To soar above
The shadows of eucalyptus trees
And touch the sky with my toes

I
memorize
your steps
in the rain
and sing
whenever you come near
you
touch my hair
calm my day
and I fall asleep
believing that you love me

Almada

in my portraits how beautiful my father, my grandfather and my uncle were. how perfect the light was on my mother and grandmother's shoulders. how small our hands were when they intersected each other like wild bodies.

Rose. The most perfect rose
Stained the snow
Sinking into the grave
I never knew its name
And she never knew
Of my existence
God made her perfect
But that rose. So perfect. Stained the snow where we all walk.

She, petal by petal,
On the ground, in the sky of her mouth, in the breath of the earth.
She was sublime, recited by Virgil or Solon,
In every stanza, a ship crosses me, ablaze, heading to her.
She sleeps, and I, at her feet.

My mistake was so simple
and death so dramatic
thus silence,
that beast,
annihilated through emptiness
everything that was within me.

Spit on the ground.
Begin the most terrible of wars
with someone who hears you
dragging your armor through the hush of dawn.

Strike the final flame.
Let it light the streets
where wild bodies ripple like fire.
Howls, heavy with iron,
as we sip from the herb of night
the tender intimacy of a goodbye.

Extreme. Absolute.
A green star, fallen
on careless earth,
between mud and water—
human reflections.

Let no one bring love.
The cruel illusion
of still being a child
is unbearable.

A whole morning, fasting.
I want to drink my wine
standing.

Stereophonic love, pulsing.
You, a nameless sweetness —
your flattened warmth lies south
of my body’s sacred meridian.
I adore the grace of your breast.

I believe in your lacework love,
so tender, so absurd.

Give me a kiss,
a glass of water,
an act of faith.

Dress my aching chest in beauty,
feed the fire of my coughing fits,
unfasten my trousers
and let me walk barefoot
through the blaze of your tundra.

Unbutton your blouse —
you are my Diana, my Ophelia.
I want to fall asleep inside your oracle.

Let me steal the tangled pendant
dangling at your throat —
my hunger sobs
just to hold it.

Strange passion, this one,
of touching the equation of shoulders
and dreaming like a stone-wise man
– I already feel the spherical shapes of time
as if it were too late for us to sing.

I want to inhabit you
like a swallow in spring,
I want to dive into your flesh
and sin until there's no salvation left


15/Almada

a fire carp
on a shoulder it burns
just skin and scales

Nothing disturbs the surface of the waters
until a dead and unfathomable time
shows us the way home.

You tell me that words build the world,
that cities are made to stimulate encounters,
and that in love, silences have a magical and phenomenological intention.

And I tell you that the days float above death,
that men are born from the barren wombs of solitude
to the solitude of rooms, and to the solitude of coffee shops and streets.

Tell me if I also float above death,
if there is solitude in us,
tell me, if the love that remains in us is only the movement of verses in extinct poems.

10/Almada

She entered the small red room. He was by the window. She remained still, the geometric matrix of light softening her form as she swayed around her own axis. He ignored her.

Winter Mary – Do you hear that noise? It sounds like people sobbing. Listen now… do you hear it?

Blossom John – I don’t hear anything, Winter. Did you see Magic? She went out the window to the roof a while ago and hasn’t come back yet. Magic!!! Pchi Pchi Pchi…

Winter Mary – She must have gone after the cats – magical smile.

Blossom John – The only cat in her life is me, Winter – brusque and teasing.

They both laughed loudly. Blossom, in the meantime, had turned inward and tried to reach for Winter Mary, but she stepped back into a corner.

Blossom John – What’s wrong? Come on, don’t be like that, you’re my little cat too.

Winter Mary – *******, Blossom…

Blossom John – What!? Did the moon change or something… what’s going on? – he threw himself onto a large, dusty red armchair.

Winter Mary – Nothing. I just don’t like it when you say that.

Blossom John – What? That you’re a cat?

Winter Mary – No, that I’m yours. I don’t belong to anyone or any ******* thing. You should know that by now. – She opened her robe and let it slip slightly off her shoulders.

She stood there, half-naked before Blossom John. Her slender body, ivory-like, was simply beautiful.

Blossom John – And what’s that for? To turn me on?

Winter Mary – No. I don’t believe you can be turned on anymore.

