A Homage to Skins (poema meu)

pousa os teus lábios nos meus

até esquecermos de onde viemos

descansa o teu coração no meu

até o pensamento nos libertar

da tensão que não repousa

do amor que nunca pára de escorrer

tal é a sabedoria que transporta

nesta hora de cumplicidade

poem of the day: Sudden Light

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

Sudden Light

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at that swallow's soar

Your neck turn'd so,

Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time's eddying flight

Still with our lives our love restore

In death's despite,

And day and night yield one delight once more?

Poem of the day:The Anxiety of Coincidence

Mark Bibbins

The Anxiety of Coincidence

Your object will have made a good subject
and I should get to tell you so: the bird
with a beak but no mouth, we hear him only

when it's night in the Dominican Republic
and Israel at the same time. Someone will
find your marginalia useful, so try to spare

some ink. I took dictation only from you,
for whom verbs were nothing and tense
everything. See the difference, you kept asking,

but it wasn't a question. See how enormous—
camel hauling an empty wheelchair, conspiracy
of hangman men, dried-out song that makes

it snow. You realize we could have walked
home in the hours taking inventory took, jack
of no traits. Bird with no wings.

Let's go

Broken

Something is broken inside of me.

Literature says it better

Fragile Broken Things

Poem of the day: Study for Salome Dancing Before Herod

Eric Pankey

Study for Salome Dancing Before Herod

In the movement toward disappearance,
She is pulled by an undertow of ecstasy.
She wakes in a room where she never fell asleep.
A thousand starlings leaf-out a bare tree.
She wakes in a dusky, tenebrous zone.
Evening on the ridges and in the mountains,
But light still spills on the valley floor.
What transport brought her here?
The shape of gravity embodies a pear on the table.
Here time is the only sovereign.
She is like an arrow slipped from its quiver.

Labours of love: End of The Road

http://issuu.com/endoftheroad/docs/english_issue_1?mode=embed&layout=http://skin.issuu.com/v/light/layout.xml&showFlipBtn=true

Here it is, at last and it looks so good :)

I'm so proud to announce one of my new projects and a true labour of love. It's a new metal magazine (End of The Road) I was invited to be a part of by someone I can now can a friend, Ekin. He is the editor and the nicest person you'll ever meet. This is the first article I ever wrote about anything. I had only written poems up til now. It was a good start, I think. It's always a good day when you get to have total creative freedom to write about the music you love and listen to everyday. As you might know, I'm a sort of a metal geek, so to me, this was a kind of dream come true. I get to write about whatever I want? I'm in. Besides, I would never do it if I didn't feel I had a safe environment behind me. I even had my little one (Regina) join our team, so that makes the whole experience even better.

The link is right there, read it, pass it unto your friends and enemies (why not?). If you like metal, you absolutely have to read it, if you want to know more about metal, it's a good way to start. And if you're just curious, don't let fear stop you.

The first issue of End of The Road came to fruition. To its sucess. \m/

Classic Poems: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Poem of the day: Acrobat

Elise Paschen

Acrobat

The night you were conceived
we balanced underneath a tent,

amazed at the air-marveler,
who, hand-over-hand, seized the stars,

then braved the line to carry home
a big-top souvenir umbrella.

Earth-bound a year, you dare
gravity, sliding from the couch

to table. Mornings, on tiptoe,
stretching fingers, you grab

Saturn, Venus and the moons
raining down from the sky of ceiling.

Prendas de Natal: Livros, Música

Entretanto, já recebi esta preciosidade da literatura, a obra poética completa de García Lorca. É um grande calhamaço, mas espero que me dê algum prazer a ler. É um autor que só vou descobrir agora, mas estou com muita curiosidade. Além disso, é sempre bom receber livros de poesia, porque quase ninguém os compra. Mas como já me conhecem, felizmente sabem que se me puserem um livro de poesia no sapatinho, eu lhes vou ficar muito agradecida. E é o caso. A literatura é infindável. E ofereçam-me sempre livros em papel, por favor. Prefiro cem mil vezes um livro físico do que qualquer ebook, nem que seja de graça. Não me vão tirar também isso, não? Se daqui a 10 anos já não existirem livros físicos, acho que vou passar por uma grave crise existencial. Bem podem tentar vender-me iphones, ipads e todo esse grupo de coisas que existem para nos facilitar a vida e convidar à inércia mental que eu não vou aceitar. Agradeço, mas prefiro os meus livros e os meus CDs tal como estão agora, com folhas para folhear, CDs físicos com um livrinho com as letras das músicas e ilustrações únicas. O resto, passa-me ao lado.

O segundo álbum de Darkwater também não me vai escapar até porque já passou algum tempo do seu lançamento, cerca de 1 mês, creio, e já estou a ficar ansiosa por não o ter ao pé do outro. Vão ficar com ciúmes. Além disso, é um óptimo álbum e eu quero tê-lo na minha colecção. Em termos de CDs, por agora é isto. Para o ano comprarei certamente outros até porque Opeth vai lançar um álbum para o ano e possivelmente Dream Theater também. Promete ser um ano de muitos concertos e novos álbuns. Boa música, é o que se quer. Prometo também rever as minhas idas a concertos de este ano com fotos e descrições tal como o fiz o ano passado em jeito de balanço. Até porque é um bom exercício de memória.

E uns CDzitos para animar a malta. Porcupine Tree para completar a minha colecção. Tirando álbuns ao vivo que esses não compro. De resto, tenho todos os CDs de Porcupine Tree que queria ter e este é daqueles velhinhos que vale a pena ter e ouvir vezes sem conta. The Sky Moves Sideways. E como foi reeditado agora, calha mesmo bem.

