The New Pantheon – The God of Economy

Now, this is a whimsical god if I ever saw one. Even the god of economy’s most devoted worshipers can by him be fooled and left stranded.

The realm of this god is vast, ranging from our vocal instruments—which also serve for us to eat, taste, kiss, and breathe, for instance—to a cleaning station where large fish go to have smaller fish or even shrimps remove their parasites.  Oh, yes: the god of economy doesn't care about humans alone, just as the goddess of sex doesn't, and that’s why they are true gods.

But this god is also deceptive. And he might be the one responsible for mirages. As one example, he’ll lure us into cheating on a school exam in order to attain our goal. Yet what happens is that the way to that goal, the process, is the one which will enrich us, and not the end result. So while our goal is achieved we didn't improve our condition at all. And that’s when you can hear the god of economy laugh a good laugh. He does love irony.

This new god's name, if you want to pray to him or ward him off, is Mireco.

As I’m writing this piece under the auspices of Mireco, I must stop here. You go and figure out the remainder of his characteristics.

_______

photo by Public Library of Science, depicting a reef manta ray at a cleaning station, maintaining a near stationary position atop a coral patch for several minutes while being cleaned by cleaner fishes

Faith, a puzzle out of bonds

The most important part
was left out of the scene;
the source of light that got in
was not part of the art,
each thought was locked within
each drawer, each head 
thus left alone to devise
what was being unseen.




______

watercolour by Jennifer Allison
One Street Shy

The New Pantheon - The Goddess of Sex

Recently I started playing a game called Words With Friends. That’s an app version of Scrabble, more addictive probably because your opponents can play with you any time, without the constraints of presence and... well... time. 

Quite an innocent thing, isn't it? 

Checking out the various menus of my new app I came across one named Community Match... And it turns out that the community is populated by photos, many of young women's selfies, some in bikini, some in underwear, and that you can search "community members" who are near you, and also based on their gender. So there you go: Tinder for Scrabblers.  

Gods won't disappear as long as there's a human being alive... who has the belief genes in him. So I want new gods. The old ones smell rotten no matter how you try to perfume them. And too many times the rottenness is that of human flesh.

Those apps prove once again the existence of probably the most important god for us: sex. Besides being one of the most pleasurable things you can do on earth, we all are the byproduct of sex, or of sexual fluids, for those who were conceived in vitro. Most of the things we deal with in everyday life can be traced back to the goddess of sex.

The second most difficult task after identifying a deity is naming it. In the western world tradition, we've the Greek (and Roman) Eros (Cupid), and Venus (Aphrodite). But they too smell of rotten flesh from having been gravely wounded by psychology or commerce, while Reproduction is too sterile a name for a god, no matter how new that god might be.

So here's my best shot for the time being: Penina.

Okay, okay! Vagenis then.

As if it mattered which came first.

The decline of TV

The Radio overshadowed the Minstrel,
TV did it to the Radio,
The Internet is doing it to all the Media;
Where's the shadow that Minstrels hide?  

Morning Dew

for Jennifer


Days of rain on her roof
soaked her attic’s woodwork 
under which, in tin trunks kept,
frailly locked by cobwebs and dust,
folded her whole being lays.

Water rushed out 
of pipes by the windows,
dormant seeds, down below,
drank it and sprouted,
and her garden flourished, 
as gardens do on days of rain.

Bone and Marrow

I should have explained my love for bones sooner:
How can we not love a bone? 
The last vestige of us and ours to be gone,
or as vulgar as a bloody boner?

Before we lie under a barrow,
there's only one thing here to be sorrow:
to be gone and all but bone tomorrow
without tasting some marrow.

Big Brother

Thomas Jefferson thought that, "Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching," gained a new meaning, with Big Brother contours, according to this article: How the Illusion of Being Observed Can Make You a Better Person. Better or more likely to follow a set of rules? Don't dictators like to spread statues and photos of themselves around their dominions?



________

Photo by António Dinis Lopes

Walls

Frustration has a history of Walls:

Of Berlin for Berliners

Of China for a Mongol

Of Adrian for the Picts

Of Troy for the Achaeans

Of Constantinople for a Goth

Of Wailing for those who wail

Of Chevaliers outside the Krak,

Fated all to one important event.

I get it now

I get religion now.

I get even self-flogging.

We all want to be loved. Deeply.

We all need to be loved. But deeply.

