HOW TO CHEAT A DOOR

first thing
shake its hand
as if you greeted it

without a wink
push it
in a surprise launch

on lockstep with
its drawing back
press ahead

now, from the other side,
changing hands,
repeat above proceedings

except, this time,
after hearing a thud,
don’t budge

only treachery can do the trick:
the whining ring even stings
but won’t get it ajar

with your all too good manners
you are still
stuck apart

kicks, punches and bruises
all are
to no use

ALONE ON THE MOUNTAINS

All around my eyes, the Sun
kept on talking alone
with its thousand tongues.

I heard a singsong,
probably a hum from a bug or such,
but got bodily warned

in bitter disappointment
that it came from my own
blank stomach.

There was an ill
to be devised from the heights
on the feet of the hill.

They have welcomed the newly-arrived
with a dish of fish
and a plate of spinach.

Then I thought that if I once were a god,
first thing I would bend to my will
is that days would never go past us so fast.

But I myself needed my rest,
picked out a frayed couch and stood still
at last.

ALARM CLOCK

what is hell other than repetition?
as a scenery, a room
plunged into its own depths:
a cat would stretch further
and display more darkness
behind the stingy eyes

trapped inside a single day,
I hear an alarm clock
that keeps on ticking,
no point in snoozing:
it would go off, if it could

and however
if there would never
be a morning after,
or if there never
could ever be
such a thing as ever

there would be elsewhere the haste in the cities
lifting the dust and the noise in the streets,
there would be at least a streak of light,
which would only slowly abandon my eyes,
as a nonchalant summer sunset,
or as only gradually vanishes
a word, a god, a habit

an incomplete body
would follow without the shadow
on the same ways I used
to trail us along

or else we may all be alive already
and only roam in the underworld
out of practice or for reminescence,
as a dog we had scared away
but sneaked back from the clearing of a dream
(though dreams usually don’t go around sniffing,
and the gate had been left properly locked)

but time, this strange variety of disregard
that scatters dirt among the corners,
deprives the books of their stiffness
and yellows the brown in the furniture,
erupts all of a sudden into the window and leaks
onto the sheet, and goes on to flooding
the sleeping room

soaked in sweat,
I hear the same old snore
from the alarm clock
and wake it up
instead

LA FETE DE TOUSSENS

vous avez retrouvé sur la rive droite
de la moitié gauche de ta soupe
quelques pièces d’un mystère sans-doutes
dans un appartement au ras-du-sommeil

vous qui aviez été souvent mépris,
et maintes fois cousu et surgelé,
vous pourrez goûter, alors, le dégoût
honnête de votre propre chair,

et renaître en dépit
du feu et de feu les cendres,
presque fleuri, presque
infini comme une arabesque

vous vous étiez déjà dévoré, dommage...
il vous reste assister maintenant
aux defilés menés en hommage
des tombés de la Toussens

LESSONS ON ANNATOMY

I- FIRST LESSON

this we name your hair,
those your new pair of specs,
all in all the things you might
ever be constituted of:
buckles, buns and bunions
and the other sorts of things
that embrace or kiss them

II- DISSECTION

a for starters
n for navel in the middle of
n then another
a final restarting alpha

III- ANNA ON THE MIRROR

Anna annA

WHAT IS REALITY ALL ABOUT?

to Murray Bennett


I could as usually
reassure you
about all the super
well-known hypernatural
and übermaterial
too good reasons
why we had better keep real.
But today, I will duly
remind that sometimes we could
try and be blithely
a little more
blistfully listless
to our limits,
only just enough to check (for
surer grounds) on
all the other
overlooked and/or
long forgotten
possibilities.

BITTERSWEETNESS

We are
captive to Art,
Art with capital A,
how else could we experience
life without putting
our senses to say?
But Art comes with a high price:

Art may turn us into the fierce
armchair critics of life,
which is the greatest possible
form of wickedness:
to force our taste of the beautiful
onto raw and indefensible
bitter-sweetness.