Também vou receber uma destas, mas há um pormenor, é uma daquelas guitarras miniaturas e não a guitarra original de Dimebag Darrel porque essas não posso comprar. Fico-me pela minha Ibanez e Jackson que por agora dão para o gasto. Mas queria mostrá-la só para se deliciarem um pouco. É linda, não é? E é incrível os pormenores que esta guitarra apresenta em miniatura. Parece que tenho outra colecção para fazer. Guitarras miniaturas dos meus heróis. E fez 6 anos que Dimebag morreu. Uma lenda do metal que nunca tirará o seu nome e o dos seus Pantera dos nossos corações. Vai ficar uma maravilha no meu quarto.

Vou receber alguns livros, como sempre e ainda bem. Os meus primos que até são pessoas como eu que lêem livros dão-me sempre um bom livro no Natal. Um bem haja para eles que sempre fizeram questão de alimentar o meu gosto pela literatura. Devo dizer que já tenho imensos livros para ler em 2011 e isso é uma satisfação.

Poem of the day: Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Thomas Campion

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their houres ;
And clouds their stormes discharge
Upon the ayrie towres.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o'erflow with wine,
Let well-tun'd words amaze
With harmonie diuine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall waite on hunny Loue
While youthfull Reuels, Masks, and Courtly sights,
Sleepes leaden spels remoue.

This time doth well dispence
With louers long discourse ;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All doe not all things well ;
Some measures comely tread ;
Some knotted Ridles tell ;
Some Poems smoothly read.
The Summer hath his ioyes,
And Winter his delights ;
Though Loue and all his pleasures are but toyes,
They shorten tedious nights.

Photography + thoughts

What would happen if we would just let go?

Poem of the day: Solar system bedsheets

Sarah Vap

Solar system bedsheets There, behind sunlight, is the long pressure of a child's love. Becoming mute with the child's love. Long influence of stars touched by the hand wrapped, asleep, in the newly laundered sheets. Touched to widths of butterscotch stretched. Split-apart as the voices, rain thickening, against one another forever, if glass. Forever if resting against one another. Forever if holding the end of a year like this: the nights lengthening. I check: each child is alive in his sleep. You are also asleep, love, at the end of the yarn you are weaving around the edge of a pink paper heart fattening—quieter, now. Forever, if quieter, now.

Poem of the day: The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; The times are winter, watch, a world undone: They waste, they wither worse; they as they run Or bring more or more blazon man's distress. And I not help. Nor word now of success: All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one— Work which to see scarce so much as begun Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness. Or what is else? There is your world within. There rid the dragons, root out there the sin. Your will is law in that small commonweal...

Poem of the day: Dawn Dreams

Rachel Hadas

Dawn Dreams

Dreams draw near at dawn and then recede
even if you beckon them.
They loom like demons
you tug by the tail to examine from up close
and then let fly away.
Their colors at once brighter and less bright
than you remembered, they
hover and insinuate all day
at the corner of your eye.

Os Meus Poemas: 29/11/10

29/11/10

só espero que o que te leve
seja o vento
e não a tempestade
que assola o meu coração
que já não sente
a passagem do dia para a noite

já que todos os ruídos se calaram
com a solenidade do momento
e as sobrancelhas se fecharam
à luz que a perspectiva de um novo dia que poderá existir
sintamos então esta mágoa de português
e preparemo-nos para o velório
agora que novamente se torna claro
a inaptidão de quem está de partida

sentir que fazes falta
e ouvir mil explosões no ar
continuadamente
a adoecer

e nada faz o tempo parar
o tiquetaque das pessoas que agora se preparam
para se despedir
e reparam
que de nada vale um sorriso fechado
um abraço sentido
uma palavra ao ouvido

de nada vale querer sentir
o que não pode ser sentido

O meu avô morreu: 29 de Novembro de 2010

RIP

Poem of the day: sorrows

Lucille Clifton

sorrows

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

Poem of the day: Eternity

William Blake

Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise

Poem of the day: A Note on Absence

Martin Corless-Smith

A Note on Absence

The story over having wished it otherwise

The water surface/friendship

The drunk euphoric

Good Friday music

Not in this lifetime

A fig tree grows

No miserable deed will do

Space and time, dimensions that just bring more of this

For anyone who has a nose

Show gratitude

A king sat in a box

8 p.m. Friday

rain defeating snow

a space too narrow to pass through

Os meus poemas: A passagem de Deus

A passagem de Deus

Um dia vou fazer-me passar por um Deus anónimo
e tocar nas mãos virgens dos dissidentes
e mentir-lhes ao ouvido,
sussurrando imagens de sangue e de anarquia

Nas minhas parcas vestes
enterrarei um punhal de arrependimento
em vez de um mandato de paz
e bastará uma palavra
de incentivo à violência
para que se dê a guerra santa

De pés descalços a arder no fogo da terra
espalharei impunidades e crenças invisíveis
e deixarei que outros ardam na fogueira
tão-somente por suspeição

Não revelarei o meu preconceito de género
nem o meu conceito de igualdade
para não ferir susceptibilidades
mas rezarei por todos como se fossem iguais
sofrerão todos a mesma dor
sonharão todos com o mesmo apocalipse

Darei uma dentada na maçã da vida
e tentarei padecer do mesmo mal que os cristãos
não ordenarei divisões, apenas segregações
comandadas pelo poder

Far-se-á justiça com as próprias mãos
com a minha permissão
e o futuro será risonho
para os pecadores
e severo para os combatentes

Deixo para trás um livro
cheio de palavras verdadeiras
que serão o espelho de uma sociedade
à minha imagem e semelhança

E no final dos tempos
vão todos passar ao largo da minha memória
e tudo isto parecerá
um mero acto de auto-flagelação.

Album of the month: Darkwater - Where Stories End

This is exciting. Darkwater have just released their new album "Where Stories End", three years after they released the epic masterpiece "Calling the Earth to Witness". Many people still don't know and have never heard of this band, but after that first album, shame on you! Being the progeek I am, I had to check it out and I was amazed when I listened to that album. My love for Darkwater has grown since then and I become a serious fan. And now I'm celebrating the release of their new album, from this relatively young band who I'm sure will still grow immensely. I hope this album puts them on the map, at least for a lot more people and gives them a little bit more of visibility in the metal scene, which they deserve, a lot more than the attention some really crappy bands get for reasons that have nothing to do with music. I respect this band very much and I'm just happy they have a new baby. Album of the month to listen to starting now.