And if we don't get it, we'll create it.

And if we don't, we'll suffocate.

And if we do, we'll suffocate?

Love or a surrogate,

a threshold we didn't set,

and this life is a quest

for a key,

for there's sorrow,

for there's a gate.

Bring on your whip!

All we have is blood to give.

The rise to a lunar eclipse

There’s not much light here in the deep sea,
where we raise particles of dust
in spite of a lazy undulating motion;
mysterious translucent membranes
and our eerie luminescence.

Underwater vents warm us for a while
and are a fireplace in a desert’s night
where we find both food and society,
which go hand in hand,
and mouth on mouth.

It’s all calm, and night after night goes by
here in life’s deep end.

But we’ll end by looking up, we always do,
the intriguing sky from where carcasses fall:
an headless whale, the head of a dolphin,
and a tentacleless cuttlefish--
to what are its tentacles clinging?

Divine sashimi! An offer from the gods above!
And, upon close examination, only decay.

Bodies and our desires went upwards,
from black to deep blue, from green to azure,
gods ourselves for the first time,
investigating mirth and tragedies,
old acts in a new scenario.

What strange creatures, whales.
Upon interview they said to be cows who,
tired of false promises of sacredness,
returned to the sea: "Better a blowhole
than hold our breath for a blowjob."

Dolphins, no matter how cute,
were engaged in atrocities too, chasing,
hurling themselves against their infants,
or the ever dreamy porpoise, on purpose.
We're yet to meet bigger blowholes!

And cuttlefish? They're a Mafia. 
Their short tentacles have an amazing reach,
as they use their ink to write and rule.
If pressed, they'll release a batch, 
to hide with a stain what they're writing.

Foam distorted the image of trees on the shore,
waves made mountains seem to jerk, 
as if inebriated by their own oxygen scarcity,
and so rocked we were in a daze
until night set in and calmed us down.

And thus floating we could have been found,
were it not for a Blood Moon that woke us up,
which we took for a symbol of what happens
when whales are hunted, dolphins adored,
and cuttlefish left alone to confuse us.  

We sank back to the deep end, our gloom,
but under another moon we might emerge again. 



_______

photo by John W. Johnson

From Red to Gray - A Scale

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
Anne Tyler


"Contrast," she said, "is what art's all about."
I stopped and ruminated on her leafy words.
Sometimes my mind's a giraffe,
and her idea was elevated enough. 

Contrast sensitivity was thought to be fixed,
and that it would only worsen with age. 
While as I age and experience more,
the more contrasts are my focus.

So I turned to stare again at my love's face,
her dark hair against her white skin.
Her dark moods against her smile,
my love for her against all others.

"Contrast," I said, "is what love's all about."
I stopped and ruminated on my starry words.
Sometimes my mind's a space shuttle,
and my idea was burnt by the sun.

My eyes melted under such luminance;
no contrast, no trace; all flamboyance.

Manifestação p'r'ó Bem e p'r'ó Mal Pró-Vida

De tantas causas, de causas tantas, é esta a causa que te move?
Que te faz sair de casa num domingo, sagrado, e profanar a calma do Senhor?
E a minha?
Que te faz, em algumas dúzias de pulmões ao alto, proclamar-te pró-vida?
E nós, os restantes? Pró-morte?
Vai um referendo sobre quem de nós mais defende, mais respeita, mais ama?
E outro maior sobre a existência da alma?

Enquanto uns as Santas Cruzadas estudam, outros o fazem sobre as Invasões dos Infiéis.
Linguagem emotiva não é por si só um argumento válido. Mas sei que dá frutos.
Contudo a atenção deve centrar-se no conteúdo cognitivo. Até porque os frutos apodrecem.

E o que te apresento para cognição é pouco mais do que isto:
Respeito a tua liberdade religiosa, apesar de não gostar da maioria dos seus efeitos no meu dia-a-dia.
Respeito que te queiras multiplicar e assim, suspeito, ser em fiéis o maior número, apesar de não gostar de ver crianças etiquetadas e segregadas, até assassinadas, por os seus progenitores serem também autores das etiquetas, segregações, e até aparições, crianças essas que ainda não tiveram oportunidade de descobrir o mundo, de o questionar, de fazer as suas opções independentemente dos teus anseios.
E muito mais respeito, e defendo, incluindo a paciência do leitor. Se bem que nem sempre, confesso.
Respeita então, por alma e graça do Senhor, a liberdade da mulher fazer o que entende com o seu corpo.
Respeita, por alma e graça do por favor, vidas que não podem abortar em luxo, e em luxo hipócrita no final orar para que outras vidas não abortem.
Sobretudo respeita o que é outridão para ti.
Deus criou essa mesma multiplicidade que em nome Dele julgas.
No juízo final, o que te diz isso?

