Happy Halloween from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Em queda - David Wojnarowicz - "untitled", 1988-1989

Janeiro - Um poema de Vasco Gato

É esta a completude dos dias

Quando se reúnem sobre a cidade

Os sossegos da nossa idade já meiga.

São estas as palavras que ficam

Desde o interior do nosso mais antigo nome.

É o inverno aberto de janeiro

Com as árvores despidas e o frio azul,

É o ano que começa no tempo que é nada,

Os bolsos que se enchem de mãos,

As casas que parecem mais juntas.

Por esta altura estarão a nascer

As horas mais felizes das nossas vidas

- bebemos chá escutando o lume

E amanhã será um dia a menos,

Um outro som acrescentando à voz,

Um abraço fechando-se até ao amor.

Vasco Gato, in  Um Mover de Mão, Assírio e Alvim, 2000

M83 - Intro (ft. Zola Jesus)

Este Blog faz hoje um ano - Parabéns!

Skinny Love - Um momento Especial

Andrew Bird - A Take Away Show

Ode to Midwest - Kevin Young

The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
—Bob Dylan

I want to be doused

in cheese

& fried. I want

to wander

the aisles, my heart's

supermarket stocked high

as cholesterol. I want to die

wearing a sweatsuit—

I want to live

forever in a Christmas sweater,

a teddy bear nursing

off the front. I want to write

a check in the express lane.

I want to scrape

my driveway clean

myself, early, before

anyone's awake—

that'll put em to shame—

I want to see what the sun

sees before it tells

the snow to go. I want to be

the only black person I know.

I want to throw

out my back & not

complain about it.

I wanta drive

two blocks. Why walk—

I want love, n stuff—

I want to cut

my sutures myself.

I want to jog

down to the river

& make it my bed—

I want to walk

its muddy banks

& make me a withdrawal.

I tried jumping in,

found it frozen—

I'll go home, I guess,

to my rooms where the moon

changes & shines

like television.

Poetry (July/August 2007)

LCD Soundsystem - I Can Change

Manuel António Pina (1943-2012)

A POESIA VAI

A poesia vai acabar, os poetas
vão ser colocados em lugares mais úteis.
Por exemplo, observadores de pássaros
(enquanto os pássaros não
acabarem). Esta certeza tive-a hoje ao
entrar numa repartição pública.
Um senhor míope atendia devagar
ao balcão; eu perguntei: «Que fez algum
poeta por este senhor?» E a pergunta
afligiu-me tanto por dentro e por
fora da cabeça que tive que voltar a ler
toda a poesia desde o princípio do mundo.
Uma pergunta numa cabeça.
– Como uma coroa de espinhos:
estão todos a ver onde o autor quer chegar? –

Manuel António Pina (1943-2012) 

Poesia, Saudade da Prosa - uma antologia pessoal, Assírio & Alvim, 2011

Alice Oswald - Memorial

Memorial (excerpt)

The first to die was PROTESILAUS 
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus    Iton    Pteleus    Antron
He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half-built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He's been in the black earth now for thousands of years

Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads
Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads

ECHEPOLUS a perfect fighter
Always ahead of his men
Known for his cold seed-like concentration
Moving out and out among the spears
Died at the hands of Antilochus
You can see the hole in the helmet just under the ridge
Where the point of the blade passed through
And stuck in his forehead
Letting the darkness leak down over his eyes

ELEPHENOR from Euboea in command of forty ships
Son of Chalcodon nothing is known of his mother
Died dragging the corpse of Echepolus
A little flash of flesh showing under the shield as he bent
Agenor stabbed him in the ninth year of the war
He wore his hair long at the back

Like leaves
Sometimes they light their green flames
And are fed by the earth
And sometimes it snuffs them out

Like leaves
Sometimes they light their green flames
And are fed by the earth
And sometimes it snuffs them out

SIMOISIUS born on the banks of the Simois
Son of Anthemion his mother a shepherdess
Still following the sheep when she gave birth
A lithe and promising young man unmarried
Was met by Ajax in the ninth year of the war
And died full tilt running onto his spear
The point passed clean through the nipple
And came out through the shoulderblade
He collapsed instantly an unspeakable sorrow to his parents

And LEUKOS friend of Odysseus
Little is known of him except his death

And someone's face pierced like a piece of fruit
That was Priam's son unlucky man
Who made his living in the horse country
North of Troy he was stepping backwards
When the darkness hit him with a dull clang
His name was DEMOCOON

Like a man steps back
Seeing a snake almost under his foot
In a heathery hollow
The fear flutters his knees it
Sucks him white he steps back
Like a man steps back

Seeing a snake almost under his foot
In a heathery hollow
The fear flutters his knees it
Sucks him white he steps back

[. . .]

