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.

disappear

aren't we all a reflection of what we used to be

a moment buried in a memory

a dying gift

disappearing

in the shadows

we are not us anymore.

someone else is interfering

with our sense of self.