In the Desert

In the Desert
By Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen


Half of me horse of myself I rein you in
I quell you by spur and rein

So that you don’t lose yourself in dead cities
So that you don’t lose yourself
Not even in Babylonian trades
Not even in Nineveh’s bloody rivers

I point your snout to the clean desert
To the clean perfume of the desert
To its end to end solitude

Because of that I quell I struggle I rein you in
And the bridle cuts the spur hurts the rein holds you back

To be able to release you in the desert
Where we are not us two but only one oneself
In the clean desert and its perfume of luminaries
In the vast clean brightness of the desert
Within each poem
Light and fire lost but so close
Where we are not us two but only one oneself



__________

Translated by António Dinis Lopes from the original poem "No Deserto" as found in Geografia, ed. Ática, 1967

Photo by Jennifer Allison, "Alone"
One Street Shy

Matryoshkian Ideas

An idea will come from an idea
which formed from an idea
within an idea.

"Eureka!" Archimedes supposedly
said, but he probably just thought,
"Hmm... Isn't that funny?..."

We cannot know for sure. But
this much we can say: "There is light,
and it should come my way."

And, "The answer is 13 834."

Untitled

Emotional Work

Some people work in Paris, 
Other work in pairs. 
Joy regardless of their location,
All in need to be in motion.


And an older playoem of mine:


Biological reasons set aside

Two eyes two ears
To look and listen to look and listen
Two arms two legs
To work and walk to work and walk
One chest
To open
One back
To return
One mind
To gather
One nose
To aspire
Half a mouth
Feed
Half a mouth
Talk




__________

Photo by António Dinis Lopes 2014

One Way

There are many routes we can take to achieve the very same goals.

In this particular case, however, any compliant driver will be forced to drive on that specific direction and then startle school children whether he wants that or not.

Sexism is fortunately a contemporary concern of ours, so much so that even Richard Dawkins has recently run into to trouble due to some sexist remarks--aren't we all flawed? Jesus, the man, told you so. 

And the road sign above also illustrates sexism in our daily lives: the male figure pulling the female one by the hand, so to get them both out of trouble (I'm assuming he's not the one who forced them both to cross a road running and without looking out first for cars). Her body language showing her trouble to keep his pace. He, the diligent, the saviour. She, the passive, the fragile one.

Among other things, we're in need of a new road signs design, you designers and politicians out there.

X & Y Rated

for Jennifer


Perhaps our love making is not a creation.
Recreation? A frolic fuck, for a while, 
Then waves of otherness roll us over;
Another's on top yet not to subjugate,
Undercurrents tell us to surrender,
“Wave a white flag!” how can we?
Shades of white, our shivering skin, 
Our inner colours Pink and Punk,
Contiguous walls--buildings in Lisbon--
Our furnace rages on,
Levers are pulled, manipulated;
Is it too soon, too late, is it now?
Hair embroidering hands, needles
And needs met; all moist, all wet;
Over we roll, ensemble;
Synchronous dancers, swimmers
Of the deep, surfaced creatures,
Lazy lizards, trees, and ripe fruit;
Coffee in the morning,
And cock and tails later on;
Faces full of lips, nipples full, 
Food sources that more hunger fuel,
The ultimate richness of the poor, 
White trash meets Avalon;
A ghetto behind a neck and back, 
The privacy of chest on chest,
Teeth and tongue, so to speak;
Books shout from the bookshelves,
Dust and words fill in the air,
Pleasure shouts from within us,
And love garnished by lust.

Under Repairs - An Upgrade

PORTUGUESE

LISBON

Eduardo Lourenço is perhaps Portugal’s most distinguished literary critic. Pessoa is “an exception, being a great writer,” he said the other afternoon. “But he had a way of being that is distinctly Portuguese.” He paused to find the right words. “It has to do with everything and nothing — that we Portuguese can have everything, but still feel we have nothing.”

Portugal, he explained, had discovered half the world by the 16th century but still felt itself a failure for having not discovered the rest. The national mind-set, Mr. Lourenço said, is “a combination of megalomania and humility.”

