Please feel free to email Juan Perez at: gotobulldog87@yahoo.com

Hotel Catarina

Welcome
The sign said up front
Yet cowardness had paralyzed me momentarily
I knew she was in there
That I wanted to be with her
To hold her
To kiss her
To share that intimate enrapture
Something about her
Drew me to her like blood through a thirsty needle

I could hear her softly
In my mind
To come to her
That she wanted only me
Yet who wanted who more

Wait, there she is by the window
On the second story
Where the white laced curtains
Flutter in the wind
Teasing it
Begging it to join her as well

She is beautiful
Look at her
She is waving me in

Dispelling any of my lingering fears
I went in
Through the massive wooden doors
Across the small plaza
Onto the steps
Onto the second floor
Into the room with the enchanting view
It was then that I remembered
That warning from the last owner
About stepping onto that lonely broken place
It was too late
She was already rushing at me
With a deadly grin
Pushing me out that same window

Falling for love was not exactly the plan

The Holy Cross

The holy cross
Swung back and forth
From the rear view mirror
Of the black sedan

At the package store
A man, impatient
Six bottles lay empty
Before leaving the lot

Content without conscience
Pressing down on the pedal
Pedestrians lay plastered
On the hot black road

The holy cross
Swung back and forth
From the rear view mirror
When the sedan finally stopped

The crowd gone wild
At the bloody event
Mob rule dictates
A swift, terrible justice

The drunkard still kicking
Swinging at his aggressors
By the tree and the rope
The man is given his sentence

The pickled body
Swung back and forth
Like the holy cross
On the rear view mirror

The Arrival

28 days on the surface
It was not until recently
That things seemed out of place
Things started happening
First, Jessica
The beautiful botanist
Found dangling
From a ripped cable, disemboweled
Naked in her sleeping quarters
Next, Betty
The marvelous medical officer
Dehydrated alive
In the large infirmary autoclave
Needles inserted into her body
Like a morbid pincushion
Then, Katherine
The ingenious engineer
Sliced to pieces like wild tuna
By the malfunctioning garbage disposal
And it continued like that
Through out the makeshift compound
The screaming, moaning
Driving me crazy, delirious
Will not cease
In darkness, three of us huddled
In the small captain’s chambers
When madness began knocking
Wildly outside the porthole door
Don’t open it, I whispered
The forceful knocking, knocking
Knocking, knocking, knocking…. silence
The sling of steel
Ripping of flesh
Interrupts the room from within
Colleagues in pessimistic pieces
Like a human collage on the deck
Door latches twisting slowly
Creaking, letting light in
Shadow wielding a long, sanguineous knife
In my crimson painted hand, laughing
Cynically

I have arrived

El Codex Chupacabra

Open your eyes
And you will see evidence of me
Open your ears
And you will hear of where I’ve been
Open your mind
And I will reveal myself to you
Open your heart
And I will fill it with the truth
I am real
When you believe it within
Otherwise, I am like a ghost
That you will never see to begin with

AUGUST 2009 FEATURED POET

JUAN PEREZ

After a decade of military service, including the First Gulf War (1991), Juan Manuel Pérez is now a public school history teacher and author of six poetry chapbooks which includes Dial H For Horror (2006), plus two full contemporary multi-culture poetry collections, Another Menudo Sunday (2007) and the e-book, O Dark Heaven (2009). He has also completed three other poetry manuscripts: W.U.I.: Written Under The Influence of Trinidad Sanchez, Jr., Comic Book Love Affair and Make Tortillas Not War. He is a member of the San Antonio Poets Association, the Poetry Society of Texas, and the Science Fiction Poetry Association, as well as, student of the great Chicano poet Trinidad Sánchez, Jr. He has also been a featured reader at many poetry venues in Southwest Texas. His work has recently appeared in Jazma Online, The People's Comic Book Newsletter, Boundless, Voices De La Luna, International Poetry Review, Illumen, Star*Line: the Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, The Poet Magazine, di-verse-city, Voices Along The River, The Dreamcatcher, Inkwell Echoes, The Palm¹s Leaf, and Message of
the Muse. He was recently named the 2nd Runner Up in the 2009 San Antonio Poet's Association's Poet Laureate Competition.