Cheers Darkwater, I salute you and your new album and I will be a fan regardless of it's quality (I seriously doubt it'll suck). And I'm spreading the word. Let me just tell you this, three years is a long time, let's make sure the next one will be faster, yes? No pressure, as long as it's good.

Poem of the day: Cézanne

Alfred Kreymborg

Cézanne

Our door was shut to the noon-day heat.
We could not see him.
We might not have heard him either—
Resting, dozing, dreaming pleasantly.
But his step was tremendous—
Are mountains on the march?

He was no man who passed;
But a great faithful horse
Dragging a load
Up the hill.

Poem of the day: from One Time

Christian Wiman

from One Time

2. 2047 Grace Street

But the world is more often refuge
than evidence, comfort and covert
for the flinching will, rather than the sharp
particulate instants through which God's being burns
into ours. I say God and mean more
than the bright abyss that opens in that word.
I say world and mean less
than the abstract oblivion of atoms
out of which every intact thing emerges,
into which every intact thing finally goes.
I do not know how to come closer to God
except by standing where a world is ending
for one man. It is still dark,
and for an hour I have listened
to the breathing of the woman I love beyond
my ability to love. Praise to the pain
scalding us toward each other, the grief
beyond which, please God, she will live
and thrive. And praise to the light that is not
yet, the dawn in which one bird believes,
crying not as if there had been no night
but as if there were no night in which it had not been.

Poem of the Day: Continuities

Walt Whitman

Continuities

(From a talk I had lately with a German spiritualist)

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

R.I.P.

Rest In Peace

Poem of the day: The Emperor

Matthew Rohrer

The Emperor

She sends me a text

she's coming home

the train emerges

from underground


I light the fire under

the pot, I pour her

a glass of wine

I fold a napkin under

a little fork


the wind blows the rain

into the windows

the emperor himself

is not this happy

Poem of the day: Sonogram

Jennifer Chang

Sonogram

Dark matter, are you
sparkless

for lack of knowing
better? The room

you've spun is distant
and indivisible—

a flickering lapsarian,
you satisfy no mute

progress but
collapse, spiral, winded

by unwinding. Dear
enigma kid, dear psychic

soft spot, I write you
from under eight spastic

lights, each falser than stars,
to promise I'll will

the darkness out of you
or I'll will myself

to trying. Twisted
mister, my incipient

sir, you be in charge
of the what-if, I'll master why.

Poem of the day: Lullaby

Jenny Joseph

Lullaby

By Only when we are in each other's arms
Babies or lovers or the very ill
Are we content not to reach over the side;
To lie still.

To stay in the time we've settled in, that we've
scooped
Like a gourd of its meat,
And not, like a sampling fly, as soon as landed
Start to our feet,

Pulling one box on another, Ossa on Pelion;
Getting the moment, only to strain away
And look each day for what each next day brings us:
Yet another day;

Pleased with the infant's health and the strength of
its frame
For the child it will grow to,
The house perfected, ready and swept, for the new
Abode we go to,

The town in order and settled down for the night
The sooner for the next day to be over,
The affair pushed straight away to its limit, to leave
and notch up
Another lover.

Lie still, then, babies or lovers or the frail old who
In dreams we carry
Seeking a place of rest beyond the crowds
That claim and harry.

We are trying to reach that island for the festive
evening
Where our love will stay –
Waylaid, prevented, we wake as that vivid country
Mists into day.

Stay on this side of the hill.
Sleep in my arms a bit longer.
This driving on will take you over the top
Beyond recall the sooner.

Album of the month: Long Distance Calling - Avoid the Light

I usually only discover things after they have already happened. It's just the way it is. And I shouldn't fight it really because there's no point, it will continue happening because I can't keep up with everything all at once. The important thing is that I end up discovering these precious things anyway, sooner or later and here it is again. Thanks to a friend of mine, again, I discovered this new band, they are called Long Distance Calling and possibly very little people know them. Some might have heard of them before, either because Katatonia's own Jonas Renkse lent his voice to one of their songs, or more recently because they were opening for Anathema's European Leg on their new album tour. Unfortunately that didn't happen in Portugal, something that saddens me a lot, but that's life, deal with it. Maybe I will see them eventually, in the future. I reckon opening for Anathema was a big step for them, it certainly opened new roads for them in terms of the diversity of the audience that listens to them.

"Avoid the Light", released in 2009, the album I'm suggesting for this month was my first contact with this band and I must say that the first date went really well :) Seriously, I'm a lover of instrumental albums and bands, I'm sure it has something to do with my musically and the fact that I like to listen to the sounds in detail so that I can later play them on my guitar. But the sound as a whole really interests me as well. So, instrumental bands were always appealing, especially if they were good of course. Here is another instrumental (almost, one of the sounds has vocals in it, Jonas' vocals) - but it's predominantly instrumental of course - album that everyone should listen to. I'm not discriminating, even people who never listened to metal or post-rock can enjoy this one, I'm afraid. I tend to find the heavier parts of the album the best but not because they are heavy but because they are clever and genius in terms of riffs. I value the originality of the riffs bands come up with, but of course originality always depends on the people's background and knowledge of other bands. And there are a lot of instrumental bands, but not all of them are worth my time, I'll assure you. Not that I'm high in my high horse and think that I'm this musical genius, far from the truth, but I think at this point, and after listening to so many albums for so many years, I know what I like and what sounds weak for me. And that's just me, I respect other people's opinions and try my best not to judge, I know my limitations. The bass is very predominant in this release which is also another thing I like to listen to, especially in metal albums. I also like long songs and long pieces of music with clever changes that seem to be fluidly created by the songwriters and a natural fit. We also have that in this album as well as enough variety to keep me interested, I can't speak for anybody else. Apart from all of these qualities already, there's beauty. I often speak about beauty in music and how I like it, so I'm probably gonna repeat myself, but who cares, I think this album provides a lot of beautiful musical moments and that's always a plus. It kinda shows a good taste and a very vivid sensibility to music in general, in my interpretation.