ZUSAMMENHANG

a Rafael Jordão

Einmal, wenn süße Liebe hatte mich gefunden,
Habe ich gedacht ich hätte sie selber erfunden.
Aber heute, du bist weg und ich bin geblieben,
Denn ich frage mich, wie kann man alleine weiterlieben?
Um sie zusammenzustellen, macht man's zu zweit,
Was noch meint: Liebe erfordet Abhängigkeit.

LOVE, LIKE WINE, DRIVE US HIGHER

Nothing else matters. Stand up.
Bring me wine.
(Omar Khayyam, apud Manuel Bandeira)



love
like wine
drive us higher

we trip on a winding straight line, dancing to no music,
till we throw up words of no footing, crying for every or no reason,
and each other we meet we call a brother, for all in all
we are not older and yet clumsier than a toddler

the silver moon face
no longer seduces our gaze,
the morning gives off a warm aroma
whose sweetness we simply can't perceive

we are all senses poured onto a sole glass,
which slowly dries off, or then is taken by someone else,
but the thirst that drives us only entices
our fondness for a further dose

we stop being like a limpid crystal,
repealing in the order of things,
to turn into mangled measure in the world,
joy and pain that entangle and go indistinguishable

like wine
love
drive us higher

ON MY WAY TO THEBES

On my way to Thebes
I was driven to an oracle
who guaranteed a total recall
of all the things of which
I had long lost control.

The seer sort reminded me
Of a good chunk of the life
I had had before being tossed
all about, then told I would go blind,
whom I should marry.

I said, don’t waste your time, my old
man, I am no goat,
just like everything else
you are just another voice
talking inside my head.

IF YOU ASK ME IF I AM AN AGNOSTIC

I ignore if we have a Lord.
All I suspect is that She made me free,
since She never stopped me from doing whatever I did.
And when I peer into the sky, it is only to check on the weather.

I guess that if it belonged to my powers
to ponder over Her existence,
She sure would be the first to touch or to seize me.
But it is air all what involves me and I know no other prison besides my body

(And yet, under slightly altered circumstances,
in some possible universe,
deprived of other guilty inquiring consciences,
I only wonder to whose use a God could serve).

LOS AMORES DE FACEBOOK

Él es argentino,
yo, paraybano,
nos conocimos en un boliche
em Buenos Ayres ya hace un año.

Desprendidas las luces,
al despedirnos quedamos
una semana en un atlantis cruise ™,
de Miami al Caribe.

Juntos estuvimos el primer día.
Pero nomás se le fueron acercando
los nativos y unos otros tantos,
enseguida se puso mi noviecito

a perderse por el camino
a volver a bailar conmigo.
Yo no hablo nada inglés,
ni de mi parte causé

ilusión en los americanos.
Así, al final pasé las vacaciones
com más soledad y desengaño
que un maestro yogi.

Los amores de verano, escuchen,
lo rápido es lo que los hace dulces:
no llevan más que la temporada,
aunque cuesten a veces caras

llamadas internacionales,
como a veces deshacen
unas almas desesperadas
de nostalgia y de quebranto.

Ya los amores de facebook,
ya prevengo que los rehúsen,
pues no hay de los que duren
más que una ida al baño.

LOS AMORES DE FACEBOOK

Él es argentino,
yo, curitibano,
nos conocimos en un boliche
de Buenos Ayres ya hace un año.

Desprendidas las luces,
al despedirnos quedamos
una semana en un atlantis cruise ™,
de Miami al Caribe.

Juntos estuvimos el primer día.
Pero nomás se le fueron acercando
los nativos y unos otros tantos.
Luego se puso mi noviecito

a perderse por el camino
a volver a bailar conmigo.
Yo no hablo nada inglés,
ni de mi parte causé

ilusión en los americanos.
Así, pasé las vacaciones
com más soledad y desengaño
que un maestro yogi.

