Michael Caylo-Baradi lives in California. His poetry has appeared in Eclectica, Metazen, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Our Own Voice, Prick of the Spindle, PopMatters, Pyrta Journal, and elsewhere. He has also written reviews for Galatea Resurrects, Latin American Review of Books (UK), and NewPages. Sometimes he blogs at ii.
Five Poems by Michael Caylo-Baradi
Shipwreck
Waves flood through
shadows and
forebodings: veils that
hid them from
what might and what
could’ve been.
Soon, their eyes refuse
to blink. Vision
becomes absence, of fear,
of anything.
Surrender is gravity,
taking them
to where silence is far
peaceful than
ceasefires and other
punctuations
waiting for arguments
to anchor on.
Inevitability
The night expands
in the mirror,
crucified on the cross
hanging on
your chest. You’re
letting things
go. I see them,
gleaming down
your face, from your eyes,
chasing skies
outside, thundering
between us.
Escape
The joint wobbles through my bottle,
through doubts that sit on half-baked smiles.
You must like being a flower
against the wall,
obsessed on preserving your petals,
their color, their fragility,
their innocence. The music
enmeshes the night
with gestures that long for youth.
I hear murmurs in your eyes,
crowding me like thumbprints
around my drink. Soon,
the streets shimmer
with expectations, restless as
silhouettes that forge us
out of ourselves.
Island
We are an island of solitude
trapped in the borders of your eyes.
Waves of premonitions flood our shores,
the way innocence shapes myths.
Nights loom into redundant desires,
incandescent as silhouettes
entangled in language
that invents us out of ourselves.
We offer melancholy wings,
mortality, and other
delusions of escape.
I find my steps in a glimmer
edging out of your eyes,
fresh as twilight perched
on petals blooming labyrinths
that guard our lullabies.
Downtown
The city fizzles in my soda, before its lights
cool down my throat, body, its pulse, its approximations
of you, and the way your gestures invent accusations,
falsifications, and other contentions.
It’s dark down there in the bottom of my glass,
an abyss waiting to be sucked, to be where traffic thrives
in my guts, in darkness ancient as touch that chills
us between overused syllables.
Soon, sidewalks intensify rush hour, frantic as your thumb
tapping on the chair. The lights at the intersection
control a pattern, fragile as moments that
choke evenings like this.
Consolations
Mornings give in to consolations.
The news anchor is part of the pattern that ensures
I will be home around six in the evening.
If I forget something on my way out,
it’s not the car keys, but the feel of your lips.
The bird blocking the green light
does not obliterate the other lights. The rearview mirror
swallows objects and takes them out of its face;
anything is game, big or small,
mountains and valleys, God, or how
the day might turn out to be.
