O Ciclo da Falsa Saudade

The Neoliths

The Tagus runs silent

Sullen steps offer brother no comfort

The ancient ones

Here before my mothers and fathers

Heavy brow and strong arms, but alas

Thick minds and inflexible.

Inflexible.

The Tagus runs silent

We left them a monument today

From the dawn to the dark

In mimicry of the tombs they leave us

Standing stones, oaken carved bulls

My sister in her grief

Painted them a grand horse

To run alongside their spirits

The Tagus runs silent

Innumerable tributaries

Veins in the Earth

Blood of the Mother

Our children are theirs

And the trees will never stop singing

Their songs

Estrímnio

The snake folk of the far west

A Blind Greek said,

Eastern friskers pass through on elephants

Always clamoring, stammering, and fighting for naught

One called Mago knocked at our door

He spoke politely, but felt the need

To prod us for gold, jewels and wheat.

We gave what we could and he went on his way, but turn the season and

One called Cornelia came to our palisade

To hunt one called Mago

We did nothing to aid, but point to his trail

Of spoils, blunt gold, and hardly fresh bread.

The hunter returned, a great red kite

And captured the sweet dove of home

Driven centuries

In Octavian law

Forgotten people

We once were

Lusitanians, Cantabrians, Asturians, Arevaccans

Reduced to nothing but signs

Songs soon forgotten

Rulers soon turned stinking rotten

They die within, we die without

A tremor finally mounts

Great shakers of history!

Visigothic rage trapped in the Earth

Disappointment of our gods

Set loose, violent, complete

And to some hellish drum beat

Spilled from the wounds of our ancient mother

And settle us into dust

The northern hordes

Our homes shook and fathers died

As Roman blood flooded our streets

And temples fall to the whims of our Mother

We drown

al-ʾIšbūnah

On gusted winds came the hard, red sand

And settled into the gaps left behind,

Wounds torn open by Eagles

Now fill with dust

Down the twisted corridors

Of streets turned distant

Granite blocks, hungry boys

A smiling ochre face

He came from a land

That is unimaginably far

Twisted, he says,

By the wind into mountains he calls

Dunes

Though on horseback he arrived

He and his brothers came softly

And took pity on us who were Vandalized

To the chagrin of kings and priests

They built our walls

To protect us from what old masters call freedom

And what new masters call heretic

I wish I could say it was all bad

But in the winding of the city

The clouds turned over on their bellies

And felt no spear thrust to finish them

Only a warm hand

And a basket of fruits

Porta de Martim Moniz

My son asked me the other day how he fell

And so I told him the story

The Day Martim Moniz died, was the day Portucalae was born

His blood the sperm, the hard red earth

The egg

My boy loves fables and asks of the way

The way he died

And I told him the story

Of the crusader’s mad desperation

To clear away sticky those eastern sands

That had filled our markets

Clamped himself in the jaws of the gate

And died

To block the way open to his comrades

With his mailed body

Like the scales of a snake

Locked in the jaws of a hawk.

My son is a lover of tales

And so I weave them for him

Fables of chivalry and success

Often lies

But what little truth there is

Is golden

The boy asks for another tale

And I happily oblige

Pleased that stories are what he seeks

So I tell him

Church of the Raven

Why does the raven block the sky?

Does she worship here as Saragossa once did?

Will she too, be ripped from her grave

By a conquering king?

I keep from him, the cruelty of his death

No child needs to hear

Of torture, salt, and hot irons

I only spoke of a man

Who dreamed to pray

The way the crows do

Desires dispelled

Feathers fluttered

And carrion eaten

Freedom of the skies

Eyes of God

And the wind in our hair

The relics of a ruined village

The scattered bones of the devout

And a flock of ravens

A flock of black

This is the plague of the saints

His body taken

To the walls of a sea-drenched town

And left to settle the spirits

Of those who had been conquered

And rose again for conquest.

Market Mistress

Spices, porcelain, open enterprise,

Dyes, ivory dice, artisans

Sugar, gold, hot fruit pie,

Bookers, muggers, folds of paper,

Wine, fur, salt,

Frankincense, myrrh, revolts,

Iron, copper, they’ll accept anyone’s dollar

Blood, silver, fill the coffers

Coffee, cocoa, silk,

Boards for boats, floors, and all that ilk

Slaves, men, women, and babes

Tea, terracotta, glass,

And bodies of thieves, tied to an unused mast

Rot in the sun just as well as

Peaches, pears, apples,

Services of labor and leeches

The importance of grain

Met with profitless disdain.

