uma camada de sons

da baía da vida

as atmosferas fracas

que estão a fluir para sudeste

um fluxo sem um nome

através os margems de verde

o que tornam-se campos da areia

um glaciar derrete (imparável)

sudoeste, uma maré salgada

sob as ondas, um nação

acima, um céu, uma cratera azul

 

 

Isto meu mapa do mundo 

os raízes, sangue, e ar

começa ao amanhecer e nunca termina

---------------------------------------------

A layer of sounds

from the bay of life

fragile atmospheres

that are flowing southeast

a stream without a name

through banks of green

which become fields of sand

a glacier melts (unstoppable)

southwest, a salt tide

under the waves, a nation 

above, a sky, blue crater 

this is my map of the world

of roots, blood, air

that begins at dawn and never ends

____________________________________

beyond the dented sky

into the stars

____________________________________

 Red Admiral

 

Silver Y Autographa gamma (Linnaeus, 1758)

 

 

content

content

happy

hapless

the path to ______?

You walk it in silence.

Keep the way to yourself.

Where others are,

what they are doing

isn't

any of your concern, is it?

 

Keep walking.

 

Bend. Focus.

Bend again.

 

Keep walking.

 

Later, 

arriving 

don't mention it.

Speak instead

about

the sun

or the color of the sea

em os outros línguas,

a alguns estranghos e aos seus amigos

 

 

 

the habit of writing

becomes being

becomes seeing

one word

never alone

a stone among stones -

earth

History

isn't

living less in 

the khipu and codices

or attempts to

when men again

bring light

to bright paper 

we make shadows

Nothing?

 

Everything.

 

 http://oralhistory.columbia.edu/blog-posts/Talking%20Knots:%20Decolonizing%20Oral%20History%20through%20Alternative%20Methods%20of%20Memory%20Transmission

 É uma poeira também poesia?

 

all day spent in soil and words

modal hours

minus schrift

steadied drift 

 

mid-sea

me

 

alone

Perhaps I will disappear.

I am already being erased from other places I've lived.

I look out my window,

high above streets, at the sea.

I imagine myself

a drop of salty water

and smile.

magoar pessoas machudam os outros

hurt people hurt others

ikigai

wabi-sabi

mottainai  (nanbu sakiori)

G  A  M  A  N

mono no aware

______________________

Usasama Myoo

Become Humble

Organize your shoes

improve posture

itadakimasu

warué tada taruwo shiru

okage sama de 

sleep, wake early

 

 

we wear our narratives

like cloaks of invisibility

stories

that contain

and protect us

protect our fragility

make us impenetrable

 Chinese art has a functional relationship with nature, not a mimetic one. 

It is not a question of depicting nature as realistically as possible but of 

operating exactly like nature. In nature, successive variations also produce

something very clearly without any kind of genius.

- Byoung-Chul Han

o sobreiro

o sobreiro diz
neste monte eu caio
sem ninguém lá
uma árvore numa floresta envelhecida
enquanto o mundo aquece
e os meus filhos
mais uma vez 

migram para o norte

the cork tree says
on this mount I fall
with no one there at all
a tree in an aging forest
while the world warms
and my children
once again 

migrate north

 

 

 

 The coordination of gazing, glancing, moving over a period of time engages me completely.

- John Virtue

a boat of teeth

lies at the bottom of

a cold lake

clearly there 

settled into the sand

listing

listening

no lament

went down

slowly on a still day

 

the burning

all my journals from 17 to 64

most sketchbooks

gone

the ashes in the old garden with yours

with our two cats

and countless birds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

tenho uma pergunta

sabes o que é isto?
esta água mais azul que os olhos do amor

Pergunto a um pássaro
porque os pássaros sabem muitas coisas
mas o pássaro não responde

O pássaro nunca responderá
Está a fechar seus olhos
está sempre a ouvir
ao sol
a lua
a árvore onde pousa
o ar em que voa
mas o pássaro prefere
se puder
não me ouvir-me

____________________

 

I have a question

do you know what this is?
this water bluer than the eyes of love

I ask a bird
because birds know many things
but the bird won't answer

The bird will never answer
it's closing its eyes
is always listening
to the sun
the moon
the tree where it lands
the air in which it flies
but the bird prefers
if it can
not to listen to me

 

thoughts walking

perovskia 

ou

salvia 

yangii

 

polar mas a sul
lunar mas a oeste
onde há água
e sal
saltar, saltar, saltar
como um peixe
como uma mosca apanhada pelo vento

