Symbolic violence

When I was little my dad took a hammer.
In his hands, it moved fast and weightless, efficiently.
The golden ring shines on his finger.
On the exterior it has engraved intertwined leaves
inside, in tiny calligraphy letters, my mother's name.
His hand places the ring on the stone
and then the hammer on the ring, one, two, three, four, five, and many other numbers I haven't learnt how to count yet.
He repeats the task until the ring is no longer a ring but a flat piece of yellow tin.
Tiny cracks on the border, the leaves almost erased, my mother's name trapped inside two pieces of metal.
A crucifix, a David's star, a miniature gold hand, and my mother's name trapped in a cage of gold that used to be a ring.
These are the charms hanging in a golden chain around my father's neck.

Cracks

Photo By Emilie Trouillet, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ahbahbravo/

I am not Ofelia, eyes fixed on the ceiling,
a bunch of wild flowers in the bath tube.

I am not a suicidal blonde,

sleeping a barbituric dream.
 

I am not the princes in the marble tower,

I am not the object of desire.

I know I am not a damsel in distress
                                                         and I know
that distresses you because I can see.

I can see the stains on your blue suit,
the worn mask of charm
the cracks in your leather boots,
the black line of dirth and sweet around your neck.

Dark materials

Image from: http://hubblesite.org

He used to call her a black hole
                                                an 'energy sucker'

What a pity!
He never realized,

                            she was  A dark galaxy

Give me hope in silence

Give me hope in silence It's easier; It's kinder...

that sort of feeling

I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself anymore. It’s hard to put into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.

— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

Insomnia

The wind is singing outside
its summer song.

I have been laying here
drugged by your smell of warm skin.

I can feel the rhythmic pumping of our blood,
yours precise like my swiss watch,
mine stumbling like a jazz syncopation

I want to be outside
singing with the win.

Flying   getting tangled in the branches   flying
running mad
untamed.

I will miss

Shopie Calle, Les Dormeurs

Wrapped in the sheets
I follow with my fingers the shape of the wrinkles
drawing the traces of your missing body.

In this bed of the size of two oceans
something is missing...
your bones lay in other shores,
your smell imprinted in some other's pillow,
         only time traveling I may be able to reach your warm.

I miss your flemish hands around my waist...
cold feet and giggling good nights...
your smile under the covers...
our fingers touching

Tonight the sound of the wind on my window
will put me to sleep
I listen, then I feel your fingers running down my spine,
as real as the branches caressed by the wind
singing a loving song.

Is that time again

Packing home again.... How to fit in all that little details that don't fit on my suitcase...

Her kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

- Anne Sexton

The optimist bias

On average they expect things to turn better.
We are more accurate predicting reality.

They live longer, make diets, take vitamin pills,
and have children.
We drink bitter coffee and have chocolate cake 
for breakfast while predicting bad weather

Sure of finding better fields
their ancestors ventured to the unknown.
We are an evolution error,
deep in our brains the amigdala is the one to be blame.

If they lose their flight
it is because the love of their lives is somewhere
in the waiting room...
waiting.
For us the glass of wine is always empty,
reality is always broken.

Language

panorama with grass, beautifully  arranged by the wind
image © daniel korzhonov

if after the unthinkable
language is the only thing that remains
what I am doing writing in this alien tongue,
entangled  deeper and deeper in sounds I can barely pronounce
closing myself into the sweetness of silence?

Why this necessity of turning my back to
the beauty of reciting my favorite poets by heart?

After the catastrophe... after the massacre
after the horror...
language might be the only thing that remains
but how to convey the unspeakable?
This pain without limits
this pain without body
this excess of words... telling telling telling
one....two... onehundred times the infinite grief

I turn my back
and run away from language...

Thanks for the beauty

Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska

I do not dare to say her name aloud. There are not words to say good bye to an old beloved friend,
whose existence has taken place in a faraway universe, and at the same time is the only one who can speak to your inner self.

A "Thank You" Note

There is much I owe

to those I do not love.

The relief in accepting

they are closer to another.

Joy that I am not

the wolf to their sheep.

My peace be with them

for with them I am free,

and this, love can neither give,

nor know how to take.

I don't wait for them

from window to door.

Almost as patient

as a sun dial,

I understand

what love does not understand.

I forgive

what love would never have forgiven.

Between rendezvous and letter

no eternity passes,

only a few days or weeks.

My trips with them always turn out well.

Concerts are heard.

Cathedrals are toured.

Landscapes are distinct.

And when seven rivers and mountains

come between us,

they are rivers and mountains

well known from any map.

It is thanks to them

that I live in three dimensions,

in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,

with a shifting, thus real, horizon.

They don't even know

how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I don't owe them anything",

love would have said

on this open topic.

...

Language... that foreign country
where I am a stranger,
always in transit,
always lost.

The lips curled...
mirroring  a line of bitterness and frustration.