Today, to trade is to prosper

Thus here we are, catering to any shopper.

All Saints Day, 1755

A dust storm did war

Unfathomable to Moorish hordes

What once stood strong

Long had frail intentions

But now recall the fury of the gods

Who crack the earth to take their dowry

And raise above a man’s head

The sea.

An Unfortunate Patriot or, O Nascimento da Saudade

Who so meekly scuttles away,

A barefoot pitter-patter,

Stealing along the calçada,

The abandoned return the favor,

Casting aside golden spectacles and silk socks,

To watch the sun set over the Tagus once more.

Already a whisper across the gilded blue sea

Stained the colored azulejos with two drops of blood

Tenho saudades tuas

But will they care?

In this land,

We miss what we never lost.

They gave me two names,

And neither fit,

But now all that remains are the ashes of an empire,

Indistinguishable from the ashes of a leper

The studious should never rule

The Whole World and You

Acrylic chips, lying on the musky street

Our cousins kill each other

Pure honey

Leaks from their veins

And somehow stokes the fire

Our sons scoff at us

In our tainted home

A rage rips through the old Goddess

Does the sea approach

As friend or foe?

Even the Saints here couldn’t know

A backwards ritual

Weakest on their birthdays

And most couldn’t even save themselves

A lover without a lover

A green, violent funeral pyre

A painter, a bomber, a mass grave

We all reap what we sow

And in the end

We shall repent for what we have done

Future Goodbye

When did the raven leave from these sunkissed shores?

Was it when the food became good?

I’ve heard rumors ravens only eat dead things

An Experiment

Words are forever. As forever as people are.

I know many words. I love them. And I hate them. They are complex, certainly. My feelings I mean. The words too, but those matter a little less to me than my feelings, obviously.

Is that obvious?

Here I will explain many words. I will explain like a dictionary should, but doesn’t. I don’t know why is doesn’t. Words are probably just too finicky. If Orwell is to be believed, it’s because they want to control me. I’m inclined to believe him.

Each word means something else to everyone. And something to me. I learned these words at strange times. Often times, I was not even alive when I felt them enter my mind. Words let you travel time like that.

Here’s a definition I found of ‘dictionary’ on google’s very own dictionary: “A book or electronic resource that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning, or gives the equivalent words in a different language, often also providing information about pronunciation, origin, and usage.”

•You are frustratingly fickle.

I ask ‘why’ often. Too often, likely. It’s because under the facade, I’m sort of an idiot. There is a lot that I do not understand. A lot that I cannot understand and this is frustrating to me.

Have you ever tried to play a game of chess against someone far better than you? I feel as though language always beats me, even if I castle my king. I’m not so good at chess, but I’ve taught more than two people how to play. They’re all better than me now. I am not proud of this.

It was when I taught the most important one that I learned the word lilt. Just look at the word and tell me that’s not a portrait of a perfect family. Two tall parents, and the youngest in the center and the crooked elder to the side. Lilt. lilt. liLt. LilT. That last one looks the scariest.

I lied when I said that was when I learned the word. You should never take anyone’s word. Especially about words. And memories of chess games

But I felt the word for the first time then. That is probably a better way to describe all these incoming words. Perhaps I had known them for longer, or only recently learned them. But I know for a fact when I first felt them.

In the lilt of that blossoming little chess player, I heard the ringing tone of a loving mother and father. But what family is actually perfect? Perhaps the ‘t’ has a drug problem. Or ‘L’ is unhappy with other ‘L’ and is having an affair. Perhaps little ‘i’ is planning on killing the family dog.

Was Werner Heisenberg really a physicist? Or perhaps a philosopher? Maybe the Fascists just made him stick to science instead. I like that narrative best.

It’s amazing how often we’re asked to do things we’re not cut out for. Asked is a soft euphemism for forced. Forced itself has infinite meaning, to infinite degrees. I don’t like the word ‘forced’ because it is too unspecific. ‘Force’ is okay though. It has power, for better or worse.

