Tag: poetry

Motocross Legend, Love of My Life, Pt. 3 (Poetry)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial2 Comments

If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short(ish) story from the beginning (link here). The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month.

My mind often revisits, perhaps as punishment,
My mother’s face dominated by a scowl
That deepened the creases long etched
Through years of worry and resentment.
Her lips were pursed as if holding herself
From unleashing a hellish rebuke,
And her eyes, intense and narrowed,
Assured that wherever her gaze landed,
She would find some detail to fault.

As damning evidence,
My mother showed a tied-up condom:
A limp and deflated rubbery sheath,
Its head filled with creamy-yellow fluid.

My mother ordered me to explain this gift
I had left for her to find while cleaning my room.
I wanted to shake my head and spit out bitterly,
“Sure, Mother. After my girlfriend and I made love,
I tossed the condom aside and forgot about it
To screw with your persecution complex,
To express contempt for your brand of parenthood,
Your desire to control every facet of my life,
To mold me into the perfect son you wish me to be.”

I apologized, but suggested she could appreciate
That my girlfriend and I use protection.
My mother scrunched up her nose
Like she had stumbled upon a pile of dung.

Her voice rose in pitch and volume as she said
I shouldn’t be having sex with “that girl,”
Whom she had welcomed into our home for years.
“No wonder your grades are slipping
If you focus on pursuing vices instead of studying.
Think of your future, think of your career!”

She had called your mother to inform her
Of the grievous sin we were committing,
But your mother already knew
Because she had heard us going at it.

“How could that girl throw away her potential,
Squander the sacrifices made by her parents?
Her mother gave birth to her, nursed her,
Stood at her crib every morning,
And hoped that she would grow into a good girl,
Only for her child to become a disgrace.”

My mother referred to you as a bad influence,
A rotten soul going nowhere fast,
A walking advertisement of aimlessness
Who would end up pregnant and homeless.
She forbid me from bringing you to the house,
And added that if I were mature enough,
I’d know that I should stay away from you.

Had I foreseen such a confrontation,
I would have imagined myself yelling,
But I saw my mother for the first time:
An aging woman who followed a script,
Who needed to straighten every life’s crooked lines,
Who met my father and shortly after got hitched
Because that’s what people are supposed to do,
And ever since, they argued as often
As loving couples exchange smiles.
My parents, my life’s givers, lived trapped inside
Something too awful and intractable to escape.

Still simmering from the confrontation,
I accompanied you and your mother
To a bike dealership in Astigarraga
That smelled of leather and new rubber.
The polished frames of motocross bikes,
In screaming colors like red, blue, and yellow,
Gleamed in a line-up,
Resembling museum exhibits.
Those knobs in the bikes’ tire treads
Would dig into the dirt for maximum grip.

You fell in love with a Suzuki RM125,
Its bodywork clad in bright yellow,
Its mechanical heart laid bare
And ready to be flecked with dirt,
Its front suspension forks
Like the limbs of a seasoned athlete.
The high-mounted guard would prevent
Mud from splattering your lovely face.

At the counter, when time came to pay
And your mother pulled out her credit card,
You grinned, clasped your hands,
Let out a squeal of delight,
And bounced on your tiptoes.

You had dreaded surrendering your Aprilia
To fill the void in your hard-earned savings,
And found yourself marveling at your luck
When your mother offered to chip in.

Bless that woman, bless her heart
That beat with love for you, her little star.
I will be forever grateful
She kept opening the door of her home
Despite knowing how you and I spent our time
Whenever the adults left us alone.

Her words echo in my mind,
As clear as if spoken yesterday:
“I’ve never seen Izar this serious about anything,
And even if I tried to stop her, I know I can’t,
Because she’d just pack up and leave.
She was always the wild one:
Uncaring for the rules,
Unafraid to do whatever she wanted.
Nobody had to teach her how to be free.”

For encouraging a “ridiculous dream,”
As your father called it,
Your mother’s support opened a rift,
And now they argued more often than not,
As most couples are destined to do.

During my lunch break, you and I met
At the restaurant that faced my high school.
In a dining space that smelled of garlic and olive oil,
Surrounded by the clink of cutlery
And the chatter of youth unfolding,
You were savoring a potato omelette sandwich,
And dropping breadcrumbs on a motocross magazine.

You charted the steps to conquer the racing world:
Seek out the motocross tracks in Gipuzkoa;
Immerse yourself in racing clubs, your gateways
To structured training and expert instruction;
Compete in races and secure victories
So local scribes would ink your triumphs,
Drawing to you sponsors willing to invest.
From there, ascend to regional championships
With prize money and notoriety at stake.

You had brought a bulky backpack
Although you had the day off from work;
You needed to refine your riding technique,
So once I returned to my classroom,
To that monotony of chalk and textbooks,
You would head to the trails at Mount Jaizkibel.

I envisioned you astride your Suzuki RM125,
Navigating those winding, weathered paths
Lined with prickly shrubs,
Skirting cliff edges,
Your bike kicking up clumps of soil,
The distant roar of waves crashing on rocks
As your sole company.

In my mind, your front wheel caught
On a deceptive patch of loose dirt, twisting viciously.
Your world turned into a blur of sky, sea, and earth
As the ground vanished,
And you and your bike hung weightless
Until the rocky outcroppings below
Rushed up to meet you.

I asked you to bring me along;
I could stand around and watch you train.
If you suffered any injury,
I would run to your side and patch you up.
You told me to rest easy: you’d be careful.
Besides, you refused to let me skip class, arguing
That I shouldn’t sacrifice my grades for your sake.

You brought up my mother’s disdain,
Which whispered to me of never again
Holding you tight while lying on the bed
That my parents chose for their son,
Nor smelling your lingering scent on my sheets
As if you were sleeping beside me.

You inquired about my sudden glumness,
And after I confessed, you smirked and assured
That our love wasn’t tethered to any room.

At night, we rode in your Aprilia to Plaiaundi,
And ventured into the deserted ecological park.
In that moonlit, forest-like gloom,
Fireflies meandered like drifting candle flames.
After the rain, the earth exhaled a damp scent.

We ascended the steps of an observation deck
That rose on sturdy wooden stilts
Above the embracing wildness of foliage.
I settled upon the moist boards of the deck.
You nestled into my lap, straddling me,
And draped your arms around my neck.

Leaves whispered, rustling in the breeze,
And crickets chirred in the undergrowth.
My tongue laved over your pebbled areola.
I caressed your nipple with my lips,
Teasing and tugging on the turgid peak,
Gradually drawing it into my wet mouth.
I savored the silky texture of your skin
As it pressed against my taste buds.

Whenever you met me in the evening
Wearing your pleated, knee-length skirt,
You made the wordless promise
That our date would find us heading
To a building with a rustic stone façade,
That back then may have been a minor college.

We wound our way to the building’s rear.
It faced a desolate park and the highway.
In a shadowed colonnade, I claimed a stone bench.
You climbed into my lap, your favorite spot,
Then unzipped me and eased down my boxers.
After your panties joined my keys in my pocket,
You curtained your hips and my legs with the skirt.

I remember what it felt like in the night breeze
When you lowered your hips and slid me inside,
Engulfing me with your slick, velvety depths:
The warmth of a hearth in wintertime.

The same dude used to show up;
He stood in the light cone
Of the sole street lamp,
Drawing puffs from his cigarette
And waiting for his dog to poop.
You and I kept still, embraced,
Your inner walls gripping my length
While our hearts beat as one.

Shoulder-deep in the cool waters of Hendaye Beach,
My bare feet digging into the soaked sand,
I shut my eyes and basked in the warmth
Of the sun’s rays dancing on my face,
And of your tongue, that tasted of salt.
My fingers roamed the skin of your back,
Over the bumps and ridges of your vertebrae.

The sea rolled and receded around us.
The rhythmic lapping of waves against the shore
Blended with the cawing of gulls overhead
And snippets of conversations in French
As if coming from a gramophone in the next room.

Dark strands of your slicked-back hair
Stuck to your cheeks and neck.
Droplets scattered across your smooth skin
Caught the sunlight and glistened.
Your eyelids drooped to a half-lidded stare
As you broke into a mischievous grin.

When you leaned in, I inhaled
The coconut aroma of your sunscreen.
Your thumbs hooked inside my swim shorts.
While your wet lips brushed the shell of my ear,
You asked me to pull down your bikini bottom.

With the spandex garment bunched up mid-calf,
I cupped your firm and fleshy ass cheeks,
And you wrapped your legs around my waist.
As the tip of my member nudged your folds,
I worried about the lack of lubrication.

I wish I could remember how it felt
To make love to you in the sea,
But that memory cuts to a bald old man
Who swam in our orbit
While gawking with a smile spread wide
As if partaking in a private show,
Even though you kept glaring at him.
“What the fuck is that idiot doing?”

Beyond the scrubland at Mount Arburu,
The undulating hills were blanketed in patches
Of dark evergreens and deciduous trees,
Whose trunks had withstood storms
And decades of growth.