Los amores de verano, escuchen,
lo rápido es lo que los hace dulces:
no llevan más que la temporada,
aunque cuestan a veces caras

llamadas internacionales,
o que muchas veces hacen
polvo unas almas desesperadas,
corroídas de nostalgia y quebranto.

Ya los amores de facebook,
les prevengo que los rehúsen,
pues no hay de los que duren
más que una ida al baño.

LA FISICA DELL'ARIA

il respiro
insegna
che non esistono
luoghi composti
di dentro e fuori

nei polmoni il fiatone
non ci entra
e sale, come pare:
il fiato infatti
ci fa restare

I WISHED I WERE A SUNDAY

I wished I were a rainbow,
in which light, inattentive,
bursts into laughter,
and all the colors
meet and greet
each other

I wished I were a chunk of bread
fought over
by the blameless gluttony
of public doves

I wished I were
dear and inexpensive as the moon
that switches on along the streets
a huge lamp, pouring over the roofs
the same silver drizzle
disseminating haze and
indistinguishability

I wished I were like a peace
shy and faint, hidden behind the things
we haven’t met as yet,
a toddling hope
wobbling towards the truth with which
we still can’t cope

I wished I were as little as the instant
that travels so minutely
we can never ever pinch it
and often goes
hand in hand

I wished I were like the hour
that builds up patiently
as steps in time’s tower
and never looks back
but won’t ever reach
the fences of eternity

I wished I were an alchemist master
that in his crop of words
in a book recess of an old shelf
would come across with
the recipe for serendipity

I wished I were a dawn
that summons with a cock’s crow
the morning-lightener

I wished I were a summer,
a wandering ragged bum
in courtyards
outflooded with sun

I wished I were like those beggars
that head for no direction,
as listless to all else as a Sunday
( for Sundays have
light feet like the water
and the sea to their right)

I wished I were a Sunday

RUEGO

si vuelva Jesús
que traiga
mucha luz
al mundo

pero cuando
llegue amor
que esté oscuro
y desnudo

 

THE SECOND DEATH

He came on a day as plain as any other.
When I saw him, he dragged the most rotten rags.
He was bittersweet for my taste and too meek to our daze.
If I strolled on my own, his steps also stamped on my road.
If I slept, and the world abandoned me in forgetfulness,
he would keep up wide awake to my dreaming.
I couldn’t tell what his silences hushed to me,
what his gesture added to mine,
as a glass to the water.
I didn’t know who he was,
though I had long waited for him.
 
Gradually, he conferred voices to all things,
and gave to the ways more than determination – straying.
Now I realize in all experience
reasons that overfeed on the lush of my senses.
I know there are under the sun things
we became so acquainted with
that we will never manage to explain.
 
A thudding of fast feet ran through the fields.
I raced unbridled to escort the newcomers.
A body tilted from a breathless horse:
it was the messenger, I would hear me from other lips.
I lifted his hood and found no face;
I felt his wrist and he was deceased.
 
I ripped the ground, in despair I pulled the hair of the earth.
It was him, the eternal embodied in human flush,
the delegate sent only too late.
And now none could be saved.
I reckoned: there are no reasons to this world.
Or rather, there are just plenty.
But one thing is to learn them.
The worse, the terrible is,
getting them learned,
be able to have them lived.
 
My groaning and weeping softened the harsh in the rocks.
Eventually I came back where I was.
I don’t know his current whereabouts,
I guessed he must have found another garden,
where by sunset the salt in the earth sets afire.
I believe so far I could recognize him,
if he happened to arrive.
But those are tales I tell for myself,
when the night is ripe and I can´t
get to grips with my rest.
 
Now I must go the same roads,
and tread on my feet the same old void of the world,
without considering where I am carried along,
amidst the cities’ whirlwind and the men’s maze.
And pretend serenity when the shades bleed,
as though the day didn’t hallucinate
and the stones didn’t scream.
 
