Surfacing.

After many years of observing, I finally started to break the code of my soul. I had to learn a new language to be able to speak, to raise my Surfacing verse. I would like to invite you to take a walk around a little piece of my soul, the part I have been able to decode into English. My poetry has no other agenda but to encourage you to find your own path towards peace, self-realization, and happiness. Now that our paths have crossed, it’s time to find out what for. DEDICATION When I moved here, almost 7 years ago, one could not artwalk down the block. Whores and drug dealers over looked in distrust, one is not unobserved dressed in verse and rust. To Wynwood.

[alfonsosantillana]

Illegal

I need no name,

I was born in every land,

I have no race.

I have prayed to all the Gods

and followed every star

in charted space.

My history

is written in all languages,

it has no borders, it knows

no nation.

Migrant speck of dust

in ticking gravitation;

seeking the beyond

I left millennia ago.

Bound to a harvest fest

and a soft delta song

I parted dirt into groove

and pollinated the earth.

I made path as far

as my body lasted,

I removed the rock

for those who came after.

I shared every oasis

and sailed the distance,

I reached every corner

with awakened inspiration.

I am a human in migration

and they call me illegal.

[alfonsosantillana]

Perception

Be kind, the war has ended.

This world of sound and light;

this double mirrored life,

this biased reality

wouldn’t be without us.

Step outside your perception,

surf the copper light

of an incandescent bulb,

through your living room,

out your window, across your street,

your district, your city, your county,

your state, your country, your planet,

your Milky Way, your universe,

and now look back, from above all universes,

so far in time that everything

is but a single atom. Division is a myth,

it’s a matter of perspective.

Be kind, the war has ended.

[alfonsosantillana]

Son of the Sun

Like the flower and the sky

brushstroke the butterfly,

time and hope

wrote the wisdom

that belongs to no one

and belongs to all;

to you and me,

the lion and the fly.

Your freedom is my liberty,

the simplest act of love,

it’s the balance of nature

and the prison of greed.

It’s what I saw in your eyes

that had me convinced:

the time to awaken

has arrived.

[alfonsosantillana]

Whole everything nothing

I am not my emotions,

I am not my thoughts,

I am not my beliefs,

I am not my labels,

I am not my pelvis,

I am not my clothes,

I am not what you see

I am not what you cannot.

All definition is limitation,

and all conclusions are old.

Call this body whichever labels

you’ve been taught,

divide me in subgroups,

cut my mind in equal parts;

or name each cell in my body,

in a unison call for each other

and that will not be me.

Only as I expand

I become more accurate,

more equal, more fair, more just.

I am not my country,

I am not my God,

I am not my family,

I am not my world,

I am not society,

I am not my voice,

I am not my name,

I am not my home,

I am not what you think,

I am not what you forgo.

All definition is limitation,

and all conclusions are old.

I am the witness

helping this body be something more,

that whole everything nothing

that expands as I grow.

No one can hold grey matter

and call it a thought,

just as no one can define a body

to confine the soul.

[alfonsosantillana]

The borders of a word

I am the source of your faults

but also the crib of your virtues.

I am contradiction and doubt

but also belief and superstition.

With me rest ideology and treachery;

next to the power of the profane

lies the wisdom of a homily.

With me you build a home

and breathe meaning into family,

brother, mother, grandson

and young old friendships.

You manifest your memories

and tell all your hardships.

You scale hope and disgrace

or cheat your way in this race;

the good and the perverse

are subjects of my universe,

they revolve on my axis,

as shepherds of stars

or hunters of galaxies.

With me you can be or not to be

or charge against windmills;

write the form of water

or break down nuclear matter.

Shade travelers or nest prejudice,

shelter strangers or criticize

the migrant and the urbanite.

You can get all men to unite

or in the name of your God kill

those standing on a godless hill.

With me you can wrap

your tongue in distance

and oppose coexistence,

or inject understanding

in each syllable of your thoughts

to utter wide open roads,

to mirror with the borders of a word

the resounding bliss of your love.

