To the Five Cultures in Room 218

HAIKU

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Harmony (South Korean World)

A unique moon,
Surrounded by five petals,
Oh Great! Coat of Arms.

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Only (American World)

Freedom of choice,
Under uncensored speech, Here!
Finally begins.

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Tropic of Cancer (Vietnamese World)

Tropical heaven!
Three hundred kinds of feathers,
Call you Formosa.

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Islam (Muslim World)

A shade of bright green,
Caresses their bronze/gold skin,
A message from God.

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Forever (Latin World)

Passion owns your blood,
Untamable Latin world,
No less! Until death!

A World Without Shoes

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Chapter I
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The Birth of Luna





In a Portuguese port on the morning of June first of 1925, an eight month dream was sleeping protected by a rocking womb. Sweet Ana and noble Diego are the parents to be. They are taking their first steps in to The Santa Maria steam Ship. Shorten the distance between a hopeless past and an inspiring future.
The ship looks like a mystical monster of colossus size, which is wrapped in wood and steal, breathing loud, exhaling black clouds that mimic a forecast sky. Ana and Diego’s compartment is by the belly of the ship. The commoners area, it is called. There are so many people everywhere, no privacy or place to rest or lay. Rats and filth...a melancholic violin and a pungent, sticky and salty aroma are also travelers during the quest to the new world.
Only a small round widow would tell the time of the day or the proximity of the night to come. One month will be the passengers’ journey, one month at the hands and glory of the ocean...one month to have it all.
From miles away with screeching smile, Portugal seems to screams with bony hands...‘If I don’t have you no, one can. Almost as accomplices,Death, hand by hand with a mysterious disease, takes over the steel and wood island that dares to cruises the Atlantic Sea.
Too late Ana notice Diego’s sweaty palms, his sepia face, his hot tremors and glassy eyes. A force stronger than him; start piercing that delicate language of his life. Diego, claps his hand with Ana, asking her for forgiveness and also to his unborn child and with a gaze of defeat and surprise Diego kisses the eternal dream.
Ana cries pure, bitter and crystal tears. Most of the passengers are ignoring her pain, most of them...except for Olga, an old world woman, seems immerse by an invisible and strange halo that no one dears to guess its significance. Olga has been watching the young couple for days; something is telling her that the new life to be is special, protected by a strong a force that by all means she has to watch over.
The night is lugubrious without any stars or sparks almost like a giant bat of infinite velvety wings has covered the Atlantic sky. Suddenly the moon is not high at the firmament. The evening is filling up with expectations and secrets to come.
The moon for a century has been tracing a plan that would take place by the fall of this night. She would have a child, take human form during twilight and by dawn reach for the stars.
With Ana’s last push, the new baby found the outside life. Her little lungs are filled with scents of ocher blood, mist of ocean and strength of mystical love. Olga, the first stranger that would be part of the child's life, covered from ripped pieces of Ana’s dress the bronze skin of this new life.
Ana is dying. Ana is tired. Ana in a whisper says...
- Luna...Luna will be your name after the only lunar eclipse that I will see in my mortal life. And with her last strength Ana caresses Luna's azabache hair, the curved smile of the little one's mouth and finally she sets her eyes on the caramel toned naked tiny toes and with her last breath, almost absent of lucid thought Ana voices the question looking at Olga’s wise eyes, that it would hunt Luna for a big part of her life...
- How can a person make it in this world without shoes?...Olga looks around to find a couple rough strings and two square cuts of a former potato sack that she firmly attaches to Luna’s plump small feet. But all happened a minute too late, for the young mother to see her child's first rustic shoes. Ana has closed her eyes, and forever she would be part of the amaranthine sleep.
Olga picked up Luna and while rocking the new soul in her arms she sang to her...
- ♪♫•*♫♥♪*•♫♪You are the daughter of the Moon. You are the creation of a celestial feminine force, many hard challenges; many corpuscles are in your future because of this. But you, my sweet Luna, are meant to be human among mankind and tomorrow reach for the stars.♪♫•*♫♥♪*•♫♪
Finally, after such a unique evening, a first ray of light, from the goddess in her full size illuminates Luna’s baby face, now sleeping by the round small window at the ship belly side.