On that massage depended where the way was headed for.
It got lost for good, and the path to travel,
empty of exits or destinations, can never finish.
I wished I had never seen him.
I don’t think a second coarpse could repeat it for me.

THE MISERY OF POETRY

in the following page
​i go undressed,
i open myself, i get
​rid of my shelf
​
the venom in these words
​could have killed us,
we must die, indeed, but indigested
from our own old flesh
 
these verses won’t blow buildings,
​won’t run guns,
ain’t crevices cracking
​the very fabric of things
 
they’re beasts short of fangs,
knives too numb to feel, axes
too heavy to be raised
for or against
 
verses absolutely serve
to no use, whoever said there would
​be something to fake or make
senses in a verse?
 
poems were never meant to be
sphynxes to no answer,
nameless streets in a country
​where only the blindmen can read
 
they’re rather functional dyslexics:
​if they still say something, they don’t mean it,​
they just still say with words
​when words won’t mean a thing
 
or simply: byproducts of attention,
flukes to no avail,
fingers stretching till a dead end, so we
​can’t hang on them nails

THE MISERY OF POETRY

in the following page
​i go undressed,
i open myself, i get
​rid of my shelf
​
the venom in these words
​could have killed us,
we must die, indeed, but indigested
from our own old flesh
 
these verses won’t blow buildings,
​won’t run guns,
ain’t crevices cracking
​the very fabric of things
 
they’re beasts short of fangs,
knives too numb to feel, axes
too heavy to be raised
for or against
 
verses absolutely serve
to no use, whoever said there would
​be something to fake or make
senses in a verse?
 
poems were never meant to be
sphynxes to no answer,
nameless streets in a country
​where only the blindmen can read
 
they’re rather functional dyslexics:
​if they still say something, they don’t mean it,​
they just still say with words
​when words won’t mean a thing
 
or simply: byproducts of attention,
flukes to no avail,
fingers stretching till a dead end, so we
​can’t hang on them nails

THE DEFENSE OF NARCISSUS

In my singing years
I was the most astounding
youth and lyre
that one could hear
in these surroundings.

But ever since my drowning,
I was no more allowed
to leave this prison-flower,
made of barren stalk
and luminous scent,

as consequence of a sentence
laid out against the progeny of covet.
So, you can say, as a poet,
I also knew confinement inside a tower,
locked alive in a cushioned-room of mine.

However, whereas poets have always been singing
more than nearly necessary,
it was also my doom that my voice grew mute,
thereby rendering me deprived of the power
to stir the bush of fire named desire.

I argued an early spree cannot be the judge
of the strength a plant might attain,
nor could it take blame for the flavours its fruits
may produce. My punishers were deaf to any such claims
and set me as an example for oncoming men.

Thus my lot as that of my kind
was loneliness and everlasting echoing silence,
just because man have always been meant to,
and lamentably meant to
suffer its force and not be able to harness it,

and aim at synthesis,
without ever being fit
to change the course of things and be both halves
of that torn fruit
which goes by two.

CASUALTIES

The road that heads for disaster
at the very first appears to end
delusively farther.
You only manage to notice it
once you got stuck right in it,
hearing roaring the so-far unperceived
self-hidden.
 
The road that befalls you with a windfall
always falls somewhat short
of our skill to elicit
such things as wishings.
It requires a patient outwinning
of an ingrained habit of ruling out expectancies
stretching beyond our wildest dreamings.
 
The road that leads towards disaster
paces much faster than the grip we master
of a briefly-before and a right-after:
no rooms rests for manoevres
of old dear self-deception,
nor a wisp of a twist by whatever measures
improvized with bits of wishful thinking.
 
The road that whirls you into a windfall,
if it ever ends at all,
might hit onto the wall of an inkling,
that while some of our needs are met
all else may well be left
just as ugly and deprived
as spinster Necessity.
 
It is quite often tough
to tell one from the other.
You may be at this very moment
stepping over either threshold,
being seized
by the unesy gut-feeling
that they are somehow sort of brothers.