Seated at the rear, I clutched at the rider
While your Suzuki shuddered and jolted
Over bumps, rocking us back and forth,
While you wrenched the handlebars
To dodge rocks and bristly bushes
Dotted with yellow flowers.

We lay supine on eroded, sloping bedrock
Beside the feathery fronds of ferns.
Birds chirped in the nearby woods.
My lungs filled with crisp mountain air
That carried the scents of pine and grass,
And the sweet rot of decomposing vegetation.

The sun stretched the shadows of trees
And bathed the scrubland in gold.
Soon enough, our god would hide.
Under that ungraspable, azure dome,
Each succesive hump of the far-off mountains
Became lighter and lighter,
Watercolor washes on a canvas.

Author’s note: today’s song is “Hey Jane” by Spiritualized.

If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.

Motocross Legend, Love of My Life, Pt. 2 (Poetry)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial2 Comments

I urge you to read the previous part of this short(ish) story. The whole thing is supposed to be experienced in one sitting, but I didn’t want to go radio silent for about a month.

For the millionth time, I cast my memory
Back to your bedroom, my ’90s haven:
Jeans-blue walls plastered with posters
Of motorcycle idols in riding gear;
Dream bikes, like your Aprilia;
Misato Katsuragi making a V sign;
Pictures of faraway places that beckoned:
Mount Fuji rising up from the plains,
The Eiffel Tower’s wrought iron lattice,
Lady Liberty’s green patina,
A sunburnt desert stretching into oblivion;
Alongside drawings I created for you.
Worn wooden shelves covered in stickers,
Overflowing with manga volumes
And pricey figurines of EVA units.
On your desk rested your black helmet
Next to piles of VHS cassettes.
Perched on a corner of your CRT television,
A single sock.

Nestled side by side on the carpeted floor
Among a scattering of your clothes,
Facing your plugged-in Playstation,
You were guiding Jill Valentine frantically
Through a shadow-laced, pixelated attic
Of that mansion infested with zombies
As you primed and fired your grenade launcher
At a slithering, grotesque serpent
That chased Jill with nefarious intent.
But lost in a sensory trance, I kept drifting
To the scent of your strawberry body spray,
And every shift of your bare arm against mine
Ignited a tingling trail of shivers down my spine.

Once the serpent fled through a hole,
You spun towards me with a victorious grin,
Flashing your wet, crooked teeth.
What did you say? I didn’t hear anything;
That face had kindled a spark inside me,
Made me feel like a flame
Dancing in a fireplace.

I leaned in and molded my lips to yours.
They tasted of cherry chapstick.

When I pulled away, you were frozen,
Your chocolate eyes wide and unblinking.
Had I gone too far? Had I ruined us?
Blood rushed to my cheeks
And words tangled in my throat
As I tried to apologize,
But you exhaled, bit your lip,
Then tossed the controller aside.
“About time,” you said
While climbing into my lap.

Our tongues wrestled,
Our breaths mingled,
Our teeth clicked,
Our noses bumped.
Your fingers raked through my hair.
I gripped your hips,
Then slid my hands under your T-shirt
To stroke the warm curve of your back.

My thoughts dissolved in a bath-like heat.
My self, that I thought forever isolated
Inside airtight boundaries,
Seeped out to meld with you.

I don’t know when we stopped,
But I remember holding onto you,
Feeling your heart calming down
As it beat against my chest.
Your wet lips rested against my neck,
Your hot breath tickled my skin.

To your annoyance, your father had removed
The privacy lock from your bedroom door,
And that brooding overseer of yours
Invaded your space whenever he pleased,
So if we ached for some privacy,
We had to make out in public.

During your shifts as a pizza delivery driver,
Each time your rounds hinted
You might grace my area of Irún,
You called me so I would wait at a nearby park.
I stared anxiously at the traffic,
Eager to spot your scarlet polo shirt.

After you pulled up on the company scooter,
We sat on a bench, you took off your cap,
And our tongues played like two puppies
As your soft ponytail brushed my hand.
The scent of melted cheese and oregano
Still returns me to those days.

One evening, in the solace of my bedroom,
While my parents argued somewhere outside,
And the last light streaming through the curtain
Bathed our lying forms in a dusk-touched hue,
You explored my naked chest and stomach,
Mapping them with your fingertips.

I cupped the nape of your neck
And brought your mouth to mine.
I wished I could merge with you,
To live within your heart,
To breathe from your lungs,
To laugh with your voice.

One afternoon, you called from a payphone
To tell me, breathless, of an accident:
After some dickhead veered into your lane,
You swerved, but your Aprilia skidded
And bucked viciously, throwing you off.
As you slid over asphalt, it clawed at your leg,
Tearing through your jeans,
Grating against your flesh.

I had never felt such a panic surge in my gut;
I pictured your leg flayed to shreds.
While you complained that the accident
Had marred your bike with scrapes and scuffs,
I urged you to call an ambulance.
You refused; if your father found out,
He would attempt to take the Aprilia away.
However, your leg seared with pain,
So you needed me to patch you up.

I grabbed a bottle of water and a soap squirter,
Then rushed out toward the nearest pharmacy
To buy gauze, bandages, and antibiotic ointment.

When you opened the front door,
You greeted me quietly.
We had lucked out, you said:
Your father wouldn’t return for hours,
And your mother was nursing a migraine.
But that left leg of yours belied our luck:
A jagged tear in your jeans
Revealed the raw red of road rash
Caked with blood and grime.
My heart lurched.

After washing my hands thoroughly, I found you
Lying pantless on your hot-pink bedspread.
I knelt by your bedside and inhaled
The coppery tang of your life essence
Mixed with adrenaline-induced sweat.

I soaked gauze in soapy water
And dabbed it on the raw red of your flesh
To clean off the dried blood and grime.
The white gauze bloomed crimson.
You winced, your eyes watered,
But you gritted through the pain.

I squeezed a glob of antibiotic ointment
And smeared it gently on your road rash.
After I climbed onto the bed,
I started wrapping the bandage
Around your injured leg,
Unwinding the roll and draping it snug.

My throat had closed up;
I felt your pain like it was mine.
You were right, we had been lucky:
Instead of swerving,
You could have crashed headfirst
And broken your neck.
Next time I saw you, you’d be lying in a coffin,
And I would never hear your laughter again.

I leaned forward, hugged your legs
And pressed my lips against your inner thigh,
Planting wet, lingering kisses,
Longing to feel the steady thrum of your life.

In the silence, your breathing grew heavier.
You propped yourself up on your elbows,
With your caramel waves cascading to the pillows.
Your eyes were glazed over, your cheeks flushed pink.

Your sunny-yellow panties,
Their stretchy cotton material
Featuring a pattern of fern-like imprints,
Contoured to your pubic mound,
And over the cleft, the fabric was soaked.

Wordlessly, I nuzzled your vulva,
Warming my face with the heat,
And inhaled the hint of laundry detergent
Mingled with a mouthwatering musk.
Your dampness clung to my tongue
As I lapped up the salty tang,
Which made you grip the bedspread.

You arched your back and wiggled your hips,
Grinding against my face,
To slide your panties down my nose and lips.

Behold a lush, dripping flower.

Our hands were clenched together,
My face buried in your muff,
Your pubes tickling my nose,
My tongue teasing, tracing, flicking
Your moist labia and turgid nub
While you gasped and mewed.

Even if your father’s words stabbed through you,
Or school made you want to jump down a well,
I could offer my warm hands and mouth
To make you forget.
I would always be your refuge
Where you could let go and be yourself.

You pulled my hands toward you
And whispered, “Come here.”
I crawled, skin to skin, over your body
So your tongue could thank mine.

We peeled off each other’s shirts.
I unhooked your bra and kneaded your breasts.
Your fingers unbuttoned and unzipped,
Then tugged down my boxers.
You gripped me, stroked me up and down.
Pleasure settled in my groin like solid heat
As you wrapped your thighs around my waist
And guided me into your warmth.

While your bedsprings squeaked,
We breathed shallow gasps in and out,
And you dug your fingertips into my back.
The rhythm of our bodies synced together.
Something inside me cracked wide open.

If your mother had opened the door,
Ready to complain about the noise,
She would be outraged about more
Than our clothes strewn about the floor,
But any shouts, I’d boldly dismiss;
What we did and what we were
Was a cause to celebrate.
My heart pulsed with an aching joy
At the miracle of finding you, Izar,
And of being found by you.

From the day we made each other adults,
In the sanctuary of your bedroom or mine,
We spent our time huddled together,
Playing games, reading manga, watching shows,
Anticipating a knock on the door
And one of our parents to speak of some errand.
You and I would drown in silence, listening
To the sounds of our guardians leaving.

My body stirred with an electric tension.
Your eyes glittered, starlit with yearning.
Your nipples poked through the top.
Once the front door closed with a thump,
And the key turned once, twice in the lock,
We would allow a brief eternity to pass,
Counting heartbeats and hushed breaths,
Then our clothes would fly off.

