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.