cálice por acaso

o demônio nos detalhes
nas entrelinhas tinhosas
o escorregão, o timbre torto, o vão em vão
e as minúcias se escondem
o que era um projeto de vida
fica sendo no farol da barra
picuinha

Birthday miscelanea

by Service, Bukowski

Let us have birthdays every day,
(I had the thought while I was shaving)
Because a birthday should be gay,
And full of grace and good behaving.
We can't have cakes and candles bright,
And presents are beyond our giving,
But let lt us cherish with delight
The birthday way of lovely living.

For I have passed three-score and ten
And I can count upon my fingers
The years I hope to bide with men,
(Though by God's grace one often lingers.)
So in the summers left to me,
Because I'm blest beyond my merit,
I hope with gratitude and glee
To sparkle with the birthday spirit.

Let me inform myself each day
Who's proudmost on the natal roster;
If Washington or Henry Clay,
Or Eugene Field or Stephen Foster.
oh lots of famous folks I'll find
Who more than measure to my rating,
And so thanksgivingly inclined
Their birthdays I'll be celebrating.

For Oh I know the cheery glow|
Of Anniversary rejoicing;
Let me reflect its radiance so
My daily gladness I'll be voicing.
And though I'm stooped and silver-haired,
Let me with laughter make the hearth gay,
So by the gods I may be spared
Each year to hear: "Pop, Happy Birthday."

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers...
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.

more songs of love and drugs

guess-translations from pepe sales by godariush

3.

if god didn't care

if god didn't care

why would he play these tricks on us

i know god loves me

that's why he played this trick on me

in the end we're all

slaves of sex

7.

sperm

talking about love well i don't know what to say

i'm all alone here hugging my pillow

the angel passed by last night

i lie here looking at the stains on the sheets

19.

our lord of the pharmacies

forgive me lord

i was feeling very alone

looking for consolation

just me, lord

and there i saw

there in the street

light of the neon cross

it was you, lord

forgive me lord

i'm in a lot of pain

and i'm afraid they're even going to deny

they ever saw you

our lord of the pharmacies

please tell the chemist

to give me the stuff

or at least

get that fucking cross down off the wall

49.

quando corpus morietur

5501 that was the room

where they admitted

cecilio and me

we were all very quiet we were all very scared

this time he looked very bad

and his mother she rocked him like a woman rocks a child

and his mother she rocked him like a woman rocks her child to sleep

and his mother she rocked him just like the mother of god

and his mother she rocked him like the madonna by the cross

the doctor said cecilio was dead

but his face was smiling still

the doctor said he'd been dead for a while

but his mother said

i gave birth to him

and he died in my arms

like the madonna by the cross

and his mother she rocked him like a woman rocks a child

and his mother she rocked him like a woman rocks her child to sleep

and his mother she rocked him just like the mother of god

and his mother she rocked him like the madonna by the cross

that might seem old-fashioned or sentimental

like a worn out tattoo that says mum

but all that was needed just then

was consolation

and his mother she rocked him like a woman rocks a child

and his mother she rocked him like a woman rocks her child to sleep

and his mother she rocked him just like the mother of god

and his mother she rocked him like the madonna by the cross

existir é diferir (com nota de rodapé exploratória)

mesmo assim constituído[1]

meu corpo degrada o poder

meu corpo desagrada o poder

meu corpo desgruda do poder

meu corpo desgraça o poder

meu corpo desgrenha o poder

meu corpo deglute o poder

eu continuo comendo meus tomates com azeite

---

[1] constrituído, constitruído, constatuído, constimoído, crostituído, cuspituído, constiroído, constitutrido.

Para Excessos e Exceções (que sai em Canela, 6 de outubro)

“But I’m not.” “What?” “A tin-opener.” “I am delighted to hear it but tell me, have people in the past attempted to open things with you?” “Why would they when I’m not a tin-opener?” […] Then she picked him up and lit her cigarette with him.

Pat Ingoldsby

ode aos crus

rasgo repolho com as mandíbulas
escrevo repetidamente sobre os nabos
que mordia quando estava longe
meus desejos em revoada de pombos grátis
meus desejos arrebitam
eu falo que se ela demora arrepio
eu ando pela casa de um orixá fugido de santeria
eu falo
o gosto das superfícies cruas virgens
eu arranho os lados do meu pescoço regrado
o mesmo pescoço que eu gostava de lavar
agora está sujo

Tarde no Caribe (há anos em Choroní)

Areia do mar na beirada do rio
Folhas verdes voam para dentro dos olhos
Minha sombra me espera na estrada

fragmento 17 do ohana

ah, não...
não vou abrir mão de devorar o mundo
- antes que ele me devore -

Acordando longe de Cessy, de Osogbo

Susanne Wenger com um olho que vê tem seus hadrons
ou nem tem porque tudo escapa quando não é vigiado
começa o teu dia, Winnie - também a mim criou o eterno dromedário
esticado pelas vértebras das horas, um ermitão encontra uma gia
adiciono velocidade, Cessy, Osogbo, minhas pernas parecem vidro
pelas remelas umas potências secas produzidas só pela má higiene

ardo

for hilan, on the way back home

anti-brasilia

by godariush cigarrinha


8. the end - listen to the cigarras

fifty years the cigarras have been singing their warning to Brasilia:

take your people and go, just go

there are no deserts, no seas to cross, we will even feed you, if we must

with the remains of our old ones, with the husks of our young

dropping from the tormented heaven of the planalto

the cigarras are giant houseflies the colour of moths

desiccated yellow they sit dead on my stairs in the morning

sometime between the early seventies and the late

at the same time (coincidentally?) that, in Rio, the samba changed

more or less at the same time

the cigarras also changed their song

they had been singing the same one too long, about twenty years

with no one ever recognising, no one authenticating their signature tune

in the office of reconhecimento de firmas

so they changed for the first time

they had been listening – during the hours of their silence they listen

(our sounds pollute their dreams - is that why they hate us so much?)

