Phone call

Ramón always wondered how was to living in California in the seventies, when he was growing up in Sevilla, with nothing to do. He always had the sensation of a sunny day inside a comfortable and Spartan house, playing in a warm green bedroom and listing to Beggar’s Banquet and White Pillow. Sometimes he watches Hanna Barbera cartoons. Then, during the night, he goes skating with his parents and friends in the sidewalk by the beach. It is a weird feeling that he experienced as real, like the memory of a dead fella was absorbed in a kind of possession.

She knows: Ramón made a bad choice based only in a vague dream. Anyway, pigheaded as he always were, he packed up his most beloved things and moved to Los Angeles, promising to everyone, himself included, to come back in a year or in a year and a half, maybe.

The heat hit him like a hell’s flame in the “taller” of the old Mexican across the avenue where he’s living with other two Spaniards. Everything resumes to work and to go home. Even living just two blocks away from the job, Ramón is not having any fun at all: cinemas, theaters and indie rock concerts were far away from the hell-hole where he’s living. None of his fellow countrymen likes any of these gringos’ stuff. Always tired, watching TV, his only solace is to buy comics and read a lot of them during the night till the day he fall in with Tom Araya on the street. Ramón tried to talk with him just to see he slams the door of a building in his face. Luckily, she called to Ramón that day. California in the nineties sucked enough to him. One week later and he were promenading in Madrid with her.

Total Eclipse of the Moon

The throng is coming out through the throat of the city’s sewers. They supposed to look like vomit when they emerge from metro stations, but they seem like blood shed by a decapited underdog.
All of them are covered in red from their clothes and, yes, from the blood of other people. Innocent people, you bet, but for the Revolution they were betrayers, spreading greed from the center of the business practices which poisoned all the society. The world will testify the renaissance of the old religion tonight, they thought in unison.
When the night came and the moon vanished from the sky, a Leviathan form raised, shining red. The thing crushed the city with his hands, which have the format of a hammer and a sickle, actually.

On duty

The burn on his elbow is hurting a lot, thanks to the stupidity of his boss, who smokes like an old movie idol to impress the gals. Most of them think that he is ugly. And we’re firemen, for Christ’s sake!
While hoping for a telephone call to make the tediousness disappear along the pain, Ray is looking for pomade in the drawers above his desk, packed of report waiting for fulfill. Another day wasting time with minutiae; nine years ago he forecast a busy and helpful life to himself. Like all other of his dreams, this gone terrible wrong. Most of the people do things that they don’t like during their day jobs; Ray tries to solace himself with the idea.
The entire family died in the fire. Ray is trying to talk with his parents since yesterday, but they don’t answer the phones. OK, they’re traveling, but the thoughts of yesterday are haunting him. He remembers the old couple partially disfigured. They are hugging each other. The kids are in another room, beneath the remains of the bed. Pick up the phone, mom, please. Burnishing the truck, verifying the hoses, his soul is flying. The pain was forgotten. Fondling Laika with a thought, Ray remembered his daddy’s cell phone number. Out of service, out of reach.
A little boy drowned three blocks down the street, swimming in the river. The phone call arrived too late. Useless, we are useless. Another corpse to carry back to a crying mother. In the last three months no life was saved on his turn. Ray takes another cup of coffee and stands alone in the cloakroom, looking to a picture of Glenda in the cell phone. Finally, he erases it. Please, some kid must fall into an artesian well to be rescued.

Her last act

She forgot to put in the refrigerator the food that she prepared. Now the dishes are covered with dust. Nevertheless, months after that, the rice, beans and meat doesn’t turned sour. We can eat it. She thought in everything. You have never left this country, sadly. She talked in a kind of code. You can’t talk to angels and break the borders from far beyond.
Bauru, 1999

Don’t get caught

You have no options. Sometimes, there are no options. Your friend can deny it, but is true. Do it and shut up. Yeah, of course, there are options. Everyone can run away like a chickenshit, but then you must face the consequences.

Be a rat is not that bad, c’mon. All you have to do is talk with your old fellas, just bullshit them, and open your mouth here. Sing to us, if you prefer. You can write your poetry with subliminar message, we’ll understand the subtle. At least we will comprehend you. All you artists claim for that, isn’t it true? Finally somebody will dedicate some attention to your writings. That’s good, uh? Maybe I’ll write an academic thesis about it.

You chose this life, pal. From now on you’ll be a real “damned poet”, I don’t know the exact term, but I think that you can get the idea. Wait a couple decades and you can tell everything to your biographers. The day you fucked up a pair of fucking dealers in payback. Because they fucked you, you know that, uh? Now you can get even.

She doesn’t recognize me anymore

The bad days are coming back. All the ghosts of the past are haunting me again. When I was isolated in my room no one can harm me, except myself, and that was happening. But when I decided to come out and breathe a little, I suddenly found myself surrounded by them. They’re not fucking with my mind, but it is high school again. Their hatred for everyone who doesn’t fit doesn’t bother me anymore, but the simple contact with all these losers left a bad taste of stagnation on my mouth. And she still doesn’t look to me.

Are we walking together when we become old?

It was sixteen years ago. Now she is ugly and this is not fair. Maybe I have some responsibility in her precocious aging. I can’t comprehend why most of the men despise women in the next day after getting laid. All of them are like a gift from Satyr. But I did the same with her. I was a kid, but this is no excuse, I feel like a kind of a rapist now, even it was consensual. A rapist of souls. And I can’t avoid look to her I.D. around the neck. She got my surname. So it was her destiny, really. Did he get acknowledge about us?

I got a hunch

John is tired of being treated like shit by his boyfriend and yelled his resentments at dawn, waking up the neighbors. These thoughts were burning his brain for days and the mental flames are impelling his body. Smiling with contemptuous, Andre whispered something, but John can’t heard it. So he roared “what did you said, you fucking asshole?” just to hear it loud “Exactly, your asshole fills my dick with shit”. Fed up with Andre, John ended up in the headlines of the tabloids.