The colour of feelings

Blue cannot be of sadness.
It’s scientifically incorrect.
Objects approaching blueshift.
So blueshift hugs and kisses.

Objects redshift when moving away.
Rage and goodbyes redshift us.
Words blueshift or bulshit us.
No shift when we stay.

And Love? In the Sahara Desert.
A deep marine shale deposit.
Life's first ink extracted:
Bright pink.

It made me tick

You know, one of those periods
in life of change and decisions.
That's the setting.

Like a classic literary battle
in between what is better
cities or the countryside,
I was weighing my options;
the pros and cons---
and when it comes to real estate
the reality is that we’ll face them,
both professionals and con artists.

The clock kept ticking.

It’s amusing.
For when it comes to house-hunting,
aren’t we the prey?
The beast looking for a cave
where to rest, where to build a nest,
where to lick its wounds,
where to lick privately,
where to hide?
From predators?
Mind?

The clock kept ticking away.

And day after day,
a tick, then two, then fifteen,
tried to climb up my legs,
to dig in and mine the living blood
out of me.

Come on! What a lifestyle!
Sure. It would’ve been a few drops
of my life’s sauce. However
ticks are no John Donne’s flea
mingling blood metaphysically
in betwixt you and me.

In conclusion, my odour
Is a fine fragrance for ticks;
they found me irresistable.
And so I had to crush this idea
of living In the countryside,
as I crushed their shield.

Inside a wall-protected city
that's where I’ll be,
wondering about what makes us
tick, about birds, about bees.

The Real Poets of Today

in memory of Anthony Bourdain

I'm not a poet. 
I do try to write poems, but if they fully become so or not that's beyond my control. 
A friend once said that if you write at least one good poem then you are a poet.
It’s a very low bar. 
And it would make an anthology of all good poems extremely unwieldy. 

But I’m not a poet in another sense as well.
The primal poets were those who first used language to rhyme, to make it easier to memorise lines. *
In my proposition, they ceased to be the poets with the appearance of the writer as a star in the twentieth century. 
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, to name a few, or to name only three.
They were sexy, they were it, they were poets.
And they were replaced by songwriters in the 1960’s.
Who in turn were superseded by rappers in the 1990's.
And rappers, in the 2000’s, were unseated by TV-star chefs.
Thus chefs are the real poets of today.

And poets laureate are those chefs who cook with laurel.

 _____________


 * Since the Advent of Free Online Porn (FOP), oral tradition has only sexual connotations.

In the Broken Garden of Eden

Kitsch and True:
Adam is waiting in the Broken Garden of Eden.
An EVE Server should join him once it becomes obsolete.
An iPad will be the Apple.

photo by António Dinis Lopes

Sonnet

Change is the only constant.
The only constant is change.
The only constant is change.
Change is the only constant.
Only change is a constant.
The constant is only change.
The constant is only change.
Only change is a constant.
Could repetition be a constant?
Could a constant be repetition?
A constant: repetition. Could it be?
Could repetition be a constant?
This constant change by repetition,
Can you sense it or is it just me?

Philip Glass (January 31, 1937)

Philip Glass - cut from the cover of
his album music in twelve parts 

Your name lacks an extra l, an extra p,

and, at the end, probably multiple e’s, like this:

Phillippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Glass I would leave unchanged.

For who better than you understands optics,

in the sense of how to look at things?

Who better breaks boundaries,
like the one of music becoming poetry,
memory, moments we never ever lived?

Glass breaks.

Compositor, they say?

Translator! Sound-mapper!

Dream-inducer! Soul-scavenger!

Minimalist? You, who maximize

the sensitivity of our ear-drums?

Maximalist! Fulfillist!

Extra Perception, extra Levity.
One exact month after each New Year's eve,
we should celebrate a New Ear's eve.

Multiplelist.

Hence the extra l, the extra p,

those many e’s, these ecstatic a’s.



.

Dormant

A creature of sleep, embracer of pillows,
tends to float away in the everyday foam,
to yawn through petty problems, and 
to close its eyelids in the sofa of peace.

Hibernation is its default stance
until Spring, blooming, returns.

Then it notices its Winter-long hunger,
its unwashed fur.

Then, oxygen ostracises the said yawn, 
cascades of blood flood the brain,
ears become sensitive to speech,
and the said unwashed fur begins to reek.

It's then time to repair its cave,
to absorb what's new, what changed,
and to gather sleep-inducing food.

Á-À! Agora é que são elas!

grafismo da revista L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui

Trago à tua atenção um caso agudo e também grave.

 

Melhor dito, um caso de á (acento agudo) e de à (acento grave).

 

ás é o nome da carta mais valiosa de um baralho na maior parte dos jogos, ou é mais do que uma primeira letra do alfabeto: á, bê, cê, dê; ás, bês, cês, dês… Vês?

 

á não existe na língua portuguesa de forma isolada, excepto no caso de se estar a escrever por extenso a primeira letra do alfabeto.

 

à ou às são preposições para horas, direcção, sentido ou acção, usadas de forma isolada à excepção de quando se funde com pronomes como àquelas, àqueloutros.

 

A origem grave deste à parece ter sido a forma económica de juntar vogais idênticas. Por exemplo, sempre que tínhamos dois ás seguidos, em lugar de dizer ou escrever a a, dizíamos ou escrevíamos à:

 

Vou virar a a esquerda – à esquerda.

 

O sino tocará a as doze horas – às doze horas.

 

Tens que dar atenção a aquelas senhoritas – àquelas senhoritas.

 

Nada disso seria necessário se a nossa língua não pedisse tanto o artigo definido. Olha ela aqui a pedi-lo de novo!

At a Glance

I
The opposite of Hatred was never Love.
Empathy.
And Indifference's the neutral stance.

II
There's no moral high ground here from where to lecture;
I too shouted hatefully,
in indifference mumbled,
and empathy silenced me. 

III
Megaphone.
Conversation.
Listening.

IV
And every stage in between.

As they go low we go high

Nestes tempos da Era pós-Trump, de ideias mesquinhas, parece-me seja de abraçar os pensamentos mais altos. Não por escapismo, mas talvez por alto-escapismo:

Em exibição no Cinema Ideal.
http://www.cinemaideal.pt/