[alfonsosantillana]

Princess

Move your toes, feel them.

Feel your ankles,

move your calves,

your legs.

Feel your hands,

rub them against each other,

feel their warmth.

Feel your arms, your neck.

Witness your thoughts.

Now,

listen to your heart.

Can you feel your body alive?

Princess,

there is no need to cut anymore.

[alfonsosantillana]

From the shadows

From the shadows I see no stars,

a trembling cigarette light draws

the cruelty of the rock

over this darkened landscape.

A mistress of moonlight

tempts like an eclipse;

the most unhappy fantasy…

A black skinned moonbeam

gravitating towards headlights,

like a backstreet satellite

in orbit to an empty sin.

From the shadows I see no stars,

as the nighttime horizon

cuts the count of the clock,

her heart’s numbness grows

like evening shadows

reaching out to the night.

A female constellation

of wounds, a moonlit sun

craving her dusky relief,

when the sadness swells up

to fill the void.

[alfonsosantillana]

as vast infinity inside as outside

To look for a black point in the darkness

the mane of a candle is useless,

staring is useless,

human senses are useless.

To look for a black point in the darkness

a whisper, almost a voice is useless.

Sitting at a desk is useless,

a pen, even if it promises

to leave you in the dark, is useless.

To look for a black point in the darkness

narrow feelings are useless,

secret expectations are useless,

blinks of faith are useless,

reborn sects are useless,

labels and teachings are useless.

In the high shadows of night,

a black point in the darkness

and its shining black edges

can be seen only by the mind;

yet we keep on seeking outside

what only in the heart we find.

[alfonsosantillana]

Inner Self Projection

I was a pilgrim of a distant dream

that could never be reached;

casting my shadow in front

I left the sunrise behind,

and went on to make the road

that aimlessly led beyond

the horizons I was taught.

I never learned to follow

and they said I’d get lost,

dictated distance and goal

ignoring that my guiding post

was the purpose of my soul.

A square foot I was given

and a square foot is all I needed

to project my inner self

upon the canvas of this earth;

with every step and in every act

I radiated my love

to heal the small piece of land

my two feet occupied.

Natural seeds of paradise

with every footmark multiplied,

because everything around me

is the consequence of who I am,

where they put a lion I placed a lamb;

where fear raised crosses I saw a man.

Despite distance, land or shore

this world is the mirror of my soul,

that is why to regret any step

is to miss the point,

following the sun no flower can disappoint.

I chose the virtue and dignity of a path

where I am you, you’re him and he’s us,

a trail of freedom that bounds no one,

expects no one to follow but all to lead

projecting their inner happiness and peace.

I no longer am a pilgrim of a distant dream,

my life is now a sign-less road,

ignoring where I am going

everywhere I am, I make my home.

While this plane is a globe

I am always returning regardless where I go,

everywhere I am I’ve been before,

because I am in all things and everything is in me;

that is how I learned that the dream I set out to reach,

everywhere I went I brought it within me.

[alfonsosantillana]

Wide open love

It is not about opening cages,

filing spiking thorns,

nor removing all chains

to romanticize my desire.

If it is time to go,

we both know that an end

cannot be written with a voice.

Go in search of your north,

I don’t judge your rush.

I know the impatience of love,

no one slows down its clock.

Follow your heart, 

I love you more 

for doing so.

But if you discover that

what you seek is only mirages,

and what looks like oceans

turns into cliffs and eclipses.

And you want to return

to my wide open love, remember

there’s always room for ellipsis

right after a dot.

[alfonsosantillana]

Gentle Beauty

Aboard this sidereal symphony

allow me to lift off to a just Nebula;

the poetic astral journey of my idylls

to evoke the cosmos in your honest eyes.

With this astronomical neon chisel

let me carve in the void that words inhabit

the glinting warmth of your sight;

to echo over this cosmic night

the spinning satellites of my idolatry;

My gentle beauty, my love.

Aboard this Aquarius awakening

like a galactic explorer

riding a comet’s burning hair,

I seek with open palms the poetry of your light.