they had been listening to the electronic age taking hold

in the commercial sectors, the government sectors, all the sectors

of Brasilia, and their new voices mimicked the static of our digital machines

indeed the violence of the new sound expressed very well their frustration

at twenty years without recognition

perhaps, perhaps they thought, if we would not listen then our machines would hear

and be our prophets

take your people and go, they sang (to the machines)

in the 1980s the cigarras, who are democrats, incorporated their delight at the

fall of the dictatorship, in a second change – they began to grow teeth

they knew they would need teeth to see them through

the end of history

the neoliberal hegemony

and after the 2001 presidential election some amongst the cigarras

who had lost their wits

believed there would be change, that the new administration

might actually listen

but that didn’t last long

we won't be fooled again, they sing

take your people and go, they sing

and they have added a new note to that signature tune (the third and last change)

which has never been recognised in the office of reconhecimento de firmas

(now not even the most brazen of optimists amongst them expects

that recognition will ever come)

you see over the last 240 generations of cigarras

(roughly since the inception of the monthly payments affair)

the species has been evolving not just telescopic fangs

but a second stomach for processing flesh

human flesh

and they are preparing to rain a plague of blood on the people of brasilia

who never got the message

who never recognised their signature tune

who left them standing in the queue in the office of reconhecimento de firmas

for fifty years

and now not even the most brazenly optimistic of them believes it still isn’t too late

for the long red night not to fall

and they have given no signs by which the believers amongst us

may mark our doors

because there are no believers - not even i, writing this, really

take the cigarras seriously enough

yellow desiccated overgrown houseflies

dead on my stairs in the morning

not even i take them seriously

but i am wrong

Sokolov reaches for Brazilian language poetry

favor, amor, vem me pegar
não sei com certeza onde eu estou
é um lugar plano
feito de planos

o peso de tristeza
aplainou as montanhas
e as ondas viraram planas
e também as montanhas e as ondas do céu
por evaporacão
e o querido mato queimou
e virou o ceu deste lugar
vermelho do pó

favor, amor, vem me pegar
não sei com certeza onde eu estou
é uma estrada vazia
monumental

e assim em lugar das formas proprias
so fica uma estrada-espelho
que tem nada pra espelhar
e se estou pesquisando
m'nha propria forma
no vazio da estrada
é porque eu tenho nada

Wafa'a Lamrani: The eight day

The eighth day

"And he said to me: the day of death is the wedding day
and the day of solitude is the day of cheerfulness."
Al-Niffari

1 Root

I was born of a sentiment that resembles neither love nor hatred; it often resembles pride.
They did not want me, but I came. By force I emerged the moment I desired.
Before the beginning I identified with defiance
I announced that I, together with the age, were split on the edge of alienage,
That I, together with time, were forever two times. . .

2 Genesis

From insight I initiate
My genesis
I extend along a space narrower than the eye of the needle,
I feign permeation into my own substance.
The wind of the hollow comes from neither Al-Sham nor Al-Maghreb*.
Thus do I depart:
Departure could not carry me away,
Nor could transit escape me,
Nor even could arrival entomb me.

3 Body

Whenever the voice of the body waxes ecstatic
The femininity of wisdom blossoms
And with roses covers those of its own parts
That remain dreamy in their coyness.
I saddle the footsteps for craving . . .

4 Love

My free tender heart
I have posted on the highest summit of the Atlas Mountains,
For the stinking hyenas
Are accustomed to decadence
And heights usually make them feel
Dizzy and nauseous . . .
My heart is a flower mined with fragrance
But the picker is a chronic common cold!

5 Semiotica

I emerge out of the blast of a time
That comes not,
I tame the leakage of seconds,
I spill them as signatures of a lifetime
Crammed with departures . . .

6 Bleeding

The loneliness of the evenings consumes me,
It nibbles at my passion
And then casts me off as a fragment
For the fugitive glow.

7 Pattern

If there were a meaning
If there were a colour
If there were a day
Not the Monday mail
Not the Tuesday train
Not the Wednesday laundry
Not the Thursday meeting
Not the Friday nausea
Not the Saturday loneliness
Not the Sunday ennui.
Oh, how weary is the Sunday afternoon . . .
If there were a face instead of a face,
A figure instead of a figure,
A lifetime instead of this lifetime,
A time instead of this time,
A sun instead of the sun,
An earth instead of the earth,
If there were an air that is really like air . . .
I am weary of what's around me, weary of parts of me, weary of my entire self.
I am weary of being a muse for poets, weary of the earth that is not up to me, weary of the sky.
I am weary of my colleague, who backbites me, and of the street that molests me,
of my brother who bothers me and never cares for me.
I am weary of my dwelling and of my time.
I am weary of weariness and of myself,
I deny all conditions and am weary of even denial.
If there were a day,
A colour,
A meaning . . .

8 Coronet

What does the wisdom of the body say?
"Forlornness is pleasanter than weariness,
Gentler than rock."
This is why the eighth day is mine:
So that the letter may on that day impregnate me
And I give birth to twins
So that death may on that day utter me
And I thus get cured . . .

Morning Rain by Tu Fu

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.
I hear it among treetop leaves before mist
Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,
Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.
Flocks and herds of things wild glisten
Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across
Half a mountain -- and lingers on past noon.