When we lay in each other’s arms
On a tangle of sweat-smeared sheets,
The room melted away
To the slick friction of skin on skin.
We became the only people in the world,
Talking and laughing and making love.

Hand in hand, we strolled to the end of Meaka
On a gravel path speckled with moss
Past the hydroelectric plant of Irugurutzeta.
Shadowed by the massive wall
Made of layers of weathered, lichen-clad stones,
We came across wandering chickens
And a dog that glanced at us from its kennel.

I breathed in the rich, loamy scent
Of damp earth and decaying leaves.
We nestled on the bank of a meandering creek
That babbled as it flowed over riverstone.
A stockade of skeletal trees obscured the horizon.
To our left stood the ruins of Roman furnaces.
On the opposite bank, stacks of blackened logs
Loomed like burned tombstones.
Here, where human activity had ceased,
Leaving behind only traces,
Life sprouted, grew, and died untroubled.

Your mood hung heavy like the overcast sky,
But I knew you’d open up when you were ready.
Turns out your parents had found out
About your disastrous grades,
And lost their shit when you declared
That you were dropping out of school altogether.

I remembered how my mother scolded me
For bringing home sevens and eights
When I could, she said, easily ace tests;
Thus, if I chose to drop out,
She would probably drop dead.
I asked if you had rushed to this decision,
But your mind had known for weeks.

Algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry;
They were rusty spanners in a junkyard
To you, who had dreamed of riding a bike
On undulating dirt tracks
Through jumps, berms, and whoops.
So instead of surrendering your youth
To the hands of glorified babysitters,
You chose to chase the road forward
Before the mirror showed a stranger.

Author’s note: the song for today is “Your Hand in Mine” by Explosions in the Sky.

If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.

Motocross Legend, Love of My Life, Pt. 1 (Poetry)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial32 Comments

Wide awake at midnight,
As I lie in the oppressive dark,
I stretch my arm into the abyss of my mind,
Seeking the warmth of your hand.

I imagine the apartment’s buzzer ringing;
You’ve come to take me away.
I put on clothes, kiss my sleeping kids goodbye,
And rush downstairs to join you.

Garbed in your sleek red jacket,
You’re straddling the leather seat
And resting your elbows on the handlebars
Of your nineteen ninety-four Aprilia Red Rose.
Its lemon-yellow body, streaked with white,
Shimmers in the streetlights’ glow.
The sharp beam of its headlight pierces the night.

Amber radiance outlines your caramel-brown hair,
But your face is lit by an unrestrained smile
That creases the corners of your chocolate eyes,
That shows off your crooked front teeth.

Once I climb onto the pillion behind you,
I wrap my arms around your slim waist.
You start up the beast, making it rumble,
And we roll down the road.

Streetlights blur to yellow streaks
As we rocket through the streets,
Zooming past cars and trucks,
Past darkened houses and shops.

The mechanical purring of the engine
Ebbs and flows through my bones.
The crisp wind of autumn stings my cheeks;
It smells like wet pavement and gasoline.
Your jacket and wavy hair rustle,
Your laughter rings in the night.

Life is a wild and beautiful sickness.
In this universe of racing colors,
We are invincible.
Through the darkness we soar
Like two lonesome shooting stars
Tearing across the heavens.

We reach our park by the Bidasoa River,
Where freshwater meets saltwater,
And the salty scent of the sea mingles
With the aroma of pine trees and earth.

Lonely benches line the path, facing the water,
But we sit side by side on the cool, dewy grass.
Pine trees etch their silhouettes against a night sky
Bathed in the silvery glow of a full moon.

You ask me if I’m living the life I dreamed of.
I confess that things didn’t pan out like I wished:
I never became a comic book artist.
But through designing websites for corporations,
I employ what little creativity I have left,
Or at least that’s what I’d like to believe.

You ask me if I still remember us.
I tell you all the ways I do.

I was drawing my comic strip,
Sitting at the base of an oak tree
In my favorite spot of our school grounds.
The rough ridges of the bark dug into my back,
And the sunlight streamed through the leaves,
Falling in pools of amber-orange on the grass,
Bouncing off the paper in my lap.
Suddenly, there you were, towering over me
With your wild brown waves down your shoulders,
A carefree smile playing on your lips.

You asked what I was always drawing
That kept me alone and with my head down.
I tried to hide the pages, but you snatched them.
As your eyes darted over ink and graphite,
I tensed up, bracing myself for your mockery
Of the tale through which I lived vicariously.

It tracked the adventures
Of a team of heroes for hire
That drifted through the cosmos
In their ramshackle starship.

Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate,
Charted stars as their cunning captain;
Redheaded terror Asuka Langley
Was their fierce-eyed, unyielding gunner;
Ranma Saotome, fluid as water,
Their covert infiltration specialist.
The rest of their motley crew was filled
With characters from games, manga, and anime
That in days of solitude and sorrow
Had brought comfort and distraction.

While you flipped through the pages,
My pulse quickened, anxiety gripped me,
But you laughed out of delight.
Seated beside me, you kept reading.
Under the canopy of leaves,
Your chocolate eyes glittered
As you pointed out jokes and references
That I thought nobody but me would get.

Days later, you asked me how come
I used characters created by others.
I didn’t dare come up with my own;
What if they were stupid and lame?
Wouldn’t that mean I was talentless?

You told me I was a special kind of idiot;
Of course my first tries would suck.
Greatness takes effort, perseverance,
And a willingness to make mistakes.
If I kept working hard and learning
From the masters we both admired,
I too would one day create art
That moved hearts and minds,
That inspired others to dream and do,
But if I gave up, wallowing in fear,
I would end up like those pathetic adults
Who believed their dreams never came true
Because they didn’t wish hard enough.

That couldn’t be right, could it?
My mother always told me
That I was an intelligent boy,
Her bright, shining star,
Who’d nail every challenge
In the first try.

You invited me to your parents’ place.
I spent my, until then, best afternoon
Playing Super Metroid on your SNES
And munching on barbecue fritos.

We recorded mock radio shows
On your dad’s tape recorder.
You acted as the host
Interviewing me, your guest.

“Hello, citizens of Irún!
It’s me, Izar Lizarraga,
Your one and only radio DJ,
Bringing you a special edition
Of ‘Izar’s Takeover,’ coming live
From the studios of Channel 52.
Great lineup today, folks!
Our very own Guybrush Threepwood,
Bonafide pirate and space pioneer
Admired by millions, loved by all,
Reports to us from the ninth dimension.
How are you doing out there, Threepwood?”

“Well, it’s been quite the thrill.
I’ve been trying to find the source
Of this mysterious pink goop
That’s been popping up everywhere.
So far, it’s led to a lot of shootin’,
Scoopin’ and lootin’ in this cosmic void.”

You showed me motocross races
From your collection of videocassettes
Nestled beside your bulky TV.
Dozens of racers clad in protective gear
Darted and wove amidst the pack
Astride dirt bikes with coil spring shocks,
Their knobby tires kicking up plumes of dust.
The racers zoomed and skidded,
They surged up series of steep ramps
And vaulted in graceful arcs
Before crashing back down to earth.

The races blurred before me,
A storm of dust, noise, and fury,
But that flickering screen illuminated
Your childlike grin.

Before I met you, I wasted entire days
Secluded in my darkened bedroom.
Now that you summoned me to your side,
We made memories out of our adventures.

At the arcade, we fed coins into Bubble Bobble.
You picked the green chubby dragon, I picked blue.
Like maniacs we jumped on 2D platforms
And trapped our foes inside colorful bubbles.
As we clutched the joysticks and punched buttons,
The warmth of your arm grazed my skin.

We hit every wooded area in the city,
Where we climbed trees
And swung from low-hanging branches
Although we kept landing on our asses.
We sneaked into construction sites
To slide downhill on cardboard.

At night, we climbed the chain-link fence
Of the primary school we had attended.
Here’s where we played hopscotch,
Here’s where I drew cartoons with chalk.
We rested our plastic buckets and shovels
Inside this little square filled with sand.
That night, we shot some hoops in the shadows
Until the custodian chased us off.

How often in comic book stores
Did I distract the cashier while you slid
A volume of manga down your pants,
Securing it with the waistband of your panties?
Remember when you lit firecrackers
In one of the toilets at our middle school?
That porcelain bowl burst like a grenade.

As we lay prone on gravel,
Your lighter’s flame kissed
The tip of a hapless leaf,
That blackened and curled.
As an orange flame rippled
Like a flag in the breeze,
A white, incandescent band
Glided down the blade,
Leaving behind ashes.

One time you brought me to your home,
Your father picked a fight, I don’t recall why.
He spoke to you like scum,
Like you were no daughter of his,
And threatened to go beyond words.
After he slammed the bedroom door,
You burst into tears. I hugged you tightly.
Your warm tears soaked my shirt
As I stroked your soft hair.
You whispered that you couldn’t wait
To move far, far away.

