Sacred Time: Short Piece

Sacred Time

Armando Ortiz

Life is not the holy moment; at best this mundane time becomes a break into the extraordinary, where eureka is hollered after years of mistakes. Nirvana is only the waking of eyes, where for a lifetime your pupils are pried wide, and blindly live every second that passes, thinking that life is forever.

This dream is just as a rose dropping its petals, a sakura that is released from a branch, only here for a moment. Our Mother’s hand slowly opens, letting tiny birds take flight, while Father’s arm swings, to sow seed into the air that becomes a cloud of butterflies floating on bye.

Love and Hate: Five Pieces

Love and Hate: Five Pieces

By Armando Ortiz

1.

I love you like party time,

as the sun goes down, and

bed sheets cover us to hide

what we imbibe.

2.

I hate you like the emotional isolation

that is felt when beside me you cry,

shedding those tears

through the night.

3.

I love you like party time

that’s when its Friday at midnight,

and though tired I fight the urge to sleep

keeping on the mild cool light.

4.

I love you like dark chocolate chili

that is sold in the old markets

of towns found in between green valleys

where on deserted imaginary lands

abuelitas wearing aprons

carry those delicious goblets

on dry baskets, and covered

in golden maize husks.

5.

I hate you like clammy handshakes

that leave that water residue on the skin

as a sign that time has come to say goodbye

like eyes that splash you with darkness

with abysmal irises of black unknowns.

Life and Death: Short Piece

Life and Death: Short Piece

by Armando Ortiz

Yes, we all die

but that doesn’t answer the question

as to why.

Into this confusion we are born,

and just when we thought that this fusion,

of love and nature could endure,

your neighbor dies and

souls begin to knock on our door.

We end up visiting the hills where people,

still cold and stiff, are laid to rest

and every time we return, it seems that life’s

duress reveals its empty self in the shape of death,

where memory can no longer regress to that time when

lawns were used to play ball, and trees blanketed

us with that cool shade.

No one knows the suffering of others.

we walk kilometers forgetting that there are those,

who’ve trampled through the heat of humanity,

walked through valleys of glowing embers and silently

swallowed the bitter drink of life.

Broken remain those who hang from trees and tattered are

the happy times that we barely reclaim, yet

there is no prejudice with life and death.

It’s the stuff in between that stirs waters,

that creates hurricanes and tsunamis

of labels and names, and

painful experience.

Peasants

Peasants

by Armando Ortiz

Sun weathered,

weather beaten.

Feeling mother’s warmth

inside the furnace of creation.

Where the wheat

is sheared and beaten.

You embody the perfect mirror

un-fragmented by life’s tears.