A BOAT ON THE HORIZON

 

On the cliffs looking out to sea

A boat on the horizon

The seawater the wind brings

Tastes like your tears

 

Maybe I failed you one time or another

But I have been at your side

What do you want to hide from me

Behind those wet eyes

I don’t want to lose you

 

Maybe the windstorm of fear

Has swallowed us up

Put your head on my breast to weep

I don’t want to lose you

 

Like geese in the sky in winter

Everything goes by

Like day, like night

Everything goes by

Everything in its entirety goes by.

 

Like the fallen leaves in the wind in the sky

Everything goes by

As time does,

As pain does

Everything goes by

Everything in its entirety goes by

 

Like a boat on the horizon.

 

 

Josu Aranbarri X-2007

 DO AS IT SEEMS TO ME

 

BREAKFAST AT SEVEN

THE RADIO ON

IT’S THE START OF OUR ONEROUS LESSON

HOW TO BE WELL

 

MAKE SALADS EVERY DAY

TWO PIECES OF FRUIT AND PASTA 

BRUSH YOUR TEETH...DO YOUR FLOSSING BUDDY!

 

GET YOUR EXERCISE, GO OUT WALKING

READ THE NEWS

SPEAK OVER SUPPER

YOGA CHI KUNG TAI CHI

 

THERE’S NO STRESS HERE MAN!

IT’S AN INVENTION

OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY!

 

MAKE LOVE THREE TIMES A WEEK

AND OH! DON’T FORGET THE KISS EACH MORNING

 

CHANGE THE PIN CODE MONTHLY, PRODUCE A BUNCH OF INTEREST

AND A BUNCH OF SHIT

 

IN THE DRAWINGS YOUR SON

MADE IN HANDICRAFTS ARE HOUSES

AND WALK INTO THEM

AND THERE FEEL FREE

I WILL DO AS IT SEEMS TO ME

DO AS IT SEEMS TO ME

IN MY OWN WORLD

FEEL LIBRE, FREE!

 

 

Txomin Uribe Urbieta

 

 

DON’T YOU CRY

 

WITHOUT A KISS

WITHOUT A SCENT

WITH NO CONTACT

 

THE COLOR BLUE

THE RED PATHS THE PLANE LEFT BEHIND

 

THE WATCH SHUTS OFF

AS YOU’RE PUTTING IT ON

YOU SUDDENLY SEE

THAT TIME IS FLEEING

 

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING TO DO

DON’T CRY AT ALL

 

 

Txomin Uribe Urbieta

 

 

 BUTTERFLIES AT NIGHT

(poem with two endings)

 

I cut off my hands because I had no wings

And one night I flew away from the earth

Toward the light, toward the light my instinct told me

Toward the light though you burn up

                            ‘till you’ve burnt up

 

Today the needle punctured my heart (today your needle punctured my heart)

I’m nailed to your pallet

Collecting this dust.

 

                                                                     Josu Aranbarri 2009-8-17

 

IF I KNEW LESS

 

Look into my eyes,

I’m me, I’m the same person

Much older

But with the same heart.

 

If I knew less, I would believe you.

If I’d lived less, I’d be happier now.

 

I went with you to the bathroom for the first time.

You came to see me in jail.

And now, you tell me I’ve changed

And I feel like a suspect

Each time I’m with you.

We were against religion,

But we too erect our own gods, no?

 

If I knew less, I would believe you.

If I’d lived less, I’d be happier now.

Leave it to me to decide, to make my mistakes.

Life is movement, my old friend.

Life is change, that’s clear to me. 

 

 

Kirmen Uribe Urbieta.

 

CLOUDS

 

A cloud’s appeared

In the midst of the blue sky

Your green eyes

Are lost on the ground

In the gravel.

 

 

The clouds that were white

have dressed in gray,

In the two green lakes

Raindrops gather

...and every one in.

 

Here is the sun.

 

The day will grow light

You, chase off the clouds

This moment is all

that we have 

This is it right here

All that we have.

 

Raindrops on the ground

Your eyes have found them

Now sultry, up from the morning grass

and patch of stones, to look at me.

 

Here is the sun.

 

 

Close your eyes, open your heart

Tell me what you feel, in your bones

Give me your hand, take mine

Tell me where you are hurting

Forget the past, it’s not the future

Now is what we are living through

All that we have.

 

 

Josu Aranbarri Aramaio 2007

 

 

 

I AM THE MOON (I’m Nothing II)

 

“I, disheartened in darkness in the midst of battle

Am the frightened wild beast who cedes the earth.”

—Xabier Lete.

 

I have always had

Problems falling asleep

A suture of nights and days

Doctors can’t repair.

 

A pistol under the pillow

A toddler’s doll

Lovely sleep conducts me

To metallic rest.

 

I am the smallest thing there is

A dust mote in the gigantic universe

I am everything, I am what’s on top

I am the moon.

 

These days I imagine myself

Hands tied, kidnapped

In the corner of a dark room

Naked, I am not waiting for anyone else at all.

 

And that doesn’t scare me

It doesn’t make me feel bad

Now I’m not taking even a single pill

At last I’m free.

 

I am the smallest thing there is

A dust mote in the gigantic universe

I am everything, I am what’s on top

I am the moon.

 

“Long live the chains!”

—Luis Buñuel.