I had also come to distrust my parents.
How many times did I hold my breath
While I pressed my ear against the door,
Eavesdropping on one of their quarrels
In case they decided to break apart my world?

I learnt how it felt to miss you for days;
You filled your afternoons after school
Studying for your motorbike license
Or working part-time as a cook at Telepizza.

One evening, lying on the grass at Aingura Park,
As the setting sun poured molten gold upon the river
And stray cats padded over our bellies,
You confessed, your eyes alight with dreams,
That you were saving up for a bike and riding gear,
That you intended to pursue your childhood dream
Of becoming a professional motocross rider,
Traveling the globe, competing at the highest level.

You made me board a bus
To an industrial park west of town.
As I meandered aimlessly
In front of workshops and warehouses,
A solitary figure emerged
Wearing white sneakers, jeans,
Padded polyester gloves,
A black motorbike helmet
With a tinted visor,
And a sleek red jacket.

You took off your carbon fiber helmet,
Freeing your caramel-brown waves.
Your eyes crinkled into half-moons
As you let out a hearty laugh.

After I met your beloved Aprilia Red Rose,
A treasure made yours from another’s hands,
You tossed me a half-helmet;
You wanted to take me on my first ride.

Weren’t you searching for a motocross bike?
Why choose this one instead?
You couldn’t resist such a bargain, you said,
And you could save up then trade the Aprilia in.

You slipped your helmet over your face,
Visor down to shield against the bugs.
The half-helmet’s padding hugged my head
As I fastened the strap under my chin.
Once I swung onto the bike behind you,
I clung to you like a koala.

You turned the ignition key
And twisted the throttle.
The engine growled and sputtered,
The exhaust let out raspy rattles.

As we raced toward an invisible finish line,
The roar of the engine echoed down
That sun-drenched industrial thoroughfare.
The bike’s rumbling quivered through me,
From my feet braced against the foot pegs
To my fingertips curled around your waist.
Spilling out the sides of your helmet,
Wind-whipped hair danced against my face.

I found the ride exhilarating, terrifying,
Like a rollercoaster, like flying.
My heart pounded, my mouth dried up.
I wanted to scream into the void
And let the thrill consume me.

What happened to that poster-size picture
I drew of you, that you hung on your wall?
Against a backdrop of blurred lines,
There you were, an anime-style Izar,
Riding your yellow-and-white motorbike,
Your caramel-brown hair flowing behind you,
Your favorite Evangelion T-shirt rippling in the wind.
Your face beamed with an open-mouthed smile,
And your chocolate eyes stared straight ahead
To wherever the road would take you.

Author’s note: the song for today is “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison.

Now that I have determined all the plot points and imagery that I want to include in the narrative, this side project of mine will likely take up to a month.

Interdimensional Prophets (Game Dev) #1

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial, Programación1 Comment

A couple of years ago I wrote a wild (and long) free verse poem about some unhinged scientist who was leading teams of unfortunate people through an interdimensional portal to explore alternate Earths. This is the link to that poem (it requires a rewrite, though, particularly to add periods). I was fascinated by the potential for stories that such a concept included. I played around with the notion of developing some game around it, but my experience with programming solo was more often than not the same: I tried to implement some general game concept only to find myself hitting my head against an implementation detail that had seemed easy to solve. Eventually I discarded all my grand programming ideas. One of them involved Python, and it was the language itself that ended up pissing me off.

Enter GPT-4, the most advanced AI that I have ever interacted with. Turns out that GPT-4 is great at programming in Rust. Literally, you tell that damn thing to write unit tests for your code, and it does. I remain constantly amazed by its insight. In a couple of days, I cobbled this stuff together:

This is the beginning of the “base” screen, set on regular Earth, where the team will manage its staff, handle their health and psychological problems, and, more importantly, delve into alternate Earths through the portal. A description gives the general notion of the alternate Earth on the other side of the portal: “A bizarre, otherworldly environment dominated by massive fungi, and strange creatures.”

This is the map view during exploration. The icon represents the actual position of the team. I didn’t mention it before, but the person on the upper left side is the player (for now generated randomly), who will lead the team of explorers to face the dangers alongside them.

I already have many, many different environments written and illustrated, thanks to the back-and-forth between GPT-4 and myself, and Midjourney for the images. A bigger example, the Stormy Desert biome:

All these environments are written in a Lua file, so they are intrinsically moddable (so far, as long as the Biomes and the environment Features are coded in game). Here’s an example of a single environment in the file environments.lua:

    Highland = {

        description = “A high-altitude environment consisting of rolling hills, plateaus, and mountains, with a mix of grasslands, forests, and rocky terrain.”,

        allowed_biomes = {

            “Alpine”,

            “TemperateGrassland”,

            “Steppe”,

            “TemperateDeciduousForest”,

            “Taiga”,

            “Tundra”,

            “SkyIslands”,

            “AncientRuins”,

        },

        features = {

            “HighAltitude”,

            “Mountains”,

            “Avalanches”,

            “RockSlides”,

            “MountainClimbing”,

            “TreacherousPaths”,

            “LimitedResources”,

            “Isolation”,

            “ExtremeCold”,

            “Frostbite”,

            “Hypothermia”,

            “NativeInhabitants”,

            “ResourceCompetition”,

            “TerritorialConflicts”,

            “CaveSystems”,

            “HiddenCoves”,

            “LostCivilizations”,

            “AncientRelics”,

        }

    },

The combination of biomes and features will determine which types of encounters the team will face. That’s a whole different system I’m developing, and that I intend to be fully moddable as well.

I wanted each team member to be as psychologically complex as possible. Each encounter will test one or more psychological dimensions of their personality. For example, if they come across walking octopi that try to drink the team members’ blood (which happens in the poem), certain psychological dimensions will be tested.

For now, all psychological dimensions that GPT-4 and I have discovered (mostly the AI, though) are Interpersonal Skills, Cognitive Abilities, Self-Regulation, Coping Skills, Drive, Cross-Cultural Skills, and Mental Strain. For example, a single psychological test of that encounter could test a team member’s Coping Skills, and if he fails, his Anxiety psychological criterion could increase permanently. They could also lose health, acquire traits, etc. The notion is that when Mental Strain reaches 100, they are committed to a mental institution. They may quit some time earlier, though. The health system is very barebones at the moment (literally just a 0.0 to 100.0 value), but I want to create a whole system for that as well, including permanent injuries.

The grouping of psychological criterion to psychological dimensions is the following:

  • Interpersonal Skills: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Social Skills, Empathy, Conflict Resolution, Teamwork
  • Drive: Conscientiousness, Leadership, Risk-Taking, Time Management
  • Self-Regulation: Emotional Stability, Emotional Intelligence, Self-Esteem, Self-Awareness
  • Cognitive Abilities: Openness to Experience, Problem-Solving, Creativity, Situational Awareness, Decision-Making
  • Coping Skills: Resilience, Coping Strategies, Adaptability
  • Cross-Cultural Skills: Cultural Competence
  • Mental Strain: Anxiety, Depression, Stress

Right now, when a new team member is created, every psychological criterion is assigned a number from 0.0 to 100.0 on a normal distribution. GPT-4 even wrote psychological reports from the perspective of the team leader. The following is such a report generated in-game for the team leader herself:

Some experience working with others and collaborating towards shared goals. They may need additional support in order to effectively build relationships with others and resolve conflicts.
Average cognitive abilities and is capable of problem solving and critical thinking. They may need additional support or training in order to tackle more complex problems and situations.
Struggles to manage their emotions and reactions in high-pressure situations or when encountering unexpected events. They may be prone to panic or irrational behavior, making them a potential liability to any team exploring alternate Earths. They may require significant support and training to effectively manage their emotions and reactions in these situations.
Some coping skills and is able to manage stressful situations to some extent. However, they may require additional support or guidance in order to effectively deal with unexpected events or extremely stressful situations that may arise while exploring alternate Earths.
Some motivation and drive to achieve their goals, but may struggle to maintain focus and commitment when faced with obstacles. They may require additional support and encouragement to stay on track and fulfill their responsibilities on an exploration team.
Solid experience with cross-cultural communication and collaboration. They are able to adapt their communication style and approach to effectively engage with people from different cultures and backgrounds. They may benefit from additional training or exposure to further enhance their cross-cultural skills.
The candidate’s mental health is poor, and they may be highly vulnerable to the extreme stress and potential trauma of exploring alternate Earths. It would be inadvisable to consider them for such a high-risk job without extensive support and preparation.

As you can figure out, I’m quite pumped up about developing this shit, to the extent that I haven’t written any fiction in two days (that’s a lot for me).