What else can I say? I'm curious about their other work, the earlier work and the new work they will be releasing next year. It's certainly a band to take into account when you are speaking of post-rock/metal and instrumental ability to write good songs. And it's not even a genre I'm an expert at, post-rock/metal or as some people call it "avantgarde". I prefer to call it instrumental because that way I'm not limiting the band's sound as much, it is undeniably instrumental, whatever else it may be, it's up to the listener to decide and conjure up. I just listen to the album and I like it a lot. Highly recommended, really.

Poem of the day: Enough

Jeffrey Harrison

Enough

It's a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough for you to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you've never said circling inside you.

It's the rising wind that pulls you out of it,
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.

New poetic discoveries: Laura Cronk

Laura Cronk

Entering

Moonscape of snow at night.
To die, to crash,

could be a crush of snow.
All softness.

I imagine, driving alone,
being enveloped by snow, crashed into, quickly.

The mice must have these visions.
Talking quietly when they can’t sleep

about tunneling in endless grain until, full of it,
completely enveloped by it, peacefully, it takes them.

Poem of the day: Ku(na)hay

Charles Bernstein

Ku(na)hay

Form
Is One
Then Two Three

Content Is Another
Matter Altogether
No?
*
I Go Home
So Tired
Now

Slump
Into My
Slumber Once Again

Wake
To What
I Almost Forgot
*
No One Waits
Time Fails
Again
*
Still
The Quiet
Sucks Me Dry

A
Bone Solitary
Against the Wind
*
Trust No One
Gets You
Nowhere

Poem of the day: The City Limits

A. R. Ammons

The City Limits

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

Poem of the day: The Dead

Mina Loy

The Dead

We have flowed out of ourselves
Beginning on the outside
That shrivable skin
Where you leave off

Of infinite elastic
Walking the ceiling
Our eyelashes polish stars

Curled close in the youngest corpuscle
Of a descendant
We spit up our passions in our grand-dams

Fixing the extension of your reactions
Our shadow lengthens
In your fear

You are so old
Born in our immortality
Stuck fast as Life
In one impalpable
Omniprevalent Dimension

We are turned inside out
Your cities lie digesting in our stomachs
Street lights footle in our ocular darkness

Having swallowed your irate hungers
Satisfied before bread-breaking
To your dissolution
We splinter into Wholes
Stirring the remorses of your tomorrow
Among the refuse of your unborn centuries
In our busy ashbins
Stink the melodies
Of your
So easily reducible
Adolescences

Our tissue is of that which escapes you
Birth-Breaths and orgasms
The shattering tremor of the static
The far-shore of an instant
The unsurpassable openness of the circle
Legerdemain of God

Only in the segregated angles of Lunatic Asylums
Do those who have strained to exceeding themselves
Break on our edgeless contours

The mouthed echoes of what
has exuded to our companionship
Is horrible to the ear
Of the half that is left inside them.

Poem of the day: The Dead Girls Speak in Unison

Danielle Pafunda

The Dead Girls Speak in Unison

Do not pretend that you don't like it
when we threaten you.

We see you getting pheromone stink
under the collar, moaning, baldly.

Motionless, picturing decay.

When we creak your step,
when we crack your glass,
when we tap tap tap,

that is a bone

that is all we have

though we are very shiny,
and filled with beetles.

We are made entirely of bone.

Like an idol.

Like the tusk of some wonderful past.

When you cleave to us,
your skin will fuse,
hot calcium meth,
and in the myth,
you will be named for us.

Poem of the day: Ants

Ravi Shankar

Ants

One is never alone. Saltwater taffy colored
beach blanket spread on a dirt outcropping
pocked with movement. Pell-mell tunneling,

black specks the specter of beard hairs swarm,
disappear, emerge, twitch, reverse course
to forage along my shin, painting pathways

with invisible pheromones that others take
up in ceaseless streams. Ordered disarray,
wingless expansionists form a colony mind,

no sense of self outside the nest, expending
summer to prepare for winter, droning on
through midday heat. I watch, repose, alone.

My poems: dark waters

dark waters

don’t get near me
you might damage me
and once the damage is done
we can never go back

these dark waters
where you found me by myself
eating away at time
reminiscing
allow me to float
wander
find protection

and I came back here
because somehow
it always makes me realise
that belonging
is being part of a bigger lie

that it is nothing but a haze
similar to the ones you feel
when someone is trying to fix you
instead of embracing you with hope

you will not find me here again
you will not be able to open me with a key anymore
watch me as I dive again
far away from you

Musical Suggestions: Yakuza - Of Seismic Consequence

Yakuza - Of Seismic Consequence

My poems: everyday cruelty

everyday cruelty

how much more cruel can you be
how much more insane
in the one-dimensional brain
that exhales nothing but rage
for your humankind

while you hang on to everything you possess
even though it’s only a fallible monetary value
your life chews away at you
as if toying with the hypothesis of an afterlife

and the psychosis that’s been your home
the place where you belong
and suffer
will never wither
as long as you keep staying faithful to your death wish

never mind the self-destruction appeal
whatever you might feel
or whomever you might call
will not be trustworthy enough
to make you comfortable in your own skin

all your thoughts are barred
now that you find yourself
lost
with no reproach

more alone than you have ever been
and more prone to error than everybody else

but you are no accuser
your end is not taking place
you place your hand on your face
you are now a believer
that the truth will come
buried in someone else’s dream
just a word away

The things you tell yourself to make yourself believe you are not good enough

Source: http://www.nowpublic.com/health/72finalposternotgood11x17

Poem of the day: Introduction to the World

Matthea Harvey

Introduction to the World

For the time being
call me Home.

All the ingénues do.

Units are the engines
I understand best.

One betrayal, two.
Merrily, merrily, merrily.

