Whenever I'm remembered
I'm forgotten in fact.
What I am remembered for
Are my outter world,
My shell with its impressions,
I'm remembered for my image,
Nothing more.

All I can be to others
Are visions, icons,
Messages,
All encoded complexly,
A sign not to be understood
For thinking about it
Is to be farther,
To gain distance.

Whenever my name is said
It shuts the voice
Encapsuled by my body,
And whatever I say
It's not me anymore
For my words have not
Ten percent of the real meaning
I intended them to be:
They lack colors,
Texture, roughness, softness:
They are digital and plain.
We're more, multi dimensional.

Whenever I'm recognized
For some work or accomplishment
It's just the manifestation
Of my inability to be authentic.
He who sees himself in anything mine
Steals my bits of identity.

There's no fame
But in anonymity.

There will always be
A better argument.
There will always be
Doubt within open thoughts.

Stressing them long enough
Will lead to, inevitably, fatigue.
Not less an argument
To keep seeking
A wider truth.

Every truth ceases to exist
If tested long enough.

I am afraid
Of the stones I step,
Of the passing cars,
Of the sounds that fill the calm.

I am afraid
Of things that exist and are,
Of what I can eventually do,
Of the structures that sustain me,
Of the wind that disguises the heat.

This fear I carry
Is the fear of what I am,
Of the real, the idea,
Of what I think
Others think of me,
Of what could never be done
And I could only do.

I have this fear
Of the ridicule in myself,
That amuses me
To say embarrassing truths.

If there is a thing
Such as fear,
It is only a self fear,
The interrupted projection
Of a tenuous success,
Of the polite strength
Of words always half the way,
Seeking an order of a world
That no longer belongs to me.

Everything I am
And I would never allow me to be.
To fear is to be displaced of oneself.

The paralysis,
the agony of unresponsive muscles,
the coward voice that barely moves the air,
the hesitation that confuses
what we are and what we are not.

This fear that makes me avoid
discomfort, pain, the unknown,
this fear guardian-torturer,
does not fit me no more.

The fear of the unreal,
the fear of the impossible,
the fear of breaking myself,
the fear of the fear,
the fear of the uncontrollable wills,
this petty fear that serves only itself,
that hits palaces, and houses and slums,
the fear of a dingy past,
or of an obscure future,
of the prophetic images of possible apocalypses,
professed by notorious atheist scientists,
or the fear of the science propagated by unbelieving priests,
or the fear of the starvation I never had (that made me obese),
or the fear of the accident I never experienced (that locks me home),
or the fear of the policeman and the thief (that armors my car),
or the fear of rejection I never suffered (that fuels my social life with happy pictures),
and the sum of all these fears, the ultimate fear,
the fear of never come to be what I dreamed to be.

Today, none of my muscles will obey them.

I am seasick,
And I am homesick.

I feel at home cooking,
Using my own restroom,
When I know streets, paths, regions, even trees.
I rarely feel it, but I sometimes do.

And it's good.

Feel at home is ambiguous,
Comfortable and redundant,
Brightless and efficient,
Lazy and unstoppable.
Feel at home is time and space independent,
Can be and not be, at the same moment,
Quantically.
It's, in all forms,
The wish to be somewhere
Never to be found,
And, yet, always revealed.

Impossible.

In each of my stories
The world was saved.
Saved by the fiction,
Saved by its magnificent characters,
Unstoppable, heroic, brave.

And all the world's illness
Was reduced to ancient history,
A bad memory floating,
A stain to conflict with a calm future.

But fiction
Is just an impossible reality,
Implausible connections leading
To a deceiving plot.

It is my will
To be the improbable hero
Materialized into words
That shall fail to produce images.

Fiction is an external change
To my internal demands,
Restrained by the boundaries of a page.

In the excess I lose myself
I undress from what moves me
To run in search
Of what makes me run in search
Of what makes me run in search.

Those things I fill
I want to hide,
To put ****** aside,
The shame of not having,
Of not being,
Of not doing,
Making me a slave
Of my desire
To have a desire
To have a desire.

In this plastic sea,
In my plastic look,
In my mold,
In my substance,
Everything deforms
To adapt to novelties
Small as an ant seen from an airplane,
Ephemeral, fugitive,
Undervalued.

