Everything feels like a cold, melancholic afternoon.
Words weigh heavy on my fingers, dragging along,
as if my thoughts were pulling iron horses.

Listen—
I exist only within myself now.
The motion of life does not tempt me;
nothing stirs the wish to be anything else.

I speak from a new territory,
shaped only so that I may fit within it.
To exist is to be here,
between what is written and what is dreamed.

Ulysses, I walk upon incandescent waters.
I change the course of the melancholic sun.
And the music has many heads, and the wine many *******.
And this is the terrible mathematics, material for dreams.

suddenly we all died without hearing a word of it
we entered our deepest darkness and never came out again

in my portraits how beautiful my father, my grandfather and my uncle were. how perfect the light was on my mother and grandmother's shoulders. how small our hands were when they intersected each other like wild bodies.

What do you think—are we temperance and music?
How do the stars move around our heads?
I seek to unravel this singular mystery of my life.
But, what I know is—I will never stop embracing the idea of ​​a consoling god, even if time devours my bones and my hopes, and you do not come to disturb my stillness and turn me into something else.

Nothing seals my unrest

My dog died old and one-eyed
Maybe he listened to too much French music
Or smoked too many yellow cigarettes

He didn’t drink, so it wasn’t because of that...

My mother boils eggs in a brass ***
My father writes political manifestos

I’m going to bury the dog in the garden

17/Almada

She entered the small red room. He was by the window. She remained still, the geometric matrix of light softening her form as she swayed around her own axis. He ignored her.

Winter Mary – Do you hear that noise? It sounds like people sobbing. Listen now… do you hear it?

Blossom John – I don’t hear anything, Winter. Did you see Magic? She went out the window to the roof a while ago and hasn’t come back yet. Magic!!! Pchi Pchi Pchi…

Winter Mary – She must have gone after the cats – magical smile.

Blossom John – The only cat in her life is me, Winter – brusque and teasing.

They both laughed loudly. Blossom, in the meantime, had turned inward and tried to reach for Winter Mary, but she stepped back into a corner.

Blossom John – What’s wrong? Come on, don’t be like that, you’re my little cat too.

Winter Mary – *******, Blossom…

Blossom John – What!? Did the moon change or something… what’s going on? – he threw himself onto a large, dusty red armchair.

Winter Mary – Nothing. I just don’t like it when you say that.

Blossom John – What? That you’re a cat?

Winter Mary – No, that I’m yours. I don’t belong to anyone or any ******* thing. You should know that by now. – She opened her robe and let it slip slightly off her shoulders.

She stood there, half-naked before Blossom John. Her slender body, ivory-like, was simply beautiful.

Blossom John – And what’s that for? To turn me on?

Winter Mary – No. I don’t believe you can be turned on anymore.

Blossom John – Even if I could, what difference would it make? You can shove all the **** you want inside you, you don’t need me for anything.

Winter Mary – Sometimes you really are a ******* animal. – She tightened the robe around her waist, leaving only one breast exposed, like a moon.

Blossom John suddenly stood up and leaned out the window again.

Blossom John – Come on… Pchi Pchi Pchi!!! Magic, come home.

Winter Mary – Close the **** window, I can’t stop hearing people sobbing, it’s getting on my nerves.

Blossom John – I still don’t hear anything. Maybe it’s coming from the floor. – He lay down and pressed his ear against the wooden boards. – Or maybe it’s just your imagination.

Winter Mary – You’re so ridiculous.

Blossom John got up, smiling.

Blossom John – Hey, let’s go out. It’s Lilac’s birthday today, she’s expecting us at 8 at the Paradise. – He moved closer to her without touching her. – I want you to look beautiful. It’s been a long time since you got beautiful for me.

Winter Mary – Beautiful like a woman or like a *****?

Blossom John – Like the best of ******.

They both smiled. She walked away, raising her ******* high, and locked herself in the bathroom. He turned back to the window.

Winter Mary shouted – Do you think it’ll be cold downtown later?

Blossom John – What!? No. How could it be cold!? Didn’t you hear the ******* news? Today’s the hottest day of the year… maybe of our lives.

Winter Mary – What an exaggeration.

