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st64 Jan 2014
He will not light long enough
for the interpreter to gather
the tatters of his speech.
But the longer we listen
the calmer he becomes.

He shows me the place where his daughter
has rubbed with a coin, violaceous streaks
raising a skeletal pattern on his chest.
He thinks he's been hit by the wind.
He's worried it will become pneumonia.

In Cambodia, he'd be given
a special tea, a prescriptive sacrifice,
the right chants to say. But I
know nothing of Chi, of Karma,
and ask him to lift the back of his shirt,
so I may listen to his breathing.

Holding the stethoscope's bell I'm stunned
by the whirl of icons and script
tattooed across his back, their teal green color
the outline of a map which looks
like Cambodia, perhaps his village, a lake,
then a scroll of letters in a watery signature.

I ask the interpreter what it means.
It's a spell, asking his ancestors
to protect him from evil spirits—
she is tracing the lines with her fingers—
and those who meet him for kindness.

The old man waves his arms and a staccato
of dipthongs and nasals fills the room.
He believes these words will lead his spirit
back to Cambodia after he dies.
I see, I say, and rest my hand on his shoulder.

He takes full deep breaths and I listen,
touching down with the stethoscope
from his back to his front. He watches me
with anticipation—as if awaiting a verdict.

His lungs are clear. You'll be fine,
I tell him. It's not your time to die.
His shoulders relax and he folds his hands
above his head as if in blessing.

Ar-kon, he says. All better now.




                                                        by Peter Pereira



.
Peter Pereira (b. 1959)


Peter Pereira is a physician, a poet, and the founder of Floating Bridge Press. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and several anthologies, including Best American Poetry and To Come to Light: Perspectives on Chronic Illness in Modern Literature. He has received the “Discovery”/The Nation and Hayden Carruth prizes, and has been a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

His poems are marked by their wit, humane observations, and range of both form and subject. In his chapbook, The Lost Twin (2000), and two full-length collections, Saying the World (2003) and What’s Written on the Body (2007), he seamlessly traverses his favorite themes, which include his work as a primary care provider at an urban clinic in Seattle, domestic life, suffering and the human condition, and the slippage of language.
He is as comfortable with free-verse narratives as he is with anagrams, and Gregory Orr calls him “a master of many modes, all of them yielding either wisdom or delight.” Edward Byrne has praised his formal innovations, “inventive use of language,” and “unexpected” juxtapositions. Pereira’s investigations have a prevailing undercurrent of celebration in the tradition of Walt Whitman, and even his deepest explorations of suffering are likely to be suffused with humour or hope.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/peter-pereira
Patas de perro con
mi primacho Miguel
en Pereira, buscando
un hotel pa pagar
la estancia de una cuartico
cerca al centro o
a poca distancia
del burdel.  

Nos tomamos un jugo de caña
y como ya tengo la maldita maña, llamamos al Toro porque
sin esa hierbita jamás
cerraría pestaña

Dándole vueltas al centro, esperándolo a él
Vi un lindo edificio
y le dije a Miguel:
"un segundo hermano que me
  gustó ese hotel, voy a entrar a
  ver si hay cupo"
y a cuánto estaba
una noche en aquél.

Me mira bien serio y
me deja pasar
quedándose afuera pa disimular.

"Buenas tardes caballero,
bien pueda...
¿En que le puedo servir?"

"Busco un cuartico que mi primo
  y yo pensamos quedarnos en
  Pereira esta noche, ¿a cuánto
  están?"

¿Cómo así? me contesta
y como creía que
no me había entendido...
repiti la encuesta.  
Otra vez ....¿Cómo así?

En eso momento,
que pendejo te cuento,
me di cuenta que
no era un hotel.
De un salón a la izquierda
salían los llantos
seguidos por un desfile
en ***** de luto.....
y yo hijueputa ¡"que bruto"!

Volteaba a ver si el primo ya sabía que pasaba cuando
soltó la gran carcajada.  

Huí sin mu decir
buscando la risa de Miguel
que decía uy... ¿que pasó no es hotel?

Pero se la hice también
cuando nos recogió el torito
y comenzamos a fumar y fumar. Tantos baretos estilo Bob Marley que ya no nos podíamos ver.

