Resistance is Futile - José Pedro Moreira

Electric Arches by Eve L. Ewing

TW, Dragon Country - Gastão Cruz

Acreditávamos no tempo quando 
o país do dragão era um espectáculo
de fronteira inviolável, e a angústia
não saía de dentro do cenário, e a 
emoção era um lugar fictício:
acreditar no
tempo o erro mais terrível.

Gastão Cruz. Fogo. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 2013.

"Still Life With Lost Cosmonaut" - John Burnside

If I imagine you dead, there is no love
immense enough to bring you back to earth;
but here, in this bowl of apples, on this kitchen
table, gold
and crimson in a space
that could not be more ample or precise
I see you drifting in the selfsame light
that I inhabit, wishing not
to occupy, or slip loose, or possess,
life being more to me than I could ever
wish for, colour, shape, the subtleties
of shade, and when I bite into the fruit,
the taste of it, much more than I could
wish for; though I wish you could be here.

John Burnside. Still Life With Feeding Snake. London: Jonathan Cape, 2017.

Peleas Domésticas - Frank Baéz

Mientras escribo en el papel
a las tres de la mañana
una musa me escupe la cara
otra musa me grita
una me trae vodka
y me susurra no escribas
me trae drogas
me trae modelos de revistas
no escribas no escribas
repiten al unísono
día y noche
noche y día.

Frank Baéz

Ofício de Viajante - Al Berto

The Laughing Child - W. S. Merwin

When she looked down from the kitchen window
into the back yard and the brown wicker
baby carriage in which she had tucked me
three months old to lie out in the fresh air
of my first January the carriage
was shaking she said and went on shaking
and she saw I was lying there laughing
she told me about it later it was
something that reassured her in a life
in which she had lost everyone she loved
before I was born and she had just begun
to believe that she might be able to
keep me as I lay there in the winter
laughing it was what she was thinking of
later when she told me that I had been
a happy child and she must have kept that
through the gray cloud of all her days and now
out of the horn of dreams of my own life
I wake again into the laughing child

Garden Time. Canyon Press, 2016.

um poema de valter hugo mãe

não procuro um amor entre os cardos,

se é entre os cardos que me vês, procura

pensar que um amor não se perde por ali

nem por ali se deve encontrar. se estou

entre os cardos, meu amor, é para te esquecer

e se me vires, pensa que é por ti, absolutamente por ti

que procuro apenas dores, apenas fardos,

para lentamente matar o meu coração. e

se me vires cair, se entretanto me vires no chão,

não me apanhes, não me ajudes, pensa que

já ninguém passeia nos cardos e que o 

amor, para castigo dos que morrem, recomeça

num outro lugar, seguramente à tua espera.

depois sorri mesmo que te seja difícil, se por

mais difícil que seja para mim ver-te sorrir

é entre os cardos que devo partir, quando

fugazmente te souber passando, tão parecida

com ires buscar a felicidade sem mim e eu

só mais uns segundos, já meus anjos preparados.

valter hugo mãe

Angélica Freitas - Eu durmo comigo

From Let them eat chaos - Kate Tempest

The squats we used to party in

are flats we can’t afford

The dumps we did our dancing in

have all been restored

Pints are up two quid

the staff are beautiful and bored

You think it’s coming round here?

It’s falling on its sword.

It don’t feel like home no more

I don’t speak the lingo.

Since when was this a winery?

It used to be the bingo.

I’ve walked these streets for all my life

they know me like no other.

But the streets have changed.

I no longer feel them

shudder

Alright alright, I get the gist.

Whose city is this?

It doesn’t want me no more.

I’ve had a glimpse

into the future.

It stinks.

London’s a walled fort,

it’s all for the rich,

if you fall short

you fall.

You know where the door is.

Board up the broken,

do it up,

sell it back

make it bespoke.

It’s all out in the open.

It’s fine, man,

hike the price right up

and smile with your friends

in the posh new nightclubs.

