It doesn't have to be about you

it doesn't have to be about you

My poems: reconheces-me

reconheces-me

quando me perguntas ‘reconheces-me’ ao ouvido
durante o que parece ser uma dança
palavras e silêncios me contas
com a pontas dos dedos

sinto o que dizes
mas não entendo as pausas
a insubordinação do teu corpo

não entendo
as perguntas que me fazes
contra uma luz a vazar os sentidos
que ainda me restam

podes tirar-me esta protecção
o intervalo entre nós
para me enfraquecer

mesmo assim
não entenderei
porque estremeces
com o som que dispara no coração

e quando me perguntas ‘reconheces-me’ outra vez
respondo-te com segredos
comunicamos assim
como se fôssemos estranhos
estranhos
que não sabem o que fazem
que não sabem do que têm mais medo:
de se perderem ou de se acharem

Metal: headbang for life

When I listen to metal I have a smile on my face, I'm enjoying myself. I'm not mad to the world and hating everybody around me. It actually, truly, makes me feel better, I have fun, I enjoy it, I headbang, it makes me a better person. It makes smile. It makes me want to listen to what else is out there that I haven't explored and it can be anything, metal is just the beginning of my journey. It makes me smile. It makes me smile. It makes me smile. It makes me smile.

Album of the month: Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone

Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone

Akercocke hail from England and their music would be considered pretty terrifying for someone who isn't familiar with extreme metal. I, on the other hand, am and know how to recognize a masterpiece when I see one. Again, they are a progressive metal band but they are much more than that, they throw death metal and black metal in there as well. What intrigued me about them was that they seemed to have built a sound of their own, very individual and standing out in the scene. And then I listened to 'Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone' and it was love. This, I think, is one of the best extreme prog albums I ever heard, without a hint of doubt. It's as diverse as any prog masterpiece and everything seems to fit to perfection, revealing a really inspired group of songwriters. Being so diverse in extreme metal is a rare thing, I find, and that's probably what got me addicted to this album and this band. It's pure headbanging violent madness at times, yes, it's heavy metal, but its tasteful and dare I say delicately put together. I've been inclined for the more extreme metal genres lately, which is something I welcome because that's where I started. The lyrics are a slap in the face of religion and since I can relate, it makes perfect sense for me but there's also this underlying questioning of life and what we are told by society to believe in. It's done in a smart way and it elicits an emotional response. Needless to say that in metal so much is about our emotional responses, about what's beneath the surface, under the skin, about what scares us to death deep inside, about our mental demons, about our alter egos, about our pain. Akercocke makes us go there. And it's never easy, is it?

Poem of the day: Affirmation

Donald Hall

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Poem of the Day: If My Voice Is Not Reaching You

Afzal Ahmed Syed

If My Voice Is Not Reaching You

If my voice is not reaching you
add to it the echo—
echo of ancient epics

And to that—
a princess

And to the princess—your beauty

And to your beauty—
a lover's heart

And in the lover's heart
a dagger

My Poems: what is happiness

what is happiness

I walk on a bubbly little field
arms open to what I might find
hidden in there

I’ve been taken
by what is safe and sacred
and I’m always returning

beyond my reach
there’s a child
speaking to herself
mumbling words of wisdom

but I do reach out to touch her hand
as she accepts my doubts
and smiles a dead smile

“there’s nothing left to do but run” she says

What is happiness?

What is happiness?

Everything has changed

trapped inside your own mind

everything has changed

Poem of the day: The Ecstasy

Phillip Lopate

The Ecstasy

You are not me, and I am never you
except for thirty seconds in a year
when ecstasy of coming,
laughing at the same time
or being cruel to know for certain
what the other's feeling
charge some recognition.

Not often when we talk though.
Undressing to the daily logs
of this petty boss, that compliment,
curling our lips at half-announced ambitions.

I tell you this during another night
of living next to you
without having said what was on our minds,
our bodies merely rubbing their fishy smells together.

The feelings keep piling up.
Will I ever find the time to tell you what is inside these trunks?

Maybe it's the fault of our language
but dreams are innocent and pictorial.
Then let our dreams speak for us
side by side, leg over leg,
an electroencephalographic kiss
flashing blue movies from temple
to temple, as we lie gagged in sleep.

Sleep on while I am talking
I am just arranging the curtains
over your naked breasts.
Love doesn't look too closely...
love looks very closely
the shock of beauty you gave me
the third rail that runs through our hospitality.
When will I follow you
over the fence to your tracks?

I feel so fragile

I feel so fragile

Nevermore: a special band

Nevermore is probably the most interesting band coming out of America for me, apart from Dream Theater. They certainly are one the most relevant bands out there playing progressive music. And all of their 7 albums added something new to the contemporary metal sound. I have most of their albums except their self-title "Nevermore" and "Dreaming Neon Black" which I intend to buy in the near future. The thing with Nevermore is that their lyrics are exceedingly good and socially keen, much superior to what most bands would ever be able to produce, and musically, they are the perfect soundtrack for nihilism and human disillusionment. And they are a thrash band while still being progressive. Very few call pull that off and still manage to create deep emotion with their music. So, again, perfect mix of aggression and emotionally charged music that will be as thought-provoking as it can be. I think no other band has touched so many nerves as Nevermore really, with a highly poetic message that speaks in between the words as well. For that, and many other things that can't be explained, they are one of my favourite bands. And there's no other voice like Warrel Dane's in music today, able to convey so many different states of mind, particularly anger towards injustice. And there's no other guitar player like Jeff Loomis who did more for the guitar world than most of the players of his generation. He's one of the few who actually pushed guitar playing into a new level of innovation and intricacy. He's as complex as they come and I admire him as a player and songwriter. He's an inspiration for me as is Nevermore as a whole train of thought.