From here. Alice Oswald, Memorial, Faber & Faber, 2012.

Bat For Lashes - Laura

David Bowie - Thursday Child

Richmond Hill - James Ragan

It is my habit to walk a hill until it levels out
or until it thinks it has seen enough of sloth
and the way I map one foot flat in front of the other,
each step shorter, wider than the first, a platypus of sorts,
whose rhythm like its waddle I have borrowed since birth.
It is my habit to walk a hill until the sky falls near
and one believes he’s risen to the heavens
where the Queen’s deer sprint past sprigs and crockets,
and night hawks graze above the Orchard House with such ascension,
heaven knows what royal robes the moon must wear.
I might sooner run downhill to find my level
because the road that rises up to meet me has no will
and bends to unimpede me like a gifting uncle,
wise and wily but in matters of frailty, unskilled.
I might even learn to hug the hill when it pretends to slope
at every lurch beyond the Terrace bole and heather
as if it grieved for the mind descending and pulls the eye
back toward some higher view the road intended,

as when my breath searches for a swig of air,
there rises in the valley a swill of smoke, high on the heath
and racing, I rabble thirst until the eyes tumble
downridge to the nightingale’s meadow
where the field edges past the bunchgrass into a cattle grove.
There between the sparrowfall and woodsmoke like a rime
that winds along the center of a verse, the river bends
as is its habit when followed by so many feet as harrowed as mine.
And while it’s not my nature to steal my way into the low roads
and fox lands where the marsh pine hugs the bracken,
I have followed bends until the journey’s end surprises
and like the hawk above the Gothic turrets on the Old Main rising
high into its lofty fields of sky, I have wandered the Thames
from Richmond Hill to Kensington for the order nature gives my mind
and of the shorter roads have sought the longer one to climb..

James Ragan, retirado daqui 

O poeta estará amanhã na FLUL, na sala 4. 

Beaufort Poem Scale - Alice Oswald

As I speak (force 1) smoke rises vertically,
Plumed seeds fall in less than ten seconds
And gossamer, perhaps shaken from the soul's hairbrush
Is seen in the air.

Oh yes (force 2) it's lovely here,
One or two spiders take off
And there are willow seeds in clouds

But I keep feeling (force 3) a scintillation,
As if a southerly light breeze
Was blowing the tips of my thoughts
(force 4) and making my tongue taste strongly of italics

And when I pause it feels different
As if something had entered (force 5) whose hand is lifting my page

(force 6) So I want to tell you how a whole tree sways to the left
But even as I say so (force 7) a persistent howl is blowing my hair horizontal
And even as I speak (force 8) this speaking becomes difficult

And now my voice (force 9) like an umbrella shaken inside out
No longer shelters me from the fact (force 10)
There is suddenly 

a winged thing in the house,
Is it the wind?

Alice Oswald, Beaufort Poem Scale from Conversations with the Wind, 2012, a new collection of eight poems specially commissioned for outdoor arts project. More information here. 

Shut up and Play the Hits

Dia 1 de Novembro, no Nimas

November for Beginners - um poema de RIta Dove

Snow would be the easy

way out—that softening

sky like a sigh of relief

at finally being allowed

to yield. No dice.

We stack twigs for burning

in glistening patches

but the rain won’t give.

So we wait, breeding

mood, making music

of decline. We sit down

in the smell of the past

and rise in a light

that is already leaving.

We ache in secret,

memorizing

a gloomy line

or two of German.

When spring comes

we promise to act

the fool. Pour,

rain! Sail, wind,

with your cargo of zithers!

November 1981

Source: Poetry (June 2012)

Poema tirado daqui.

Cass McCombs - Dreams Come True

Nina Simone - Just in Time

Um poema de José Duarte

Para L.

Subíamos a rua descontraidamente

sem preocupação com a

subtileza do tempo. Quando chovia

abria o guarda-chuva, dava-te o braço

e percorríamos as ruas com edifícios

cor de tijolo. Eu sorria e tu sorrias.

Quanto mais não fosse era bom estar no quarto

a ouvir a chuva a bater, a ver as gaivotas

na rua em frente à espera da mão do

misterioso senhor que abria a janela para lhes

dar comida, sempre à mesma hora.

Se, por vezes nos distraímos do que estávamos

a fazer, era porque o silêncio tinha uma

dimensão mágica. Todas as línguas em todas

as vozes.

Não me esqueci ainda do toque, nem

das carícias às escondidas. Pequenos segredos,

que ocultam um ainda amor de juventude.

José Duarte, 2012