Five Poems by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

 

Like a Stone

 

 

Like a stone 

in the San Gabriel Valley 

 

I sit, cold and calculating, 

I make my heart hard, 

figuratively and thoroughly. 

 

As it starts to rain, 

deprived of sunshine, 

 

I get off the stone. 

I am not weeping. 

But I should be. 

 

I am living, hanging on by 

a thread death is trying to unravel. 

 

 

 

 

Brand New 

 

For Glenn Cooper 

 

Give everything you see a new name. 

Get close, have a good look, and give 

everything you see a brand new name. 

In the distance everything is so far away. 

Above is the moon, what will you name it? 

 

Names are essential and mysterious 

when you allow your eyes to see them 

with a new name. What will the sky be 

named? Sky is not vast enough. What 

brand new name will you give the sky? 

 

The sky will file a grievance for calling 

it sky of all things. It is deserving of a 

brand new name. Above all of us is 

the moon, get a telescope, get a good 

look, how about Aperion, the infinite? 

 

 

 

 

Voice and Night

 

 

Voice births night. 

Dark lips births 

voice and night. 

Light lifts skirt 

of morning, 

first image 

after night. 

Memory 

falls dead in 

night’s embrace. 

Young mermaids 

wait at sea 

with bound hands 

and sea-song. 

A seagull’s 

blue song drown 

demented 

sailors same 

as sirens’ 

serenade 

on cold nights.

 

 

 

My Dying Words

 

 
I read over my words dying  

on the page in so many ways 

over wine and crackers with 

cheese with light shining bright. 

I keep a window open to let 

the night air in. My words, so 

filled with love, disappointments, 

and just wanted to be shared. 

How toxic they become when 

they dwell about the past. 

They burst out of me with no 

filter. In the late hours they 

fight each other like alley cats. 

By morning I see the wreckage 

and I mourn their death. I refer 

to them as poems of the grave, 

my dying words. I bury them 

as their last breath rots on the 

page. They are like life when 

they have had enough. I can 

recall how much they suffered 

scattered throughout my note- 

books. I kept them alive for 

days. I loved them for teaching 

me the lesson of failure. 

Time stops for everyone, even 

words, that pine for the moon 

and the stars. I take these words 

for a drive sometimes. They don’t 

know that I will bury them in 

the California desert, never to 

be seen again. I will light a candle. 

I will bury them deep, where they 

will dream of a pygmy forest, and 

when it is over at least they will 

have experienced a beautiful dream. 

In the morning, I will start again 

on new words over coffee and I 

will do my best to give them life. 

 

 

 

The Wind Exits

 

 

The wind distances itself 

Tired of cities complaining of its presence 

Tired of playing with shadows 

Tired of following its dreams without 

 

fulfilment or nourishment of its own 

strength; tired of fanning the flames 

of destruction; of kicking up dust 

for entertainment purposes; tired of 

the boredom of cities too cosy to 

come outside and meet it head on

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal  lives in California, works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, and was born in Mexico. His poetry has been published by Blue Collar Review, Fixator Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Mad Swirl, Oddball Magazine, Unlikely Stories, and Yellow Mama Webzine. His poetry book, Make the Water Laugh was published by Rogue Wolf Press.