Define hope. Machine.
Define machine. Nope.

Like thoughts,
the geniuses race through.

If you're lucky

after a number of
revolutions, you'll

feel something catch.

Poem of the day: At Home

Christina Rossetti

At Home

When I was dead, my spirit turned
To seek the much-frequented house:
I passed the door, and saw my friends
Feasting beneath green orange boughs;
From hand to hand they pushed the wine,
They sucked the pulp of plum and peach;
They sang, they jested, and they laughed,
For each was loved of each.

I listened to their honest chat:
Said one: 'To-morrow we shall be
Plod plod along the featureless sands
And coasting miles and miles of sea.'
Said one: 'Before the turn of tide
We will achieve the eyrie-seat.'
Said one: 'To-morrow shall be like
To-day, but much more sweet.'

'To-morrow,' said they, strong with hope,
And dwelt upon the pleasant way:
'To-morrow,' cried they one and all,
While no one spoke of yesterday.
Their life stood full at blessed noon;
I, only I, had passed away:
'To-morrow and to-day,' they cried;
I was of yesterday.

I shivered comfortless, but cast
No chill across the tablecloth;
I all-forgotten shivered, sad
To stay and yet to part how loth:
I passed from the familiar room,
I who from love had passed away,
Like the remembrance of a guest
That tarrieth but a day.

Poema do dia: Nevoeiro

Fernando Pessoa

Nevoeiro

Nem rei nem lei, nem paz nem guerra,
Define com perfil e ser
Este fulgor baço da terra
Que é Portugal a entristecer--

Brilho sem luz e sem arder,
Como o que o fogofátuo encerra.
Ninguém sabe que coisa quere.
Ninguém conhece que alma tem,

Nem o que é mal nem o que é bem.
(Que ânsia distante perto chora?)
Tudo é incerto e derradeiro.
Tudo é disperso, nada é inteiro.

Ó Portugal, hoje és nevoeiro...
É a Hora!

Heavy Metal

Poem of the day: Drench

Anne Stevenson

Drench

You sleep with a dream of summer weather,
wake to the thrum of rain—roped down by rain.
Nothing out there but drop-heavy feathers of grass
and rainy air. The plastic table on the terrace
has shed three legs on its way to the garden fence.
The mountains have had the sense to disappear.
It's the Celtic temperament—wind, then torrents, then remorse.
Glory rising like a curtain over distant water.
Old stonehouse, having steered us through the dark,
docks in a pool of shadow all its own.
That widening crack in the gloom is like good luck.
Luck, which neither you nor tomorrow can depend on.

Meus poemas: úteros invisíveis

úteros invisíveis

vamos abraçar-nos
aqui
entre o frio
e as dúvidas que carregamos

as pétalas que dividimos
constrangidos um pelo outro
vão acabar desfeitas
em promessas
de pessoas que não podemos ser
pessoas que nunca vamos ser

abracemo-nos, porém,
enquanto o sentimento de culpa
não nos traz chagas
que não queremos invocar

vamos esperar mais um dia
pode ser que venha a claridade
e nos faça deixar de temer
o que abandonámos há muito tempo
as pequenas mortes diárias
o delírio constante
que nos faz achar que estamos unidos
por um qualquer sentimento
que nos devolve a sensação
de estarmos no útero
a ser protegidos
por uma invisibilidade
controlada pelos bocejos do silêncio

Untitled #12

Poema do dia: Euforia

Al Berto

Euforia

cai neve no cérebro vivo do imaculado - dizem
que este milagres só são possíveis com rosas e
enganos - precisamente no segundo em que a insónia
transmuda os metais diurnos em estrume do coração

dizem também
que um duende dança na erecção do enforcado - o fulgor
dos sémenes venenosos alastra no brilho dos olhos e
um sussurro de tinta preta aflora os lábios
fere a mão de gelo que se aproxima da boca

o vómito da luz ergue-se
das palavras ditas em surdina

a seguir vem o sono
e o miraculado entra no voo dos cisnes
o dia cansa-se
na brutalidade com que a voz se atira contra as paredes
abrindo fendas
em toda a extensão das veias e dos tendões

quando desperta com o crepúsculo
o miraculado olha-nos fixamente e sorri
dá-nos uma rosa em forma de estilete - fechamos os olhos
sabendo que este é o maior engano
da eternidade

Poem of the day: The Coming of Light

Mark Strand

The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

Os meus poemas: diminuir a luz

diminuir a luz

esta é apenas mais uma preocupação nocturna
como todas as outras
que nos acompanham
quando estamos a adoecer

quando esta voz
se instala
no peito adormecido
e faz diminuir a intensidade
das palpitações
do coração que está de fora

ela é mais do que uma palavra espelhada noutra
é mais medrosa do que isso

e a certeza que transparece
a certeza de estar a ser transformada
por uma espécie de portão
que se abre à minha frente
e assinala uma passagem dolorosa
faz-me temer o confronto
num espaço periclitante
entre os passos que dou
e os sons dos passos dos outros

receio a minha identidade
tanto como a minha clarividência febril
e na debilidade própria da lucidez
falta-me a fragilidade
para ser funâmbula

Poem of the day: The Novelist’s Comments

John Mateer

The Novelist’s Comments

After I read my poem addressed to one of his people’s heroes,
in his reclaimed, autochthonous voice
the novelist doesn’t say:

This is our language, our land.

Nor does he say:

Why don’t you go back where you came from?

And in what he doesn’t say he is echoing the woman
who after burying her father – a rare fluent speaker of language –
declared she should have chucked his tapes and journals,
his repository of the tongue, after him into the mouth
of the grave:

So that the white bastards wouldn’t get that too.

Poem of the day; White Nights

Paul Auster

White Nights

No one here,
and the body
says: whatever is said
is not to be said. But no one
is a body as well,
and what the body says
is heard by no one
but you.

Snowfall
and night. The repetition
of a murder
among the trees. The pen
moves
across the earth: it no longer knows
what will happen, and the hand that
holds it
has disappeared.

