Like well-kept secrets

A wrecking ball plunging forward
independent of control,
unmistakable and unforgiving.
Destroying creating,
thumping down grounds of thick sludge and concrete,
making way for itself but soon others can see
the amalgamation of things, the particles now the prairie, the landscape forever changing, the eye but a moment, the then never recurring, the multitude of movement, the vicinities of thought, the remoteness of complexion, the stupidity in comparison, the drive, the need, the must of unique, the race to know nothing and feel everything at once, the occasional pause
the despair to erase memory, the effort to preserve it, the wonderings that seep off the lid of Pandora, the momentous physicality, the false connection, the primitive musk alive as the heat which sustains it, the ephemeral sense of freedom, the fading of fear, the consequence of time tumble and rumble under its spherical weight, lost in momentum this unstoppable force.

It's Five in the Morning: Do You Know Where You Are?

I am what nature made me. I am the centre of the universe.
I am nothing and all things speaking really, really fast.

      Sometimes I embrace the spirit Walden left behind.
To up and go from the carbonate lulling of the tide;
to take up arms alongside - the humming of the oak,
the scent of thoughts.

Other times I become
Patriot of cities, lover of hedonism;
a romance short lived
as to question the truth behind romance and tricks.

Cut like a cantaloupe,
in half - I exist
as you who are bold and soft.

You live your days on electropop.
Make it good, make it loud -
whatever's on, whatever's hot.
Like creatures of myth riding into war,
for tomorrow when you are closest to death
lapsed memories come to fade in your head.
Bangitty bang the battles you have fought
like wrapped sheets shrivel back down the melting pot.

It's five in the morning: do you know where you are?

You leave the darkness from whence you came,
some kid comes along and asks you for change.
Ragged clothes, no shoes on -
How about that vodka you just blew fifty on?

It comes back to you one hit first:
     what would your father think?
     Is this why your mother gave birth?
Had you been clear you'd think for love,
equality; maybe an end to poverty.
But tonight nose runny and eyes like a dome,
you just wish the child had never left home.

The dark at its worst 
he should be sleeping for school.
But who are you to know which 
way leaves bend when they meet with summer hue.
Mouth with him as he goes: "It's five in the morning,
you look like a fool".

Cold sweat like caverns in spring - 
you could tell him your truth
to up and go from where you came, all he does not know.
"I can't speak to the concrete"
your voice a godless whisper, should not have played in the snow.

You reason with youth -
you are what you are and that makes it okay
to live through this night and sleep through the day.
For tomorrow when you are closest to death,
      you'll think of leaves lapping gently on trees by the riverbed.

October

How delightful it is to see squirrels
scuttle around grassy graveyards,
making tiny rackets over auburn
leaves, playing hide and seek behind tired
 tombs. Fresh in the morning,
dew still loitering,
the child sun seeks out cracks and crevasses,
phantoms and little girls with little flowers –
unaware of the greater depth that
this ground takes – which from above,
remain faithful to the loveliest of autumn days.

The Little Sections that Relieve Me

Bending gently the small twig that made up mankind, I sit at that bench and wait for the 63 bus, in sunny hue underneath park trees.

She mellows her hands in tepid little waterfalls, rinsing the porcelain platters made of her grandmother’s bones, and if she turns the right tap two and a half times, it sings out alone, alone, alone.

He says a sneeze carries one percent of the soul, its fleeting particles dismember you into the travelling winds; and as he sneezes onto her that is when she knows, that is when she knows she will be sleeping with the stars tonight.

She seemed delighted when you experimented with submerging your ears beneath the shadowy waters of the darkly blue pool to see if the day would collapse any differently. Twenty-three years have washed and you remain breathing into the waters by the eroded banks; fleetingly through our eroded days. If only you could remember her name -

You drop your hair long, long on the same earth the lilies sprang from and you smile like you’re used to being told that you’re trouble…

They waved their hands in time; in time to see the waves come back; in time to see her skirt’s quite short; in time to see the waves had gone again, and then it wasn’t amusing anymore.