My streets have been dug up.

Re-paved.

New routes for commuters.

The landscape has changed

I’m looking for the old tags,

the graffs that once meant

safe territory

but it seems

every hieroglyph gets whitewashed

eventually.

Kate Tempest. Let them eat chaos. Picador, 2016.

Melancolia - Bernardo Pinto de Almeida

Os papéis falam uns com os outros

Sobre esta mesa onde a sombra cai

A lâmpada esquecida tem remorsos

Da luz que antes lhe deu que se esvai.

Nas paredes que antes quadros coloriram

Sobre papel sedoso de ramagens

Ecoam dias em que vozes riram

Jarras de cristal com flores selvagens.

Já partidos os vidros nas janelas

A glicínia sobre os muros sinuosa

Conforme o sol ondula se reclina

Ervas crescem no jardim por elas

Pois já nenhuma mão colhe sua rosa.

Tudo se abandona a ser em ruína.

Bernardo Pinto de Almeida. Hotel Spleen. Lisboa: Quetzal, 2003.

Deathlike de Paul Stephenson

Paul Stephenson. Retirado daqui.

Avô Amaro - Margarida Vale de Gato

Quando o homem pisou a lua no café do meu avô

eu não estava lá [escrevi sobre isto antes por outra

causa mas (montagem, conspiração, solas ufanas de improváveis

galochas de lustro astronómico arrastando um pé retocado

pelo ângulo do vento bafejando ouro azul rubro e branco

e pura Americana forever) nem sempre há-de ser o mesmo 

poema; neste o tema serve o desenho de quem era o meu avô:

ele tinha um café e um televisor ainda raro na altura, caixa

cúbica que todos convocou em torno ao espaço, só eu não;

eu era ainda para nascer e por isso lamento quando chegou

o primeiro homem à lua eu não estava lá] em Vendas Novas

e o café ficava em frente ao quartel e os mancebos

treinavam para ir matar no ultramar por causa do senhor

que julgava ainda governar Portugal mas também não esteve

lá e se calhar nem viu nada se calhar nem ouviu se calhar

nem deu por nada mesmo supondo um rouco transístor

seguro pela débil mão junto ao débil coração o enfermo 

na cadeira de onde já tinha caído sem ter percebido

nada desconhecendo os mancebos e estes em paga

ignorando por uma vez tudo dele todos olhos e reparo

todos postos no futuro todos sôfregos na respiração 

de Neil Amrstrong lá longe na lua na televisão do Amaro

preto no branco o dominó em tampo de mármore em câmara

lenta derrubado passado tempo guerra regime ó leve coração

efémero o meu avô no meio do café a serradura era neve 

de botas cardadas na lua que ele limpou quando voltou

a tropa ao quartel de fantasia em forma ele só atencioso 

ele desperto afã de cuidar de varrer como sempre fazia 

ele pepitas semi-acesas eram estrelas fabulosas da alegria 

eu não estava lá nem estive quando anos após (eu tinha

dezoito) o coração dele parou eu soube como um soco 

a primeira vez que alguém morria a lua não tremeu não se via 

o meu avô pela sua fé sem qualquer tecnologia tornou ao céu


Margarida Vale de Gato. Retirado daqui.

Los Detectives Perdidos

Los detectives perdidos en la ciudad oscura.
Oí sus gemidos.
Oí sus pasos en el Teatro de la Juventud.
Una voz que avanza como una flecha.
Sombra de cafés y parques
Frecuentados en la adolescencia.
Los detectives que observan
Sus manos abiertas,
El destino manchado con la propia sangre.
Y tú no puedes ni siquiera recordar
En dónde estuvo la herida,
Los rostros que una vez amaste,
La mujer que te salvó la vida.

Roberto Bolaño. Retirado daqui.