 

um azul viral 

uma expansão em espiral

 

_______________________________________

polar but south
lunar but to the west
where there is water
and salt
skip, leap, jump
like a fish
like a fly caught in the wind

a viral blue
a spiraling expansion

_________________________________________

sacas de

calçadas

branco

preto

__________

 paisajem 

 

haze hills inscrutable

discovery of impermeable

 

______________________

language is not a competition
the landscape of the foreigner
is one alone
in light, sun, in darkness, night

a língua não é concurso
a paiseje da estrangeira
é uma sozinha
em luz, sol, em escuriso, noite

 

_________________________

 

 

 walking to

shake off

winter dampness

a slow mind

a kind of stupor

I rise from

walking to

leave the constant

noise 

the fugues I play

to drown it out

 

walking towards something

that I reject

and so walk somewhere else

 

walking

to remember walking

city roaming

without aim

you were there 

in another room

always

in another room

the pain

until

I woke

realised 

you dead

these 

ten years 

_______________

estava lá
noutra sala
sempre
noutra sala
a dor
até
acordei
percebi
tu morto
estes
dez anos

___

 

num sonho
uma voz falava
suave

invisível
constrói uma nova vida
dizia

 

água no chão
a chuva
a chuva
como mil
votos de felicidade

________________

in a dream
a voice spoke
soft
invisible
build a new life
it said

water on the ground
the rain
the rain
like a thousand
good wishes

songbirds attack

a hungry hawk

doves awake know

the smell of cat

 

I watch the young gulls grow

 

pushing up 

cupped-leaved nasturtium

soil-speckled lobelia

cosmos rising 

a slender net of sway

 

stay a little longer, jasmine

 

 

 

I cannot bear the constant talking

but I do

I find the quiet inside, again and again

I miss the still trains of Tokyo, Osaka

eating alone out, in silence

walking, greeting neighbors in few words, politely

 

o riudo não é mais,  mas para mim é menos

menos mundano, menos cheio 

do que o canto de um pássaro, o miado de um gato

save the nest

scuttle the fish

prune it

kick it

can it

cant it

 Em abril águas mil

 

Tree slippages -

pin oak    shadow   dry field weedy   duff   loess 

___________

Alliances of
Disputes about
The route of the dissenter
The limits of language
Aren’t the limits of love

_____________
 

Garbage and Golgotha
Did the apostles recycle,

pick up trash

______________

The end times align with the beginning

I for one 

cannot tear them into separate messages

______________

 
Oh, and what about the loss of birds 

the urgency of the fishes?

Quake signs.
Animal residual resistance
Senescence is coming.

 
Nothing was ever without consequences

but led ourselves into thinking so.

What is more interesting than optimism, more prescient than fatalism?
We fogo on.
(Even if it’s only and always indecisive)

 
No figs on the trees but under the duff mushrooms.
No birds in the sky but under the straw thawing ice.
An emmigration of environmental protections.
 

Assonance of Ashoka's Dama
Manga comprida.
Dama Buddha’s longo

Aspects of interstellar intelligence have reached us.
Intimations of mortality, immortal beloved, is life itself,

interstellar and grateful.

 
The brambles - consciousness.

Cinzento vente
Oh e
Deixei e
Tondo
Rondo
Bell
Knell



Mama hen and black white chicks hiding in bramble's consciousness.

Beyond the pink apartments

old men and young men without sandwiches or dogs

have great faith, great doubts.

Approach them.

An angel lives on my roof.

 

apelido é já
Por aqui sei agora. ou vou
Te espírito e em da casa ele estava
A sonho ou sombras ou ambos

Can I find order in my house? 

Do I need to go back 

to that place in my mind where I am mourning?

The small thing is, even though it doesn’t make sense.

You are not a child.

The burned books
Returned to the fish.
Green as earth or water (copper) and for air in holes
Those lost pieces of books are
playing with plastic, glass on the beach.


Almost hypericum nearly nepenthe.

There are many moments over many years that have become a long moment of feeling the world, like an hour during a child's summer day.

joaninha

joaninha, joaninha

sem a cauda

ainda um dragão

com asas de fogo

uma corpa cor de sangue 

salpicado de cinzas

joaninha joaninha
uma caçadora
uma vingadora
ver vermelho
vejo vermelho
quando te vejo

________

ladybird, ladybird
without a tail
still a dragon
with wings of fire
and blood-coloured body
sprinkled with ashes

ladybird ladybird
a huntress
an avenger
see red
I see red
when I see you

a high shuttered window

has a twin window

glass patched with tape

lets in light

as rain

feeds the roof

rampant with fern and polypody

-----------

Stone bones

grand abandoned homes

The rich have disappeared,

as will the cardboard walls

holding blanketed bodies.