Please, if you can come up with any ideas, I’d love to hear and implement them. One of the worst parts of programming for me is having built a careful architecture only to realize that a better idea will require a whole restructuring. I’ve already had to do that twice for the encounter system. So I want the best ideas first.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 69 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial4 Comments

Millefeuilles made of layers of puff pastry, cake, and cream. Chocolate croissants sprinkled with powdered sugar. Danish pastries topped with rosewood-colored jam. White mousse cakes that look like melting snowdrifts. Heart-shaped pastries half-caked in chocolate. Coffee buns dusted with coarse sugar. Coconut-flavored croquembouches. Crumbly cream horns. Sugar donuts. Stuffed crullers. Buttercream-iced choux buns. Cookie-crusted hazelnut pralines. Red fruit tartlets with a golden crust. Puff pastry braids bedecked with nuts and raisins. Freshly baked croissants that resemble legless, buff crabs. Oversized, rust-brown palmiers covered with a thick layer of glazed sugar. Oblong eclairs stuffed with cream and decorated with lines of white chocolate in zig-zag.

My mouth is flooding with saliva. The lining of my stomach secretes more and more acid like a flesh-vat at some dystopian factory, ready to dissolve whatever bolus gets pushed down the esophagus. I need to stuff myself with the whole inventory of pastries; their sugar will make me forget about my otherworldly stalkers, about the exponential ruin of our society, about the fact that I’m a failed genetic experiment that should have been thrown in the garbage, and about the fact that my brain is hoping to spot a hole in my defenses to unleash another assault of nightmarish memories: the disasters that the universe has hurled at me out of spite, and the disgraces that I’ve brought upon myself because I’m a cowardly fiend that is counting the minutes until she can shove her hand down her panties.

Our adopted daughter is standing on her tiptoes and pressing her hands and nose against the glass display counter, hypnotized by the concoctions of chocolate, cream and jam supplied by this factory of death and gluttony. She looks like she might faint if we let her try any pastry. The child will make us gorge ourselves on a cake of toxic sludge, to push us deeper into the underbelly of this rotten world that promises periods of blissful oblivion through drugs, only to fuck us over.

“She’s going to become addicted to sugar in no time,” I say.

Jacqueline chuckles.

“Aren’t we all.”

From behind the counter comes the chirpy voice of a young woman with an Eastern European accent.

“She’s so adorable! It’s like she’s the cutest thing I ever laid eyes on! What kind of pastry would you like, little bunny?”

Past the reflections in the plexiglass partition, the barista is wearing a black uniform and grey-blue sanitary gloves. She’s at least half a head taller than me. Her sandy-blond hair, tied up in a messy bun, gleams under the overhead lights. Her eyes are shadowed by deep mascara, and she has the Slavic gaze of someone who has witnessed officers of Communism forcing entire villages to starve, although she looks young enough to be in college.

I should prevent her from interacting with Jacqueline; if this woman flirted, my beloved may snap out of her trance and realize that she’s dating the human equivalent of a raccoon. But the barista has fixed her haunted gaze on our child, and dared to address her. Although I’m tempted to tell this woman that she should mind her own business, over the years I’ve learned that if you are as hostile to people as they deserve, they tend to bother you even more, so I measure my response.

“Please, don’t mention bunnies in my presence,” I say icily. “And we haven’t decided yet. Once we do, I hope you’ll be capable enough of providing the chosen pastries for us.”

When the woman smiles, I’m surprised that she had been able to cover those teeth with her lips.

“I’m sure I will!”

“Then we’ll have two millefeuilles, a half-dozen of the chocolate croissants, one fruit tartlet with almonds, four palmiers, and two dozen donuts. Plus two bottles of your best champagne.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“What was that?”

“We haven’t decided yet,” Jacqueline says through a grin, then she pats me on the shoulder. “Let’s pick our table. One of those at the back.”

I stifle a yawn as I nod. Hand in hand with our adopted daughter, we head deeper into the pastry shop, past two short-haired, middle-aged women who have ordered toast and coffee, then past an ancient woman whose wrinkled skin is stained with liver spots, and who is sitting next to her South American carer; both are frowning as if they’re trying to figure out the purpose of their existence.

Jacqueline picks two joined tables at the back, then she gestures for the child to climb onto the chair closest to the wall and facing the entrance. She’s safer if we box her in.

This shop features a second counter dominated by an industrial coffee machine, above which menu boards advertise breakfasts. Two male clients are seated on wooden stools at the counter. My skin itches; my brain is busy monitoring the presence of multiple strangers although I’m already exhausting my reserves of energy on remaining coherent. Jacqueline, however, remains as calm as a cup of warm milk.

After we set down the shopping bags on the fourth chair, my beloved walks around the two varnished maple wood tables to take off our child’s lemonade-pink scarf, revealing the peach-orange skin of her throat. The girl lets out an anxious vocalization, as if she had been deprived of a toy.

“You shouldn’t wear it indoors, darling,” Jacqueline says in her honeyed voice. “It will catch lots of crumbs.”

I slump down into the chair next to our child, but as I’m considering that she would feel more comfortable closer to the woman that has taken care of her, Jacqueline interrupts my thoughts.

“What would strike your fancy, dear?”

“Well, if I force myself to drink more coffee today, I might vomit.”

“So how about a cup of chocolate? Our girl will also enjoy that.”

“Sounds tasty.”

“And what kind of pastries would you like?”

“Anything you think that I can fit in my mouth.”

Jacqueline chuckles. She leans over the table to move aside the menu and the napkin dispenser, clearing some space in front of the child. She pulls out from one of the shopping bags a sketchbook, the kind that an art teacher would order his middle school students to buy, as well as a yellow pack of Crayola crayons that contains sixty-four different colors. My girlfriend’s face lights up with a grin as she opens the pack, revealing four rows of crayons like multicolored, cone-headed freaks seated at an auditorium. I lack names for half of those colors.

The child perks up, then she gabbles a couple of sentences excitedly. Jacqueline reaches over to pat her on the head.

“It will take us a long time to teach our language to this doll, if… if she’s capable of learning it.” Her smile falters. “But she should be able to draw, right?”

I pull out an asphalt-black crayon from the pack. I probe its flat tip.

“Yeah… I read this morning that plenty of those cave paintings were made by children.”

“Perfect. Keep her entertained, will you?”

Jacqueline squeezes my hand, then she struts towards the counter to order. When I turn my head to the right, our child is paying attention to me with curiosity; I feared that she would look at me as if I were some pest that she’s forced to tolerate. Her cherubic cheeks disturb my heart, but the gaze of her monolid eyes is like a laser running over my face. It reminds me of my high school biology teacher; when he was about to explain the insides of an elephant, he stared so long and hard into our eyes that I started to wonder if elephants actually existed.

This girl is shining a light on the garbage bags I piled up at the apartment I abandoned, on the shattered living room window I never bothered to fix, on the board games I bought but didn’t unwrap, on the times I stuck around after hours at the office and tugged my trousers and panties down to rub one out. Is she a cosmic judge sent from the distant past to bring the gavel down on my foul deeds? Or maybe this girl will grow into the exact image of my mother: an indifferent humanoid programmed to erase me from history.

I gulp.

“Just wait until they serve us a bunch of pastries, forest girl,” I say nervously while I try a smile. “You have never tasted anything that good! And you’re lucky I’m not the one preparing your food. I’m able to fry ham and bacon and cook some eggs, but you never know if they’ll somehow end up covered in cum.”

The child arches her eyebrows and tilts her head, and my cheeks flush. I scoot my chair closer to her.

“Nevermind what I said. I guess you need to be taught how to draw with crayons, so check this out.”

What should I draw? What effluvia of my diseased brain could I show to this pristine child that has just begun to get eroded by modernity? I risk scarring her for life. But what an odd worry for me to have; when was the last time that I doodled anything else than a close-up of my own face? No, of the face with which I should have been born, instead of the rotting husk with which any reflective surface torments me.

I survey the rows of crayons as if they were the opportunities of a full hand in a card game. I let my instinct grab four other crayons from the pack. When I lean back, I spot Jacqueline: she’s standing in front of the pastry counter and pointing at some items inside the glass display counter. Behind it, the Slavic barista, pastry chef or whatever the hell she pretends to be, is using food tongs to pluck an oblong eclair.

Seated at the second counter, next to an uneven and dented wooden pillar, a man in his late twenties is ogling my girlfriend’s legs. He’s wearing a beanie and a nylon windbreaker. He’s holding his phone in his hand as if he was staring at it before he realized that the most delicious woman alive had materialized in this store. The sight of my girlfriend’s twin mountains hugged by her sweater would be enough to make the man’s crotch swell up like an angry balloon.

I can make out the tight, toned flesh of Jacqueline’s legs through her cinder-colored tights, and as she bends over to press a fingertip against the glass display counter, her plaid skirt hikes up slightly. The bottom of her peacoat may keep hiding her butt, or it may instead fail catastrophically at its mission, exposing her ample behind that resembles a pair of ripe pomegranates. Anyway, Jacqueline is an exquisite piece of art that should have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci, while I’m an unmade bed with a dirty quilt and a crusted-up blanket, my sheets tattered by two decades of restless sleep and smelly ejaculate.

