bullets that you have fired

and have been fired at you.

A wound against all wounds

A silence against all cries

A man against himself

that saves yourself

You must first touch your own wound

pronounce it liberation

a compact to end all wounds

You will never forget who you are

until you forget who you’ve been

A wound that walks around

slashing the land with rage

A wound that screams blaming the sky

for the blue of your weariness

A wound of quicksand and freezing solitary

You were hungry

And you refused my prayers

Your were angry

And you ignored the sage

You were a child

And you got your way….

[Poem: February 2019 | Collage 2014 | arnoldo garcía]