“Also Pessoa was a loner,” he went on, “one of the great poets to express absolute loneliness — some of his poems are so sad they are difficult to read, which is very Portuguese. Listen to fado.” He was referring to the music that here connotes “saudade,” a nearly untranslatable word meaning homesickness but also something more, something, he suggested, like paradise lost.

in Michael Kimmelman's article for the NYT, Portugal Holds on to Words Few Can Grasp.

Waiting

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Bertrand Russell

And two Portuguese proverbs on the subject of waiting:

He who's waiting despairs.

He who knows how to wait will attain his goals.


___________


Photo by António Dinis Lopes, 2014

Contemporary Superpowers

for Jennifer


I’m no hero on Meatspace
nor am I engaged by nature 
in any rodent’s race;
I just take a step at each time
at my own pace.

I’m not even incomplete,
too feeble, too weak;
I’m just limited
or awake as possible
to what I can perceive.

One day, in a curious Street, 
I saw her, admired her cape,
examined my own back
and a dusty piece of cloth
bedecked it.

I witnessed her, for a couple
of years, distractedly,
engaged in love and life,
glancing with half an eye
when she passed me by.

And then, by mistake,
I touched her shoulder and,
seeing who she was, I said,
“Hey! It sounds strange,
but I’m sort of entranced.”

She smiled back
and offered me questions
as others offer candy
or a selfie
of a dirty bit.

I took the bait.

And since then, every day,
she allows me to peek
at a vast array of worlds 
she flies in, my Heroine!

Her powers include
extra vision, femalespeak,
emotional storms, super scent,
a smiley mask,
and a fast flying pack.

Mark my words,
I fear for her villains’ health
and can see them trapped,
with one option left:
cry for mommy; help. 

She’s a Gem yet Ferocious,
and thus known in comics
as Gemyfer,
the defender of fair
opportunities to mortals
and immortals alike.

I fell for her. 

“I love you,” I wrote,
and then pressed delete
as I want to have it saved
for us again on Facemeet.




  

Competitive Street Art

The chronological events that took place on this wall were probably like this: a graffiti artist produced the figure on the right. Then a not so very talented one produced the one on the left, respecting the first artist as much as he could, without doing so--a graffiti penis size envy issue? And then the tagger came along and envied them both. Respectfully.



___________


Photo by António Dinis Lopes, 2014

Shit makes it happen

As a Brazilian friend and physicist says, "Shit makes it happen," as opposed to "Shit happens."

We must never forget that shit is often overlooked and underrated. It's a supreme fertilizer and thus a facilitator of life. Guano is a Quechuan word for dung, usually of sea birds, used as fertilizer. Even the Incas attributed great value to it. And as such so should we. 

Therefore I propose that the expletive "Shit!" should be interpreted and also used as a synonym to "Great!" or to words of similar positive nature. 

And in the same line of thought, we should reconsider the usage of "Fuck!" as well. Surely such a pleasurable and so very human activity must be connected instead to positive feelings. "Fuck! I'm happy!"



___________


Photo by António Dinis Lopes, 2014

Travessa do Cotovelo / Elbow Lane

Late Bloomers

for Jennifer


Blackberries blooming late,
wild, tucked in thorned beds,
a flower for a throne, fruit
evolving colours: green,
rose, red, black;
a fruit which is many, 
a face each drupelet. 

Summer’s ending, thus
much longer shadows are being cast,
grapes and longing are being harvested,
reduced into wine.

Two blackberries are now jam;
sugar was added and they were boiled,
mixed first with other berries,
the right consistency was reached,
screwed was a jar lid, 
and a hand painted cupboard 
gathers dust, a daydream,
a kitchen door left ajar.




______________

photo by Sage Ross,
admin on Wikimedia Commons

Hurt – a prayer

As a spoilt Western world person, with most basic needs taken care of, my feelings were hurt by relationships. Or should I say "relationshits" as the comedian Dane Cook has it?

I remember being hurt when I caught a woman who I deemed a woman-goddess (I'm prone to exaggerate human qualities, or defects, I'm sorry) inside a taxi being kissed by another man a few minutes before we took the same train back to our home.

Or, much before that, being hurt by my father's friends and acquaintances joking and laughing just outside the chapel where he laid in his coffin, only to realize later in life that humor in face of death or other adversities is a most welcome relief, a helpful tool to keep us sane.