It's in the dog's eyes,

all of it -

such loneliness

------------

 

 

 

 Andrea Maria from Clavicórdio

"I like to think that my hatred is a kind of mysticism.
It's not a totalitarian hatred, spread without care 

or devotion, but a humble, somewhat hypocritical, 

contemplative hatred, filled to the nostrils, like a saint, 

with a faint rotten aroma and dried blood.
I know that to hate is to still be in relationship. Refusal 

is still a relationship, like the father who abandons his 

son to save us. And I believe wholeheartedly in the son

 mixed with the cross."

 

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr  john crowley 

 

I had lost my faith, as the church would say it, though I think the reverse is just as true. In fact I’m not sure that faith was ever what I had. I think I was not capax Dei, in Augustine’s phrase: I had, and have, no capacity for God. Living in the sacred time you didn’t really need it; you didn’t even need belief. All you needed were five senses, a sacerdotal language, and the solemnities of repetition. - John Crowley

w a t e r w o r d s

 Several words for bodies of water changed meanings between the old country and the new. 

In England a pond is artificial, but in America it is natural. Creek in British English refers to an inlet from the sea, while in American English it describes a tributary of a river. An English watershed is a line or ridge separating the waters that flow into different drainage areas, but in America it’s a slope down which the water flows, or the catchment area of a river. Americans added the meaning of a small stream or brook to branch and said fork to refer to one arm of a river as well as a fork in the road. 

 

- Rosemary Ostler 2023 from The United States of English-The American Language from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century

a poem, repeated

 To whom it may concern, Mr. Kirala's intention is to accelerate the process of making a beautiful tiger, and he is good at it.

各位キララ氏虎美措置加速意図はに得意ひいすんしチンからもちのいい国とは近くイス口せせん

unconformity, a line  that separated time 

radically different rock formations, 

layers of finite

gaps
absences
Siccar Point
three men and no end
cement works at Dunbar
and the Muirs away
driftless
and sere
concrete weirs
here and there
where no fish stay
no children among the grasses
deep time passes
seas
leaves and island for a lake
so deep it’s first in freshwater size
and rarely frozen
surprisingly clear down 8 meters
and found there thomsonite
east
of lonely
Morton Outcrops

a caminhada

a caminhada (the walk)

steps are lines of sight
one foot down two feet forward
stop
or pause
to see
to remember
memorize
and then continue

_________________________________

os passos são linhas de visão
um pé para baixo dois pés para a frente
parar
ou fazer uma pausa
para ver
para recordar
memorizar
e depois continuar

Eu nunca estou sozinho
Estou sempre sozinho

P R O J E C T S

 1

a r t e

Cá estou eu (h e r e  am I, here I am)  

 

projeto um  -  uma visão da vida

 

uma folha de ouro

um velho cão dourado

gengibre

som

o mar Báltico

sicómoro empedrado

uma enfermeira a fumar

_____________________

a vision of  life

one golden leaf 

an old gold dog 

ginger 

sound 

the Baltic sea

cobbled sycamore 

a nurse smoking

_________________

projeto dois - folhas e tableau 

Thimble-sized gold book of margaritas or margaridas 

ou Margaret’s goddess of bloom without pluck, 

fucked by another religion and beheaded

Ana Ann Anne - barrens (barren women) and after 

or 

why you are more than blood or bloodline

Natural histories -

I prefer Juana Alipay’s de Machado Worthington 

to  what?
A pill in a bottle
 

A pleasant legend as many like Grimm are neither natural nor history

Lucretius  Pliny

projeto três -filmes

What’s the skinny?Assets bought and sold
Most unassuming ant richer than that

Boats barquinho the river inland
Susana Monsó philosopher on grief

Directed to see
A house centipede  
Over stained glass
 

Light on sand
In shadow
In hear

Sixteen absences
The heartrecedes
Terminar
Desligaram
An afterword

projeto quatro - coisas

An exhibition of flag poems each inspired by a word an artist in the exhibit provides

 

 

t h o u g h t s

 1

A kiss

that wishes to be 

an expression of freedom,

away from the safety of partnership

 

2

 

I go into old age 

alone

an Alcott Jo that
chose her own ending

 

3

 

Start to or first recognize
your shadows, you said

 

4

What makes me see

 

5

The difficulty of long sickness

the heart in disrepair,

weary of nothing but exhaustion itself

6

To be, truly,

and as a solitary

is the joy.

