Amor próprio alheio

E nesses dias tristes de cansaço
Nessas semanas de horas tão sem fim

Dessas de olhar você pra você mesma
E até você achar você ruim

Em que você só quer deitar na cama
Pra se ver longe de você enfim

Não tem lhe juro solução mais linda
Do que me dar você você pra mim

Ritual

Acendo uma vela
Evoco nomes, invoco seres
Falo torto e errado
Uso giz, telha e sangue
Prego e pedaço de pau
Teclado e até lápis
E papel

Abro a janela
De luz apagada, luz acesa
Penso, escrevo
Canto, danço, amo
E faço o pacto de que
Mesmo que o mundo me engula
Vomitará

A luz de um poste

A luz de um poste penetra pelas folhagens. Forma-se dela uma estrela: difusa, rala, intensa.
É na penumbra que vem abaixo, depois da grande e retalhada escuridão da copa, que eu me encontro.
Sou ao mesmo tempo repelido de seu centro mas mantido em seu halo, e sobre a influência de seus membros dourados, pressiono-me contra o chão, abandonado por mim mesmo.
Ali, a triste lembrança de um espírito pleno, um sorriso puro, inquieta-me.
Tsc.
Estala uma rebeldia, gerando forças quase suficientes para que eu desvie o olhar.
Shmm...
Quase desvio.
Hffffff...
Mergulho novamente. Mergulho nessa imagem e ela mergulha em mim.

Concentram-se noites de verões a invernos. A nostalgia lembra-me de muita coisa: mas são só imagens, e dúbias. Tudo, desde sempre, diz que sempre existe uma culpa, e ela é sempre de alguém. Talvez alguém muito especial e escondido, talvez a própria estrela e quem passa por ela. Até condenam a solidão. Porém hoje não há alguém.
Hoje imagino fotografias.
Sob a mancha de luz e na sombra, levanto-me. Levanto-me de tal imagem, levanto-me de todas as distâncias e respiro o ar de vidas e mortes. Só existe eu e as coisas, as casas, os postes.
Dou de costas, volto ao caos ordinário. Finalmente para afundar.

PííííBüüü

Tu Dum
Tu Dum
Tu Dum
Tu Dum
Tu  Dum
Tu    Dum
Tu      Dum
Tu            Dum

Pííííííííííííí

[Esse túnel para onde vai?
Como será tal futuro?

Nem um pouco sozinho
Preparo-me para a parada]

Büüüüüüüüüüü

— Estação..Sé. Desembarque pelo lado esquerdo do trem.

We never know ourselves.

I see you alone and this makes me wonder why things went out that way. Maybe you thought I didn't like you, maybe we've got tired of mirrors. You know, I was never too good for you, and you’ve always heard they say. When the wind blew backwards that night, I got scared of interiors, I didn’t want to go back home, I confess.
Anyways, I decided to reach you just to let you know, as you might, that I still see you, and the broken glass we’ve left behind scattered light all over, it is beautiful. I hope your life turns out to be the best of all our. We never know who we are until we see ourselves hugged in front of that thing, don’t you think?

São Paulo

It wouldn’t be summer in São Paulo if it wasn’t for the rain. Some of the sidewalks are actually made of a porous kind of stone, so it can absorb a small amount of water, as if it could be enough to prevent the recurring floods of January. Usually, this late in the afternoon, a storm should be raging, but the rain falling now is very light. It creates ever-changing patterns on the porous stone, filling it with slightly darker spots, as in a Pollock painting. God always held some resemblance to Pollock anyway.

I see this while I stand waiting on the bus stop. I get so hypnotized by the sidewalk that I almost forget to give it the sign to stop. Through the window I see the city and it’s post-modern patterns racing, like a movie in fast-forward. São Paulo was supposed to be gray, but it’s not. Nah, I should rather say that it is, but in a different way than usual. Newton said that if you go too fast trough all the colours, you’ll only see a white shade. I assume if he ever had a chance of seeing this city he would change his opinion. All the colours merge into gray. Gray and green. There’s quite a lot of green here, despite what people say, and despite all reason. And the green here is eternal. Maybe that’s why I think there’s a lot of trees. The place I was born was dry, no plants could ever grow proper green leaves there. My hometown was gray and blue – a unbearable, cloudless blue sky – and São Paulo is Gray and Green. But when it’s cloudy, like today, I can almost understand why people forget how green it is.

