The Iberian Peninsula: the edge of the earth

at least 500 years ago when the world was flat.

People came to Iberia to be in the sun and the water that

            Sticks to the air

They could gaze at the ocean or the hills at their back,

And build cities or boats to kill their claustrophobia.

But it’s hard to be claustrophobic in a two-dimensional world,

for everyone knows that the world is flat.

So you make concrete edifices and call them home,

and you stack them and stack them and stack them

like a pile of cinder blocks.

Then you can live inside your cubism painting.

You can hang your clothes to dry outside your window,

            or in other words,

Wash them in the humidity.

New World cotton blows in the wind and gives life to sun-bleached plaster,

The weed plantations that grow in the cracks between the cobblestones are the only sign of life

in those roads that have been there since the world was flat

with cigarette butts lodged in their cracks.

The buildings stand as cobblestone extensions of the cobblestone roads

            to give them dimension.

As if they could build a cobblestone road to extend to the sky,

All that they accomplished was to extend their gutter

            and the inalienable right to live on top of each other.

These gutters or roads all lead to the ocean.

They can sit there and stare and smoke their cigarettes,

that came straight from the new world;

and they can stare at what might lie beyond their comfortable lives that they have always known.

They can build boats and sail off of the face of the earth

Then they’ll return with slaves and cigarettes, so they can fill the cracks between the cobblestones.

Then they can build up an empire to give their lives worth.

But every great empire is built upon the priceless broken shards,

the artifactual evidences of greatness,

of another great empire,

for everything gains value as it increases in age.

So the cobblestones and the gutter walls lead to the ocean, and its wide-open space

to lands that weren’t so afraid of a change