Citação do dia: Fernando Pessoa

“A nossa personalidade deve ser indevassável, mesmo por nós próprios: daí o nosso dever de sonharmos sempre, e incluirmo-nos nos nossos sonhos, para que nos não seja possível ter opiniões a nosso respeito”

Writings on the wall: #5654

#909

Do you wanna live or do you wanna leave?

If you're alive

Show me

Os Meus Poemas: coisas concretas

coisas concretas

as coisas muito concretas

que parecem alucinações

quando olhamos para elas e nos afastamos

daquilo que é poesia

e daquilo que são corpos pregados num céu sem estrelas

feito a partir de retalhos e remendos dos contos que me contas

com os olhos fechados

para o mundo

e se agora me atingisse um relâmpago

quando estou a acordar

e a ser engolida pela noite

uma coisa concreta

mas impalpável

tudo se transformaria

numa coisa desfeita

e dolorosa

aquilo que escondemos

por entre sorrisos abertos

e momentos transitórios

colocar-nos-á um pouco mais longe

do que vemos reflectido

e a sensação com que ficamos

é que as coisas concretas

não nos deixam ser aquilo que queremos

Poema do dia: Cartas a uma Desconhecida

Nicanor Parra

Cartas a uma Desconhecida

Quando passarem os anos, quando passarem

Os anos e o ar tiver cavado um fosso

Entre a tua alma e a minha; quando passarem os anos

E eu for apenas um homem que amou,

Um ser que se deteve um instante diante dos teus lábios,

Um pobre homem cansado de andar pelos jardins,

Onde estarás tu? Onde

Estarás, ó filha dos meus beijos?

Tradução de Albano Martins.

Citação do dia: Augusto Monterroso

«O certo é que o escritor de brevidades o que mais deseja é escrever interminavelmente textos longos, textos longos em que a imaginação não tenha de trabalhar, em que factos, coisas, animais e homens se cruzem, se procurem ou fujam uns dos outros, vivam, convivam, se amem ou façam derramar livremente o seu sangue sem estarem sujeitos ao ponto e vírgula, ao ponto.»

Augusto Monterroso

Poem of the day: Strip Show

Zach Savich

Strip Show

Lightning-torn bark lured on the lower limbs, a sym-
bol of how a bole bares itself in time. I've tried

to wear my sheddings so gracefully
that finches will not flush at the foul capillary sheen my

systolic nerve acts out its barn-raisings slash burnings by.
Have a heart. Mine murmurs yes and no and yet now.

Poem of the day: Wolf Cento

Simone Muench

Wolf Cento

Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf
at a live heart, the sun breaks down.
What is important is to avoid
the time allotted for disavowels
as the livid wound
leaves a trace leaves an abscess
takes its contraction for those clouds
that dip thunder & vanish
like rose leaves in closed jars.
Age approaches, slowly. But it cannot
crystal bone into thin air.
The small hours open their wounds for me.
This is a woman's confession:
I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me

Sugestões literárias: A Poesia dos Outros Eus

Fernando Pessoa

A Poesia dos Outros Eus

The Truth About the Present

John Lane

The Truth About the Present

after Bei Dao

when rivers are intoxicated
with dioxide you gather lotus shoots
to pick their pockets is
the clock of the age

when the last songbird
shivers with undue cold like wires overhead
to handle harsh metals is
the clock of the age

when your keyboard dissolves
in the pit of nations
to write in echoes is
the clock of the age

when you forge transparencies
in the foundries upstream
the bridges are blocked by karaoke
their digital sand is
the clock of the age

the cell phone's face is always
time-dependent on fingers somewhere
today opens to the nearby delta
and tomorrow
is the clock of the age

Poem of the day: Almost There

Timothy Liu

Almost There

Hard to imagine getting
anywhere near another semi-
nude encounter down this concrete
slab of interstate, the two of us
all thumbs—

white-throated swifts mating mid-flight
instead of buckets of
crispy wings thrown down
hoi polloi—
an army of mouths

eager to feed
left without any lasting sustenance.
Best get down on all fours.
Ease our noses past
rear-end collisions wrapped around

guardrails shaking loose their bolts
while unseen choirs jacked on
airwaves go on preaching
loud and clear to every
last pair of unrepentant ears—

Mood: In Absentia

Poem of the day: What Elizabeth Bishop Could Not Know

Afaa M. Weaver

What Elizabeth Bishop Could Not Know

Black women keep secrets tied up in hankies
they stuff in their bras, secrets of how their necks
are connected to their spines in the precise gyration
of a jelly sweetened in nights they had to keep
to themselves, nights prowlers came in to change
the faces of their children, secrets like the good
googa mooga laughter they do with each other
when something affirms their suspicions, when
their eyes are made the prayerbooks of fate crafted
in the wisdom that knows there is no north or south
in black wandering, searching the new land, a song
they wrestle from black men, the broken ones
who had to be shown where and how to stand,
how to respect pain and the way it governs itself,
secrets, things made out of generations and not kept
in the glass selections of an old juke box.

