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Burning the Boats to Hesperion

No reason and No rhyme

Burning the Boats to Hesperion

11
Abr17

The Question

 

It was night and we were drinking in the garden by the church.

I looked at my friend and asked him,

- “Di, are you always aware that you’re black?”

- “No, not really. Sometimes I think about it, if someone is weird with me in a bar,

or on the street … people looking at you funny, know what I mean”?

- “Yeah”

- “Then I think, is it because I’m black?

But you don’t know.

Not really.

It can be for so many reasons

    …

Yeah; but I think about it.”

 

 

 

 

01
Abr17

First thoughts after reading the Rig Veda

 

Oh bounteous Sun! Giver of warmth that belies winters,

Thy boons are yours and through you alone.

As we bask in your most munificent glow,

We’re reminded of the fleet footed horses

That bring the day and occlude the shade.

 

Oh beauteous rays of light!

Oh, form unseen!

Oh God so giving,

favour our right sacrifice.

 

We stand here in attention!

Full of awe,

And respect

 

Oh Sun, your generosity is like that of a overflowing river!

Constant, fast and plentiful.

and to you, Oh my mighty King,

I send my prayers of wealth and days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

25
Mar17

Celebration

 

 

This afternoon was sound and movement.

      bangs, clarions and hisses,

lovers creeping

   crawling

to each other.

 

It rained,

      a cold splatter, here and not here,

we talked,

      ravenous

the words of others surrounded us,

      like dishes touching dishes,

and,

       when we spoke,

our hearts were full of sound.

 

Vrooommm, buzz and kill…

 

Words were thrown at me,

and I heard them as applause

Clap, clap, clap

reassurement

Purr, purr, purr,

or confrontation

Pow, pow, pow!

 

All lost in the clang of the kitchen, the people and the cars outside the restaurant.

 

But still it was clear what I heard,

“I love you”

“Thank you for being here”

These are much better times”

“I’m happy that you’re with me”.

 

All the sounds that passed between me and my father.

Not because we don’t talk,

As we talk so much

Not because we don’t express emotions,

They come like voluble torrents of lava, violent and hearing only their sound.

Not because we don’t understand each other,

so, so much

 

But because,

some days are noisier than others,

full of streets, wants and longing,

 

and the loudest is the coming together with another.

 

All the bedlam drowns you

As you try for  love to pierce through.

 

And when you go away,

finally,

you understand the biggest noise was your heart.

 

Boom - boom - boom.

21
Ago15

Fat

bacchus.jpg

 

The chair pressed my sides,

Its arms drilling into me saying,

you shouldn’t be here.

 

This chair,

       when unemcubered with slothfull mass,

                 sits only the usual and the sane,

not freaks of flesh.

 

I screw myself out of the esplanade seat,

where all sat drinking and eating guiltlessly,

and I thought:

 

I do  not belong here,

I’m too fat and self-obsessed to exist between sundecks and sunscreens.

Summer, sunlight and sunshine all ask to for their lithe and golden sons,

Not the trudging obese.

I should be ashamed,

 

…and I was.

 

I waddle away,

my ass a pendulum

ticking away my escape from this sun dappled scene.

 

As I depart a warm breeze shoots through the street,

a tepid rush of air raises the leaves, rustles the branches and washes over me.

The wind touches my neck and shoulders,

blowing softly through my shirt,

and embracing me like a playful lover.

 

I feel myself standing to attention,

and walking a little straighter …

a little prouder.

 

 

 

 

08
Jun13

Aging

 

Let us go forth,

once more,

into this new day.

Let us sail

unafraid and undaunted

to new beginnings.


Morning beckons a fresh light.

New, clean unbroken,

radiant and beaming.

Gleaming and pure,

full of rage, fire and movement.


But Dawn calls out for its kin,

the young and the naked,

not the old and the weathered.


I was skinned and stoned,

so many times,

by choice and chance,

that I’m known only by my scars

bruises, aches and the longing for deeds not done.


Before me I see the New Dance,

Taught to the new and hidden from the old.


Living is made of the anger, pain and cum of the newly born.

All the rest is not of this world.


The present is Time’s gift to youth,

showering it with now and,

promising it a future.


For them alone,

not me.