Lacking words to give me meaning
I hold on to the sound of the wind entwined
in the bare branches of the trees,
I hold on to my abandoned body,
cooling like a cake in the edge of a window,
I hold on to your smile ....
on to the feeling of the sun on my face,
I hold on to this other language made
of little gestures, sounds, images ...
I hold on to the beauty of the unspeakable

Winter sun

The ragged light struggles to find its way
nesting shadows
are growing,
stronger... darker... in my chest
language has left me behind

Raised under a strong light
I was a shadow plant longing for the dark
Winter sun, winter sun,
In my dreams I am always lost
I raise my hands towards your opal light
and start my walk through the darkest day

All beauty must Die

All the eons of the universe have fall on you
not even the mirror, that old beloved enemy,
can bear the heaviness of the years for you.
as an assassin time has come over night,
you wake up only to face a stranger in the mirror.
As autum leafs,
all beauty has fallen away from you,
you are like a tree,
waiting for death to come

All substance...

Sometimes life is like politics
you have to change it, make a revolution, turn it upside down
and everything will continue the same.

Other times
mutation occurs in silence,
it grows in the dark... like a shadow plant.

Unaware of the process you carry on living
only dreams can warn you
(but it does't matter because you never remember your dreams)
and then one morning or maybe one night
in the middle of a conversation,
or with a cup of tea half way between the table and your lips,
you become aware of the little changes
in the DNA sequence of everyday life.

and the question drops inside your head with the weight of a hammer
Where all your substance resides?
is it the curly hair or the junky caffeine gene?
                               maybe    
maybe  all substance is about transmutation    about restlessness,
the unfolding of whatever life can bring and     you....
                           eye blinded
                  need to be prepared to embrace it

Out and about

Three weeks ago the movement started
it was a subtle earthquake.

in less than a week I bought my plane tickets

put some things in the suitcases

and crossed the ocean dragging behind me 40 kilograms,

and without saying good bye to many beloved people

(whose names I don't dare to mention)

I still don't have a permanent place

my belongings are still packed

no internet no phone no house

only the road ahead..

(Thanks to miss Carla Afonso for this beautiful song)

I want to cast a spell

I want to cast a spell
But not a love spell
I don't want to steal a lock of your hair
while singing impenetrable incantations
neither want to tie you to me by force or magic

I want to cast a spell
but not a money spell
I don't want to wither like an ancient alchemist
searching for the secret of transmutation

I want to cast a spell
a spell of freedom and protection,
A healing spell to frighten away this sadness,
to shut up once for all the screaming of my old scars,
a spell to burn down
this fleet of black ships lying under the sun
as a premonition,
a spell to embrace love and life
and happiness and beauty and all those undefinable concepts
which only can be described with words that are not yet invented
or are too old to be remembered

Look at me
I am casting a spell
there are not lit candles or burned incense
I am not summoning the elements or inviting in the four directions.
I can recognize my voice
sweet and deep at the same time
here is me, simply,
shivering as a broken bird
face to face with my nude self

Levitation

That small moment
not even a second...
impossible to measure  under rational terms,
that small moment when everything froze
and you lose the sense of time and space,
that second of a second
when you can hear the sound of the things falling down

Are you going to be fast enough to catch them?,
do you have the skills to prevent  them smashing into pieces?
or are you going to stay there,
immobile,
looking at the parable taking shape while they fall,
waiting for the crash,
amassed by the multiple little fragments flying out of your sight,
now missed for ever under the furniture.

That second of a second

between the jump and the landing,

when you wish to have the gift of levitation

because after a few seconds in the air

you can hear the sound of your life and your body and your hopes falling down.

Are you going to land on your feet?

Are you going to lose one of your seven lives? (you have already lost so many)

or are you going to smash into little pieces like a wine glass?

This second of a second

it has lasted centuries or a blink?

Am I levitating or falling down?

I can hear the sound of my life and my body and my hopes falling down

sorting out

B-day cards,postcards, old photographs,

books yellowed by the past of the time,

CDs, vinyl records, cassettes from my youth,

museum maps, notebooks and diaries,

brushes, watercolors,

beloved jackets,

holed shoes,

a couple of reminders of old scars

all them piled out...

laying on the floor

hanging out of the drawers

spreaded as tarot cards telling me my fortune

whispering... 

and I am here trying to sort them out

I know I can't carry them with me

but then I realise that they are already part of what I am

'Postcards and letters
T-shirts and sweaters 
Passports and Parkas 
Mobiles and chargers 
Two tennis rackets 
Blue Rizla packets 
A new sheep-skin jacket 
I lost it all 

All through my life there have been 
Many rare and precious things 
I have tried to call mine 
But I just cannot seem
To keep hold of anything 
For more than a short time 
Possessions of a sentimental kind 
They were mine, now they're not 

Gym-kits and trainers 
Asthma inhalers 
Silk-cuts and Bennies 
Ten-packs and twenties 
C-class narcotics 
Antibiotics 
The holes in my pockets
I lost it all 

All that I'd like is to know
Just where do those lost things go? 
When they slip from my hands 
Then one night in a dream 
I passed through a sheepskin screen 
To a green, pleasant land 
I found them all piled up into the sky 
And I cried tears of joy'