Sunday, October 12, 2014

Hace años, estuvimos allí

en silencio.
"No voy hacerte daño, no llores." Sin embargo, estuvimos allí por horas, tan lejos del muelle, mis ojos en tus manos, y hasta hoy esos silencios siguiéndome a traer jardines inesperados.

"La echo en falta," y una lluvia que no ha partido jamás. yo qué sé.

De rodillas en el arriate, esperandote pulsar y un chasquido, tantos años, tu rostro medio escondido detrás de la máquina. "Si, acércate a mi. No voy hacerte daño. jamás."

Monday, August 11, 2014

Silently

And I woke up when you smiled.
Standing up I followed curves on the river,
I phoned long distance at nights,
I heard your voice on the radio, from the speaker at work,
behind sirens on friday nights.

we danced in the kitchen uncountable tangos,
innumerable salsas and sambas and other tunes
of high mountains.

We wept when baby died,
and we sat the table for afternoon coffees,
tea and biscuits: old friends. Lovers.
Silently, now. Still.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Berkeley

No, I don't.

A few blocks from there, the smell of freshly caught fish. Ships on docks.
"This morning of thin air, this air entering your nose like a  jelly mixture. Cold. A day without birds singing, lost in their flights, trying to reach a south. Sur. Sul.
The word for south in Spanish a rumbling drum: Sur.
South: it’s a ship docking.
South: an old bandoneon.
South: A sailor that knew how to paint. His hands on you.
South: Your sailor. Your wharf.
Where are you, Sur ?
Where am I ?"

mais do texto, aqui

Monday, June 30, 2014

Fotografias de outono


E o dia aqui acordou ensolarado e quente. E seco, como apenas nos desertos é possível ser.
O verde das plantas é amaciado, já sem poder mais sair em força, já que a muito falta água e a seca são as únicas sombras constantes que um deserto pode oferecer.
Detrás da janela, olhando a grama lá fora eu revejo sem olhar o calor húmido dos trópicos, mesmo em épocas de chuva e pouco frio como faz lá agora. E sinto o cheiro das coisas depois de uma chuva longa, do céu despencado em trovões e relâmpagos e a água inundando as calçadas, escorrendo por telhas e paredes, lavando a cal e os umbrais das portas.
E o cheiro vivo de terra molhada que me entrava pela casa a dentro, morcegos nos sapotis do quintal, junto com mangas da estação. Aquele cheiro todo envolvendo as coisas e a humidade a subir pelas paredes e o ar limpo e claro de quando a vida parecia resumir seu curso, o vendedor de bananas, o apotecário reabrindo as portas, o cheiro de pão recém-desenfornado vindo da padaria. O relógio e a marca das quatro.
E eu ali, entre camaleões no jardim, o piano em silêncio.

Assim agora nessa manhã quente de deserto eu revejo a chuva e voce.
E em mim outra vez a vontade de me encolher sob os lençóis em voce e me derramar na tua pele a me perder em meia-luas, muito tatuador, tudo muito lento, assim, que "é pra nos dar coragem, pra seguir viagem, quando a noite vem..."

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Lugares: os nomes



A hunger. When I stepped out of the taxi that morning it was cold and the streets were almost empty. In the still moist street I could hear my shoes tapping at the pavement while I headed to the work site. I had dreamed of Évora the night before: the road that took me there, the lone tree sitting on the top of a hill. Daisies, pervincas covering the hill side, ervas-divinas, Laura smiling. With the whiff of that remembered countryside the sidewalk by my side now felt elevated, paved with well worn-out cobblestones, life pushing out through the in-betweens despite the uncountable steps. I thought of Madredeus, Oxalá. I wanted a hug. A warm, uncompromising, all-encompassing, fully loving, wordless  embrace.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Red Clay: Cerrado




So, memories, they are like these chained sets of images, each with its own context and history but which nonetheless still require all the bits and pieces hanging to the chain itself, scents and sounds, a sense of temperature or weather, in order to gather up and bulge and explode in their full meaning; not unlike that game "wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on color and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, solid and recognizable."

These image sets, multi-pronged devices that reach over a lifetime and more, that pop up unexpectedly and with no forewarning between this step and that one when I jump over a puddle on the sidewalk. Like the scent of fresh rain in the view from the top of that hill, in the heart of the cerrado, just after the car turned a curve and the valley appeared clear and shinning below and it was almost 4 o'clock in the afternoon with the sun still high in the sky and so much light under all that blue. And we stopped and stepped out and sat on a makeshift wooden bench hanging precariously against the tree and I wondered just for a minute who would have built it, although there was enough reason for it right there: an invitation for rest and contemplation, with all that view stretching far to the rooftops of a town almost indistinguishable much down below, with its church towers and bells. And we sat and took in the view and I pondered on how good it felt to be there with you then and on that perhaps it was happiness and I could still hear the drums of the waterfall and feel my skin under that same sun just a little earlier. And then you smiled and I thought of not leaving and you may have just guessed it, because you became a more still and serious. While all that sun bathing short trees and scrubs and the sparse vegetation that barely covered all that red clay everywhere. And I thought: I can think but wish I could just feel more or brave more, and the sun was still a long way from setting and we talked about the ranch house down below and about the walk and your hands on my shoulder and your eyes so dark and when we kissed it felt a bit like an unspoken goodbye and we said nothing for a long time and just sat looking down the valley, the wind brushing the leaves of the cashew tree above us and your hair flowing freely and by then almost dry.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Otros cafés

"You've slept too much, you've waited too long."
The lines on the book spines all broken now. In occasional flashlights you catch glimpses of forgotten plans, misshaped maps, and in doped up jerks realize at times that you've dreamed too little, and avoided the effort to change a fate, a horizon line, an epigastric collusion. And just kept following the easiest path.

You've been too lazy to move and sat half-satisfied half-content with watching words and afternoons and sunsets go by almost unnoticed, while barely aware of forgotten dreams, stocked up on piles and piles of dust and unfinished medication bottles, sitting quietly disappearing in a closet on the back.

You haven't fed yourself enough, dreaming up words occasionally, haphazardly.
One day you wake up to the sound of this old tango and the day is lost in the haze of forgotten paths and plans and hopes. You realize some mistakes, or at least what you've left behind in the process. in this process.

You think of feeding and retro-feeding, you remember foamy cups and medialunas. You just sit there. Silent. Consumed. Remember a cat you had so many years ago, and the streets of a city you're too old to reach.
Recall a lost love. a few. An accordion.
Sin café, sin medialunas.