How dare that beanie-wearing beast take a sneak peek at my queen’s attributes? Merely grazing Jacqueline with his gaze would befoul her as if she had fallen in one of those Indian rivers. I should stop him. I would stand up, walk up to the pervert and tap his shoulder. When he turned around, I would clock him hard on the nose. No, that may break my fingers, and he might even punch me back. I could hurl the napkin dispenser at him. A hail of paper may distract him so much that Jacqueline would return to our table unmolested. I could snatch the barista’s tongs, then I’d snap the guy’s neck with a quick twist and a jerk. I’m also holding crayons; although their tip is flat, the end is still tapered, so I could try to push them through the guy’s face. No, I would have to sharpen the tips first with my teeth. I could fling the crayons at the prick, but I don’t know which colors would be the most effective in dissuading him from polluting my queen.

What the hell am I thinking? Isn’t Spike’s revolver weighing down the inside pocket of my corduroy jacket? I should take the weapon out and check that the bullets haven’t vanished, that they remain in the chamber. I’d cock the hammer, then aim the revolver at the back of that windbreaker. Blam, blam! Blood would start oozing from the two black holes. After that triumph of justice, an oily thread of equine saliva would descend from the heavens, and its beady end would morph into a thumbs up.

If either of the bullets buried themselves in the guy’s spine, he would slump instantly to the hardwood floor. Otherwise he would stand up and turn around with an annoyed expression. Upon noticing that a thin stream of smoke rose from the muzzle of my revolver, he would say, “what the hell, lady.” But I would lower the barrel towards his abdomen and squeeze the trigger. Blam! Another blood spatter. The bullet would pierce his intestines, which would leak out their shit and cause an infection that would rot his insides. If by this point the revolver didn’t misfire and explode turning my hands into shredded ribbons, I would aim the revolver further down. A thick liquid would be dangling from the glans of his erect penis. Blam! His dick and balls would burst. The windbreaker-clad wretch would fall to his knees while clutching his pulsating groin, then tumble into a pool of liquefied meat.

Once a man loses his genitals, he wouldn’t care if I smashed his face with a rock, if I gouged his eyes out, or if I cut his head off. His life was already over anyway. If someone were to shoot out my clitoris, I’d have a hard time getting out of bed in the mornings.

A small hand tugs on my right sleeve. I flinch, my heart leaps to my throat. Our child lets out a sentence in a questioning tone, which pulls me down into the atmosphere of this patisserie and its scent of pastries splashed with blood. Her childish innocence will strike me dead and bury me in the same grave as that beanie-wearing lowlife.

I wish I were like this girl. Her eyes are clear and she’s free. And she probably has no clue how to use a knife nor a fork.

My brain feels like it’s dripping with tar. I catch my breath, then I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand.

“You are right, I was supposed to work on my masterpiece. You know what they say: never make your art in a patisserie. It may be a fine place for fattening food, but for creative work, it’s too distracting. Anyway, my drawing will become the most famous ever, and it will cure my insomnia.”

I hunch over the sketchbook and start drawing the outline of a face, but the stroke comes out faint. I examine the tip of the asphalt-black crayon. No, they didn’t come with transparent caps, and my exhaustion is preventing me from thinking straight, because the crayon’s pigmented wax wouldn’t have touched the paper in that case. I must have gotten used to pens and markers.

I press the tip of the crayon harder against the paper until the curve comes out as thick as I want, although it feels like I’m punishing the sketchbook. I draw round eyes like those of a slow loris, the well-mouths into an inner chasm. Added to the slightly raised eyebrows and the half-closed lips, the woman’s expression suggests madness, frustration and pent-up horniness. In short, her look screams, “I’m trapped within my own mind, so fuck me, please and thank you, mistress.”

I can’t figure out how to make the strokes seem continuous, and some of the colors have blended into mud. The tip of an orange crayon splinters into chips. When I brush them away with my hand, they leave a stain on the paper. I guess that any crayon drawing ends up looking like it was made by a child.

I’m enjoying shading that brow furrowed in worry, as well as the space under the arched eyebrows, under the marked eye bags that befit someone who suffers from anxiety-induced insomnia and severe depression, and under that downturned mouth of a person for whom every moment of happiness, as soon as it ends, feels like a mirage.

I draw each sinuous lock of hair in caramel and wood browns, with some orange added in as if I had dyed those locks with henna, until I end up rendering a beastly mane that matches my unkempt mind. Hair is about a hundred thousand protein filaments that grow however they please out of the person’s scalp; aren’t we damaging its dignity by arranging it with a narrow-toothed tool into artificial shapes?

Under the caricaturesque head, I’ve depicted a skinny neck and narrowed shoulders; even in a drawing, I want to occupy as little space as possible. I don’t dare to continue the drawing below that close-up, but I envision a body like a column, its legs thin as pipes and the feet dangling from them. I’m tempted to add a title in the top right-hand corner of the paper: ‘The Lonely Loon, Queen of Monsters.’ I should also write an accompanying poem:

I am a monster from a land far away.
I roamed the mountains,
I lurked in the caves,
I slithered on the sand,
I climbed the trees,
I scaled the clouds,
I jumped between the rainbows,
I swayed amidst the stars.

I’m not a good kid, as you can see
From my monstrous countenance.
My feet are freezing and bloody red,
But my mouth is filled with hot steam.

My mom is a lizard. She says she’s an angel.
My dad is a worm. He says he’s a god.
My only companion is the moon.
I eat other monsters’ bodies,
And I swallow every stranger
Who wanders in from outside.
My shadow is so long
As I cast it upon the ground.

I stick my teeth into my soul’s wounds,
And eat myself alive.
I will end up living on ice.

This is my song of mourning,
This is my prayer to the night,
That a special monster like myself
May find herself at peace in another realm.

My voice does not reach the skies,
Nor do my words touch the Earth,
But I sing my songs to the moon
While she falls asleep by the lake,
And wakes up by the river
Where there is no one else.

I remove my elbows from the table, then I push the sketchbook to the child’s side.

“Ta-ta!” I exclaim using an expression that may have been common in the Ice Age.

The child snaps her head back and lets out an admiring O sound through her O-shaped mouth. A flood of pride flows down to my groin.

“Hell yeah, I’m pretty good, huh?” I point at the drawing, then at myself. “Leire. That’s me. My name is Leire.”

She stares at me hesitantly while her eyebrows twitch. When she parts her lips, they form a bubble of saliva that slides to a corner of her mouth. She closes it again.

I tap the drawing with my index finger.

“Leire.”

“Eide,” the child says in her high-pitched voice.

Did the word’s consonants become shapeless blobs of doughy mud, as if they’d fallen into a tar pit and gotten stuck?

“Eide?”

She claps and hoots with laughter as if I were a monkey and she had heard me utter a ridiculous sound.

I’m flabbergasted. A rush of warmth fills my chest, and my head feels like it’s about to shoot off like the cork of a champagne bottle. Oh no, I want to hug this child so hard that her liquified viscera would get squeezed through her orifices like toothpaste!

The name Leire is elegant and alluring; a poet would form it with his lips while gazing at the stars and yearning for the one he loves. Eide sounds like a rude kid who has failed to learn that she shouldn’t insult other people’s parents, or hit people over the head with a hammer. Eide is a name for a morose girl who needs hugs. I guess I’m Eide now.

That was the first of the Ice Age child’s vocalizations that showed intelligence; whatever vestiges of sentience we recognized in her previous actions might have been wish fulfillment. Now I suspect that she may be smarter than me.

My heartbeat resumes its steady thud. I point at myself with one thumb.

“Leire.”

The child waves her little hand at me.

“Eide!”

When I jab my index finger at our girl, her eyes sparkle. She clenches her hands into fists and blurts out maybe two words, but I don’t understand how she used her tongue and lips to vocalize them, even though I’m staring at her mouth.

I should give myself a break. An otherworldly demon invaded my dreams to force-feed me tainted pancakes, which caused me to wake up screaming at four in the morning, then a rip in spacetime sent me to the Paleolithic Age, where I risked losing my fingers and toes and nose to frostbite, as well as my sanity. I also pissed off an extinct ground sloth to the point where it wanted to ram its claws through my windpipe. I should be thankful that I can still understand my own language, and if I think about all of this too long, I might become incapable of speaking.

Author’s note: today’s songs are “Caribou” (as well as this alternate version) by Pixies, and “Mute” by Youth Lagoon.

Leire’s fear that any food she prepares may end up covered in cum is actually a reference to chapter 14.

I exploited a neural network to generate images related to this chapter: here’s the link.

This was the last chapter I will be able to post before I return to work this Friday. Of course, it feels like a disaster. Back to the routine of wasting my time and energies on fixing stupid computer problems, dealing with even stupider users, and tolerating my coworkers, who often act like middle school kids. But I’ve never managed to earn more than ten euros selling my ebooks, and I’m a thirty-seven-year-old disgusting dude, so nobody would want to pay the bills while I stay at home jerking off whether literally or psychologically, or both at once.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this one.