 

7
Deserved access to your mind’s eye
Interesting interruptions

8

Wind is accessible 

light at the end

light

as it ends

slips under

as it ends 

into such disarray 

that its ellipsis is 

a sloppy summary of day.

Still, it stores unseen greens

to come, or come again.

_________________________

night wind broke the marble

but not the bat, lonely, lost,

lodged under the rolling 

shuttered door

hanging nearby

more refugees, dark shapes.

Midnight brings a bird to the window

and an animal creeping along the sill.

s t o r m

a gull falls from

salt-altered air

as warnings shift

yellow to orange,

becomes part of

coastal foment

foretold.

 

time stutters, small wet bursts of minutes

 

that have been pushed, crest.

 

shore-bound

surfaces

tousled

 

have lost the locus of time

 

air underwater 

as the gull,

tumbling,

disappears into

fuming spray, 

wings bent, 

and mewling.

 

 

 

things

(fuzzy, forming)

thought of

(ought, want, could)

when I wake

make omurice

mourn river eel

wrist pain means rain

fish out of water

I couldn't kick the eel

não há coragem

eu não há couragem

a brown eel

in road shoulder sand

I couldn't kick the brown eel

so close to the river

so far from the river

uma vida lá

Lá em baixo, no rio

 

e uma morte
uma morte no ar

 

I couldn't kick the brown eel

dead in road shoulder sand

into the green shoulder grass

 

 

 

nothing 

much

this

bliss

solitude

friends in

beginning

with

eggs (who are sheep)

then creeping warm

glimpsing

weed

bee,

bird,

boy with ball

all small things

eight stories high

I give thanks for

 

1

Tonight the inevitable 

creeping into my bones. 

 

 

2

às vezes

ao meu lado

 

sometimes

by my side

 

 

3

need boundaries

 

4

spillt

milk

whole

 

 

 

vidas e mortes 2

 1

Já não estás aqui.

Tenho saudades tuas.

Apareces de vez em quando num sonho,
ou como uma memória dentro de algo,
ou na minha mente quotidiana,
como uma palavra que raramente digo em voz alta.


 

You're not here anymore.

I miss you.

You appear from time to time in a dream,
or as a memory inside something,
or in my everyday mind,
like a word I rarely say out loud.

 

2

Primeiro, 

os andorinhões regressaram,

hoje 

as joaninhas, 

e as pequenas abelhas pretas.

 

First, 

the swifts returned,
today 

ladybugs,
and the small black bees.

 

 

3

 

O jasmim num frasco faz-me companhia enquanto escrevo.

Jasmine in a jar keeps me company as I write. 

 

Long friendships change. Some slip back into time quietly, quite naturally, create a mutual silence 

that grows comfortable over the years.

 I prefer this, of course.

But this is not always so.

I've had the pain of letters unanswered, 

felt cruel words that, aware of my secrets,

knew exactly where to cut.

 

But perhaps it's all part of the animal we are, that can choose to ease or hurt a heart.

vidas e mortes

 1

camelia

wet brown camelias 

have fallen upon green grass -

death, new life, lamplit

2

lizard

the drowned lizard I found

carelessness or weather's toll -

do you care, lizard?

3

jardim

Memorizing this

silence, a garden, spring rain

time to plant again

4

the fly

even a fly's death

seems inconsolably sad -

here such a short time.

5

death

Spring's come, sun, but cold

I remember one I lost -

has it been ten years?

 

what to

put

in place

of space

days fill

with broken violins

and damp stones.

I believe I need

their weight

to

remain here,

outside myself.

you are now able to breathe 

 

o barco dos sonhos

não é o barco dos sonhos?

long nights unslept

kept awake by small impurities

the not good enoughs that haunt

and play

stay under eyelids

and fall out at two am

 

p o l e c a t

 

Grandmother told stories.

 

With tips of her fingers,

she imitated

ant, spider, inchworm 

climbing our arms

until we could name 

the lives upon us.

 

On summer afternoons

when settled round the picnic table

in the shade of the swing oak 

she'd narrate us safely into woods

under the moon

where  her voice would prod and hiss us up trees.

 

These, she'd say, are the dark pines where the polecats play.

 

We'd imagine them paused

claws in bark, 

a deeper blur blow as they hunted for meat.