La Artesana.

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Yesterday, I was out in the open,
Just a piece of clay.
Absent of value, unsure of my worth.
Maybe full of potential,
Wasted, by a torrential rain,
That drop by drop carried away my soul.

But your hands, my sweet Artesana,
Gently scooped me out of the mud.
With silky touch you shaped my skin,
And the inside of me, you even out too.

Unable to hear it, I felt your words.
Vibrating melodies from your finger tips,
Into the depths, of my broken spirit.
Kindness, comprehension,
Encouragement and compliments,
Showered my shores.
And with fresh minty water,
You got rid of my rough surface.

With long strokes, my merciful angel,
You dressed me in purple and velveteen green.
And under a sun bean,
Caressed by a fragrant spring breeze,
My crystal shade, Artesana,
You made from clay a soldier, worthy of your skills.

A soldier,
That jealously hides,
Proudly presents,
Or valiantly fights
For a new born writer, secrets and treasures,
Illuminated by your eternal beats of inspiration.

Adieu +

(Final Act)

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Goodbye pleasant view of my mother baking bread and my father's strong dark hands around her waist. Goodbye Erica...my better half...you have always been the wind and I...the seed in your loving arms.
Good bye nesting bells in the pine like towers and to the echoes of your voices.
Goodbye to winter with the scent of snow to come...goodbye crystal needles from a former drip and to the warm glow by the fireplace...goodbye cashmere gloves that once belonged to grandma and to the secret messages to my sister, written with vapor and fingers at the glassy surface of her window.
Goodbye to spring that brings my birthday each time and a symphony of aquarelles...green emerald, velvety carmine and mustard yellow of buttons in bloom, romance, fresh water creeks and feathery trees all in perfect harmony under a vigilant wand of an invisible director that loves to rhyme.
And the gold! And silver! And copper! Of the autumn leaves and their cracking whispers under my feet on the pavements and gardens of my beloved street.
Goodbye hot sand between my toes, and the castle and canal that I make by the blue sapphire beach and to my white clothes that would never again feel, over my summer sun kissed skin.
Goodbye friends at the corner Café, goodbye cigarettes and espressos and that smokey caramel nirvana that the mix produces in our mouths…Goodbye Charles Baudelaire and the infinite discussions among us over “Les fleur du mal”, we were immersed and oblivious to the world outside and without a fight we surrender under a snobby cloud, that only a French writer and the Buenos Aires sky can handle at the same time.
World, you have been good to me and because you choose to create me as a human being I was able to listen, caress, observe, inhale and taste your amazing force in my whole self.
My final act will be a silky kiss dedicated to all you are...Goodbye Ravishing world...Goodbye.

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Adieu +


(Final Act)-Reading-

You in the Circus, Me behind Bars.

(Letter from a Tiger to His Brother)

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Forgive me, my brother, for telling you that I haven’t had the desire to write to you. The truth is I’ve been feeling lethargic and sad. I don’t know if it is the confinement; I don’t know if it is the food or the time that I have been in this kind of life.
The reality is that the zoo depresses me; and evil is not redeemed by apparent love. If not for those children who bring me their joy, my life would be much bitterer, still. I hope you are doing better my brother... I hope.. traveling the entire world, but as you tell me: the tiger tamer, forces you to work more than is accounted for.
You have to understand, my brother that some humans have in their soul a little villain in it, that when unable to overpower whomever they wish, they strike their frustration among the beasts. Many of them feel important and find bravery only with a chair in one hand and a whip in the other.
But back to me, let me tell you, nothing has changed here since we were separated. However, something has happened among these people. I notice that their gaze is lost in the infinite, and smells empty. It seems like their eyes look different tortured, lonely and trapped without a trace of a spark as if they were themselves the captive ones. I bet you those outsiders don’t understand how to freely run.
We fell into some jungle, my brother, and look in what kind of pious hands! Their air is vicious, stale with smoke and death. And who can anticipate our luck?
Being back to nature would be their greatest achievements and as well our dream; able to act at will; not hampered; not under compulsion or restraint and without a zoo of people. Take care my brother, I do not know when, but that day is coming.