A Hedgehog’s Advantage (Poetry)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificialLeave a comment

Throughout these pointless thirty six years of my life,
I’ve been amused by the strange dance people engage in
When they take a passing interest in shitty old me.
The more they know me, the more they twist their minds
To figure out how their frameworks can wrap around
The prickly, festering spherule that I represent.

Their picture of me is a mirage they conjured up
Of a prisoner who willingly keeps the world outside.
Some believe they can fix me through their efforts,
Some create elaborate fantasies to find me worthy.
So much energy wasted in hopeless endeavours
When they all get sick of me in the end.

Narcissists who want to bring me out of my shell
To gloat in their own virtue towards their inferiors,
Brainwashed social workers for whom I’m a good boy
Because I fit one of their protected categories,
Aging mommy types for whom the world is divided
Into vulnerable kids and threats to kids
(But who won’t offer me their tits to suck on),
Dutiful servants of a made-up god
Eager to propagate their Abrahamic curse
(Western civilization died with Rome).

The more they know me, the more they loathe themselves.
The more they know me, the more I despise them.
They wish me to vanish from their lives,
I wish them to be erased from the face of the earth.

I’m chained to this physical frame
That I didn’t choose nor identify with
(A living corpse, a lump of organic waste),
And to keep it breathing and moving,
I’ve had to tether myself to others,
But in my mind I’ve always been alone.

I’ve survived on my own until now,
I’ll survive on my own until I die.
Through my misguided attempts at love I learned
That nothing could fill this cannonball-sized hole.

I’m a mentally ill junkie
Constantly aching for my next fix.
I’m a suicidal wannabe
Machine-gunning serial killer.
I was born to spread rot
Upon this ruinous world.
To feel okay for a single moment,
I’ll betray or abuse whoever needs to fall.

I hate my mother who killed me.
I loathe my father who should have.
There’s no point in any of it;
I’ve seen all the stars
And they’re just holes.
No life before my birth,
No life after my death.
In between there’s only me
In an endless stream of pain.

If anything I do, say or write
Bothers you enough to care,
Please, do me a huge favor
And go to hell.

The Tiny Pebble in My Head (Poetry)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificialLeave a comment

Ten years ago I still believed in therapy.
I used to pay this psychiatrist a hundred euros
For each session, that always started late
And often got interrupted by phone calls.

What I got out of those sessions was false hope,
The notion that I was going forward in life
Because to listen to me for an hour, I paid someone
As much as I would make as a technician in four days.

I don’t know what the point of all that was;
There were no answers to anything,
No solutions or plans for my future.
I always felt like a guinea pig in some experiment.

After each session, I wanted to vomit.
I spent the day with a lump in my throat
While lying on my bed or walking around the block,
Looking at the clouds and sky above my head.
I’ve always hated talking about myself,
And especially sharing my secrets with others.
Talking with other people is exhausting.
It’s not like anyone has ever really cared.

But I guess I was desperate for help and support.
My cycles of depression made me lose opportunities,
And I’ve dealt with suicidal ideation since forever.
Many times I’ve fantasized about overdosing,
Throwing myself out of a window,
Shooting myself in the head,
And a myriad of other creative methods
Of getting rid of this life I’ve never enjoyed.

Anyway, talking never worked well enough,
So these professionals wanted to medicate me.
They said stuff like, “We’ll try this one drug,
And if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”

This one antidepressant, or whatever it was,
Made my skin break out in stretch marks,
And I suddenly found myself producing milk
Out of the breast tissue my body had developed.
Not many men can say, let alone admit,
That they know how their breast milk tastes.

(The taste reminded me of rotten meat
With some sourness and saltiness added.
Over the years, as I grew more unhinged,
My milk tasted better. I no longer disliked it.
It became a part of my diet.
I drank it straight from the teat with a straw,
Or with some milk powder mixed in for taste.
Now I was consuming myself to survive.
I could have become anemic
From all the blood I was losing in this way.
Yet it was the only sustenance I had available;
Without it I would have died within a week.)

None of that seemed right,
So they told me to get an MRI.
I enjoyed the cozy feeling
Of being trapped in that coffin
While this loud clanging noise
Echoed through every bone in my body.
It felt like what one might experience in space,
Except instead of zero gravity
It’s just magnetic forces
Pulling your brain around.

The next doctor I visited, maybe two weeks later,
Started talking about how he was going to treat it.
“Treat what?” I asked. Things got awkward quick;
Someone had failed to tell me beforehand
That they had found a tumor in my pituitary gland.

I thought maybe they could show me something else,
Something more important than my tumor.
A hole in my heart that wouldn’t close.
A tear in my eye that no doctor could remove.
Anything besides my macroadenoma.

The tumor is a lumpy thing that lives inside me,
Hiding behind my eyes where nobody can see it.
(Sometimes when I blink it gets dislodged and falls out.
I feel it at night as it makes its way down through my hair.)

A prolactinoma they call it,
A tiny pebble of flesh in that stupid gland
Located at the base of the brain,
And that according to some googling,
It monitors and regulates bodily functions
Through the hormones it produces:
The adrenocorticotropic hormone,
The growth hormone,
The luteinising hormone,
Prolactin,
And the thyroid stimulating hormone.

I don’t know what most of that means,
But because I was born with this tumor
And it wasn’t found for twenty five years,
I failed to produce enough testosterone
During the critical years of my development,
So I ended up with low bone density,
Headaches, migraines,
Loss of interest in sexual activities
(I believed myself to be asexual,
But now I’d fuck anything that moves),
Erectile dysfunction,
Possible infertility (not that it matters),
Enlarged breasts,
And far more sweat than necessary.

This tumor is a macroadenoma in one dimension,
Meaning that it could fuck up the optic nerve,
And to prevent it from growing further,
I have to keep taking medication for life.

My doc told me that some other guy with this tumor
Had decided to stop taking the drug,
And years later he went to the hospital
Because he experienced head-splitting headaches;
His tumor had kept growing uncontrollably.

(My doctor told me to stay away from doctors.
He advised me to stop going to the hospital.
The last thing he wanted to see was me again.
I found this to be an incredible relief;
I could get back to the safety and isolation I craved,
And it seemed like I had nothing more to lose anyway.)

Do you have any clue how much fun it is
To be known as the male kid with breasts?
Worse yet, this kind of tumor is known to cause
The infamous curse of the micropenis.
I suppose I must count myself lucky;
Mine just ended up small.
After gym class, about to hit the showers,
My dick was at times a source of ridicule,
Although life didn’t feel funny at all to me.

Sex has always been shameful and humiliating,
And a girlfriend used its size to justify
Cheating with some other guy and leaving me.
There’s no cure for having a small dick,
Neither for the mental scars of insults and mockery,
So I’ll likely stick with VR porn for the rest of my life.

Ironically, this tumor with which I was born,
Or that I developed shortly after,
Seems unrelated to the autism
(High-functioning, formerly Asperger’s)
That I was also born with or developed.
Add to that a screwed up family,
And plenty more terrible luck.

Stranger yet, this fucking macroadenoma
Put me under feminizing hormone therapy
Against my will, as if it were any of those doctors
That these days decides that a girl must become a boy
Because she likes wearing pants and playing with trucks,
To try to change the way you’re made
Into the thing that fits those bastards best.

There’s no magic potion, no quick fix
For the nonsense that we’ve been given,
Just a whole lot of hurt
And a million kinds of pain.

My brain failed to develop properly as a guy
But also failed to grow as a girl.
I’m left feeling like something is missing inside me,
Like I could never be normal in any way.

Whenever I get undressed, I avoid staring at myself;
I don’t identify with the body with which I was left.
When I stare, the reflected face seems strange:
It looks back at me with its own eyes,
The expression of a whole other self.
That doesn’t mean I should have been a girl;
I simply shouldn’t have been born
With a fucking tumor in my head
(Or better yet, not have been born at all).

My sexuality got fucked up as a result,
An obvious point if you’ve read my stuff.

In the end my heart’s not so easy to read,
It beats with such intensity it can’t be missed.
So what do you see? What does this brain look like?
And why did they cut my penis off with scissors
And sew my vagina shut while I was still alive?

(None of this has to do
With that marxist,
Society-ruining garbage
That cretins keep spewing out
From the infiltrated academia
And the compromised media;
You should all shove a cactus
Up your greasy bums.)

I’ve always felt comfortable
Writing female characters.
It would be nice to have a pussy,
Or at least a decently-sized dick.

Is it truly a wonder, then,
That ever since I was a little boy,
When faced with any problem,
The first solution that came to mind
Was to end my suffering and die?
I haven’t improved in that respect;
I’ve just grown jaded and exhausted,
Way past my expiration date,
And I’m waiting for my body
To finally get the memo
And say “fuck you” to me.