To live by news
Is, at the same time,
Deconstruct and complete oneself,
Take off from the body,
Arrive from time,
Float in a jelly
Half present, half future,
To discover
That every history
Is fulfill a time.

To choose the hollows
Is the precise art
Of creating meaning.

I hear the bells
And I see the lights
To request me out of me,
To update me
Lives I lived in other life,
To answer questions I did not make.

I am a filter
Or everything else is a filter,
It is a choice,
Conscious or not.
One either chooses what to see
Or is chosen,
One either has intent,
Or will be intended.

To select is the ultimate art to be learned.

When I left town,
I meant to come back,
To turn my village
Into a great city,
Make it flourish,
But I'm not there,
And I ain't coming back.

My old street is my name,
My neighborhood, my family name,
Its lake is my busy calm place,
Its morals, my constant fight.

A town always wanting,
Waiting to be,
The capital of county,
The capital of the state,
The capital of hearts,
Trapped with a small
Megalomaniac obsession,
A misplace inside a panic room,
The dream of a solved traffic congestion,
A myth of buildings and skyscrapers,
A proud town,
Proud of all citizens that left,
Proud of all you can find in there
That could never be found three,
Proud of a growth measured by irrelevant mesures.

A great town,
Hidden in a beautiful valley,
In the middle of no paths,
More peculiar each day,
With decaying ideas
In the exact proportion
Of a growing population.

There is many of it in me,
But there's nothing there about me.

I wanted, truly, to believe
That this fire in the words and the eyes
Won't get our hands *****
Of clay, cement,
Of walls to face to,
That this same fire
Won't consume all the air we breathe,
Won't reduce to dust
All the ornament and all the content
That bonds us,
And all the remains
Are looks to the floor,
The first degree burns,
The second degree burns,
And those, more serious, but not painful,
Third degree burns.

I cannot believe
That this is a phony, fictitious,
Neither a harmless fire.
The awake of any sleeping volcano
Is more serious than those known, measured.

It is not the blow of the words
That make fire;
It is made in the stomach,
With all the acids ingested,
With poisoned food,
In the masochism of cultivating
Unnecessary pain,
In the sadism of wanting to see this pain
In any other eyes,
In the self denial as also a poison producer.

We are alone, naked, hands *****,
In cubicles, over a soft soil of the ashes,
Protected from everything,
Except ourselves.

Through fissures of the world
We build our knowledge,
Through fissures between us and others
We construct relationships.

Through fissures in time
We try (effortless) to predict future,
Understand past,
Control present,
But it's all fissures.

All but little cracks,
Percentages of reality,
Small parts of the world
That we are able to capture.

We cannot live life in completeness.
We are built through our fissures.

Sometimes we free fall
In the windy moist air
So we can learn to fly
Only to reach the sky.

In the future resides the uncertainty of things not happened,
Of nothingness emanating from not coming,
Of factorial and exponential combinations,
Of haltered decisions,
Of the purity of lack of constitution.
Uncertainty is absolute, mother of delimitation,
Only it can, gently, cede into facts.

To be right is to be no thing,
Is to buy food and be given only the smell of it,
Is to deposit yourself over an abyss
Guarding yourself through a thin web
Of a sure death of faith,
Of a short present,
This present that, so certain and possible
That tricks.
That will, eventually, be once again uncertain
Through forgetfulness and intentions,
Fading fading until lost
In the infinitude of odds,
Rebuilding, then, the absolute pureness of hollow doubts.

Present is the time corrupted.

We're as strong as our hearts,
We beat as hard as it beats.

I'm more than been lost in a dream
That I no longer dream,
And my heart tells me so.

I'm fragile
For my ears are shut,
Numbed or whatever,
But I resist.
I'll move on, I'll swim
And I'll fly if I need to.
If I want to.

Want,
What a strange word.
I never know whose voice it is
When it is pronounced.

Sometimes I'm a poet
But most often
I'm an ordinary forger,
Torturing words
To fulfill my sadist desires,
Watching them cry out loud
Meaningless combinations
Purposely vague to seem intelligent.

I never played around
To see what could I do.
What could I've done?
What would I've done?
Would I change the world,
Be a tyrant advocate
Of reason, of equality, of mercy?
Would I at least understand
Why I keep my bed
Always facing the (shut) door?
Or I would be the same as I am
Running over and over
For something different
That never meant to be,
And find myself
From time to time wandering
What could I've done?
What would I've done?