Know to stay away from them, 

grandmother would say

they are witchy 

keen to make mischief

 

________________________________________________

 

 

Some people say that they're seen as a symbol of an upcoming productive and fruitful period in life. 

Gale (Ancient Greek: Γαλῆ, romanized: Galê, lit. 'weasel, marten' pronounced [galɛ̌ː]) is a minor character in Greek mythology. She was a very skillful witch.

Mythology

According to Aelian's On the Characteristics of Animals, Gale was a talented witch who dealt in herbs and potions. But she was extremely lascivious, and had abnormal sexual desires. For this Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, turned her into a small, "evil" (in the words of Aelian) animal bearing her name, gale (a land-marten or polecat).^[1]

Thus the animal became one of the most commonly associated ones with Hecate. Martens/weasels were thought to have magical potency in ancient Greece, though not necessarily of the beneficial kind.^[2]

Gale's name shares an etymology with that of Galanthis, another mortal woman who was turned into a weasel at the hands of an angered goddess.^[2]

tourão

 

 

The olive jar slipped.

Saw salt water and fruit 

plash among smashed glass,

sands of which I'll find for weeks.

Clean, chamomile-scented,

kitchen floor tiles

show motes of dark dirt

flung under the door 

fleeing high winds, more rain.

Thyme-seeded soil, 

lost to soft mold,

enters the bin bag too.

My hand's unsteady,

worn by the storm, 

saddened by seed death.

I take a breath,  

tie up the trash, 

pull on boots,

pocket keys,

go out.

 

I need sun, but the rain's won.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amanhã regressa o mau tempo, ele disse, que se prolongará por vários dias.

Eu digo que nenhum tempo é mau se eu estiver vivo. Vivo, cada dia é um bom dia.

 

 

 

I am grateful for the shutters, 

flexing and shuddering in the howling wind. 

I thank the rain pouring weight into pots and soil, 

making stable my small high plots of earth. 

 

Dearth of cares when the weather is this. 

Sampling sound. Can rain murmurate?

Can my closed-in rooms hum as hives do?

 

The eucalptus sway under white, and I think

you are bamboo now

imagining their tall trunks 

clacking like snow geese

 

Lone gull

hovering in the midst of it all

young by the color of its feathers

gorgeously ebullient -

Vivo, cada dia é um bom dia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is peace

that persists in small things -

warm spring earth stubbled green,

a quiet neighborhood schoolyard after

midday play ends,

a cat asleep in the sun.

All things ordinary are hard won

yet often invisible. 

I sometimes think

we are animals afraid of

stillness,

of an everyday indivisibility.

Is it possible to stop fidgeting,

for even a brief moment?

 

 

 

 

I am changing the garden,

rearranging, potting up

grasses and succulents,

and spindly geraniums

that smell of citrus.

The trees are pruned, and soon

the lavender.

The planters wait for flowers, to be planted

among onions, chickweed, and 

struggling alyssum.

The terrace smells of laundry and salt.

My mind reaches into the soil,

pulls out hurt,

worry, white paper -

so few words.

The swifts return.

Among gulls,

a brave bee

sees my trees 

eight stories up.

entry of

sun

won over

cold by noon,

dropping at four -

more cold

soon.

When days 

into nights

were sleepless, 

full of unease,

thoughts unpaused

flowed as rivers do

in early snow-melt spring,

things askew,

jumbled, 

tossed,

sound thoughts turned

flotsam.

An herb draught drunk, a pill,

and now 

with calmer, earlier, sleep

I rise with the fog.

Three nights unknown.

Dreamless fissures.

 

when death

then fiction

 ___________

 

 

 If your world is very small

you seem very large

but if the universe

in its expansiveness

calls

small is

a star

so far away

 that's all

 

so much more

than before

 

But I guess

less

will return

I found it today

the Febros

running dark 

through bottom land 

a dirt trail beside it

roads of calçadas

and houses perched like herons along it

I walked 

got lost

to my surprise

my eyes

remembered how to 

return to solitude

that house streaming light

as you open its door

sleeplessness

fierce winds

endless winds

and rain

ainda

she says 

as razões para viver continuam a ressurgir

 

In Um Rakuba, a third within are children

In Kutapalong,

some drown in monsoon rains

 

There are more.

Say the names - Kakuma, Dadaad, Za' ateri. 

 

 

He'd guessed as much,

that she was south.

Was it Rafah? Khan Younis?

 

He had to let her go.

 

When the shelling resumes,

a gifted translator

jobless now

reaches

for her children,

memorising their misery

in four languages.

