Perfect security and full peace
cannot exist in this world.
~ Thomas a Kempis
If we have hope in this life only
If in this life only
We have hope
It is not even that of the conquered,
Deceived by a Greek horse or
Defrauded by a crafty snake and
Since neither tears nor cries can rescue the perishing
I no longer endeavor to persevere
Under the weight of futile existence
Having tested myself and
Sought for meaning
In wine
In women
And philosophies

What we saw and heard and touched

Why should anyone take bricks for stone
And tar for mortar? Why not rather be scattered, nameless?
One toils
And another plunders
One produces
And another loots
Ancient cities, vigor spent, foundations shaken,
Recline and raze themselves to powder
The end of it all is vapor.

“I thirst.”

Adoration is recompensed with indifference
And love with infidelity
Blessed unions
Broken by premature death or
Thieving infirmity
Leave love cherished alone
In its given child

“This day you shall be with me…”

Mouths open and lies flee their hive
The passionate, desperate, clutching heat
Of flesh on flesh
(Consuming, ceaseless, desire)
Bears no fruit
No glazed donut monsters begging kisses
See the nursery, unused, converted
Into a spare bedroom
And useless seeds discarded

Arms nailed down…

I try to remember something
I’m supposed to remember
If only I could remember
Something
About a light in a window extinguished
By a silver chord
To a grinding halt
For poverty in numbers
An act of fidelity
For one of betrayal
At about the sixth hour
If only I could remember
If only I could have seen a little something

Just a little spattering
Of an omnipresent brain
A little something now
A little something here
In this life
In this world

“Into your hands…”

A little something more
Than this sisyphean life
In a crust of bread from cursed dust
After the sweaty, pyrrhic victory over thistle and thorn
What goes in is eliminated
All that is filled eventually empties
That’s where he was, I think,
When his heart broke: under the thorns

Then blood and water flowed




~ James Frank Solís
Good Friday, 2009