It’s very common too. I know many who have experienced this. I am one of them. That is where the second word enters. He is called Quotidian and he is distinctly a he. Distant, disciplined, and most importantly painfully repetitive. He looks like cold mathematics.

I find nothing wrong with math itself. I even sort of like parts of it. It’s kind of an alphabet, so I understand why people are so attached to it. But it can be very cold.

Every morning I hear him knocking on my door and pressuring me. It’s unpleasant but it is not starving, or fighting. I am ashamed of how scary he is.

•Everyone else seems to get along just fine. Why can’t you?

I hate being told to get along. Only I am allowed to tell myself this. Getting along is what I call daily, quotidian life. I feel such an immense pressure to be boring and such shame when I actually am. It’s tiresome walking in and out of the same door over and over. That’s when that third word crawls thorough every single space between the floor, the walls, and the outside and ruins your food pantry.

I thought about putting bullet points in here, but those break things up too much, don’t you think?

•Clearly second guessing that simple choice.

Wait I’m stalling. Or getting distracted. Whichever it is changes based on what’s convenient.

Sycophant. That’s the word. It has a weird cousin I learned about more recently. I first saw this cousin in a Russian novel. Mythomane sounds like a drug that makes you relive ancient myths.

You could meet Zeus, dude.

My point is, they’re both liars. Don’t listen to them.

I tell this to myself. I am not one to give commands very often.

I think commands are just misplaced appeals. Those who command are often desperate for someone to listen. The cynical would call them self-important. The empathetic would call them lonely.

Misplaced appeals are tragic. Almost as tragic as misplaced words. They can become just as menacing as commands, when the circumstances are right, like when kings and presidents talk without thinking.

And that’s literally where malaprop comes in.

Did you see what I did there? Of course you did.

Sometimes I end thoughts with jokes and don’t allow them to go further.

•Perhaps that self-delusion will lead to you finding god

Or maybe it’ll just cheer me up from time to time. I am very worried about powerful people using the wrong words.

It’s funny, yes, but also very scary. Anyone can find dictionaries. They are everywhere. I’ve found dozens on the internet, and more on paper. How can they ignore the little details? They’re made of atoms like the rest of us.

•Here you go again, asking stupid questions.

I am not ready for a war.

And yet there are always whispers of it, anywhere you go. In some places, it’s happening right now.

•But even tiny children know that.

That’s where susurration wakes up. I don’t think this word has a sex. It is like a remarkable machine, efficient and sensual, but ultimately kind of lifeless.

The best words are like drawings of what they mean and susurration falls into this category.

But I brought up waking up so I have to elaborate.

It awakens in the child mentioned a moment ago, the ones who know that there are wars.

I heard a boy ask his mother if we would die because of some bombs fired across the sea.

Mother told him no, but the boy’s older sister whispered something into his ear and he cried.

Sometimes when I’m aimlessly unhappy with no reason to be so, I need to take a turn.

Maybe it’s because my mind never stops humming.

•Maybe it’s because you can’t stop thinking about that one thing, that one person, that one phrase.

Or song

But I always drive when I am distressed and the timing is good.

So the word ‘always’ doesn’t belong, but I put it there anyway. I want always to be the truth. If I write it, it shall be. No one else will remember it’s a lie but me, if we wait long enough.

I’m a liar. I never wanted to be, but it sort of just happened. Just like everyone else. There’s quotidian again.

That word is like herpes. Never quite quits bothering me.

I am not a creator. I am an arranger. I never create new words. How can I?

I arrange words trying to find something. I search for something I do not believe I ever had.

Can nostalgia be sad?

The answer is yes and it’s the next word. It’s one of my favorites, so learn it.

Saudade is a word invented by the Portuguese. They’ve had it for hundreds of years.

They explain it as missingness. This word has invaded my mind. I imagine this word as the silent power-behind-the-throne. Saudade is a she. A muse, more specifically, just like the ones from long ago.

She wears a familiar face and speaks in a familiar voice, but she is not real.

I have to always remind myself she is not real.

Sometimes I forget. I feel like monster when I forget.

Not because of the action of forgetting. But because I must always eventually realize that I had forgotten. It seems easy to swap one truth for another, but boy is it tiresome.

We have hunted birds for a very long time. We eat, en masse, the ugly ones.

And every arrow can kill a beast.