Nevertheless, it writes.
It writes:
in the beginning,
among the trees, a body came walking
from the night. It
writes:
the body's whiteness
is the color of earth. It is earth,
and
the earth writes: everything
is the color of silence.

I am no
longer here. I have never said
what you say
I have said. And yet, the body
is a place
where nothing dies. And each night,
from the silence of the
trees, you know
that my voice
comes walking toward you.

Literatura Portuguesa Contemporânea: Recomendações

Recomendo, para já, dois livros, que eu própria vou ler muito brevemente, uma vez que ainda tenho que esperar que cheguem a casa e que depois tenha tempo para os ler. Mas as premissas dos livros em si já fazem deles recomendações e pequenos oásis no deserto da literatura portuguesa, que embora sempre rica, nem sempre nos presenteia com o seu melhor. É preciso procurar bem, e para quem não conhece, ou nunca ouvi falar destes autores, porque não lê-los? Especialmente se gostarem de literatura anglo-saxónica, como eu que a amo profundamente. Estes dois autores estão ligados não só por laços emocionais, como também por laços literários e temáticos se quiserem, embora se expressem em formas literárias diferentes, mas sempre complementares, do meu ponto de vista. A poesia e o romance. Boas leituras, eu por mim sei que os vou ler, mais cedo ou mais tarde. São ambos publicados pela Relógio D'Água que, por sinal, é uma editora de muito bom gosto. Tenho tantos livros da Relógio D'Água que isso deve querer dizer qualquer coisa.

a) Hélia Correia - Adoecer

b) Jaime Rocha - Necrophilia

Soundtrack recommendations

This is mainly a list of albums that should be listened to on a rainy day like today, totally fitting for their mood and atmosphere. You can always go against the grain and listen to it on a sunny day, as long as it's in silence. It's bound to make you feel something. No matter what it is. Soundtrack recommendations:

a) Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs

b) Stone Circle - Myth

c) James LaBrie - Static Impulse

My poems: decomposition

decomposition

I want to tell you the truth:

I have been waiting for you
to give me the knife

watch my mind
in decomposition
and open a new door
where you won’t enter
at least physically

watch time disappear
between the passing moments
we did not share

raise your dead hand
in confirmation
and tell me
what’s inside me
that needs to be freed

the truth is
none of these dreams
make me wash the blood off my hands

I have been waiting for you
to erase me

I have been waiting for you
to suffocate me

but the truth
is that the mirrors within
obfuscate
disintegrate
what’s always been concealed
in a black light
behind the closed eyes
the isolation madness

the barrier
where I catch what you said
between portraits and hands
and passion habits

a journey that will take me
to a severed place
which is so familiar

Robert Olen Butler: Severance

bought a new book today, just now. Heard about Butler's short stories in the meeting I had today with other literature and translation researchers. I always think the meetings are a bit boring at times but the truth is that I always learn something new, and even more important might be the fact that I always learn about a new book I haven't read yet or heard about. It's what happens when you're surrounded by literature aficionados. I always leave those meetings wanting to read more than I already do. And here is something I haven't read in a while, short stories. I used to read a lot of short stories in college and I really enjoyed it. But I stopped doing it for a while, for no apparent reason. And now I feel like drinking a bit of that again. And I will. Soon, after I finish "The Killer Inside Me", I'll start reading hopefully one of the best of the genre, certainly an important name in the short story contemporary world. He was in Lisbon for a conference in my college so that's why we started talking about him and his books. Also I was intrigued when I found out that this book was about what people supposedly said before being decapitated. Some people might find it appaling, well I don't, I think it's an interesting thing to write about. I'm very curious to know how he did it and what he made of it. And also I'm curious to find out how 1 page short stories can come to life. I'm just very curious about the whole thing and this book has been so praised that I might as well give it a try since its probably an interesting subject matter for me going in anyway. New books, new stories to read. Going back to the past in a way, reading short stories again. I feel like it. I feel excited about it. Besides, short stories always puzzled me, it's a part of literature that makes me want to know more.

Robert Olen Butler - Severance

poem of the day: Heroisms, 4, 5

Dan Beachy-Quick

Heroisms, 4, 5

4.

I speak these words directly into his yawn

Open cave of
his dark almost kind
of fire-lit mouth

And the shadows there my words form these shadows
In the back of the hero's throat

A world we applaud where chained to the ground
We watch the trees walk past us. There are other ways to describe the year:

Seasons of
The hero's boredom.


5.

Where the horror is comparison, honor sees
Hands in the trees instead of leaves—

Honesty asks why the applause is so quiet
When the wind blows so hard—

Breath is the atmosphere at utmost extreme
Where the lungs are flowers—thought the dew—

The sun doubts everything, a general statement
In whose light the hero sees these helpless things

Beg mercy, beg darkness for obscurity—
We do not comprehend the awe, it comprehends us—

When leaves fold in halves they look sleepy
Like eyes, but these eyes are fists

Poem of the day: I measure every Grief I meet

Emily Dickinson

I measure every Grief I meet (561)

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin –
I could not tell the Date of Mine –
It feels so old a pain –

I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if They have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –

I note that Some – gone patient long –
At length, renew their smile –
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil –

I wonder if when Years have piled –
Some Thousands – on the Harm –
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve –
Enlightened to a larger Pain –
In Contrast with the Love –

The Grieved – are many – I am told –
There is the various Cause –
Death – is but one – and comes but once –
And only nails the eyes –

There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –
A sort they call "Despair" –
There's Banishment from native Eyes –
In sight of Native Air –

And though I may not guess the kind –
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –

To note the fashions – of the Cross –
And how they're mostly worn –
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own –

Hide Inside

we are just like these sand dunes

always trying to hide from something

even though we are stronger

than everything else that can haunt us

Is this what we've become?