 Morning.

I shoo seagulls into the air

into the warm bright sunlight.

I am grateful.

The lengthening days

the long quiet hours ahead

are enough.

Is this peace?

 

 

 

Yemanjá comes in with the rain 

in from the sea, blesses

my body, 

thick with water and salt.

 

 

1

(more than anything)

I believe

that I am real.

 

2

My joy doesn't

need me.

 

3

I delight in old remnants

that are ridiculed as rags

 

4

I am hurt by the hubris

that kills children

 

P e a c e

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the cold rain

the bumbles are again

creeping in and out of the rotten stump, 

visiting low lying heather.

Brood and death

are their daily lives.

They're a community

often tested by stress -

internal power struggles,

bee hungry hornets,

humans that see only empty lots 

where they've had family plots 

for generations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 small poems

 

 1

c left

clef t

2

itidatemashita

onegaishimasu

kudasai

3

gallinas

gallinas

vinte quatro ovos

e

um galo castanho

sozinho

each

and

every

 

We're not lost 

in leisure

nor John Clares

worked to the bone -

I'd call us

river stone,

clearly worn

but still here

reading 

Flannery and Eudora

storied

lives

sliced

once

or twice

with sound

the particular

unknown

then again

lost in  it

_______________________

umbilicus   mundo 

________________________

the appearance of

the walk 2

the walk
a caminhada

steps are lines of sight
one foot down 

two feet forward
stop
or pause
to see
to remember
memorize
and then continue

________________________

os passos são linhas de visão
um pé para baixo 

dois pés para a frente
parar
ou fazer uma pausa
para ver
para recordar
memorizar
e depois continuar

Nunca estou sozinho
Estou sempre sozinho

 Last

hours of sun -

greeted by a lizard

a podengo

the meow of a peacock.

 

Última

horas de sol -

saudado por um lagarto

um podengo

o miado de um pavão.

the walk 1

the walk

began

downhill

still on a sidewalk

veered under

an overpass and then again

up,

cobbled, asphalt.

Old shoulders.

Cinders pocked

with rubbish.

Without a destination

other than to surprise the eye

I pass plants

called wayward

or weed.

 

Calla palustris

Wild tobacco

growing

without gardens, 

unbound.

In neighborhoods around them, 

caverned stumps

clotted with bumble bees

knees white with pollen.

 

Persian ivy

bristled bare where rusted fence intersects pole and stone -

these all wrapping land that began cultivation centuries ago.

 

 

I know each earthen plot on earth has a story.

 

Common milk thistle

Knapweed

and thistle again

wherever a home once was.

 

Groundsel swallowing lawns and pasture.

Woad and weld,

close by, dyers plants,

forgotten.

 

Swedish ivy

strangling pear,

past fruiting.

Scrambling gromwell

blue motes

navel wort,

old stones.

 

plangent too

you

returning home

uttering

"everything".

 

 

uprooted limão

and sorrowful marmelo

too late

too early 

to fruit

More the physicality of 

moving through

where you are are

blank and back

So many pages left, events remembered, left unwritten, due to what? I want to say the cold, but that's an old excuse, cave-borne, and doesn't quite say it, relay the extent of the mind blankness, the creeping self-doubt and overwhelming course of personal  events, bomb ticks, I've felt .  Vanish'd sight.

But you do go on, until you don't.

Afterthoughts ought to come in, and begin you again.

All losses are restor'd, and sorrow's end.

 

 

 

 

 

30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

 

  flâneuse

Woolf called it “street haunting” 

Sophie Calle, whose celebrated career began the day that, out of boredom, she began secretly following people in the street whom she had chosen arbitrarily

Suite Vénitienne 

Flânerie, the great war reporter Martha Gellhorn told Victoria Glendinning, “is as necessary as solitude: that is how the compost keeps growing in the mind”.

This is a kind of micro-reporting, telling the world not what happened at a meeting between generals, but how much a loaf of bread mattered to an architect and his children.In her dedication to exposing misery, Gellhorn turned flânerie into testimony.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/29/female-flaneur-women-reclaim-streets

many words undone

but one 

seems to always remain,

or two -

you are grateful for that.

 year

near

gone

 

 

Aqui jaz um grande poeta.

Nada deixou escrito.

Este silêncio, acredito,

são suas obras completas.»

(Paulo Leminski, La Vie en Close)

"Here lies a great poet.

Nothing left unwritten.