Quote of the day

#676

Random #999

Citação do dia: José Saramago

"Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara."

José Saramago

Poem of the day: A Book Said Dream and I Do

Barbara Ras

A Book Said Dream and I Do

There were feathers and the light that passed through feathers.

There were birds that made the feathers and the sun that made the light.

The feathers of the birds made the air soft, softer

than the quiet in a cocoon waiting for wings,

stiller than the stare of a hooded falcon.

But no falcons in this green made by the passage of parents.

No, not parents, parrots flying through slow sleep

casting green rays to light the long dream.

If skin, dew would have drenched it, but dust

hung in space like the stoppage of

time itself, which, after dancing with parrots,

had said, Thank you. I'll rest now.

It's not too late to say the parrot light was thick

enough to part with a hand, and the feathers softening

the path, fallen after so much touching of cheeks,

were red, hibiscus red split by veins of flight

now at the end of flying.

Despite the halt of time, the feathers trusted red

and believed indolence would fill the long dream,

until the book shut and time began again to hurt.

Knowing Archibald MacLeish: 2 Poems

Archibald MacLeish

a) Charity

Since my Beloved chambered me

   To beat within her breast,

And took my soul to light a shrine

   Her soul had decked and dressed,

And caught my songs about her throat,—

   Dissected, known, confessed,

I dwell within her charity

A half-unwelcome guest.

b) Soul-Sight

Like moon-dark, like brown water you escape,

O laughing mouth, O sweet uplifted lips.

Within the peering brain old ghosts take shape;

You flame and wither as the white foam slips

Back from the broken wave: sometimes a start,

A gesture of the hands, a way you own

Of bending that smooth head above your heart,—

Then these are vanished, then the dream is gone.

Oh, you are too much mine and flesh of me

To seal upon the brain, who in the blood

Are so intense a pulse, so swift a flood

Of beauty, such unceasing instancy.

Dear unimagined brow, unvisioned face,

All beauty has become your dwelling place.

#789

"Do not seek outside yourself"

Poem of the day: To George Sand: A Desire

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

To George Sand: A Desire

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man,
Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions
Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance
And answers roar for roar, as spirits can:
I would some mild miraculous thunder ran
Above the applauded circus, in appliance
Of thine own nobler nature's strength and science,
Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
From thy strong shoulders, to amaze the place
With holier light! that thou to woman's claim
And man's, mightst join beside the angel's grace
Of a pure genius sanctified from blame
Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace
To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.

Citação do dia: Fernando Pessoa

O argumento essencial contra uma Ditadura

é que ela é Ditadura.

Fernando Pessoa

My poems: naming things

naming things

why did you shut the lights?

I was watching the birth of your face

the music coming out of your lips

and now there is only a dance of shadows

who don’t belong

let’s not name our feelings for now

there is no need to scare them away

with words

we don’t need to think about what’s to come

or predict it

the moments will end up discovering themselves

let’s not open ajar boxes

let’s not keep them

intact

we can promise that we will never stay the same

and break that promise

because it is so easy to fall apart

but not as easy as turning the lights on again

there is so much more that we can see

when there is no pain involved

the process of acknowledgement of one another

is completed when we are quiet

and exposed

and everything that can be uncovered

deserves to be

and maybe we will find ourselves that way

when we least expect

and start living at once

because what else is there to learn

about intimacy

that doesn’t force us to be closer?

why should we wait?

#888

#112

Poema do dia: Sobre os poetas que inventaram

Jorge Letria

Sobre os poetas que inventaram

Tenho na mesa uma estrela do mar

e na almofada uma rosa dos ventos.

Tudo me sabe a viagem, mesmo quando

permaneço imóvel, separando no cais

o centeio e o vinho, a pimenta e o ouro.

Não fui almirante de nenhuma armada

nem grumete de nenhum naufrágio;

fui a nau frágil da loucura das ondas,

o albatroz rendido ao chamamento do longe,

a sereia apodrecida nas redes da faina.

Nesse tempo em que eu era tudo e não era nada,

em que existia somente na perdição dos mapas,

vinham as viúvas chorar por mim

com lágrimas do tamanho de pérolas,

do tamanho de conchas no desespero das dunas.

Ai dos poetas que se alimentam apenas do vivido,

ai dos olhos vencidos pela evidência do real.

Eu sou dos que inventam, dos que sempre inventaram,

dos que não podem ser levados a sério,

mesmo quando vestem a roupagem da tristeza absoluta.

Um poeta não pode resumir-se ao que é tangível,

sob pena de ser pequeno de mais para caber num verso.