But there is one more word. It is not a real word.

I did not make it up. Someone else did. This is not a lie.

It has a silly look to it. Monochopsis. Repeat it in your mind for me a few times.

It describes a subtle, but persistent feeling. That feeling of being out of place.

I like this word because despite its appearance, it is very close to saudade.

I love all things that even remotely resemble the muse of missingness.

This is because you cannot love missingness itself. I’ve tried. Far too difficult.

Words can be real and not real. You can still see words that are not real.

Their visibility is not what makes them real or fake.

It’s us.

God is real to many.

And many are fake in the eyes of god.

So he sees them, but knows they aren’t real.

Just like monochopsis.

But if the word isn’t real, and the implication here is that the feeling isn’t real, then why have a word for it at all?

Again it’s us.

Shit, we don’t even know if we’re real or not. I can’t even decide which truth would be more comforting. But isn’t that exactly what monochopsis is meant to describe?

What a bunch of idiots we all are. Me included, naturally.

•What does nature have to do with it?

Poetry Compilation 3

Swampy

Out and Down South,

Stretched golden on the bayou

He rests

Sour teeth filled with invasive sand

And no more rattle

In his smoker’s cough

Our Family

Has been here a long time

Stilted houses rise above and around his crimes

Mud-foot children cracking corn

And with every sigh

The thick air opens and heaves for us

Oppressive rain

---

Patent leather, brand new

Heart and heels plunged in mud

Hot, sticky oil sucked from river banks

The bled-out feeling when clean is absent

And all you feel

And all you do

Tastes raw on her tongue

---

Who is he, who wishes to be among the oak

A cousin from home

A new baron, in the trees

Who fondles fruitless soil

To reunite with his mother, Earth.

Oh how he had missed her

---

Soft and green embrace,

Flecks of gold

Smeared across a face

Even the fishermen here are warm

In the summer they yell in tongues

Gills fluttering

With the mossy musk of beer and worms on their breath

And sure as hell, plenty of moonshine hidden in their tents

Once children cracking corn

Whose mothers and fathers

And aunts and cousins

Have been here for as long a time

As any could recall

Old and young, the dead too,

The bog sticks to our cracks and corners

Barncat

Teeth, pork, beef,

Chicken ‘n sheep.

Fingertips of swallow’s tongue,

Like arrows in the wood,

Crackling, crunching.

Ancient musty human smell,

Like mustard and pig shit

And one limping barn cat

---

Mud and flies

Or flying mud?

Grandma’s rough hand once wrapped round

This metal rod,

And in the right light,

When all the dust is stirred from the floor

You can see her fingerprints.

Heady grunts inform,

And fill her spirit again,

Like a paper puppet

---

My perfume is the river

The stones, the cold,

For paper I use a rose

And smear its red prose

What other outline could my

Sunken silhouette ask for?

Potpourri, of dried ashes and leaves

With curly fingers,

Peel back April’s cruel chill,

Oh yes, some say April is the cruelest month,

But I say some are wrong,

And April is only cruel

To those not yet born.

---

Woe is to the old patrician

Which are cursed to lose, as the world gains.

Whose iron-wrought factory farms,

Lack any and all

Cozy, dusty, charm,

And only the weeds,

And piles of dead leaves,

Are allowed to flaunt,

The colors of bones.

Life

Poem by Jean Follain

Translated by Daniel Kushnir

A boy is born

In a brilliant pasture

In a half century

He is nothing

But the corpse of a soldier

And it was him

That we saw appear,

Lying on the ground,

A sac full of apples,

Two or three of which roll,

Off the edge of a world

Where birds sing

At the threshold of oblivion

Age of Fish

Ancient tower tombstone

Rising from the shore

Crag-house, whose cough fills the sky

With a hundred million bristled spores

We found your bones

As they were

And how odd a grandfather you are

To the lichens on the bark

We had many questions

Do ants remember?

Those who pulp fat oaken roots

Must have once built their homes

Under shady caps

Was the sky still blue then?

Or did those spores and

Four hundred or more millions years

Dye it this way

Was the earth once in love

With the fungal trees in her hair?