This silence, I believe,

are His finished works "

(Paulo Leminski, Life Close)

It's 

not

you

but love

this

too

Sometimes 

I am overwhelmed

by my

aloneness

 

a solitude that resembles

the breathless

exuberance

of  a running child.

 

Sometimes

I let it go

this 

precious

brilliant

solitude -

remains 

of which

surround me

like spent flowers

nothing

as far as

I can see

 1

a deserted street

lamplight

in the

cold dark 

____________

2

lap

cat

attached

adapting

to

you

_______________

酔ひふしのところはここか蓮の花

yoi (drunkenness) he (place) fushi (notable place)  

no (possessive)tokoro (yadori-inn) wa koko (individual) ka (?) 

basu no hana  (lotus flower)

Is this the inn of drunkenness ? lotus flower

Is this the lotus flower where the drunkard is?

Is this the place to get drunk or is it the lotus flower?

https://ameblo-jp.translate.goog/mtada99/entry-12474308573.html?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

_________________

gi di na weyn' di min

 

we are all related to each other 

 

________________

 

o nado da pata emite um brilho brilhante

 

O pato enjaulado não faz nada.
Libertem-na!
Depois, a andar, a nadar ou a voar
ela torna-se
um instrumento

luminoso
de luz

 

the paw swimming emits a brilliant glow

 

The caged duck does nothing.
Release her!
Then walking, swimming or flying
she becomes
a luminous
instrument
of light

____________________________

redundâncias de discurso

Recitar narrativas
Ter pronto um pequeno livro de contos memorizados
para usar como armadura
para proteger
o seu coração 

Recite narratives
Have ready a small book of memorised tales
to use as armor
to protect
your heart 

______________________________

"We can change the pest by not making it the last chapter"

______________________________

 

 

 

 

 simply looking

shuttered life open

optioned also

sleep

with or without

dreams

 

My mother told

how the smell of an orange

at Christmas 

delighted her

so rare there in the snow

when America was poorer

 

but really

there were many oranges 

somewhere else

a not uncommon fruit

or fragrance

 

(matter out of place)

her daughter

 

accustomed now 

to avocados

passion fruit

cannot name their season

 

Both

plentitudes

 

entering

memory 

become

canticles

to presumption

I also sing an ode to

 

the unused,

an obsolete

Transistor radio 

held to my ear

once indispensable

I  recall

isn't 

necessary at all 

 

or  a beloved  object 

 repurposed

that

At ten 

you jumped with

at seventy

used

to tie the terrace bench to the wall

against the winds

you know are coming

 

no more

no more

no less

than this

how small one life

not difficult to describe

in fact, a chorus of sounds

repetitive, not entirely original

not wholly elegaic

 

unexpectedly punctuated

by  a joy

 

not entirely revealed.

 

 

 

 

 

 first full night's sleep in ages

that feeling

of surrender

overwhelmed

beyond resistance

Waking naturally at six

with a thirst

for water and morning

cedar 

birch

acacia

it's all ground down into dust

I pine away

for spruce

yellow and spilling sap

 

on the hill

above my terrace 

eucalyptus are

leading closed lives

as immigrants do

 

while all around them

garden plots nudge

girdled cork

 

the wind distorts 

the lowing pines

as sycamore lining streets

are sheared like sheep

 

willows, willows

where are you?

 

beyond

the norfolk spines

and palms full of weevils

are camelia crowded dells,

vine-strangled, ghosts

 

I search along

a stream

for willows

finding few

 

but knew tamarisk

would be here

and poplar

 

wiping away nostalgia

 

I return to Porto

to be sweet gummed

and ginkoed

 

 

 

 

 Ariadne 

Minos' daughter

led Theseus to

slaughter

the Minotaur

her half-brother

John Virtue

Eddie Tay

they influence me

gidinawendimin

gidinawendimin

miigwech

miigwech

minobimaadiziwin

 

I pray that even I 

a foreigner

who pushed herself

to live across seas

far, far away

isolate but never alone

may send breath

back into you

words, words

my home

We are all related, we are all related, thank you, thank you, the good life

 

 

An epistemic bubble is a social epistemic structure in which other relevant voices have been left out, perhaps accidentally. An echo chamber is a social epistemic structure from which other relevant voices have been actively excluded and discredited.

 

an echo of

seas

valleys

 

breaking glass

the past

 

cardinal

cormorant

galinha

 

have begun

each one

their

 

revolutionary

flight of

the ordinary

 

encircling

 

a person

a planet

a star

 

 

 

gaivotas

gallinas

pavões

pombos
papagaios
patos

pessoas
no parque
pássaros
passeando

___________

flores caídas à volta da camélia

 

 

wet from rain

old blooms ring

the camelia

a circle

of brilliant pink

beautiful and dying

in the fading winter light

 Gimikwenden ina?