My poems: the spiteful

the spiteful

I close my eyes
when you lie
beside me
during sleep

it is grief
now that you’re inside me
in belief

let’s relive the past
once and for all
and be spiteful

there’s nothing quite like the morning dew
when it’s being swallowed whole
in a sort of darkness
that resembles us

what we are
now that it’s too late to stop
too late to stop the stains
is nothing like a symbiosis
but it is always a reminder
of what might have been

Poem of the day: 9773 Comanche Ave

David Trinidad

9773 Comanche Ave

In color photographs, my childhood house looks
fresh as an uncut sheet cake—
pale yellow buttercream, ribbons of white trim

squeezed from the grooved tip of a pastry tube.
Whose dream was this confection?
This suburb of identical, pillow-mint homes?

The sky, too, is pastel. Children roller skate
down the new sidewalk. Fathers stake young trees.
Mothers plan baby showers and Tupperware parties.
The Avon Lady treks door to door.

Six or seven years old, I stand on the front porch,
hand on the decorative cast-iron trellis that frames it,
squinting in California sunlight,
striped short-sleeved shirt buttoned at the neck.

I sit in the backyard (this picture's black-and-white),
my Flintstones playset spread out on the grass.
I arrange each plastic character, each dinosaur,
each palm tree and round "granite" house.

Half a century later, I barely recognize it
when I search the address on Google Maps
and, via "Street view," find myself face to face—

foliage overgrown, facade remodeled and painted
a drab brown. I click to zoom: light hits
one of the windows. I can almost see what's inside.

Dark Tranquillity Corroios

Dark Tranquillity is a band that's very near and dear to my heart. And now, in more or less a week, I will have the opportunity to watch them live for the first time in my life. Dark Tranquillity will play in Corroios on October 4th and I can only rejoice and I'm pretty sure I will cry when the emotion of being in the presence of these genius musicians overwhelms me. God, I cry in their DVDs! And I'm not ashamed or anything, I never hide my emotions when it comes to music. I do it too much when it music is not involved, but for some hidden reason, when music is involved I let it all out. Really Dark Tranquillity is one of the most important bands of my life and certainly one of the most influential bands in the metal scene. This is a fact, Dark Tranquillity helped to shape the sound of old and modern metal. The thing with this band is that they started in the 90s and were influential in the 90s in terms of the melodic death metal sound and today, 20 years later they continue to be influential, they never stopped evolving. I don't care what people say about them, they never repeated themselves, they are always looking into the future of metal, they are adventurous, progressive in their sound, risk-takers, trend-setters, leaders in the sense that others try to copy their originality. And another very important thing, which I say again and again, they are a band who makes beautiful music. It's so brutal at times and yet it is beautiful and emotional and sensitive. Also, Stanne is clearly one of the best lyricist ever to come out of Sweden, one of the best of all time, Dark Tranquillity's discography speaks for itself for anyone who is willing to hear it. They have the mark of legendary bands, their sound always changed while always remaining true to the core of their music. As far as I'm concerned, it's gonna be a historical moment when they land in Portugal and play in front of me. Because I never know what will happen tomorrow, I might never get the chance to see these musical legends, to hear these songs that mean so much to me and make so much sense. Dark Tranquillity always made sense for me, they always touched me, they were always brilliant even when they were a small band from Gothenburg who remained underground for years. How many bands have remained consistently good for over 20 years? Not many. And how many of those continued to innovate while doing so? Even less. Dark Tranquillity's sound is charismatic, it wraps you around it and makes you feel something, whatever it is that you feel, and the hair stand up on the back of your neck, and it also makes you think about yourself, others and everything that surrounds you, it makes you go there, even if is painful. This is why I stick my concert tickets on my bedroom wall, they are all a part of my history, to watch my favourite bands it's always an historical event for me, one that I will never forget and that will change me forever.

Dark Tranquillity - Corroios 4 de Outubro / Porto 3 de Outubro

Poem of the day: Celestial

Tina Chang

Celestial

When everything was accounted for
you rummaged through my bag to find
something offensive: a revolver,
a notebook of misinterpreted text.

I'm God's professor.
His eyes two open ovens.
He has a physical body
and it hiccups and blesses.

Tell me a story before the mudslide,
tell it fast before the house falls,
before it withers in the frost, before
it dozes off next to the television.

I couldn't tell if it was that screen
or the sky spitting dust and light.

Poem of the day: Translations

Michael Dickman

Translations

My mother was led into the world
by her teeth

Pulled
like a bull
into the
heather

She only ever wanted to be a mother her whole life and
nothing else, not even a human being!

One body turned into
another body

Pulled like that
by the golden voices of children

A bull
out of hell

Called out
her teeth out in front of her
her children
pulling

*

First I walk my mother out
into the field
by a leash
by a lifetime
then she walks me out
our coats
shimmering

I brush her hair

Wipe the flies away from her eyes

They are my eyes

Who will ride my mother
when we aren't around
anymore?

Her children won't

Turned from one thing into another until you are a bull
standing in a field

The field just beginning
to whistle us
home

*

Then I am led by the mouth
out into the yellow
field

The light turning to water in the early evening, the insects
dying in the cold and coming back in the morning

Something has to come back

Wings and
shit

I have put on my horse-head

Led by a bit

A lead

My leader is tall and the hair on her forearms is gold

It is a miracle
to lower your eyes
into the tall grass
and eat

Poem of the day: NINE, 40

Anne Tardos

NINE, 40

Take a good look, she says about her inventory.

Palatially housed, her inflammatory and multifaceted
set of selves.

Old brain inside the new brain, inside the skull.

The exact velocity of quantum particles cannot be known.

Like wave equations in the space of certain dimensions.

I never thought that things would go this far.

Angular momentum of closely-knit and sexually
adventurous people.

Any piece of matter, when heated, starts to glow.

It's that kind of relationship that's built on friction.