And hurt I was also when a man at work turned to me and said I couldn't keep my job position as a secretary to the administration. "You'd be the first suspect if any information leaked out."  He had no idea who I was, or which my political affiliations, work ethics and qualities were—a work "relationshit." I was depressed for months.

As you’re clever,  I don’t feel the need to add more personal examples here, and I'm sure you have your own list of stories related to love, family, and work. 

Heck! We can even feel hurt if someone unfriend us on Facebook.

The odd thing is that I've felt depressed when I hurt people, on one time for months. I remember thinking that if there’s one thing I wasn’t born to do was to hurt someone. But I obviously have failed on occasion.

Wiser people will tell you that the pain is inside you. It’s a truly private experience. So it must be dealt with at that level, or we risk exteriorising that pain with no result but having to exteriorise it again and again. At each wave of discomfort, at each gush of contempt, at each vomit of hatred the cancer cells of our hurt feelings keep spreading. And they spread until our soul is charcoal dark, dried out, and ready to ignite, an event which will burn everyone around us.  

I’ve been witnessing the above in people close to me for some time now. Nevertheless, I too am not a saint. Well, I’m kind of, of a very pagan type.

So, if your feelings are currently hurt, please deal with them first from within you. And please do your best to let it go, or to let me go, or to let her go. 

For some reason, you might not respect me enough to take in consideration what I just said. Thus I leave you with W. Somerset Maugham’s words instead:

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

And if you’re still not convinced, it isn’t my fault that it's hard to please Greeks and Trojans at the same time*... Unless we organize a free banquet and sex feast at the very gates of Troy?  




________________

* Portuguese proverb.

Image from the 2004 film Troy, directed by Wolfgang Petersen.

Classic and New

for Jennifer


I don’t believe in soul mates, love.
That would be demeaning to you:
you who were born in years later
made specifically for me? Yikes! 

What I’m sure it exists is rhyme,
where we can rhyme with others
in couplets, strophes that we read
to others each, then to each other.

All our poems depend on factors
beyond reason and thus in poetry,
which is music in text fabricated,
from the mighty ode to the petty.

Even without text we still dance
and our common dance is tango:
the male holding you, directing 
your female self back to trance.

All of us slaves to our rhythms,
which rhyme even in dissonance, 
the length of our time revolving
on how we rhyme day after day.

My rhyme and dance with you
is scary: we might not stop ever,
thus I sense fever lurking yonder,
as music without silence is eerie.

Yet we rhyme as we never did:
to celebrate such new wonders
I opted here for a rhyme different
with alliterative letters or words. 

[pause for a tango nuevo arabesque]

As I write my love poems to you,
freedom of speech is decapitated
fundamentally, almost yesterday,
a vulgar yesterday that's yet to die.

I wonder if similar worldly events
that turn lovers' woo into wounds
should make my wooing you end 
or by rebel contrast gain weight.

This much I know: the structural
world is flawed, and we must try 
to bring back its humane stance 
by rhythm and structure of tango.

A pause, love. And here we go.



_______

image: a postcard of circa 1919.

Two Duets - A Quartet

On Children

by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

A Matter of Personal Taste

for Jennifer


In my darkest night, / when the moon was covered / and I roamed through
wreckage, / a nimbus-clouded voice / directed me: / “Live in the layers, / 
not on the litter.”
--in Stanley Kunitz’s poem “The Layers”


She loves cheese.
Cheeky, I love her.
So I like cheese.
I lick it through her.

I lick deeper and salivate.
I taste salt and freckles.
Lemony tones.
Stolen orange from a tree.
A relaxed Spring in Sicily.

And deeper.
And deeper. 
My tongue turned sandpaper.
Her layers wet picked away.

She tastes of warmth.
Warmth tastes like Yellow Stone.
A thin layer of crust.
Skin.
And a mega volcano within.

My tongue is aching now. 
So I bite her bit by bit.
Hunger triggered by taste.
My appetite increases.
And I rip her ribs apart.
I can’t help myself.

But that’s never enough.
I want her whole again.
To repeat my feat, my feast.
So I need a desperate trick.
I swallow her.

And I stop here to confess.
I’ve been lying the whole time.
Taste's nothing without sight and smell.
A sense that needs some help.

Well, the whole truth too is one.
My digestion’s in French. 
Soupe a l'oignon au fromage.