Blossom John – Even if I could, what difference would it make? You can shove all the **** you want inside you, you don’t need me for anything.

Winter Mary – Sometimes you really are a ******* animal. – She tightened the robe around her waist, leaving only one breast exposed, like a moon.

Blossom John suddenly stood up and leaned out the window again.

Blossom John – Come on… Pchi Pchi Pchi!!! Magic, come home.

Winter Mary – Close the **** window, I can’t stop hearing people sobbing, it’s getting on my nerves.

Blossom John – I still don’t hear anything. Maybe it’s coming from the floor. – He lay down and pressed his ear against the wooden boards. – Or maybe it’s just your imagination.

Winter Mary – You’re so ridiculous.

Blossom John got up, smiling.

Blossom John – Hey, let’s go out. It’s Lilac’s birthday today, she’s expecting us at 8 at the Paradise. – He moved closer to her without touching her. – I want you to look beautiful. It’s been a long time since you got beautiful for me.

Winter Mary – Beautiful like a woman or like a *****?

Blossom John – Like the best of ******.

They both smiled. She walked away, raising her ******* high, and locked herself in the bathroom. He turned back to the window.

Winter Mary shouted – Do you think it’ll be cold downtown later?

Blossom John – What!? No. How could it be cold!? Didn’t you hear the ******* news? Today’s the hottest day of the year… maybe of our lives.

Winter Mary – What an exaggeration.

Blossom John – Sometimes you worry me. You’re too distracted, too distant from all the simple things.

Winter Mary – If you loved me, you’d worry less. – She murmured, barely moving her lips, as she drew a thick black line around her eyes.

Blossom John – What did you say?

Winter Mary – I asked what you’re going to wear.

Blossom John – The shirt you gave me on your birthday. Of course.

Winter Mary – I threw it away.

Blossom John – What?

Winter Mary – I threw it away. Along with the lipstick marks it had from the last time you wore it. I think it was last week when you went out with Oom.

Blossom John – You did well. They say that **** is hard to get out of shirts.

Winter Mary – Whose was it, may I ask?

Blossom John – What?

Winter Mary – The lipstick.

Blossom John – Some random girl, nothing important. I don’t even remember her name.

Winter Mary – At least you took her home?

Blossom John – I paid for her cab. Why?

Winter Mary – No woman deserves to be abandoned by you, Blossom.

Blossom John – You’re so dramatic sometimes, love. – He said, smiling.

Winter Mary returned to the room, and Blossom John was already holding Magic gently in his arms.

Blossom John – Look who came home, Winter… look who came back to me.

Winter Mary – You really are a mountain where all women crash.

Blossom John – What? No way, right my little one? – He said to the cat, rubbing his face against hers.

Winter Mary – Are you ready? Weren’t you afraid of being late?

Blossom John – See, little one? They make me leave you here alone. You’ll miss me, won’t you?

Winter Mary – Oh God!!!!

He gently placed the cat on the sofa. The cat purred and curled her head between her paws, the bell on her collar jingling softly. Blossom John stood there for a few seconds, just watching. He felt at peace with it.

Blossom John – Did you give her water and food in her little dish?

Winter Mary – Yes. And poison, lots of poison. But don’t worry, it’s the good kind of poison.

They took a cab, and in less than ten minutes, they were going down the avenue. When they arrived at the party, Lilac was at the door waiting to greet them.

Lilac – Here comes the couple I envy the most. If love took a form, it would undoubtedly be the way you look at Blossom, and vice versa.

Winter Mary – What an exaggeration, darling. I’d say it’s more like the way you look at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

Lilac smiled, showing her teeth stained with red lipstick. Winter Mary kissed her coldly on the cheek.

Winter Mary – Thanks for inviting us.

My Philosophy (If I Have One)
Seek to reveal all the mysteries
that made your existence possible.

You defy all the foundations of reason,
you escape every universal law
that governs the motion of celestial bodies,
the power of alchemy, and the possibility of love.

There is nothing more beautiful in the world than your essence,
the eternal dawn that you are, where I always awaken.

20/Almada

The carp is hundreds of years old,
so is my story.
We speak the same dialect of time.

I know about the solitude of the night,
what does she knows about the river’s current

From the tongue of mirrors,
toward the geometry of vines.
The fierce ferment of distant years,
our perpetual paths.

