Notes on the Abyss

    Shanghai Kid , tryptic 70x150cm, acrylic on wood panel I drink something strange, it tastes good I don't care about the price of happiness I keep drinking-drinking-something-strange it's hot as if it were today and I think maybe it is today as I swing my clumsy arms among hundreds of sunny blocks; trains go by, dodge me it's all too hard for them, they keep rattling fast, silent swimming in a dream of worn out colors.   I think I'm getting my bearings, I can still see the star shot to God, I say to myself. tasting every gasp like a last breath  as I try to move with poise among sixty kilos of purity that just started this Monday                         for the first time. It's good to look for something forbidden when it's hot, the sky all around, buildings that play with the sun while we let the world go on without us and I say to myself, let's get on with it I say to myself, let's play maybe it'

     Once, so I can forget you. Acrylic on wood panel, 100x70cm, 2004 I woke up next to her when I was nineteen, she had the mannerisms of a stewardess and small eyes. For two weeks I followed her everywhere: She knew how to sit on rooftops without showing her underwear, the shortest skirts I'll ever see.   She was seventeen, I thought things would work out the way they always did: her lack of direction would make her lose herself in the details                                               and I would just have to undress her. She had long, shiny hair, I was dating a girl with long, shiny hair. she was afraid of losing her virginity to me because she wasn't in love with me, and well, things seemed very easy and very complicated                                                     [at the same time. I've never been nineteen again like I was then.   There's no need for details, she became one of those girls you don't make love t

"I lied but I have been a good boy" acrylic over wood panel 80x60cm, 2005 Her, with short hair in the ninety-seven, tried with me and I wasn't enough for her either. I found out that the past always leaves good memories, and even does it with horrible things.   II Years later she would say she loved me but it was a lie so that I would kiss her and not be left alone while somebody came to pick her up.   III Twenty-one years in the midst of the dust of a car skidding over village dirt, the red dust sticking to her all over her body, the sweat of a beautiful woman prey to her youth. They invented the word summer for this moment.   IV I think I fell in love two or three times with her until I gave up [in an honest way.   V I would like to write that sometimes I cry and that I'm not sure if it's because of her or for something else, put my name at the end of it all and pretend it's a farewell letter that

     Photo-collage, "Unmade beds" series, 100x50cm, 2015 In this house of cold that doesn't belong to us, my clothes crumple on the clothesline, my girlfriend smiles and says it's the cheap laundry softener. Smiles so that when we cross the mirrors with those people who look at us from the other side, I can pretend to recognize us. But the towels scratch my skin, they scorch my face and naked for her I am nothing more than a flayed man who shows the palms of his hands -empty- a man who does not know how to get up early, who doesn't drink, who never comes to blows nor uses rude words to talk about   [what he once believed to be true.   On Saturday, I am a man who dresses in shirts that are too big                                          [or too small, and my hatred for the things I touch is so small that it's barely enough to put on my shoes and walk to the Chinese store for a bottle of wine and something for d

Girls Walking in the Rain ( Perpetual Motion  series)  Oil and  acrylic on wood panel 140x70cm # 7                     Everybody laughs and sings and dances I write about people who laugh and sing and dance. I don't feel happy at all I'm no worse or better off than I was ten minutes ago I'm no worse or better off than I was ten years ago, I don't feel happy at all. Sometimes I telephone my ex-girlfriends asking in between sobs what led me to lose them they answer that it was me who left it helps a little with this waiting. I write things about people who laugh and sing and dance.            everyone does it, people laugh and sing and dance. -----------------------------------------//  Orignal version below // # 7                     Todo el mundo ríe y canta y baila yo escribo sobre gente que ríe y canta y baila yo no me siento feliz, en absoluto no estoy peor ni mejor que hace diez minutos no estoy peor ni mejor que hace diez años,

Portraits of David Ortiz ( Perpetual Motion series) Acrylic on wood panel 40x55cm          # 6 From this shore you can't see the sea. You can never see the sea, through the half-open doors of this house that forgot what I learned behind the windows, these nights locked in bottles like marvelous genies who are not my friends turn the past of this house a place of cold feet and naked bodies that love each other looking for each other in the street                                                             [like dogs in love.                    Everyone asks where is David now that everyone is looking for him shouting in the streets? I am here, in my barracks house, reading yesterday's news in the papers,                         [the Americans won again.   If we would sit down again all together to listen to the fog noises on the bare shoulders of the city you would be here with me too, for all those who step in the rain and get lost under the electric light.   My wife would als

* No title  -  acrylic on canvas 2022                # 5 Scenario: A sparsely furnished room,                      in front of the window, a boy                      squints,                      a brunette curls up in bed,                      through the window,  just a wall.                      A tacky song is playing...   -For once the world sings in unison and you don't know the song, it's not Saturday it's still Friday, so you still have time to face the hurricane a little more while you make Chinese shadows with my body.   -In this house there were once so many people that now can't understand why the stars don't shiver up there when in silences that last all night long the women who spend the night wake up grumpy smoking cigarettes.   (And once again it feels like a motherless girl this princess of aluminum windows and horizon  [as if it were a mistake).   -The threat of the day hovers over the rooftops while you write on the mattress in second person with