I have wore out my welcome,

the Stream runs with the blood of others,


but still I live...


surely not by Nature’s wish,

it’s lustful drunkenness for childhood,

and its never ending begetting of youth,

are boons that are bestowed to those shorter in years.


And certainly not for

wisdom,

knowledge,

philosophy

and all other icy comforts of aging.


I live bereft of reasons to be.


The Gods don't need me anymore,

Aging set me free from purpose and destiny.


So I am,

now,

alone

and free.

12
Dez11

Death

 

 

Death is so unbecoming.

Cuts through today,
like a blunt knife through warm butter,

stops your breathing,
your heart and everything,
as pain reminds you,
for the last time,
of your body.


Oh wondrous transformation!

Death is a moment,
and,
as such,
it does not exist.

It’s the longing between nothing and something else,
between silence and disbelief.

What to say of the cessation of the voice of the narrator?
What should I write?
If anything...
on the demise of the story teller?

10
Jul11

In Europe the squares are full of people

 

 

-It will come,

He said, sipping his beer and fumbling for the lighter.
-What will?
I listened to every other word,

hoping that was enough,


It wasn't.


-This thing that’s happening in Tahrir Square. It’ll come here,
-Here?
-Yes.

To the south first then to the North,
Maybe not as dramatic as in Egypt, but it’ll come.
-You think?
-Oh yes,

we both have regimes that no one believes anymore,

ailing economies,

elites that represent only themselves …

these things are infectious,


Said my father,

blowing cigarette smoke through his nose and looking me in the eyes,
forcing me into attention.

 

I grunted my accord and looked at my glass,
feeling cheated of the contemplative beer buzz,

I felt,

deserved.

Not really sure of what to say,

I said what I was thinking:


-Better late than never, I suppose.
-Yes, this place needs a cleaning …

Off course here it wont be so … revolutionary.

The EU won’t let it go so far,

but people will fill the squares very soon.


-Soon?
-Yes, soon,
-Like what, four, five years?
-No! A year … maybe less.
My father looked intently to his cigarette.

Waiting for me to say something.


I zoned out as I felt the conversation taking a turn to the improbable.

 

Off course there’s reasons for people to be fucked with politics, politicians and government,

but we have years of rot before we see people on the streets.


This is Portugal,

we’re all beyond indignation and certainly over protestation.


I looked at my father, encouraging him to talk some more,
and ask me nothing.
I lwatched over the roofs of downtown Lisboa that,

4 months from then,

would see camped protesters on Rossio Square.

A five minutes walk from my house.
So close.
All this things that I chose to believe were in a manageable future,
are already here.

 

 

24
Jun11

The Sweet Hereafter

 

 

The future stains the horizon.

Not a time for plans and projects,
dreams and wanting.
But the moment where all present movement will end,
and go no further.

Hope was jettisoned to the sea, to keep the raft of the tomorrow afloat.

Not for lack of dreaming,
not for lack of wanting something different,
but because becoming is so pregnant with the unstoppable flow of yesterday,
tomorrow will only fit its end.

A future as the answer to the equation of the present,
its propositions explained,
its terms understood,
all its possibilities made fact,
palpable,
conclusive.

This sea of becoming is not ours to command,
only to sail,

on the edge of sinking,

the waves of causation,
in the hope of being delivered,

trembling but alive.

to the future that’ll belong to no man,
no reason,
no volition,
only to time that devours time,
for no other reason that, that, is its nature.

And if the future won’t suit us,
and it won’t,
we must take solace in the knowledge that,
whatever tomorrow may be,

it wont be our fault.

II

As progress liberated us from all languages of understanding,
Science,
Religion,
Art
Philosophy,
the rest,

we were brought forth to watch,
on the best seats of the house,
the spectacle of humanity moving without reasons to explain it.

For the first time in a long time,
we saw the effervescence of Men with the same eyes that follow the bustle of ants.

And still...
we move,

now that we know that there’s no will guiding it,

evermore faster.

Maybe it was always like this,
Maybe we just didn’t knew it.
Maybe there’s nothing new in this flux that we witness.
Maybe.

But now we know it doesn’t need us,
that we’re not needed to decide our end.

This is the true end of history,
when we avert our eyes from the deeds of men,
to watch only its moving,
forever void of direction.