We are shy to show
The little tiny mess we're made of,
Like a thief,
We hide what reveals us.

The orange night sky
Says more about my city
Than the heaven above it.

We are fragments
who do not fit in a whole world.
If we say we know,
we lie.
If we know we lie,
we are true.
If we know the truth,
we are mistaken.
In mistakes we know.

The faults reveal the existence.
What we write
exposes everything not written.
Our creations show our limitations .

My words are the boundaries
of communication,
the fragmentation of a message,
for we are unable to read the whole.

My house is the demolition
of a ****** space,
of a space unbuilt,
the containment of the wind,
the separation of light,
a splinter of a world.

Everything is happening
Causes cause effect to be cause,
endlessly.

Freedom is to understand
What are the rules that imprison us
And use it to evolve,
Like the water of a river,
Restrained by gravity,
Keep going down
In order to grow
Inevitably to meet
A more tempered version of itself.

You are not free
For anything given to you.
Freedom is conquered
Through self violence,
Though greedy battles of this.
Freedom is earned for the voices spoken.
Freedom is screamed
Or it is just a fading breath.

Deny yourself
Deny the effortless routines,
Deny chance and deny steadyness.

Freedom is on the other side of truths.

The only thing keeping us together
Is this friction,
That avoids slipping,
Avoids movement,
Despite of all generated heat,
All lost work,
It is, ultimately, micro physics
Of contact, of bonding,
It is a welding necessary for coherence.

Friction allows steadiness and displacement.
The difference is the direction and way of the force.

I call friends
Those who
I have been drunk with,
But not only that -
That'd be too easy.

To be my friend
One has to have seen me
Dressed in womens' clothes,
Or have watched Juno for the first time,
Or have watched Lion King over and over,
Or have seen bright new colors together,
Or crossed an ocean with me,
Or shared during 5 years dreams of a lifetime,
Or dragged me out of a downward spiral,
Or have been invited to my parents' house,
Or new it had no locks (most of the time),
Or have played 16-bit games with me,
Or have me sleeping out of home,
Or traded a party for a school work,
Or fought with a friend to leave to the party,
Or took me for a brother, and still does it,
Or sheltered me when I was desperate,
Or took me in for a job,
Or partnered in an enterprise with me,
Or shared all toys with me,
Or hold me when I was all cracks,
Or adopted street cats with me,
Or have known me for more than 25 years
(and endured me at least 50 days a year),
Or introduced me to movies and music,
Or expanded my horizons with philosophy,
Or criticized my guitar playing,
Or have been a sister to me,
Or have jumped from a moving car,
Or shared a 16-people house with me,
Or have shown me underground culture,
Or have played in a bar with me while 5 years old,
Or have played football (Brazilian-like) at least 30 times,
Or have changed a name for a Pokémon,
Or have lived with me in a hunted house,

Every bit I am
Somehow, I owe it to you.

At points
What pumps us
Imprisons.

The difference
Is abundance.

Every position
Is denying any others.
It is conquered
Through all that is learned,
Through intuition and grit,
And, that, is the only possible position
Oneself can be,
At those circumstances,
At that moment.

The result of billions of billions of billions
Of tiny particle forces,
Together in as much combinations,
To happen into only one solution.

Yet, time and time again
We divert that position,
That self constitution
Relative to the place of values
And beliefs and dreams and wishes,
Where we stand, bravely.
The distance between we and our ghosts,
The self imagined ghost,
Our own view from above
(untrue, but real),
This ambiguous gap
Eventually leads us farther,
Away from our core.
But be not mistaken,
We go. The ghosts stay.

The gap is only imaginary,
A concept, as any concept:
Ceases to exist the moment
It is brought to life.

The wind, the farm,
The mist,
The church and the park,
The little square blocks,
The fading Polaroids,
The walks with old friends,
Carefully wrapped and tied.

Nothing new
In our daily journey,
Except for the images and the words,
The right words,
The whispered words,
Those ones that fly through
The meadows, the plains,
That turn to tornados,
That vanish entire islands,
That reflects on Mars,
That you barely understand,
But turn you over.
Words, as if they were, at least,
Pure.