We wither in the whirlwind of days,
virtuous man – ogre man,
no one knows.

They call us,
The dead.
Lamenting the sway of entire fields of grain.
They,
With a mantle of countless lives we owe,
Call us.
When we quench the rough throat,
When we lay down the axes,
When we bow and pray,
When we strive and live.

They killed my dog because he couldn’t read.

He didn’t know how to drive a car or fly a plane.
But he spoke a strange language—his own—not from here.
He didn’t go to beauty salons, restaurants, or church.
In fact, he prayed to a dog god, different from the dog of God of those who killed him.

he was a happy dog. that's why he's dead.
We no longer see happiness as something natural.
We can’t stand anyone less miserable than we are.

And so, on a warm morning,
with nothing worth reading in the newspaper,
without a trial, they killed him.

BAMMM!!!
Three shots to the neck and seven stab wounds to the heart.

He didn't breathe again.

For me, the dead dog didn’t even look like a dog.
(I hesitate to say what it looked like.)

And now I play chess alone, because he couldn’t read...

20/Almada

Breton’s BLUE tongue
Breton’s blue TONGUE

Like a fantastic harp

- nommer les nuages -

Ships beneath rain-drenched seagulls.
The sea surrenders idleness to the land.

Only the one
who tastes
the poison
of time
knows,
the death
of the rose.


Almada/99

Ulysses, I walk upon incandescent waters.
I change the course of the melancholic sun.
And the music has many heads, and the wine many *******.
And this is the terrible mathematics, material for dreams.

We talked. We read newspapers. We read old magazines. The banished poets. There's nothing of that left, we said.
I stopped and looked at you. I stripped the darkness of a secret from my body. I am alone. Where are you? One more verse and our life ends. In this very second. I'm going to bed to play statue while sleep devours me.


Lisboa/98

Scant aegis, insular wasteland
in the infernal roar of the cliffs,
the sea breathes with its black manes.
Searching in the empty wombs of women
for the word of prayer,
the single and vital principle of all things.

Were you the sweet music of wine
the perfect shape of embrace
and the peace that doesn’t exist           in my mind.

And when we lifted our arms, night had already fallen
– our heavy heads spoke with the blazing stars.

In the brightness of death,
the day opens your shoulders,
Wings grow
The roots of the trees pierce deep into your veins
The time of love runs dry
Darkened mouths touch petrified sexes
Pleasures becomes barren and rough
The soul is no longer inside the body
It fills the emptiness of something else

(I speak to you of my experience of writing for what is fleeting)

11/Almada

Golden garden – portals of mist.
The trees upright in beautiful drowsiness.
Pale moon, boundless and restless, stirs the soul...
Naked horse.

And the water flowed,
folded on the wing,
like one who turns a page of the wind
– and our speech, what was it then?

THEN the morning was a long way to reach you, I wrote with ashes the wounds in music as if god MOVED in the grass.

A transparent cat stares at a distant desert with no one there.
A tree burns and screams.
Mad death devours a green fruit.
Stone *******. Stone with *******.
Wreckage of sea and sky—
and the moon did not come.
Cracked earth in the chest-hollow of a beast.
****** footprints everywhere.
Hands grinding the water.
Wine falls as rain,
a flower dissolves in the ash of the day.
Slow surface—
and a bird appears, barely distinguishable.
At last, a stroke that emerged by mistake.

Kafka,
Prague is poorly lit.
A guest at a cheap boarding house smokes on the balcony of his room – he contemplates the movement of the Vltava – the river’s dark reverie chills the soul.
A newspaper lies across his lap, the front page reads: How to Be a Good Cockroach.
The man goes back inside; that night, he dreamed.

What remains of you is flower-smoke,
A white dream of cold lava and sorrow.

Ashes of your days—
a sleep of birds
in the grey murmur of rain.

What remains is the weary strength of struggle,
Night’s sweat in the scent of the house,
The moan of lovers in love’s first bloom.

And what remains—
the dead script with which I devour you,
and the silence with which I adore you.

With a sweep of the sword,
I cut through time, step in, and watch—
Your father sketching in the garden,
Your mother lifeless in the cellar.

To write, one must first think.
Thought cuts like a blade;
It, too, reshapes the world.

But it does not change mine.

you
as if I spoke with a soft knife
water
or a
kiss
a pure kiss

Almada