Trapped in the eternal present,
We see ourselves through the eyes of the Gods.

Transparent.

05
Mar11

Mouraria

 

I

 

My building is made of flaws and asymmetry.

My building,

is a place of impossible angles and fortuitous stairs.
Time, need and chance are its bricks and mortar,
contingency and happenstance were its architects.
And there it stands,
With the understated confidence of the things who need no reason to exist.

Unencumbered with purpose,
Free from design,
It stands,
whole,
as a creation of passing time.

 

II


In it dwell several families of variable geometries,

countries and pigmentations,
who pray, (or not),

to different gods,
listen to their own music,
and have jobs that the others ignore,


speaking all languages,
eating all foods,
and,
all,
teaching their children to be good in different ways.


My building is multicultural,
multiracial,
and,
much more than tolerant,
it is accepting.

We accept that,

some of us,

will leave garbage on the stairs,
that the women will clean it,

eventually,

That we’ll greet each other on our respective languages,
That our affairs are our own,

and that at night there'll be silence,

because we all have children who need to sleep.

 

III


My building is in the wrong side of town.
The natives are poor, belligerent,
and live a life of drug dealing and petty crime.
This is viewed as local folklore by everyone.

They are the new iteration of the Third State,
a class of european have-not’s, that shape their worldview through the lens of a 50 Cent video.
Here, they emulate the ethos of the American ghetto and its caricature of achievement and respect.

But enough on the natives.

 

Lets talk of the foreigners that are so many that the neighbourhood has their name,
Mouraria its called.

Since the middle ages that is a unsavory and unregarded place inside the city.
In the beginning was a ghetto for the Moors,
and now its the same for the poor.

It’s funny how,
although, through time, we picked different outsiders,
we always put them in the same place.

Mouraria is known by their Chinese,
Indians,
Pakistanis,
Africans, (not the ones from the ex-colonies. The real foreigners),
and a unsavoury brand of Portuguese that it sires much to the disgust of all others.

They lay about street corners,
selling drugs,
stealing on occasion,
working when needed,
talking about football, fights and more football.
Huddling near the stores of the Pakistanis and Indians,
drinking beer and discussing the art of car tuning.


The Chinese stores await customers with belligerent efficiency,
The Ukrainian supermarket is open for business,

The African hairdressers blare out music calling their clientelle,
several Internet stores are there to link Asia with Portugal,
and the Brazilian and Chinese loaders take bales of goods to the stores as they chain-smoke and talk to each other.


In the middle of all this move Portuguese old ladies,
slowly intent in reaching the Portuguese bakery, where they’ll buy bread in the morning as it'll close in the afternoon.


The natives see all this from the walls they lean against all day...
seeming vaguely bemused by all the bustle that doesn’t concern them.
Intent only on the cars that stop in front of them, and screech away guiltily.

Only the foreigners seem to have a goal and a reason to exist,
all the rest just seem to … be.


Maybe that’s the privilege of living in your own land,
the only place where you can be, without justification...

Here,

in Mouraria,

you realize that is not Portugal that is only fog...

 

It's the Portuguese.

 

 

10
Jan11

Quiet

 

 

Dead days and still nights flesh out a living made of absence.
Not the quietus searched by the men of God,
but the listlessness of those who stopped looking.

Inside this nothing made time
movement is broken in moments,
and thoughts are like photographs,
each one clear and self sufficient,
isolated and engraved in now.

Carpe Diem, they say,
the eternal present, they say,
but if they ever lived a second here, all their voices would still,
and in their place...
paralysis and aphasia .

Forever trapped in the moment...
finding no relief,
no wisdom,
no satori,
no calm,
no detachment.

Only terror and constriction.

Some say this happens to those who are not ready for this state of being.
Not pure enough,
wise enough,

prepared, if you will.

But if this is so,
this gift is given most freely by the Higher Power,
for the number of those who think are in Hell far outnumber those who think are in Heaven.

Maybe the Buddhists are right.
That all will make the trek to the Living Beginning,
sooner or later,
whether we like it or not.

And,
more importantly,
irregardless of our degree of readiness.

We will be dragged to enlightenment.

Most of us kicking and screaming.

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