 

Josu Aranbarri

2009-5-23

 

JAI BRAIAN

 

To say “We’re done for”

in Ondarroa there’s an expression:

”Jai braian” is what you say

when all is totally lost.

 

At a tavern of the same name,

Rafa Monu, later Danel.

An open half shutter and good music,

What more do you need?

 

Come over here

and stand with us,

and don’t stop there.

Come here

by my side,

where you’ve  got things to say.

 

The sun has begun

to come out of the sea.

Danel don’t close the shutter, or else

we’re done for, jai braian.

 

 SLEEP (...gray and white) 

 

I want to go to sleep, sleep

Leave life in the hands of my dreams

Escape from this shortness of breath

And drown in all the forgotten memories

 

I don’t know what to say

I don’t know what to think

I don’t know what to feel

If it’s not in dreams, if it isn’t asleep

if it’s not under the control of the unconscious

 

Make me sleep.

 

I want to go to sleep, sleep

gazing at the insides of my eyes

Cross to the other side of the mirror

Become an island.

 

Because I am lost

Because I am trapped

In this great crowd, alone

in my windowless room a prisoner, at peace.

 

Make me sleep

 

 

 “From one window of an aseptic white room

A chimney appears that is spouting smoke

Gray smoke in the white sky

Where have the trees gone?

Where have the seagulls gone to?

Have the butterflies all died?

It’s nighttime in the city

The obscene smokestack spouting white smoke in a gray sky from the window

Today I’ve also seen a dead cat on the side of the road.

Today I’ve also seen a dead dog on the side of the road 

A rhythmical trace of blood.”

 

Make me sleep.

 

Josu Aranbarri Aramaio 2008-IV-11(00:58)

 

 

MY LITTLE PORN STAR

 

I saw you going downhill

as if it were slo-mo

People barely know who you are by now

How did the name of that movie go?

 

At one time together

We wanted to eat up the world

No one knows how it happened

Nobody knows what broke before running away

like when we were little.

 

I saw you from a distance today

Flaunting your pride

There had been some gossip

No one knows anything further.

 

The door to the room was shut

That old Betacam filming

Souixie followed Israel howling

And you very slowly disrobing

Dancing and very slowly disrobing.

 

UH, UH, My little porn star

UH, UH, My little porn star

UH, UH

 

Have you come back once the war got lost?

Come back from New York?

Already everything makes no nevermind

Today a new screenplay begins

 

...and at night we’ll go out on the streets

To look for a fight

Like when we were little

And scream to the world

We are still alive

For today, still alive

....almost nearly like when we were little....

 

UH, UH, My little porn star

UH, UH, My little porn star

UH, UH,

 

Josu Aranbarri Aramaio

2007-IX-19

 

 

 

WALKING ALL ALONG THE STREET

 

I’m walking all along the street

People on every side,

a store,

posters on the walls

 

It all goes slow

as it does in films

the noise of the street

far-off pictures in stop-motion

 

I don’t have my head with me

It has run away

changed time

I am not in the place I am

 

 

I don’t have my head with me

it has run away

changed time

I am not in the place I am

I have changed time,

begging time from time

to get myself to you.

 

 

I’m walking, yes, but in my head are other pictures

at each step I’m taken farther from where I am

in one I’m in a car, it’s night, the window’s down.

listening to music and I’m singing with all my might

the Doors’ “This Is the End”

 

I close my eyes and...  

...so get myself, to you.

 

 

Josu Eizagirre

 

ON PORNOGRAPHY

 

“AS I WAS YOUNG” SAYS SOMEONE

AS GULLS DIVE INTO THE WIND’S CLEAR SHEETS

APPEARING TO LOVE EACH OTHER

AS DEVISED ON BRIDGE ABOVE RIVER BY THE MIXED-UP SHADE.

 

A LOVE LETTER‘S CROOKED LETTERS, IN MIST

FROM OUT OF THE BEDSHEETS’ FISSURES, GENTLE, MOIST

SOUNDS, AND SMOKE THAT STREAMS FROM A MOUTH

THE SCATTERED CLOUDS AT TWILIGHT

YOUR LIPS APPLE BLOSSOMS FLEEING AWAY INTO THE BLUE

THE ROSY POINT OVER THE COWERING MOUNTAINS

YOU KNOW, DON’T YOU, NO ONE WILL DO TO US  WHAT THE MIST,

NEUTERING, DOES TO THE HORIZON, JEALOUSLY PUT BY.

 

WE ARE THE NERVOUS BUTTERFLIES CAUGHT IN WARM ASPHALT

THE CRACKS CAUGHT SIGHT OF ONLY IN SUNLIGHT

AS THE SUN WATERS THE WET MEADOWS

ORANGY-YELLOW CURRICULUM PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS.

 

THE BODIES OUTLINED IN CHALK, SIMPLY

AND PORNOGRAPHY YES ... ON THE TV

NOT TODAY, I WILL NOT GO OUT SINCE...

I SET OUT TO STROLL ON BACK TO MY HOUSE

 

IN THE RAIN...

 

 

Kirmen Uribe Urbieta

IN TUNISIA

 

 

Different smells, gazes on the street

up and down dressed up bathing children

 

 

Sheep hanging (in the restaurants), cows’ heads in the shops...

 

How little you need to lead a happy life,...

 

 

To meet up

The two of us together again,

Who would have thought?

 

 

 

Txomin Uribe Urbieta