Blossom John – Sometimes you worry me. You’re too distracted, too distant from all the simple things.

Winter Mary – If you loved me, you’d worry less. – She murmured, barely moving her lips, as she drew a thick black line around her eyes.

Blossom John – What did you say?

Winter Mary – I asked what you’re going to wear.

Blossom John – The shirt you gave me on your birthday. Of course.

Winter Mary – I threw it away.

Blossom John – What?

Winter Mary – I threw it away. Along with the lipstick marks it had from the last time you wore it. I think it was last week when you went out with Oom.

Blossom John – You did well. They say that **** is hard to get out of shirts.

Winter Mary – Whose was it, may I ask?

Blossom John – What?

Winter Mary – The lipstick.

Blossom John – Some random girl, nothing important. I don’t even remember her name.

Winter Mary – At least you took her home?

Blossom John – I paid for her cab. Why?

Winter Mary – No woman deserves to be abandoned by you, Blossom.

Blossom John – You’re so dramatic sometimes, love. – He said, smiling.

Winter Mary returned to the room, and Blossom John was already holding Magic gently in his arms.

Blossom John – Look who came home, Winter… look who came back to me.

Winter Mary – You really are a mountain where all women crash.

Blossom John – What? No way, right my little one? – He said to the cat, rubbing his face against hers.

Winter Mary – Are you ready? Weren’t you afraid of being late?

Blossom John – See, little one? They make me leave you here alone. You’ll miss me, won’t you?

Winter Mary – Oh God!!!!

He gently placed the cat on the sofa. The cat purred and curled her head between her paws, the bell on her collar jingling softly. Blossom John stood there for a few seconds, just watching. He felt at peace with it.

Blossom John – Did you give her water and food in her little dish?

Winter Mary – Yes. And poison, lots of poison. But don’t worry, it’s the good kind of poison.

They took a cab, and in less than ten minutes, they were going down the avenue. When they arrived at the party, Lilac was at the door waiting to greet them.

Lilac – Here comes the couple I envy the most. If love took a form, it would undoubtedly be the way you look at Blossom, and vice versa.

Winter Mary – What an exaggeration, darling. I’d say it’s more like the way you look at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

Lilac smiled, showing her teeth stained with red lipstick. Winter Mary kissed her coldly on the cheek.

Winter Mary – Thanks for inviting us.

From the tongue of mirrors,
toward the geometry of vines.
The fierce ferment of distant years,
our perpetual paths.

We wither in the whirlwind of days,
virtuous man – ogre man,
no one knows.

you
as if I spoke with a soft knife
water
or a
kiss
a pure kiss

Almada

Spit on the ground.
Begin the most terrible of wars
with someone who hears you
dragging your armor through the hush of dawn.

Strike the final flame.
Let it light the streets
where wild bodies ripple like fire.
Howls, heavy with iron,
as we sip from the herb of night
the tender intimacy of a goodbye.

Extreme. Absolute.
A green star, fallen
on careless earth,
between mud and water—
human reflections.

Let no one bring love.
The cruel illusion
of still being a child
is unbearable.

A whole morning, fasting.
I want to drink my wine
standing.

Beauty in the shadows
Cold hands, Baudelaire
From your verses, they bloom

The ultimate mutilation of a kiss
my lips did what they knew
they softened the cold temperature of yours
so, kissing you was like dying

94/Almada

I am alive
knowing, at the same time,
that I am dead.

we spend the afternoons
walking down the avenue,
hand in hand —
each step, a soft erosion toward silence,
toward profound solitude.

I ask you without using words:
what is it like
to walk hand in hand with a stranger?
and you look at me
as if you believe
that everything is the opposite
of what it seems.

and in that
there is a devastating peace —
knowing you believe in love,
in your own quiet way,
is the sign
that you were saved.

when I return, I write:
I am dead
knowing, at the same time,
that I am alive.

(I owe you
this unexpected metamorphosis)

Madness  
has all the hours  
Whether it's insatiable hunger or the incision of ***
The unique path from silence to the abyss and back again
Life before life to tarnish the image of a house of a voice of an absent hand. Madness is a garden.