Remember the day you remembered you never really spoke to your father, but by then you were too large to ask the silly thing you thought of that summer when the last soap bubble kissed the grass.

In the Attic

The boy speaks in tongues
and sometimes it is hard,
it is hard sometimes, to relate -
if he will grow up
what is the point.
If he will grow out of his toys,
if he should grow up
what is the point of there being a boy?

Under the skylight he sits and spatters,
he listens intensely to bits and matters -
crackling the spine of his phases,
caressing the eyars. Brushes his cheek
on old wood pine pages,
and flicks, twitches, picks and splatters,
and dims, switches and licks his lips faster -

the sun shines through his wood pine hair.
He likes the warmth, and sits and looks
lightly, light binding his boyish stare;
for it glares too brightly, for it is forever there.
So he lays on old wood pine and shades
his little face, hands and girly nails,
as he rolls and grunts, tries to whistle and slumps,
and scratches and picks the earth
in his nails and licks, just to see what
earth tastes like; and he does as he does
because he knows nobody knows.

And he does as he does because he knows an awful lot -
alas, as suspected, just as he thought!
It tasted of bubbles and mud, wars and chicken like
spud. And he sits where he sits, the sun is his enemy,
but the stuff is still stuffy, his hands getting clammy -
so he rubs and he pulls and he coughs and he tugs, and
he stops to think maybe he does not know all that much.
But one scowls at the rubbish – it is hard sometimes,
as his palms shower down in thundry drums and he
hums and he hums and he hums and he hums.
Such delightful rhythm but speaking in tongues;
his language is daring, his eyes domineering,
and all the while he imagines Peter Pan peering -

badoom, badoom the glory of noise!
Badoom who would have thought he was coy.
His mother will love him more than he does -
but what is the point of getting there first.
Little drummer he is, stardust his toy.
If he hummed in a man’s world,
no one would hear this little boy

Nocracy

Soft, soft, the ground caves in.
And the calendar shows you’ve been running thin,
for the letters in your head are all shapes in a cave
meandering slightly,
forgotten but secretly safe -

and your grandma is bellowing “Oh my days!”
As if it weren’t enough to remind you of when
you weren’t there and the town was another place,
if only you could have seen her smile then.

Pagliuca, Pagliuca! Stop sipping that Snakebite.
Your attendance is poor and your focus is shite.
If only you tried a little harder you might,
but the ways of the world are clear and drole,
and you are left to believe in a satisfied soul.
That is easier than raising your voice,
even more so than ignoring the chore of a choice.

Despair is little when you are lairy oh Larry numb.
The anaesthetic which spreads from finger to thumb,
in a rattle of what sounds like African drums
and the clicking and the typing and the silence of the Texum.

A whale of a time for a while in a way,
gets you thinking of all them other days
where you felt and flicked, not scurried and clicked
and in the loving of Nabokov there was no shame.

But the digital, digital gunning of sin
crept up as those gangrened from cancer of skin.
Soft, soft, the ground caves in
and the calendar shows you’ve been running thin.

But lo, and behold, the Emperor is dead -
If I’m losing the benefits you may as well take my head.
For the books have set fire, for you have made your own bed.
Reluctantly shadow behind those who have shed the remorse,
the passion, the purpose, the regret,

Seemingly reasonless to reason what seems,
the intolerable arrogance of those who tolerate and deem
well, the lines of the high stands of the pitches of Win,
But soft, soft as the ground caves in
and the calendar shows my friend, you are running thin.

The Country

I want to leave my heart in the country,
and learn from the art of living.
I want to part from self induced cynicism
that numbs my longing for the simple.

That’s not it.
I want to be special and unspecial enough,
to dispense the namecard, the contracts and the mind lard.
I would rather feel the velvet of the sky instead.

More than that,
I want to be content in knowing that others are growing
by pitying my simple-minded lost soul.
I long for the longing to let go of scrutiny and laugh
alongside human insecurity.

No, that isn't it. I wish them well
despite the jealousies of this condescending city life.
I condemn the frail spirit that keeps me
from ploughing the garden or reciting Yutang,
without having satire stinging my tongue,
and guilt weigh upon
my already heavy, hollow heart.