Cuando se escapó todo el humo Miguel se detuvo
antes de casi caer.  
Con ojos cruzados y labios babeados empecé
a burlarme también.
Story bout my cousin letting me make a fool of myself in Pereira Colombia by asking the front desk at a funeral home if they had rooms for the night.  And how I got him back
jeremy wyatt Jan 2011
Teachers? I'll give you ****** teachers!
There was a lazy old worm
dodged him most of the term
he would let you go home
if you bought him a tome
that stimulated  shedding of *****
another thought he was fine
but at lunch he would sup on red wine
of english he thought that I could do nought
and mocked me all of the time
another for boredomes sake
found a rule he thought he could break
smash the lid of a desk on a boy he detests
then tell him the  tears he does fake
then there was Mr pereira
how we wished he was fairer
never gave a toss 'cos he was the boss
but there was one even scarier
Red-Neck....
Big and crazy
very lazy
beat the ****
out of me with his mate
for reasons they found hazy
used the dap
I wouldn't cry
so they got
metre rulers
and they did try
the brass bit cut my leg
and ripped my trousers
bullying *****
which was lousier
all I did was come in late
was depressed and sick
and full of hate for school
but a good boy not a fool
scarred me a bit
ha! they were all full of ****
when I passed my exams
they resented it
Best days of my life?

DOWN WITH SKOOL.....
I wrote a good poem, a kind teacher wanted to send it to a magazine. His rival, my teacher stopped him and was so nasty that until this December I had only written three more in 23 years...wow that long, boy I feel old ;o)
Chapter XVI
Vernarth Third Finale Fragment, Apud tertium final


Vernarth, runs ripped from himself, after himself, to try to stay in this Parapsychological Regression. His bewilderment was imminent. He was seen in this regression on Nevski Avenue, Saint Petersburg, and in the province of Yekaterinburg, looking for vestiges of the Tungus tribe.
Peter I Alekséievich or Pedro I of Russia, nicknamed Peter the Great Moscow, May 30 / June 9, 1672- Saint Petersburg, January 28 / February 8, 1725.) 1 son of Tsar Alexius I and his second wife Natalia Narýshkina and successor of her half brother Teodoro III (Fiódor Alekséievich), was one of the most outstanding rulers in the history of Russia, belonging to the Románov Dynasty.
He ruled Russia from May 7 (April 27 C.J.), 1682, until his death, and before 1696 he did so along with his weak and sickly brother, Ivan V of Russia. It carried out a process of modernization through westernization and expansion that transformed Moscow Russia into one of the main European powers. He married Eudoxi Lopujiná, with whom he had a son and, in second nuptials, with his servant, who would take the title of Catherine I when he succeeded Pedro after his death occurred in Saint Petersburg on February 8, 1725 as a result of an infection in the bladder.


"... It was reading Vernarth in a tourist magazine when I was on a visit to the region, previously I was in Moscow and its surroundings ..." The parapsychological regression trip, followed and resumed another course with Destination to the Iberian Peninsula, on the Jacobean Route Through Santiago de Compostela and Vigo, in the latter, place passes to see the remains of the crypt of a friend killed in a Crusade. Here the remains rest in the Pereira mausoleum .Continuing his tour in Portugal, Lisbon. In Lisbon, old and melodic Afro Fado, on the sheets hanging from the illustrious houses, saw his escapades continue, rummaging bookstores and offices to get to the rooms of Amalia Rodrígues and the bohemian Lisbonense, who asked for more of his presence than the bartender himself placing port wine on the tables that cover their cork oak tables.


Does your regressive session continue, and was the doctor in charge asking if it was within your will to wake up and end the session? .Vernarth ...; He says with a gesture of his right hand, clutching his left wrist, that he wanted to continue and did not know if he would come back from himself. Which caused the doctor a strange and worried sensation, so he asked for a break before this unusual and abrupt situation. The windows of the room vibrated remarkably low, as if the thick strings of a cello intended to leave everyone diminished, to feel nothing more than himself, the very experience of a simultaneous True Warrior in mere compartments of a life that has currently disturbed him live without being part of any!


The session continues:
"... On a ridge in the middle of combat, Vernarth crosses for more below the positions of the Persians, on him and some like Mardiath, leader of his squad in Tire. Accompanying him, they could feel the thousands of sound frequencies crossing each other. Metals whistling with bowed, high and mid-frequency waves crisscrossing with spears as they skidded off the muffled wheels with their burnt axles.  The herds of fortified elephants, huge towers of ivories slicing bellies and cutting the flag,cloths next to their embalmed suns. Mardiath protects him from the rear, to evict him from the hundreds of boisterous spears, which were intended to target their commander. The Xifos sheared the chins of the almost annihilated Persians. Some of the Greek mercenaries shone with great pride the totemic animals of war to tune the Hellenic ones who cut off everything that was put before them. ”
They continue chasing the peal of spears that no longer spaced more than the shadow of their companions. The ringing of the voices that cut the metal rattle winds continues, diverting the coral trotting of the Macedonians with those of the cavalry, which faster than the others echoed the soon to take of causing always close wounds, where nothing was already with their defense weapons.