The next book I'll be reading: The Killer Inside Me

I read a review about this book, and the title intrigued me. Later I found out that apparently it is a classic. I'm just curious about the story. I read a lot of these type of books about killers and the lives of killers. So I bought the book. Not in Portugal of course, all the books are too expensive here, I always buy them from either the UK or the USA because I refuse to pay 20 Euros for a book and make the publishers' rich. I do it on principle. If a book can cost 5 Euros in the UK, why is it 18 or 20 Euros here? I will not abide to that. Besides, most of the books written in English are not available in Portugal anyway, might as well. I guess they are cheaper because they read more, it's an obvious assumption. Same thing goes for CDs and DVDs. I wonder...

Poem of the day: Finding the Words

Carol Ann Duffy

Finding the Words

I found the words at the back of a drawer,
wrapped in black cloth, like three rings
slipped from a dead woman's hand, cold,
dull gold. I had held them before,

years ago,
then put them away, forgetting whatever it was
I could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips,
the second, the third, like a sacrament,
like a pledge, like a kiss,

and my breath
warmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words,
and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm -
I love you, I love you, I love you -
as though they were new.

Os meus poemas: my old poems - auguries of innocence

Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night,
When the Soul slept in Beams of Light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor Souls who Dwell in Night,
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of Day.

Auguries of Innocence, William Blake (1803)

auguries of innocence

o que acontece quando vemos o mundo?
o que acontece quando percebemos que o mundo é um cavalo
de flores com o inferno à volta da cintura?
o que acontece quando deixamos de o sentir
na palma da nossa mão?
quando o mundo e as suas formas nascem de novo em todas as noites.


o que diz o mundo que seja verdade?
o que o mundo me sussurra ao ouvido, com a mão sobre o meu ombro,
é tudo inventado.

o que acontece quando sentimos o mundo?
o que acontece quando deixamos sair dos olhos a inocência?

o que acontece quando sabemos que o mundo é uma estrada de areia?
o que acontece quando deixamos que o mundo nos minta?
o que é que nos diz o mundo que possamos ver?

o que acontece no mundo quando o mundo que achamos ser mundo
é a raiva e o espírito do sangue humano.
quando fomos um mundo que existiu
exclusivamente dentro de nós.

My poems: a road to cross

a road to cross

I built a road to cross
an infinite road of hope
and commonness

at the end of the road
there’s me waiting
the other me
an egotistical self born of pain

I expect certain things to happen
I predict my intelligence will wither
when I cross
and reach the other side

I expect someone to tell me to stop
like someone always does
when I cross

I predict I will find a scar
inside of me
and smile

others will be able to hear
my steps into vertigo
my collapse
the irony of it all

and when I cross
I know what I will find
pointing a gun at my face:
my future.

Poem of the day: Jamaican Idol

Terese Svoboda

Jamaican Idol

Walking backward from the sea,
scales shedding, you seek the cave.

This is why the French door admits
only ocean. You stare into the louver

and forget how to get out. Lull
is the word, or loll. The sea returns,

completing your pulse, the waves live,
each breath of yours worship.

Poem of the day: Days

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Album of the month: Vertigo Steps

"love cannot be trusted" - song Synapse, taken from the album Vertigo Steps

It's been a while since I did musical recommendations, well maybe just a month. But I guess I discover new bands every month, so it's natural that at least one of them (out of the million bands out there) will be worth listening to and praising. They are difficult to find, believe me, and most of the new bands I discover are by accident, or maybe what some people would call "fate", this unidentified entity that I doubt exists.

The truth is I discovered Vertigo Steps by mistake. I was looking into the Portuguese bands that were labeled as "prog" not really thinking it'll be any or even if there were, not really thinking they would be really good. I assume this of all new bands I listened to, I assume they won't be very good because most of the bands really aren't. So it's a good place to start. If the band convinces me and proves me wrong, it'll be twice as good. Here we are, a Portuguese band. It's not that our metal scene isn't vigorous but sometimes there comes a pearl that shines more than the others. And this band is promising Vertigo Steps. Their self-titled album "Vertigo Steps" is so good you won't see it coming. Actually, and I've said this before, I think I like Vertigo Steps (the band) so much because they remind me of Green Carnation (now deceased unfortunately) and that nostalgic feeling was enough to make me feel warm inside. But then I was also able to see all the layers their music has. They are truly adventurous as a band, which is something I always regard as a positive sign, and most of all they write beautiful music. I say many times that I like beautiful music, whether it's black metal, death metal or the cleanest prog band. All of them write beautiful music and that's why I like them. I don't hide I fall in love with the melodies of the bands, and that's what music is all about, melody, and metal is melody, that's why I can't accept it being labeled "noise", because clearly it isn't that at all.

Back to Vertigo Steps, this album was released in 2008 and I only found out about it now, this means I was either too distracted and not looking in the right places. And so have most of you, because most people never heard of Vertigo Steps. Well, let me tell you all that you should all listen to this album because it's really a work of very talented people, who are good songwriters, know what they are doing, and they even write amazing lyrics, philosophical, thought-provoking, as it always such be in art, loving and painful. And you can hear a lot of love and pain on this album, but it's done with a good taste that makes me go back to Anathema. And this is really a big compliment, when I compare whatever a band does to Anathema. In this case, I think it's the sensitivity Vertigo Steps show to write really emotional songs as well. Emotional doesn't always have to be equated with frailty as some people seem to think.

Vertigo Steps are set to release their second album at the end of this year, 2010 for those who don't know, and at this point I'm really really excited about it. I defnitely believe that they can take it a little be further and do even better than what they did in Vertigo Steps, which is one of the best albums to ever come out of Portugal in the last few years, and that's saying a lot about a band who released their first album. I believe they will prove to be more than a promise and exceed themselves. If they don't, which is also a possibility, hard to believe though, they can still be very proud of their debut album Vertigo Steps, which is has more value than meets the end and it demands a lot of attention from the listener, a very common occurrence in bands that have a progressive vibe or feel in their music, and Vertigo Steps definitely have that background, of exploring their musical possibilities not really thinking about boundaries, which is, as it were, my personal definition of prog. It's dark, it's rock, it's metal, it's prog, it's acoustic, it's a great combination, everything comes together pretty well, you might even find it surprising but this band is here to stay.