I now see
Things I've imagined, and I
Am not sure
If they are just as I
Imagined
Or now that I see
I imagine I've imagined them
That way.

It is everything, except mine.
It is me, except what I've kept from me.
It is itself, otherwise specified.
Words and content,
Form, soul, intention.
Imprecisely complete
But nevertheless complete.

It is a blossom blossoming in concrete,
It is anything it was not
Five minutes ago.

A gift,
Flourishing
Within the impossible soil:
The feelings left unfelt
Between you and me.

Soft voice and lyrics
Gently moving the air
Accompanied by a well played guitar
To be my company for the night.

When somnolence reach me
I will be far gone
Surfing scales, tones, harmonies,
Knowing not where to arrive:
Drifting in words
To be touched by the waves,
Asking questions
Whose answers will always be indirect.

The guitar invites me
To 50 bpm,
To calmer thoughts,
And, all of sudden
All I can hear
Is its reverberation
Within my empty body,
Filled only by the vibrations
To guide me to the real me:
A thoughtless being
Immersed in a mix of feelings,
Sensations, senses and faith.

Half ways are not halfs,
They're two thirds or more,
The midpoint does not account
For the prior doubts,
The self empowerment,
The fights against our louder inner judging voices.
They're midpoints,
But most of the world
Is hidden from space,
Things are in all 37 dimensions.

Half ways is just a reminder
That though most of the work is done,
It's the last half that lead to an end.

I am the hand that writes,
The hand that whips,
I am the commit,
The judge and the executioner.

The hand that chooses
To make or let go,
To punish or to caress,
To wave or to touch.

The hand that farm
That composes,
That plays,
That pray,
That curse.

The primary form of communication
The ultimate form of transforming.

I am the hand
Just that
And I am the whole world.

The harshest moment
Was when I found myself alone.
It wasn't scary because of solitude,
Or because I wanted anyone else beside me:
I recognized that feeling latent in every other moment,
With good and bad companies,
In pleasant or sad times.

The only company is loneliness
Which is just another name
For our own name.
Now I am not scared of it anymore:
I only saw the ugliness in its face
Because it is how it was always painted
When, in fact, it was just a mirror.

We were taught
To be afraid of ourselves:
That's the only possible reason
Loneliness is so fearing.

Difference can only be observed
With a deep and close look,
But connections can only be seen
Far above the clouds.

We are singular, we are plural;
Heisenberg could not be less certain.

Now I need
Things that heal.

The distilled poison
Hidden beneath the purity mantle,
Disguised with the smell of perfume,
Can't be distinguished from pure air.

The monster of insanity,
Fed by fear,
Grew larger than ourselves.
Bravery is the only way
Whenever danger is out.  

To heal is to resist.
The absurd is to succumb.

It's a load,
It's all unforgotten unfinished dreams,
It's all the love that could be and want,
A lot of missing but doing the same stuff.

It's too much to bear,
It's all disappointments,
It's all the accomplishments that matters to anyone but you,
It's all the things you see and can't explain to anybody else,
It's all the experiences in your life you wanted to share but the moment's passed.

It's the struggle with time, actions and decisions,
It's all the worry about money,
It's everyone and just you,
It's the weight of knowing that it was you all along pushing yourself farther from everyone,
It's the deceiving lightness of being distant in a new city every 4 or5 years to blame geography and culture for being alone,
It's all of that and nothing apparently.
It's a lot of feelings, some this bad, others not so much (waiting for the right time to pop up).

And on top of that,
It still has blood to pump.

Sweating I try to remember
The cold days I used to complain.
Then came heat
And I can no longer feel
The annoyance I once cursed.

I keep hating heat,
Hating cold,
Hating sameness.
Dissatisfaction is my engine.

Heights and short trees,
Hot winter, red stones,
Cold water, abundant falls,
The pale green leaves
And unforgiving blue sky.

These words,
Although accurate,
Could not be more wrong.
Guimarães is your name,
Only freezing bones
In freezing was can tell
The truth about you:
Nothing human is found in you,
Not even the humanity of people
Imprinting landscapes through our half known truths,
Touching the imagination of our history
Hoping our shouts to be heard
For these same people, in the future.

Nothing human:
All is magic.

