barbershop in the rain

It’s raining again at the barbershop,

it always seems to be raining when I get my hair cut,

but it’s OK. I simply sit there like the Sphinx

and think of my brother,

how he used to work in a barbershop

so many years ago and he’d cut my hair

for free, of course, on the weekends.

They always play that horrible elevator/dentist music,

that soft pop crap that makes you wonder

where the devil your old girlfriend is living now

and what her husband is like.

the sun splashing all around

Waiting out in the backyard

I notice the grass is cut short and neat,

and the wasp nests

that once hung like proud stalactites

from beneath the gutters

had been knocked down and smashed

into unregal piles of pulpy cardboard,

and he’d built a pretty wooden fence around

a tree. There, listening to familiar neighborhood

sounds of children and vehicles, and slamming

screen doors, I thought of when I

was a child cutting grass

in my grandfather’s backyard,

then resting on his stoop sucking

on the ice cubes left in the cold wet

lemonade glass, sniffing the air

as the smells of my grandmother’s sizzling cooking

inside drifted outside to mingle

with the fresh tangy warmth of grass clippings,

the sun splashing all around.

but how can I tell you?

Spring is a greening, warming,

brightening moment,

a coming alive, a surging

of life”s energies, spring is you.

But how can I tell you?

The sheen of your skin,

soft and sweet and pure,

the fragrance all about you

lingering in tiny swells and eddies

draws me out, pulls me to you,

you as you are snarling and snapping

in the dull dripping shadows

and the air heavy as mist.

***

In Aunt Alice”s house:

“Bless this kitchen

and season it with love” the little plaque

says propped in the corner

right behind a scrawled note: “put

bag of fertilizer in garage” she left

to remind herself.

“The memory”s

the second thing to go, you know,”

she said.

***

Song of Guantanamo Bay

We have come back from hell
Back from Guantanamo Bay

Our heads off our shoulders
Holding our heads in our hands we came
Back from Guantanamo Bay

We were tortured night & day
Back in Guantanamo Bay

Till our eyes dropped from their sockets
and our hearts missed their beats
Back in Guantanamo Bay

Which awful crime had we committed?
No one answered no one said
no one near no one human
Back in Guantanamo Bay

Still we prayed in utter silence
Back in Guantanamo Bay

Could not touch nor feel
Could not walk nor smell
Could nothing but pray
Back in Guantanamo Bay

In our orange overalls
No one near no one human
Back in Guantanamo Bay

In those cells or senseless shells
as time melted in eternity
no one answered no one near
Damned in Guantanamo Bay

Were you made of flesh or stone?
Were you human, was this Earth?
Executioners passed by
Back in Guantanamo Bay…

Some returned alive and kicking
Out of Guantanamo Bay
But we’re dead and still remember:
Damned be Guantanamo Bay

Amparo Perez Gutierrez

***