CIDADE VERMELHA

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed

I am so very sorry for
my wife

she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again

"Hank!"

Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.

- Charles Bukowski


Milk Drop Coronet, 1957 - © Harold Edgerton

Até agora eu não me conhecia,
julgava que era Eu e eu não era
Aquela que em meus versos descrevera
Tão clara como a fonte e como o dia.
Mas que eu não era Eu não o sabia
mesmo que o soubesse, o não dissera...
Olhos fitos em rútila quimera
Andava atrás de mim... e não me via!
Andava a procurar-me - pobre louca!-
E achei o meu olhar no teu olhar,
E a minha boca sobre a tua boca!
E esta ânsia de viver, que nada acalma,
E a chama da tua alma a esbrasear
As apagadas cinzas da minha alma!

- Florbela Espanca

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

- William S. Burroughs

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be

For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap

And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Five Dollars with Che,1998 - © Pedro Meyer

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

- Charles Bukowski

The Melancholic Tulip, 1939 - © Andrè Kertèsz

Tears, 1932-33 - © Man Ray

Nota: Agrada-me pensar que se "Raio Homem" fosse luso, esta imagem chamar-se-ia Saudade.

Kiss at the Hôtel de Ville, 1950 - © Robert Doisneau

Há emoções, como a que emana da visita a firmamentos longínquos, que se imprimem perenes em indecifráveis hieróglifos na rocha do tempo que se deixa por consumir. Ocorre por vezes seus objectos serem os resgatados da berma da vereda cujo trilho se julga erroneamente um passo mais morto por cada passo que o ultrapassa, cujos traços decorridos se recordam transmutados em tatuagem cardíaca, a cores de gáudio ou de tristeza. A indiferença, subtil arte tangente ao erro irrecorrível, não se vislumbra nestes prados. Esta é a paisagem que pertence a uma linguagem para além das palavras e dos gestos, feita de trocas de temperaturas, campos eléctricos e saltos quânticos, do fascínio de peitos abertos pelo externo, revelando um miolo sorridente quando ao meu núcleo és luz intensa apontada que ao iluminar-me me deixa ver-me tal como o teu reflexo em mim. Contente, quando me abres a tua porta e me convidas para um chá de menta e chocolates e me encaminhas pelo teu castelo e me acomodas no teu mais confortável divã e me permites sondar-te enquanto me investigas.

Todo o tempo perdido contigo é tempo de ganho para mim.