On the way to Stratford-upon-Avon

My humorous head is

married to a frustrating memory,

and much like any odd couple

quarrel over the silliest of treacheries.

But if I remember as so,

there was a neatly trimmed graveyard

where only old women would bother to go,

decorate the tombs –

with white, blue and Golden balloons.

The song of Summer trees –

savoured in flowery cobwebs

and polite little fleas,

over looking war heroes who were

you and I when the Earth took them in.

I saw a burnt down barn

simmering through its rusty skeleton,

where a boy escaped chores

and lay, in lazy hay, beside restless young boars.

And his children,

and their children, tangled with lovers in the attic –

navigating through the wonders of static whisperings.

There goes the soul of secrecy,

and the seemingly timeless murmurings of naïve indescretions by the crickets.

I felt dock leaves and stinging nettles,

wind blown hair and scratchy skin;

a world far too great to fit the one within.

So I sit at the nook of a tree

as a final blanket of sun lights with the breeze,

and the stars begin their travels with fruitful ascent.

Church bells knoll and pastor lights fade from the sky.

And as fulfilling a day as this could have been,

I seem unprepared to bid England goodbye.

The Driver

He said "Get in the car, my friend",
and I didn't know what to say.
Stepping hard, he showed no fear;
the night was young as we drove away.

He looked into the rearview mirror
and saw my youthful eyes,
then pulling on his old man whiskers
he clarified all lies.

He claimed that money was the greatest
misfortune to all our souls;
and visions seen by the bravest,
memories of which bring them foe.

He told me stories of Kathmandu,
and the Kings of the spiraling sands;
of purity in the black man's shoes,
and civilizations raised by their hands.

At last he told me that life is but one precious breathe to hold.
That he knew nothing else, other than to never let this go.

The Passing

You find yourself so Original
with kissing backs and ear lobes,
with verses of love and private anecdotes -
the source of ingenuity, truth be told,
has passed from my lover's lips to those kissing your own.
And in passionate stumbles our lovers unfold,
from being poets to commoners -
utterly sold souls.

Our love resonates in similar ways,
what only time can prove true or fake.
Though we do not whisper love words for love's sake
a world of our own we recreate, filled with
blissful encounters of stories heard before.
I'll wait to see
not too expectantly -
the tides wash away our vows from the shore.

A Fumaça

Quando eu era moleque,

os cabelos cheio de peste,

eu pensava ser dono do mundo.

O meu mundo que sumia de mês em mês,

na Rua do Picadouro, casa quarenta e seis,

até que enfim fui rebaixado a freguês.

Pois a fumaça que cercava o telhado

com papo de adulto e cheiro de gato molhado

caiu no alcance das minhas unhas ruídas.

Agora que sei lavo bem as mãos,

derrubou-se a casa de telha à chão

e a ideia se foi num cheque de barão.

Enquanto encanto meninas com minhas histórias sofridas,

de cabelos de peste e unhas ruídas –

meu mundinho, memórias pica-dor meu coração.

Take Me Back to Star City

Things are a little fuzzy now. I dream that I’m awake; walking with my eyes closed. A floating brain, a pine tree in Cape Town, a cape tree in pine town. Take me back to Star City. I want to dream of the place that tastes like 1997 and steals my second breath out of every three.

Didn’t have Ol’Doc play the harmonica when I was a kid, but I miss him anyway. My tongue tries to wet the cracklings of my lips, flailing about for excuses but I got none. Cracker jacks and lollipops, band-aids and cough drops. What the hell are Cracker jacks?

See, you grow up then you grow old, and if you stay young you grow old and if you don’t love then you don’t grow. That’s like loveless loving for lovers who know that loveless loving leads to letting go. This is my loving promise to not let you go. And if I do, my father Time told me to, sorry. And Mr. Time is playing tricks on our temperate minds as your youth is given much sense as my old.