 Do you remember

that even smashed it's reassembled.

Someone bring the glue.

You, too, glue yourself together.

__________________________

 

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

 

 

___________________________

 

 

I showed you the word.

You said 

It's just a word. 

Words don't mean anything.

 

Have you no respect for the letters, one following another, that have to hold so much?

 

Gimikwended ina?

 

I took the tablets I made to commemorate

 

minobimaadizin

 

and struck them down. 

What right have I to that word?

 

It rarely snows here,

so my tears will have to fall like rain.

My tears here are equally cold, but without their white-starred complexity.

I simply weep here, a salty sea

for every one and thing suffering everywhere.

 

 

 ________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't want to be your relative, family of man, 

said the sheep.

You are a family full of murderous intentions, arrogant and ungrateful.

 

Leave us be, 

said the clouds.

We aren't interested in your revelatory self-reflections.

 

Calma, calma,

said the far-off stars.

They are each briefly bright before they dim to nothingness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

grutas, gritos
unem-nos
ruínas, risos
elevam-nos
sorrisos sórdidos
fazem-nos 

chorar 

mas
sob os soluços
somos sempre

um coro de cores

_______________

caves, screams
unite us
ruins, laughter
lift us up
sordid smiles
make us 

weep

but
under sobs
we are always

a chorus of colors
 

 Long ago,

I made memories

to help me through

that  never really 

made me safe.

Those I've lost,

tossed them

on a fire, with 

ancestor

lies,

mean friends

and cruel men.

I'm sure I'm not through.

More fires to come. A winter's worth of flames! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I notice

as I age

that

the spaces within

begin to fill,

not always 

wisely.

I find

cruelty,

pettiness,

envy. 

The uncertain nature of life

begins

to nudge death,

complaining.

Yet my own

happiness,

small bird,

fledged,

takes flight,

never surrenders.

 

 

 slowly illness passes

looking at dawn

wind in the eucalyptus

blue hills, colder vale

 

se ud ved daggry

vinden i eukalyptustræerne

blå bakker, koldere dal

 

ao amanhecer

vento nos eucaliptos

colinas azuis, vale mais frio

 

 

 

Boys beating up math teachers 

an old Danish professor

a young woman prone to gaming and music

 

 

Sickness makes me stay at home.

So I fix the things I thought I couldn't

a broken blind

a leak

as I seek to still.

Then, after quiet,

I fill up again

with listening.

 

Pain in right ear

clearly bruxism again

as I grind my way out of worry

for a nephew hospitalized

or the madness of friends

I remind myself

these cannot endure

the returns of

the web, the orbed egg sac

or

the wavering vee

of swans

Zoropsis spinimana

 

 

I hope to find another 

 

As I watch little orb mother

near the sill plants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hairy Rose Beetle

 Tropinota squalida

hairy rose beetle

 

Crudely painted plaster saints

on folding tables wait -

so many of them!

An old woman prays aloud,

a plea to Saint Rita,

as I trace

mould on the door,

creeping down to the floor

from the water-stained nave.

thoughts, november

What this life listens to - how much terrible noise we humans make.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

w i n d   p o e m  - V i l a  d ' E s t e

 

early winter storm

nothing rigid will survive

so I strive for bent

flex, arc, crook, curve, bow and now

spring back after, unbroken

2

everywhere

in the house

I am outside

3

N o v e   a n d a r e s

9 nono             não existe

8 oitavo           céu lindo

7 sétimo          cães e pessoas barulhentas

6 sexto            uma aparição

 
5 quinto          silêncio  

4 quarto          ou cozinhas

 

3 terceiro        música do outro tempo

2 segundo       afirmação de boa vontade 

 
1 primeiro      dez mil passos

 
res de chão    grutas e sepulturas

 

 

 

 

  

lua e arvore

 Dezasseis luas já passaram e ainda não consegui sair de sarashina.

438 Basho trans. Joãquim M. Palma

At Obusate I will fall

with no one there at all

even the moon

can't see 

me a tree 

in an agony forest

migrating north

 "Didn't leave much, did she? Not much for a life, is it?" - Vera S6 Ep3 Pt2

 

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. - Chimamanda Adichie

 

Laotzu might even have said: The wise man is without bones, like water. - Byunh-chul Han, Absence