To soar above
The shadows of eucalyptus trees
And touch the sky with my toes

January’s hours passed me by. Over and over again.
The cold waters won’t be missed.
Miserable souls, dragging their heavy fates, peer through the windows from the depths of the centuries,
weighed down by heaven’s vanity.
A musty and insignificant existence that only answers to the devil.

Almada/99

In the brightness of death,
the day opens your shoulders,
Wings grow
The roots of the trees pierce deep into your veins
The time of love runs dry
Darkened mouths touch petrified sexes
Pleasures becomes barren and rough
The soul is no longer inside the body
It fills the emptiness of something else

(I speak to you of my experience of writing for what is fleeting)

11/Almada

It is still earlier than usual,
I hope that death comes with the bees.
The cold morning breeze softens our stone faces.
The uncles of my sweet queen and their troubled vices.
And I knew it all—the echoes of wine,
the sobs in the first skin.
I ask if it is true, if She has found herself.

In the now abandoned room—open sea.

It Was from a Morphological Time

I have the idea of a first home,
a worn womb with no number on the door.

There was also a tree, first and singular,
from which Eve plucked the fruit.

A heavy rain poured down on us,
separating our light from our darkness.

Then came the Men, very old,
as if wearing heavy masks
to hide their true age and their true sins.
Precarious in almost everything,
they returned from where they came,
stoking fire for the very pregnant women,
defying the swift advance of the seasons.

And I, facing the sun,
write of good and evil—
and from that moment, I awaken.

(Almada)

Do not give us the gift of consciousness,
do not save us with morality.

Offer us, instead, freedom —
pure and authentic.
A virtuous night to love,
to make of another body the island that cuts through the ocean,
the new dwelling place of our soul.

Do not offer us treatises,
nor more phrases for convention.

I will cast a kiss that will make the world fertile,
and like a rope, I will pull you —
you who are beside me,
and you who are far from me.

For I must love my neighbor with intensity,
and love even more the one beyond,
even if they are a stranger to me.

When I wanted to go back home,
I just couldn’t take that final step.
Going back meant traveling the whole world,
diving into the chaos of every city,
wandering deep into the darkest forests,
sinking to the bottom of the ocean,
lost among strange people.

My feet were tired,
and all the junk I’d gathered in life felt so heavy.
And the loneliness—endless.

Going home was impossible.

Those days have passed.

And no one remembers us anymore.
Slow steps through the mud,
Bare heads bowed beneath the snow,
Silence bitten into the crust of bread.

The death with which they poisoned us has been forgotten,
No one remembers anymore.
And even if I sang every name,
Even if I unearthed from the ashes
Or pulled from the darkness every frozen face,
Every shattered youth,
Every buried love,
Even if I did all that,
No one would remember us.

(I am a cry against the indifference of time, while I am here I am memory.)

The wind sings in the cherry trees
So sweet that voice, so pure and human
It whispers your name to wake me up

Almada

It was winter
and in your mouth sank a body that I adored
It was hell
It was bone
It was smoke
The opaque poison of your old solution
Badly anchored
It was verse
trembling on the ground
your cracked and spiteful days
that deny art
that deny the kiss
a little bird
That ended the poet's life

Almada

Nothing disturbs the surface of the waters
until a dead and unfathomable time
shows us the way home.

You tell me that words build the world,
that cities are made to stimulate encounters,
and that in love, silences have a magical and phenomenological intention.

And I tell you that the days float above death,
that men are born from the barren wombs of solitude
to the solitude of rooms, and to the solitude of coffee shops and streets.

Tell me if I also float above death,
if there is solitude in us,
tell me, if the love that remains in us is only the movement of verses in extinct poems.

10/Almada

Stereophonic love, pulsing.
You, a nameless sweetness —
your flattened warmth lies south
of my body’s sacred meridian.
I adore the grace of your breast.

I believe in your lacework love,
so tender, so absurd.

Give me a kiss,
a glass of water,
an act of faith.

Dress my aching chest in beauty,
feed the fire of my coughing fits,
unfasten my trousers
and let me walk barefoot
through the blaze of your tundra.

Unbutton your blouse —
you are my Diana, my Ophelia.
I want to fall asleep inside your oracle.

Let me steal the tangled pendant
dangling at your throat —
my hunger sobs
just to hold it.