Too young to act as I say, I’m forty three and the world is a little older than me. Since that’s how it goes I think it knows best, so I’ll leave the thinkers to think and the world to rest. Close my eyes and I’m back at nineteen when I didn’t know I even had a spleen and all I wanted to do was to have sex with you. Confusing your eyes with other ladies’ thighs - what a mess of an age. I’d give up seven years of what I have for one year of having that. Passionate promises, sweaty conglomerates fulfilling like a short summer dream.


I awake again and I’m thirty three. Only the devil and the postman know what is wrong with me. But there is more to the feel of a pen than the psychobabble of a blind man. I sang in the blues and my God! You knew before I told you. Doesn’t take a war to know that self pity is cruel. My mind is a lost season, my hands are a jewel. But like all things ephemeral I’ll go back to renewal.


Honey blossoms in her hair; you tell me I should be fair I feel for belonging. In a rainy day, trapped under a cheap umbrella I think of others I think I’ve loved. Like a projection of Adam’s thought, Eve is now begot. It was a different umbrella then.

Note to Self

To live
is to exercise the swelling of your lungs,
of which
little balloons shape its lining
like an interior designer dancing in the palace of the Tsar.
I am the Tsar. I am the heir of nothing in particular.

Some men have mediocrity thrust upon them;
men who looked at the sky
and were saddened by the stars
of night and light and the half-light.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams.

Tudo no mundo começou com um sim. Uma molécula disse sim a outra molécula e nasceu a vida.
I’ve seen it happen in other people’s lives and now it’s happened in mine -
six billion, seven hundred million Giraffes inhabit this world.

To the precious pressures in my lungs:
I’ve given you all and now I am nothing.
Indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
like moonlight on a midnight stream
giving grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.


Poem written out of a combination of my own words and that of The Smiths, Joseph Heller, William Butler Yeats, Clarice Lispector, Allen Ginsberg, William Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Rua da Meia Lua

Upon rooftops of old Paris
we drank cheap wine
and swore to make them hear us,
it’s all over the very next day.
Squared tops of the world
where secrets float from drunken tongues below,
of shouts and laughter in a one night stand with Saint Germain.

Father: It seems to me that we’re on a stage my love.
Mother: Our truth is script,
Father: Our passions rehearsed,
and the golden lights that make this city Molière-immersed.

Aside: Mon Sang être la derniere verse!
The verse which exudes its own curse,

but not tonight.
Tonight I am Peter, you are dollface.
We jump off roofs and glide down the Champs Elysée,
and the only curse sont les rêves.
It is cruel because I know that as grey eyes open
tomorrow -

In half moon street where dreams are bread crumbs blown on the carpet, and my verse falls apart like old cigarettes in coat pockets.

Black Widow

Working the System in the Soul-ridden Farms,
looking for love lost in stranger’s arms –
I watch someone who kind of looks like me,
have their thoughts plucked off in notable reverie.
Needles attached to their arms and legs
prick softly like the fangs on a spider’s head.
Miss Black Widow of mass eedolisation
carries out her job with admirable sophistication.
I stand hopeless – they stand smiling,
what a historic day for pragmatic frying!

Scent of skin leaves me empty-stomached,
remember that roast we had last summer?
A Chardonnay daze of stung, stricken tongues,
one hundred eyes gaze and tighten their lungs -
from fearful white to powder-hot, blood-shot:
I want a part of this,
do you not? Sign your name and just to be sure,
marvell in the idea of whose idea this was before.
Little switch flicked up –

ZAP ZAP ZAP!

10 cents a pop, made a deal with God
that the Dreaming man would be the
last to drop.

One Two All None

If a grain of sand was to be moved from the realms of the multitudes of its brothers and sisters,
levitating in a sweeping dance by the barren breath of the Sahara, floating elegantly onto a wild cat’s sleeping brow; a steady breathing for its rocking cot.

If lightning was to become a greater source of life than that of the moon; if it were to take its place as
King of the Skies
bawling his desires into open freedom. Voice shaped of thunder; earthly rattle. A colossal bolt of electric woe with nothing but black space listening.