Browns and greys, and fatal white

Did they keep their vines tangled

Stretched across or under soil

Blind fingertips, lover’s mic cables

Always reaching out, like those in cedar boxes

Under granite, can never do

How porous things must have been then

Severe yellow tusks

Like redwood spears

As prosperous as dandelions

Clipped from history

Like ugly toenails

We were not yet born

When they grew old and died

If the mountains shrunk

Would we deny them too?

Poetry Compilation 2

Monument

Our wish to travel the buildings,

Old of pavement,

New of blood,

Comes to boil, only after salting,

We orbit brick bastions,

Pylons of wood and glass,

Who rise to soak in the heat of

Summer.

And resist the blister of

Winter.

Tires, footsteps, leave a city,

To take their time in trip,

They ask us, “When can we talk…

…with a face?”

To make a clearer connection.

Walls of ever stretching spired glass dissolve,

To wander outside the blind clutch,

The relentless resolve of those,

Those uptown clowns,

Our wish fades now, my unborn daughter’s

Sun-bleached blanket waves in the breeze

The thick, accented purr of

Motors, will surely lull her to sleep,

After a trawl beyond the city we knew.

On a Lovely Day, The Zoo Suffers

Dropping angry red tears

The sun peeks, from clouded sky,

Shy, testing the patience of

The world, we knew and loved

Strike not a woman but a mailbox, quite fast,

A torn hand not for striking steel,

But from gripping the wheel of the past

Just to eat can do so wrong

The neighbors will see, but we do not,

Instead, we just struggle here

Wrestling, for lack of fear

Did I win? I cannot tell,

She leaves with the pace of the wind

Cool faced, trembling hands,

Please, all of this I can’t stand,

Yes, I know that I am rage

Sun is so very warm

But she

Does not go home.

Her choice is a mystery

My acceptance, too easy

She stole me from me, a lot of things

And the warlord within

Remembers them.

Her eyes are soft with sorrow

The sunset soft with pride

I ramble a broken chorus

She laughs inside her mind

And tells me, this, she’s heard before,

But the breeze tells her anew,

And that she knows what she must do

And so she remains true,

But why do you talk this way?

Of things we don’t understand?

Around us day grows older

And we heed its gentle warning

But something in us has changed

Something, dark and cold

But who am I to say, if we have gotten old

I worry for who I became that day

A man I do not know

A strange and angry child,

Lost inside a store

I hope he finds peace some day

And that she, does too,

Perhaps I once loved her,

Perhaps she even knew

And that is how I know for sure

That we are dead and gone

A silence hangs

Before us

And we sing a sad old song

Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

I remember things I shouldn’t,

Dates of Byzantine decay,

All the Lies I’ve told.

The stink of Kerosene,

On a thieves’ breath.

I remember days I was never present for,

Countless weeks spent thoughtless,

Binges,

Masked with the morality of mundanity,

I remember the glitter of the chandelier

And tilting my head side-to-side

To see the entire Rainbow.

Who knew I would find myself here?

You did

But I could not even foresee

Your tomorrow

A scam, we played, with nicotine patches,

To trick the eyes of our masters

(or perhaps just yours)

Our reward, only time and,

A little pocket money

Never come back here, blood,

This place is twisted and dull

An airport of dust

Corny magazines, dead friends,

Never would I threaten you

Only beseech you, leave

And never return

Fly safe to elsewhere

Anywhere

Warmer or colder

Go, brother,

Go, winter bird,

Go.

Who Goes To Breed

Well swap my blood for something better,

Formalin, Formaldehyde, sulfates of morphine or even butter

Over-prescribed to feel like we aren't dying,

But can I ask the expert panel,

How long can I expect to survive?

Symptoms included a sour taste in my throat

And a smell worth scrutiny,

Stuck to my coat

Which one is barely alive, a hundred facts

And one’s a lie

A whistling on the horizon,

Signals the darkening skies.

A rhyme to die by

A pill to live by

Tiny mouth-missile, but

The panel promises us

“Feel like you can fly”

Passive eyes with tiny holes

Fall asleep on their way to the drugstore

Strike me with a sack of pennies

Who hasn’t prayed for a little copper before

Coinstar, Kroger, next to the Denny’s

A desperate grab at the store

To hold close that ultimate, bloodsucking

Whore

Barely alive, we hide our blisters,

Welts, holes picked opened,

So what happens when man and substance

Collide

And by your friend’s accounts you really should have

Died