Vernarth says: With me there will be nothing ... anything more than how much will be counted, nothing more than being eternally brandishing our Xiphs. Medea ... full sorceress, tell me that I have to bet more than multiply my forces, without being able to unite with your potions of my right breastplate yet?

Medea replies: It must be applied with the woodcutter's hatchet ax. She hardens the edges of the banner, flaming, and the feather that moves the plumes that will be reserved in the squares of your energetic blasphemies. It has already welded your breastplate more than a feeling of longing. She was watered by the sacred steam of the Bumodos and its waters. I am here in full dispute; you can now anoint your throne with squares for more centuries by commenting to the right of the regular rules.

Brisehal in Advance

“They were all in full swing of the latest outbursts of onslaught from both sides. Vernarth gallops across the right side over the spearmen and archers, when suddenly everyone is paralyzed at the sight of a giant shadow of an oversized dog appearing to them from the rear. Some dropped their weapons; others restrained themselves and did not know what to do ... it was even notable that they did not hear the voices of their Persian commanders.


In the immensity of their over proportions, the fusion of reality appears in that of an almost unreal animal that stood between them to intercede and protect Vernarth. Was "Brisehal", which was suspended with its quadruple legs over an area of more than two square kilometers?

It came from Dasht-e-Lut. After Brisehal bellowed and the troops of their self-contemplation were depopulated, they were emerging from the empty Wagnerian Gaugamela. Brisehal with her Anubis-headed mountain, began to move it and shake the space between earth and sky, like the hope of some parishioners to enter the garden-kingdom of Heaven. Before the day trembled with the movement of her trembling footsteps, Brisehal shuddered on both sides and stepped in front of Vernarth to preserve her. When her entire body shuddered, she eliminated the remains of parasites that fell on the insistent achemenids, on their smallest heaps that were seen to be liquidated with the greatest effect of their rotating forces.

They were immense thunderclaps that even scrubbed up to the spheroid clouds reddened by their rising. He turned from left to right as if wanting to exile them to the Desert of Lut, as if to tube his pro generation by the bundles of optical rope or high-density fiber, which could cohabit with Vernarth in his odyssey of the Horcondising (Vernarth lineage paradise to Gaugamela).

From Horcondising; Sudpichi, on the streams channeled like proliferated mirrors, illuminated the sky of his region like haloes of light showing each outcome of the Intervention of this enormous Dasht-e-Lut dog on a huge colorful screen by the celestial air of the nearby clouds.

A guard says: Our Lord Vernarth, is under the protection of Brisehal, just as we with his memory are his succession, we owe him great respect for his bravery and repercussion of his ancestry. I continue from here of the Tower seeing his operations of greater spirit, for the protection of his great heroic sign!

Brisehal, is introduced on the cavalries of thousands of horsemen of the Persians, on hundreds of groups of mounts that flew over their heads the cataphractic armor, also elephants that did not give truce but, the most devastated were the failed cars, which were totally annulled by the bellowing and fierce contortions that Brisehal gave angrily without stopping. From this moment on, Vernarth, who already had contracted wounds, was amazed by this mass of fright in the eyes of the Falangists and the movement of strategies already aimed at deserved success, ******* the huge hordes remained, prey to their fear and undeniable defeat. early.

Alejandro Magnus says: “This Victory has no concordance with others that I have overcome. I must imagine myself supported by the support of my land and my collaborators. Undoubtedly, the tendency of those who have left their sparse sweat on this plain tend to exaggerate, it gives room to further commend the victory of my commander Vernarth and his supporters. The only thing that we can affirm for sure is that our adversaries grasped at the expense of their resources, is that even though they are tremendously superior in quantity to those of the Macedonian army, they were disintegrated at this moment by our overwhelming powers.

Ellipsis Darius III in Arbela

“… In July 331 BC, the army of Alexander the Great would cross the Euphrates River, entering fully into Mesopotamia. At that time, instead of marching south on the river to reach Babylon, where Darius III was supposed to have fled, he chose to head north, crossing the entire Mesopotamian territory until he reached the Tigris River in the second half of September. At the same time, Darius III had marched north to Arbela, just over 100 kilometers from the vast Gaugamela plain. Unlike what happened in the battle of Gránico and the battle of Issos, there he could deploy the full potential of his troops to envelop Alexander's and annihilate him… ”.