If a melodic note could not only be heard but also seen,
unleashed from the hollow wood or the sharp brass; aroused by the accrual of others to absorb the very infinity that encases them.
The waves clash once! Once more they thrive against the abandoned ceiling of the musical vault.
Fairy notes play hide-and-seek through cracks under rows of dusty chairs and into pockets of unused suits. Reflecting diamonds on ageing necklaces they spiral back in racing, multi-coloured lights, corresponding to their place in the hierarchy of sounds:
Each string for a voice, each beat for a thought.

I see the grain of sand moulding onto the shape of the King’s nose, as I gently step on the soft heap it once lived in.
I see the King’s tears cascade down the black skies as I gently step on the layers that have been shed before.
I see the King come to life as he explodes into several rhythmic constellations of noise, while I gently step on the reverberating floor boards.

I see the pasty area that one would call your face.
I suddenly see my face as yours and am deafened by the silence that comes with the glass between us.

B - effect

There is beauty in the calling,
when frantic bird shit is falling, and the
sky is open wide to those who believe this story.

There is beauty in the trace of a spirit crawling, at
one million light years per fucking second
and your eyelids rest mourning.
Lovers that part ignoring the spectacle your vision has just lost this morning.

There is beauty in not knowing the Last bre-
ath before the First hit,
ecstatic nerve-ends embrace the bliss
as the art of anticipation is gone,
like the lovers who counted them wrong.

There is beauty in customising:
red shirt, shit mood identifying,
you and me and everyone’s lying.
Intuition stands as the last great ‘undying’,
so you know all you’ve been un-doing -
that is the beauty of losing.

A Minha Língua é Minha

It rockets downwards like a meteor in flames,
burning its way through the infinity of black skies.
It comes in the form of Ellie, and fire, and smoke;
it comes in the form of Miller, and life, and being alone.

It is in the steps of Cesar and the Montague's reproach,
found also in the tip of the tongue
of Nietzsche and Donne,
and forever in Adolf's inexistent son.

It's in my father and your father and our
father’s demise.
In the prominence of youth, seen through
their eyes.

It is in the diseased words of Cazuza
and of Generation AIDS.
Aussi bien que dans l'âge du rêve Américain,
but aren't they both the same?

It comes from the now, and the then,
and the what if's of when.
From knowing the great -
to those that should have been so.
We could have been so.

As she sets the world on fire,
and he pulls it back together,

A Minha Língua é a Sua.

My Language is Yours.

Moon

What a manipulative moon is this thing called woman.

As you let go of the month she shows her Janus face. 

You miss her for the other twenty some things and almost fail to remember why you spiralled to this place.

When she is out though, it is worth the wait.

In reappearing, her humble brilliance kidnaps your song and morphs you into a slave-like tide, 

so you are left in a dreamy wondrous shore 

for something you have to wait another twenty eight days for.

Every end of the month we meet for the very first time. 

You offer me a private spectacle; I am keen to hear your stories in line.

It’s no use avoiding, because when she is present 

she’ll seek out your voice, and follow the crescent -

you will love her audacity again and again.

For the rest of it, you miss and anticipate, crave and endure, 

nurture and pretend to forget 

the effect Diana has on your core.

Mine has been stolen with your moon mirrored Iago;

an icy cold shimmer that burns through the pores of my chest

into an incomprehensible arduous zest of

something which feels not unlike sin.

But my loss moon is not your win,

for as you shadow your sections one by one

letting go of secrets behind the veiled sun,

I lose segments of mine own, my rivers, my venus and my unknown.

Only your full blown presence shapes me into something I once was.

Your phases cyclical, your freshness unending,

yet the lines by my sight work harder in welding

the skin of an ageing poet digressing:

You were born in a new moon -

what some call dark.

Heart of summer, the twelfth of June;

a black sheet riddled with stars.

Misleading me with your trickster light shining where there was no shine before,

bringing life to where, by morning, there will be no more.

A ray which strikes at twelve and I am the only one alive.

But for the greater part I just wonder where

have you gone my allied moon, play me not so.

How very youthful of you to come and go,

as you please, as I fall – you have my eyes you have my all.

And I am left to write words that take of me full and without;

the fiendish linger of a channelling doubt.

Your heart, my head: a hollow balloon,

release my strings so I may follow the moon.