I get to the underground. Blue and Yellow lines and I’m in the center. Not the old, historic center, but the real center. Paulista, Augusta, Consolação.  Roosevelt square. Ypiranga and São João. As I walk these streets I can’t avoid remembering so many others I’ve seen. The narrow ones, the loving alleys, the royal roads all over the world. I can’t say that I haven’t fallen in love for them, in them. But in all the cities I roamed, it was a passionate love, carnal, some of them became perennial in the maps of my heart and mind, others were ephemeral. The other cities were lovers. This one is family. Is the place I'm always dragged back to. And the place I ultimately feel I have to leave. Even so, it will still be home, my home. Hometown is an ancestor, is my past, my history. São Paulo is my flesh and bones.

A famous song – and everybody must be quoting it today – says that there’s no true love in São Paulo. I guess that might be truth. This city was build upon obsession and illusion. Broken hearts and dreams. But it has its wonders, I must say. There’s no sense in a book where all the characters are good, a movie without motion, a song without emotion. São Paulo is the place where they all come from. Is a hole in the fabric of reality, showing us heaven and hell and telling both are lies. Getting us drunk on love. However fake or paid-for or misunderstood. Let’s keep the real love for the rest of the world. All we need are the Japanese lampposts in Liberdade – freedom, it means – and the Pollock sidewalks and the light rain, the city’s most renowned patrimony, over our heads. All we need is to belong somewhere. 

Cats and dogs (b).

It was the third Friday evening of the month, and Red Hat (with a tiny white stripe) Girl was really happy. She was tall and almost never combed her hair – which is why she would usually keep the hat on even inside. She had two parrots, named “Dog” and “Cat”, and  “Karl Marx”, the cockatoo, and that sort of humour, stuck somewhere between sarcastic and ironic, was the only one she seemed to get a hold of.

So thought most of her friends, who would only invite her to cult French, Swedish and sometimes Finnish movies, which used to play at the old willow tree cinema downtown. They had once made the mistake of bringing her to a superhero film/dance party combo and, legend says, for the next entire month she would just leave her apartment for work and to watch, repeatedly, a minimalist (and dreadfully tedious, for most human beings) post-post-modernist montage of Moses und Aaron, which was playing on a theatre two blocks away.

Every third Friday evening of the month, however, she would engage in a secret ritual unknown to everyone but her bird friends: She would set herself a mysterious mix of milk, cocoa, ice cream, tea and some alcoholics, enough to last an entire night; she would place Cat on the sofa, by her side, while Dog bounced around the floor of the living room; She would take off the hat, and Karl Marx would nest himself in it; They would then, together, proceed to watch something between ten and thirteen hours of pirate movies – with the occasional break for toilet, cookies and sunflower seed.

They loved pirate movies. Dog would always do his impression on barking whenever a ship appeared. Marx wouldn’t blink for as long as a swordfight took place. The only of the four who didn’t like it that much was Cat:

Red Hat Girl would always tell Cat she could never fall in love for another person after seeing Errol Flynn as “Captain Blood”, but Cat was never sure if she was talking sarcasm, and ended up having troubling thoughts on the human nature.       

Viagem (Açaraí nº2)

No cano o fogo

No fogo um estalo

No pano o vento

No vento um pouco do mar
<->

De boca em boca um sopro

De palma em palma ferramentas

Olhamos além dos morros

Trazemos no peito tal tormenta

<->

Na cabeça, fios de cada dia

Agradece-se o sol que ilumina

Queimam-se pés com pedra quente

Espera-se a noite com seu presente 

Aos errantes, de oferenda, uma alforria
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