If I get something to hide
I'd say it would be
Nothing to embarrasses me,
Nothing others would laugh
If only they could find,
Nothing to put me
In an inferior position.

What I would hide
Is this sense of superiority
Heir of humility
Flavored with the ignorance
Of a child that did not had a chance
To put its finger in a power plug.

Every time this pops up
I end up dangerously stronger.

Things we only learn
So when they happen again,
Too late,
We regret
We didn't notice them earlier.

Deep inside I had this hope
That I could bear us, and
The unforgiven would be just a bad memory.

I had this hope
That yesterday's problems wouldn't resist
The cruel test of time.

I had this hope
That our new found love
Was born differently.

I had this hope
That I would resist strongly,
That I would fight for my sanity,
And warm, calm waters
Would occupy all the trenches.

Hope is just hope,
With no past, present or future.
Hope is a wanderer,
A promiser,
A guest never to arrive,
A cure for other's disease,
An oasis one mile away of him who died of thirsty,
The imminent accident of which we'll all die someday,
And all we can do is live to wait.

We live for concepts
From which we take nothing in the end.

Is it hopeful
To expect a failure
In order to learn deeply?

Is it hopeful to be right
Even if the result is catastrophic?
Or to hope for a blackout
For a dark night to sleep in the city?

What is it hope gives us?
A small carrot in front of our noses,
Or the ability to be super-human?

Is it hopeful
To not believe in hope
But still believe in a brighter future?

Hope is the very most useful thing
Among the useless things.

Anywhere behind the hills
A lazy sun sets
To create the expectations
For the night to come.

My horizon is short sighted:
A kilometer far, at most,
Shortened by the buildings surrounding,
With an eventual glance at the ridges
As a reminder of an outside world,
Limits to civilization,
The extent of our greatness.

Still it is my horizon and I love it.
I love the blocking buildings,
I love the engine noises
Contrasting an inverted clearing
Of trees resisting within the concrete.

I love my sunset,
I love my multilayered sky and its unnamed colors,
I love rooftops I see at a range,
I love the windows blinking,
I love people walking by the street.

That's the thing about horizons:
One either choose a complex view
Or a longing view.
To have both is to have none.

A little house
In a little town,
In a little state,
In a not so little country,
In a little planet,
Orbiting a little star.

It's not the walls that make a house,
But the air within,
The little breeze that refreshes
At specific spots on the living room,
It's the sound of voices still echoing,
Mostly about happy times,
It's the images reflected in pictures,
In the mirror, in our minds.
It's all we can't see, hear or touch,
It's all the color layers beneath,
It's all the invisible footprints
That creates stories out of pressure imprinted.

A house is everything but its walls.

Every house
Has another house within.
In the smells, the roughness of the walls,
In the little cracks
That barely are seen.

The voices remain there,
The dreams remain there,
Our gentle touches remain there.

It is also in the furniture.
The same house with different furniture
Is another house, with another house.
The tables lose their colors,
And is still a table,
A chair changes until no chair endures:
It is a tree once again,
In a forest of other chairs
And doors, and wardrobes.

We cannot sit anymore,
We cannot rest,
Neither be there:
It's somebody else's house.

But between the cracks
The air blows
A distinct sound
Of every spoken words
In this house
Of fathers, mothers,
Sons, workers, masons.

Bricks are just bricks.

Is it hunger
Or anxiety,
Or a desire to keep concentrated?
The result is
A ***** keyboard,
Sticky fingers,
Unnecessary eating
And a need to brush the teeth.

Spread,
Infect,
Pulverize,
Migrate,
Pollinate,
Propagate,
Reverbe­rate,
Echo,
Transmit,
Amplify,
Expand,
Convince,
Multiply,
Prolif­erate,
Create,
Pass on,
Reproduce,
Tell,
Shout.

It's worth it.

I am full of ideas
But too tired to build them.
Ideas to save the world,
Ideas to get rich,
Ideas to have time in abundance,
Ideas to be remembered forever.

I am stuck
In day to day tasks,
In faking a learning,
In accomplishing requirements for a good life,
In the fear of not be self sufficient.

Will those ideas slowly die
Or will they pump me out of the quicksand?
They can only be
What I allow them to.