My head is spinning like an airplane on its last descent.
Nothing remains but static inside this fucking skull.

It’s been a long time since I last saw a shrink.
Instead, I write for self-expression and catharsis:
An art gallery where no one goes,
A museum without visitors.
I thought that writing would serve as therapy,
But what a joke that turned out to be.

My writing gives me pleasure and relief.
I guess that it’s a sort of masturbation.
If that’s so, then let me enjoy my self-pleasure;
Fuck off to read Shakespeare if that makes you happy.

They say that every man must come to terms with himself.
What about people like me? How are we supposed to do that?
My brain doesn’t know who I am. My body isn’t even mine.
My penis and testicles don’t seem to exist at all.

I’m not interested in reality;
I just want to live in my mind.
So when I sit in here with you today,
You are just a phantom in the dark.

Do people change? I haven’t changed much.
I’m afraid to look people in the face.
The whole world looks gloomy to me.
A deep sadness has settled into my heart.

The only reason why I haven’t killed myself yet
Is because there are things left to accomplish in life.
Just kidding; it’s because I’m a little bitch
With severe executive dysfunction issues.

I feel like I’ve been around forever.
Time just flies by. It feels so short.
Why did I even get out of bed today?
What should I be doing with my life?
To me there’s nothing special about living;
It is just the long, tiring way to die.

Anyway, fuck you all,
Especially you reading this,
If only ’cause
I got fucked first.

A Boy on a Boat (Poetry)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificialLeave a comment

Ahead of me:
I sit at an office for years and years
To do shit I couldn’t care less about
While the shit in my bowels churns and burns.
A billion sounds slap me in the face.
A billion gazes pierce me.
A billion colors overwhelm my mind.
I force myself to speak although I want to be left alone.
My father dies.
My mother dies.
I live in an unkempt, dirty, stink-ridden hole.
My health slowly crumbles away.
My body breaks down.
I either pay someone to wipe my ass until my heart stops,
Or I muster the strength to hang myself.

Behind me:
I’m surrounded by kids that I can’t understand
And that don’t understand me.
My mother drags me by the hand
Down the steep slope of our street
Because some kids have taken my brother’s ball.
I listen to my mother berating my father
With a voice like nails on a chalkboard.
I don’t know who I am.
I don’t understand what’s happening inside me.
My grandmother drools on my mashed potatoes.
I get a thousand thermometers
Shoved up my ass.
Someone films me as I take a shower.
My mother slaps me in the face
Because I slapped her pregnant belly by mistake.
My father forces the bathroom door open
And finds me with my head under the water.
I watch as some older kids push my pal
Facefirst into a tide of soapy foam.
I hide behind a car while my pal lies on the road
To find out if the next car will stop.
A kid calls me a fat ass.
A kid points out that I have tits.
A kid points and laughs at my dick.
A group of kids take turns punching my shoulder.
That girl says we are now dating,
But the next time she approaches me smiling
I pretend I don’t know what she’s talking about.
I need to be alone but I’m an unwanted guest
In my older brother’s bedroom.
I need to be alone but a narcissistic cousin
Pushes his way into my bedroom every weekend.
A gypsy kid brings his whole family to threaten me.
We find my sister electrocuted,
Her forearm blackened up to the elbow.
That classmate likes me, but I say something
And she never talks to me again.
My sister yells until my mother gives in.
I hide my stuff or else it’ll get stolen.
I want to call the cops because my sister’s boyfriend
Is dealing drugs under our balcony.
A myriad of pimples colonize my face.
That girl I like wants someone else.
A guy pushes his way into our rented property
And threatens to kill us with a broken bottle.
An older guy beats me up in front of a hundred people.
I spend an eternity in the dark between floors
Of random apartment buildings
As I wait for the hours to pass.
I wander through Donostia like a zombie
During the hours I should be in class.
My eyes hurt, my nose is bleeding.
A guy that wanted to hang out glares at me like a spited lover
In classrooms to which he doesn’t belong.
Someone turns his or her back on me
Because a different guy goes out of his way
To poison everyone against me.
I talk to the therapist for forty minutes
Then I pay her as much as I would make in a day,
And she says that my depression
Is just the result of a major depression.
I refuse to return the calls of that basketball player
Whose firm ass I still feel in my hands,
Because I like her too much
And she will end up abandoning me.
I confuse this girl for this other girl
Then I date her for years.
I need to be alone but I have to go out with my girl.
I cry in silence while she smokes in the bathroom.
A classmate insults me in every class for two years,
But the teacher tells me to ignore her because she’s troubled.
My girl sits next to that guy instead of me
And gets mad because the evening goes well.
She says she’ll destroy me if I make things difficult.
I find myself wandering to known spots
And hoping that she’ll show up.
I can’t get out of bed.
I don’t know what day it is or how old I am.
I take her calls because I miss her.
She gloats to me over the size of her new man’s dick.
I go to college for a couple of months
Until I realize I can’t do it on my own.
My childhood pal either overdoses or kills himself.
I have a tumor in my head.
I find myself filling bottles with my pee.
My body gets covered in stretch marks.
The shrink tells me I’m autistic.
I wade through the mud of another depression
While I yearn to die in my sleep.
A smiling HR drone tells me I do good work
But I won’t work well in a team.
I go out but I can’t wait to run back home.
My head feels like it’s been filled with lead.
My skin is the same color as the gray sky.
I see nothing but clouds outside;
The color has faded from every tree.
I get excited enough at her concert
That I realize how much of a retard I truly am.
A young social worker gets flirty with me,
Then she dates someone else
And steals glances at my receding hairline.
A pitbull breaks my cat in half,
And I watch her eyes popping out
And her tongue protruding
As she agonizes in excruciating pain.
I don’t understand anybody in this writing course;
They’d prefer if I weren’t here.
I write two novels that nobody wants.
The people I work with stare at me
And sling countless words my way.
I refuse to see my cat’s decomposing body
Because I don’t want that image in my head
For the rest of my life.
I write another novel that nobody wants.
I break down, I can’t write another word.
I spend days staring at the wall.
I’ll be thirty seven in a month.
The sun is out, I am cold.

(In a hotel with my name on a plate,
The woman at the check-in
Tells me the weather is nice.
I’ll walk down to the beach
Where the sun’s never-ending rays
Will warm my skin and my bones.
I’ll see the children running in the sand.
The sun will glint off their golden heads
As the blue waves roll in from afar.)

I’m a boy on a boat
Floating along a river.
The boat sinks.
I drown.

I can’t do this alone.
I have always done it alone.
I have never been able to love
Even when I tried my best.
I have a hole
Where my heart ought to be.

My life has been nothing
But an accumulation of pain
And disappointment
And mediocrity
And uselessness.

I find myself wandering through my place
Like a ghost that can’t die.
The only thing I want to do
Is fall asleep.

Writing can’t save me,
But it can deceive me into believing
That these words I type
Are worth forcing myself to breathe
For another day.

Author’s note: five in the morning, listening to Japanese shoegaze.

Revised and expanded: This Is Not a Good Story

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, EscrituraLeave a comment

Back when I was revising my latest full novel, My Own Desert Places, I rearranged all my free verse poems into three distinct books, so in the future I could upload them as ebooks to online retailers. Whenever I feel like it, I’ve been going through the poems contained in the first of those books, to update their punctuation, revise them and expand them if possible.

This time I had to handle my free verse poem slash short story This Is Not a Good Story, about a guy who meets a sad girl. As I was rereading it, my impression was something like, “What the hell is this? Why did I think this was good enough to upload?”

My standards have grown, so stuff I wrote just a few months ago doesn’t satisfy me anymore. Apart from that, I think I derived significant satisfaction from starting a poem soon after I got to the office and managing to “finish” it just as I was about to leave, which infused the otherwise pointless workday with meaning. Nowadays I’d rather continue improving the piece after I get home.

In any case, I removed around 600 words of the original version of This Is Not a Good Story, then I added like 800 new ones. I’m quite proud of the current version.

If you, stranger reading these words right now (can you hear my voice echoing in your head?), read the original version of this poem back in July and enjoyed it, I think you should read it again, because it’s like a whole new thing.

Link to the updated poem: This Is Not a Good Story

Revised: ‘A Ghastly Scar’

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, EscrituraLeave a comment

When I was revising my latest full novel, I rearranged all the free verse poetry I ever wrote (because I only tried my hand at it for the first time back in May, I think) into three books that some day I’ll format into ebooks, so I can upload them on online retailers and beg people to buy them.

I have been going through all the poems contained in the first of those books, to revise them, update the punctuation and expand them if necessary. This time I handled ‘A Ghastly Scar’, a heartfelt piece about a girl I used to know back in middle school.

To my horror, the previous version of this poem was a mess. I’ve had to edit nearly every sentence. I don’t know whether I’ve improved that much since July or I hurried up to upload the poem before I had to leave the office. In any case, I’m happy with the updated version.

Link to the updated poem: A Ghastly Scar