Changed Boxes.

(The Dream in the Mirror)

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Something is faulty, within this box,
All is changing, and I don’t know what is happening.
I want to sew; I want to use make up,
I want to be a mother, and a man to love,
To dress like a woman and high heels to wear,
To feel normal and be able of have dreams.
But when I stop, in front of a mirror,
I touch my beard, I watch my reflection,
But when I watch and I watch my reflection I see that I am a man and I feel perplexed.
Traps, traps, trap of the life. In the mirror she is lost, in reality I feel lost… we are both lost.

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Changed Boxes


(The Dream in the Mirror) -Reading-

Reality

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Pure, virgin
Vanishing, leaving, disappearing
Forever alone
Death

To quiet a voice

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Terror explodes in rubber bullets
Wrapped in black smoke,
He was a coward.

1995

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Activism complains on the streets of Cordoba,
Dressed in red and banging the lids of pans.
She is asking for freedom.

Tu

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You are the birth place
And the death bed
You are the sweet peas
And the hand that picks them
You are Kafka’s Metamorphosis
And the apple in his side

However, you are not the tears in those eyes
Or the dress on the bed
Or the lonely star in the Vietnamese flag
And certainly you are not the teeth on the carcass

It is possible that you are the sun under the sea
Maybe even the fox at the little prince meadow
But you are not even close
To being the cold New York winter snow

It might interest you to know
Speaking in the plentiful truth
That I am the girl from the
Moulin Rouge

I also happen to be the vampire pumping life not to die
The morning paper news at the door
And the craziness behind the ear of Van Gogh
I am the mud by the river
And silence in the soul
But don’t worry I am not the
Birth place and the dead bed
You always be Kafka’s Metamorphosis
And the apple in his side
You will always be the sweet peas,
Not to mention and some how
The hand that picks them

About David's name.

(The Significant of my Name)

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The most popular significance of the name David comes from the Hebrew word “dwd” meaning “beloved” while in Arabic it comes from the word “wid” meaning “love”. David... beloved and love in two beautiful languages. David... the name that travels through time between the ancient and the world of today... effortlessly.
David is a biblical name. The first David was one of the most remarkable personalities in the Hebrew Scriptures. David was a shepherd, musician, poet, soldier, statesman and the first king of the united Kingdom of Israel; but he was also violent, ambitious, vindictive and lustful; in other words, a full fleshed human being in search of beauty and achieving power with no remorse.
David is my name because my first love, my mother, called me to supper with it, making me feel unique among my brothers and sisters or just telling me with her sweet voice how much she loved me. David was also the name my father would recite when he taught me how to stand straight like a man; or on Sunday morning he would say: “David, please my son, bring me the newspaper,” and there sitting on his lap he would read to me the comic strips. Sometimes I did not understand all the jokes but I would laugh just to be part of this remarkable man’s world. Despite all of this, after finding out I was not the only David in the world, I felt betrayed.
Longing for the loss of what I call my identity until the tender age of four was the beginning of my battle for individualism. Like the legendary King David, I had to conquer Goliath with one stone. Lost and confused, I heard that name, David, called sweetly, bitterly or happily but each time I turned my face looking wishfully, without preamble, reality would hit me; it is not me who had been called, it was another David. Sadly, I realized after all, that I was not a king. I was just a commoner, and as a commoner, it would take me more than one rock to kill my own giant.
Suddenly... David... I heard in soft whispers from the lips of my first kiss. Da-vid! Da-vid! Da-vid! from the cheers of my whole team. David, Mr., written in very formal and neat letters from prestigious colleges that want not another David, but Me. Suddenly, the world seems like such a perfect place. Suddenly, my name does not seem like such a waste. Suddenly,David is my name and as it always been. Finally, I understood that my mother and father gave me a unique name that only I can make great because they taught me how. Suddenly, and out of nowhere, I was a child and a king with one stone conquering a giant, killing Goliath. My name is David.



by David Nores


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