Darius III says: Being in Arbela, I should never have disobeyed The Astros. When they moved and I couldn't look at them because of their immigration, I never believed that the nebulae that would cross in front of my eyes would be the chivalry commanded by Alexander Magnus, and the infantry by Vernarth joined Etréstles. Now I see him with his glasses in his hands drinking Nepente in the twilight with his comrades surrounded by Zeus. I meanwhile ..., I still think that I should never have abstracted myself from the last portion of Betelgeuse's movement when he circulated around the border of the emblem of his seduction to the adorned orion belt.

At the time of knowing the movements and tactics of the battle of Gaugamela we find the same problem as always, the veracity of the sources of knowledge, whose account is very similar to that of the battle of Issos. According to this account, Alexander and the cavalry galloped diagonally and to the right, to avoid the caltrops and the failed cars and avoid being flanked by the Persians. Consequently, the Persian cavalry on the left wing moved in pursuit, aiming to overtake the Macedonians and envelop them. However, the Achaemenid horsemen did not realize that in doing so they had separated from the center, where a hole had been opened that allowed them to reach Darius III.

Vernarth says: in the hour that I ate of the black roses and their petals, I must savor the conversation that I had to have with the nature of our military training. Our strategy has oppressed the erratic tactics of the adversaries; the pressure of our Macedonian lancers disrupts the formation of the troops of the satrap Bessos, who end up losing the initiative and fleeing. In the center, the phalanx Me, Mardiath and Etréstles, together with the hipaspistas we will advance slowly but surely, gradually pushing back the Persian units. Brisehal has stood out above the outstanding lightness of the harassed Commander Satrap Maceo, annihilating all attempts to completely discredit him, of which his figure of high countenance was thus tainted. With the sweaty blizzard of the afternoon back then the fully grained shadow of Brisehal migrated to his Dasht-e-Lut desert from where he was confined by command of his allegiance to Vernarth forever and ever where both will always be seen at dawn play and jump.

At one point, after long resisting the burden of the Macedonian sovereign, Darius III makes his worst mistake. As happened in Issos, he gives up the battle when he was not yet decided for either side and flees, progressively dragging with him the rest of the nearby troops. In the face of this movement, Alexander immediately pursued him, and for a moment it seemed that the life of the King of Kings was coming to an end. However, the desperate call of Parmenion, who can no longer resist the fight against the Persian horsemen, makes Alexander desist from his persecution and allows Darius III to escape. When they were abandoned by their king, the Persian army became demoralized and ended up fleeing or surrendering, thus confirming the disintegration of the Persian Empire and the coronation of Alexander the Great as lord of Asia.

The end begins in a new beginning, Vernarth limps along the external bank of the Bumodos with his pectoral reopened and his back with purple colored diaphragms bellowing his resistance. He was accompanied by Kanti and, Etrestles and Mardiath who helped him endure it. They take their steps and approach the store where Valekiria was waiting for them; his consort to apply the sedative ****** essence with waters of the Bumodos to calm his pain, and later return from this great epic of his "Parapsychological Regression" that was soon to culminate.
THIRD  ENDING FRAGMENT
Andre Apr 2019
Tell me
By: Andrea Pereira

I’m sitting on my room again wondering what happened,
How could this ever end we seemed so happy,
And I always thought that this would never end,
And I know there are many things unsaid,
But now you’re gone and all that’s left
Me wishing you would turn back instead,

And I wish you could tell me, Tell me that you want me,
So tell me, baby, tell me there is no one else,
Cause I’m too you young, to understand,
That I’m too you young to get my heart broken,
And I’m too young,
So tell me, tell me that you’re gonna stay,

I keep wondering if I did something wrong, Uh oh
But I can’t remember, oh no no,
One day you’re here, one day you’re gone, how could I respect you?
But I miss your holding and I miss your touch,
And if I could turn back,

And I wish you could tell me, Tell me that you want me,
So tell me, baby, tell me there is no one else,
Cause I’m too you young, to understand,
That I’m too you young to get my heart broken,
And I’m too young,
So tell me, tell me that you’re gonna stay,

And I wish you could tell me, Tell me that you want me,
So tell me, baby, tell me there is no one else,
Cause I’m too you young, to understand,
That I’m too you young to get my heart broken,
And I’m too young,
So tell me, tell me that you’re gonna stay,

— The End —