Bogumil Pacak-Gamalski

You all know that a lot of my own poetry a lot of times starts life in one of my notebooks in one of my favored cafes: in Vancouver’s “Melriches”, in New Westminster’s in “Moodswing”, In Halifax in “Trident Bookstore Cafe”, in Warsaw in “Miedzy nami” Cafe on Bracka Street. Sometime in cafes in Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg.

Of course between coffees and cakes I get to to know all my baristas and waitresses from these cafes. We talk about things. Sometime we talk about literature or just about life. After all – life is literature, that was not written in a book yet. Not entire life anyway, just a little tidbits of it.

But I have not known yet any barista from such cafe, who was a poet. I mean – I do understand that a lot of people sometime write a short poem here and there – that does not make them a poet, though, just the same as someone, who plays guitar or piano is not neccessarily a composer.

Ricky is my barista in the “Moodswing” cafe on the Front Street in New West. (clik for a link https://www.moodswingbar.com/)

Sometime in these cafe some poets gather and have their poetry slam. Sometimes I partake. Well, the last one was a surprise for me since I didn’t expect it, just came for my daily coffee. At the end I did find on my phone one of my poems and recited it. But … the surprise came later. Ricky Castanedo Laredo, my barista, came to the mike and recited his. I liked it very much. I knew that he is a co-editor in one of local artistic magazines but never suspected that he also publishes his own poetry.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, welcome to the poetry of Ricky Laredo

turn the world upside down

turn the world upside down
press your hands through the pane
the pain, unforgiving in it’s weight
both in breath and titanic
we must be afraid all of the time

unease, real as the slam of car doors in the woods
the slice of metal against blood
the ache of earthlings looking for a place to die
a heaven, a place by the sea
a place where I am not afraid all of the time

remembers your grandmothers hands
and her last words
pressure wash the memory
turn the world upside down
as the engine outside bellows
the keys live in the cupboard should you
ever need them

I can’t hold this all in mind
like the light you emit that only invites
the moths inside
I want to erase the path that leads you back
to me, and scuffs the traces
of my exoskeleton

turn the world upside down
I hope I don’t have enough time to do that for you
to stabilize the illusion
before they wipe the footage

shelf

I wanted a shelf for perdition
for all the lint from my pocket
a resting place from transition
like keys and debt and death
who’s lumbering outside?
who peers through the window?
we are surrounded every day
you leave through the back door
you bend out of frame
wired like wind through the house
at night I see you galloping
proving me wrong for the last time
yearning under darkness

shade grown

speak of faith in distant moments

necking shrines pouring

the umbre out

underneath the bells

underneath the pain

underneath the heavy

of death’s

aching jowl

repeat and return

throw shade and

bear witness because

you shouldn’t lose this

but what if I’m better off without

the world

respite if just for a day

fingernails on the bend

of my arm

envious of your youth

and

I cast a long shadow across the bed

I’m flowering

turbulent

shade grown

keep the fan on

even when it’s cold outside