CCTV Central Control - Tom Warner

Eight-hour shifts on rolling nights wouldn’t suit some

– people with kids and a wife – but the money’s okay

and I’m my own boss, in a way, or at least it feels like that

when I pan across girls stamping their feet in the taxi rank,

 

zoom in on men squaring up in the street between bars,

or watch a woman sat against the glass of the Turkish Kebab,

head lolling between her bare knees, all her long hair

covering her face. They never look into the camera.

 

The Eye in the Sky, that’s the game I play in my head,

but this job takes serious discretion: Outside of work,

you must never discuss what you see on your screens.

I switch between twenty; the others work ten at the most.

 

Some stick it out for a year or so, then leave or get asked to go.

Darren I know fell asleep on the job. His phone was flashing

and flashing and flashing on the desk next to mine.

Operatives must demonstrate excellent concentration, Darren.

 

Ashley in Archives was sacked for leaving a door unlocked.

Most of the time nothing much happens, just the silent film,

the roll of drunken friends hanging from each other’s necks.

My colleagues find ways to pass the time. I don’t join in.

 

Never record over a shift. I liked Ashley, but sometimes the film

tells it wrong and I’ve been doing this job long enough to know

what’s a crime and what’s just two people fooling around.

These things would be better with the sound turned up.

 

My dad always said I’d never amount to anything

staring at a screen all night, but here I am, doing just that:

a free man with a one-bed rent on the seventh-floor

of that mirrored-glass tower he hated. I’m my own man

 

and when I get home after a shift, I pull a chair up to the glass

like it’s some massive VDU on which I watch the sun

and all those city workers rising from the ground, 

changed, wiped clean, as though nothing was ever as it was.


Tom Warner. Retirado daqui.

Um poema de Nick Flynn

It nests in the hollow of my pelvis, I carry it with both hands, as if
offering my stomach, as if it were pulling me forward.

At night the sun leaks from it, it turns cold, I sleep with it
beside my head, I breath for it.

Sometimes I dream of hammers.

I am hammering it back into sand, the sand we melt into glass,
the glass we blow into bottles.

This stone is fifteen green bottles with nothing inside.

It never bleeds, it never heals, it is a soup can left on the back shelf,
the label worn off.

It is the corner of a house, the beginning of a wall.

At night it changes shape, it lies on one side, casting jagged shadows.

It brightens where my tongue touches it.

Richard's eyes were this color, a pale fruit, honeydew.

When I swing it over my head I swear it could lift me.

If I jump from a bridge it would drag me down, the current couldn't
carry us, it has no lungs, no pockets of air.

If I could walk it to the center of a frozen pond & leave it,
in the spring it would be gone. 

Nick Flynn.

Rilke Shake - Angélica Freitas

salta um rilke shake
com amor & ovomaltine
quando passo a noite insone
e não há nada que ilumine
eu peço um rilke shake
e como um toasted blake
sunny side para cima
quando estou triste
& sozinha enquanto
o amor não cega
bebo um rilke shake
e roço um toasted blake
na epiderme da manteiga

nada bate um rilke shake
no quesito anti-heartache
nada supera a batida
de um rilke com sorvete
por mais que você se deite
se deleite e se divirta
tem noites que a lua é fraca
as estrelas somem no piche
e aí quando não há cigarro
não há cerveja que preste
eu peço um rilke shake
engulo um toasted blake
e danço que nem dervixe

Rilke Shake, Cosac Naify, 2007

After the Storm - Derek Walcott

There are so many islands!
As many islands as the stars at night
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall,and so it always was,
on one hand Venus,on the other Mars;
fall,and are one,just as this earth is one
island in archipelagoes of stars.
My first friend was the sea.Now,is my last.
I stop talking now.I work,then I read,
cotching under a lantern hooked to the mast.
I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work,I study the stars.
Sometimes is just me,and the soft-scissored foam
as the deck turn white and the moon open
a cloud like a door,and the light over me
is a road in white moonlight taking me home.
Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea. 

Dear Reader

Baudelaire considers you his brother, and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words. 

Billy Collins