My Portuguese sadness,
My Italian gesticulation,
My German treatment,
My Northern simplicity,
My Brazilian compassion
Can only explain half of me.

I don't know Yoruba
And I don't know Tupi,
I am a Brazilian suspended
In European webs,
But all of it have a bit of me.
I cannot decide between
Abequar and Icarus,
For I am a constant mixture of opposites.

I can only define myself
Within gradients and midterms,
Undefinable, then.
To have an identity
Is to have none.

Where to dock
If lonely ports don't attract me
And crowd ports scare me?

Where can have so much life
That one can only be satiated of it,
Where is that curiosity,
Of so much healthy, bores me,
Where is that so many salty tears
Can fill my sweetness?

Why am I so afraid of life
Of all my crying is for having it too much?
All this health sicken me,
I sink my ship in the middle of the Atlantic
So, maybe, I'm reborn in Pacific.

I've lived intensely the middles:
I came from a mid-sized town
In the mid of Midwest,
Found myself in midtown of a big city,
In the middle of extreme and opposite opinions,
With an older and a younger brother,
Half way of where I judge myself capable,
Half lonely, half accompanied,
In the middle of people (never in their extremes);
Immensely in the median  disequilibrium.

Sometimes we have to stand
Upfront the immensity and the abyss of nothing
To realize the only greatness
Lies inside.

The mind keeps pushing body
Higher, farther, stronger,
Until it is resisted by the impacts
Of a harsh sun,
A draught,
Insensitive words,
That will mold, break and crack.

What's to be done
Is just a choice:
Camouflage the fragile collage
Or to stick it all with a golden glue.

To hide or to expose.
Our selection construct us.

There is a detachment I seek,
I can sense its lightness
To lead me to new routes,
Wander town to town,
But it is unreachable.

It is there in idea,
Form, smell, colors and shadows,
But never in walls, floors,
Treads, acting and feeling.

There is this impression
That I know what I want,
But that I don't know how to be it.
That I can't find the place to unearth it.
That I can't find the compass to point it.
And, drifting in the sea of everything inside me,
I lose myself in fake storms
Created to sustain my farce failures.

There is this light impression of control,
Of a premeditated operation, reasonable,
Which I carry at all times
Like coins in my pockets:
Don't know what they're there for,
And I'm always willing to give some to whoever asks.

But it is a light impression.
It is a fact, although questionable.
It is the principle of a doubt fed day by day
By vague thoughts,
As if they're thought by others through my mind.

It is the impression of a renunciation,
But I want it real.
As I want my breakfast
And healthy legs to move.

I want the softest of breezes
To carry me even to places
I don't want to be.

Full,
I am in most ways:
Loved, lived, livid.

Empty,
Spaces grow
When I pass:
Weeks, days, lengths,
Lands, roads, feelings.

I'm a point in nowhere
Incalculable in speed, in size
And dimensions,
Half here, half there,
Not mine nor others',
Just a vague matter
In a strange strange
Full-empty world.

I'm happening in between
The real and the nothingness,
Divided and undecided,
Waiting for the ultimate prove
Of a sure choice.

I'm caught between
The wheels and the leather,
Cotton and glycerin,
Fruits and caramels,
Meats and grains,
Wind and coal,
But existing in all of them at once.

There's pain, passion and desire
In the seek of gold,
In pursuit of patents,
In achieving medals.

There's a unique relaxation
In the void of beings,
In dematerializing that inner voice,
In decharacterizing oneself,
But still self recognizing simultaneously,
An identity stored in the clouds
Like Theseus' ship.

The subtle finding
Is to realize that the actually real stuff
Are the ones that can't be touched;
Everything in matter
Are nothingness, perceived only
Through the illusion
Of the senses.

I sometimes shine
And I don't know
Where that comes from.
It's something from inside,
Something I am still not aware.

Somehow I connect,
Somehow I surprise,
Somehow I am there.

But I often disappear,
And that, too,
I don't know why.
It's just an undescribable need for space.

In loneliness I try to find
This light
But the more I seek,
The further I get.
The more I think of it,
The less I have.

Maybe I should get used to it,
Surf these waves,
Hide from the storm
(Inevitable),
Float during a calm tide.

I know I have it
I don't know how to use it,
But it's ok.

It's only a matter
Of living in ignorance
And embrace happiness.