I head towards a Zodiac station

to reach the galaxy of affections

starring in your clear eyes.

Harmony with sepia shades for a calm verse;

exhaling the inspiration of your essence

like harvesting joy from the sun.

Gravitational urgency of living

to orbit the universal dawn of your glance.

Gentle beauty of chestnuts stars

dawning tenderness behind morning eyes.

Rosy as a lethargic kiss

blooming in the banks of a sunrise;

rosy as a sigh that disguised as verse

wants to be the caress

that touches your soul.

My gentle beauty, my love.

[alfonsosantillana]

Vox Populi

A pencil scratches this paper

with periods and dashes.

But a dash and a period

so short and sudden,

their charcoal soul can

hardly draw a thought.

A shapeless thought,

a weightless nothing

scratched on this paper

like an ethereal door,

half way opened or closed.

A closed ethereal door

like all closed doors is a wall,

but as it grows back open…

its half way shadow

draws down a bridge.

Shapeless, weightless bridge

with a charcoal soul.

An arching penciled thought

above the wells of hate.

Suspended by ropes

of short and sudden hope.

A mindful hope daring to cross

from my reason to your eyes,

reaching out to your side

seeking forgiveness for our past.

For our shared imperfect past

that keeps on pulling us back.

But this suspended hope hovers

in the future of our past,

because the future is after all

just a thought beyond.

An arching penciled thought

above the wells of hate,

like a weightless bridge

made out of half opened doors,

scratched on this paper

with dashes and dots.

[alfonsosantillana]

Room 306

A human thought

could have recycled

a trigger into reason.

The spark could have

refused to burn,

and the lonesomeness

of the bullet could have

never sought the light.

The wind could have

blown out the powder

burning through its guts.

The earth could have

shifted away its turn

to save a

mountain on a ledge.

The galaxy could have

freeze the speed

growing through the distance.

But the human thought

pulled the trigger,

the spark burned and

the bullet found the light.

The wind was weak,

the earth lay flat,

and the galaxy cried

a brand new star.

[alfonsosantillana]

Ever changing value of life

The monumental

vantage point of heroes

and the treacherous perspective

of martyrs, need a closer look---

between faith and heresy

there is only 1 statute directive.

When the fifth creed

is conditioned upon a rubber stamp,

between shackles and medals 

there is only the ever changing

value of life.

[alfonsosantillana]

Ensimismarce (To lose oneself)

To interiorize

the depths of

my own ignorance.

To flinch

when doubting

my own goodness.

To eternally

expand the discovery

of wearing

a stranger’s mind.

To lose oneself

hiking the alpine

concupiscence

of one’s own soul.

Is to remove a layer

of this blindfold.

To stare

at the slim gleams

of my anger.

To break

my crystal shame

and past tense blame.

To condone

those grudges

against myself.

To lose oneself

hiking the alpine

concupiscence

of one’s own soul.

Is to remove a layer

of this blindfold.

To observe

my oscillating existence

with a steady word.

To forsake

the fears

I inherited of old.

And to finally discover

that I am love

clasped in dust.

To lose oneself

hiking the alpine

concupiscence

of one’s own soul.

Is to remove a layer

of this blindfold.

[alfonsosantillana]

Today’s day

To day is to walk

to the now of the light,

away from the fear

derived from the night.

To day is to stop

living all past pain

and the imagined anguish

of future tense.

To day is to seed

tomorrow’s scent,

in the infinite instants

of the moments we live.

[alfonsosantillana]

The fourth person

This three-dimensional language

of I, you and they

needs a fourth person.

A fourth person

to exist in timeless tense,

to be awakened by a sunray

bound to be a verse.

A fourth person

to finally see through:

Taller the tree, deeper its roots.

A fourth person

to corral the infinity

trapped outside meaning;

to look out

and into ourselves

with the same view.

A fourth person

to unbind our glance

to a higher perspective,

to lighten the burden

of all mind-based lies,

to be the witness

above our eyes.