"Blame the world or blame yourself

Or just accept what cannot change"

The Day You Built The Wall - Nevermore

Poem of the Day: Beginning with Two Lines from Rexroth

Ray Gonzalez

Beginning with Two Lines from Rexroth

I see the unwritten books, the unrecorded experiments, the unpainted pictures, the interrupted lives, a staircase leading to a guarantee, the glowing frame of wisdom protecting me from harm after I escape the questions of a lifetime. I see the turning of the pages in a book I have not read, its story proclaiming the reader is going to escape without knowing how the equation injured the moment—sacred leaves rotting in a bottle of rubbing oil, their black designs sinking farther than my reach.

I witness what is made for someone else, its motion calling me to wait for the regions of love where we come back, able to dismiss the picture of ourselves where we can't smile because no one is able to capture time that has not happened and never will. There is no agony and waste, only the steps into the frontier where it is easy to hide.

Even a shoulder bone cracks in the morning light, a man rising at the end of a century where everyone gives him pictures, including one of a translucent scene where the running youth carries the host, his confusion between danger and desire making the boy stop at thebank of the river, turn, and go home. When he gets to the house, he doesn't cry out. When it goes dark and the arguments begin, it is his portrait that is handed to me first because I already arrived at the junction between the lamp and the staircase to the mocking stars.

Books I'm reading: Contra Salazar

Depois de ter lido uma "mémoire", das poucas que li na vida até agora, regresso à poesia, a um lugar familiar: Fernando Pessoa. E porque eu papo tudo que sai sobre Fernando Pessoa, tinha de ler este também, mesmo achando que só me trará algumas gargalhadas. Talvez o que lá encontre me surpreenda. Depois desta ainda não sei o que vou ler, talvez me volte para poetas estrangeiros novamente. Time wil tell.

Poem of the Day: Making a Fist

Naomi Shihab Nye

Making a Fist

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

Anathema: We're Here Because We're Here

don't be afraid to come inside

Meus poemas: de profundis

de profundis

Society, as we constitued it, will have no place for me.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

quanto tempo vais perder
a tentar perceber a profundidade do corte

a profundidade do corte

vais ambicionar outros tempos
vais ser outro escudo penitente

como um dos fracos
entregues a uma solidão
tão monótona
quanto exagerada
escolheste os passos

e dessa travessia
sobrarás
como o único sobrevivente

no caminho
vais ser
o que te dizem para ser

vais fazer de tudo
para sentir

Poema do dia: Meu Pobre Portugal

Fernando Pessoa

Meu Pobre Portugal

Meu pobre Portugal,
Dóis-me no coração.
Teu mal é o meu mal
Por imaginação.

Tão fraco, tão doente,
E com a boa cor
Que a tísica põe quente
Na cara, o exterior.

Meu pobre e magro povo
A quem deram, às peças,
Um fato em estado novo
Para que o não pareças!

Tens a cara lavada,
Um fato de se ver
Mas não te deram nada,
Coitado, que comer.

E aí, nessa cadeira,
Jazes, apresentável.
O transeunte amável.

Poema do dia: Magdalene Poem

John Taggart

Magdalene Poem

Love enters the body

enters
almost
almost completely breaks and enters into the body

already beaten and broken

peaceful if breaking if breaking
and entering the already broken is peaceful

untouchable fortunately
untouchable.

Surprises unfold: Between the Buried And Me

So, I heard about Between the Buried And Me like 4 years ago. A mate from school recommended a song to me. I never listened to that song, I was too busy listening to other prog. A few years later, like in 2010, like now, I listened to "The Great Misdirect" which was released in 2009, so I'm late anyway. Now I'm exploring this new band starting with their latest release, that happens a lot. They are labeled as many things but to me, based on this record, they simply play progressive metal. That would be perfect for me right? Well, it is. So, I'm highlighting this album as one of the biggest surprises of the year so far, good ones, of course. The other good new band I found out about that made me feel the same way was "Stone Circle" when they released "Myth", totally different album but still genre bending progressive metal. Once in a while, a pearl like this pops up and makes itself visible to me, to my eager years. I see myself more and more attracted to extreme progressive metal sounds as much as "typical" progressive melodic metal. This is, however, a very difficult band, in the sense that most people won't really enjoy listening to them, too "specific" and "true" for most "consume, conform" minds. But, at the same time, they seem to be a very popular band, which, to me, is a contradiction. And why is that? They are in a big label and the press labeled them as metalcore? That might be it. Also, I feel you must have a certain musical background to really enjoy their music and understand what they are doing because there are so many musical genres involved and that are being explored and updated, taken aback, that one does need to be paying attention. But, in the end, this is the kind of music I love, music that isn't all that easy to understand or process, music that will make me think about what's being said and communicated, music that will speak to me on a higher level, music that will make me feel different things all at once, music that takes its time to reveal itself to me, music that feeds my brain and stretches it.

Between the Buried And Me - The Great Misdirect

And they will be playing in Portugal soon too, I won't be able to see them but I'm promoting it anyway. 24 June 2010 in Porto, The Great Misdirect European Tour hits our country. I'm sure it'll be worth it. They are very skillful and imaginative performers and they obviously know how to play their instruments.

Poem of the day: I Have News for You

Tony Hoagland

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought
process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.