Carlos Manuel Rivera

Ego conquiro

The question?

The encounter with the unknown
that distorts the myth
about its
victims

an apparatus that
singularly
desires to pretend that
the other was myself.

For this,
to submit
and conquer
with disgrace

to a being that
is not a being
of the world
I know of.

Its dominance
leads it
to forget
its roots

and projects me
as a
perpetrator
in his error,

integrating it
into the appropriate,
the civil,
the correct.

There is no
valid
excuse.

There is
no response
for the soulless.
It proceeds from
modern life
period.

To be,
think
and act.

To me it seems
that
we have

focused
enough,
too much
to remain.

We have enlightened
ourselves in the shadow
of an emptiness
and stopped.

We have
fed ourselves with greed
and entanglements

to dazzle
with the shadow
a conquest,
a failure.

The lilies
that were
affirming themselves

break from their
beginnings
their remoteness,

their corpses
that arise
from streams

to affirm
this same
permanence.

They have
disappointed us
up to here
with trivialities

that enrich
irises
and daisies.

Nothing
there are other
furrows

truncated
by sun in the
water

and the strong
who line up for
the search

from
there
to here

And there
power
to become.

There
power to be.

There
power to be aware.

There
power
to have knowledge.

Publications by Carlos Manuel Rivera include: So we cannot forget: Essays on Puerto Rican Marginal Theater; Popular Theater: The New Poor Theater of America by Pedro Santaliz. (Essays 2005); Magical Puff of Non Senses (Poetry 2003); ASI MI NATION (Spoken Words CD 2010); and Bululu. Perfume and Poison (Performances 2020).