living in Porto – Stories from A Closet of Errors

There is a point when tears don’t work

There were days I wanted out.
But then You would go and do things
like dive into the Vancouver ocean,
big brilliant cliché poem that You are,
water rolling off Your back
as You swam toward a sunset
that hung like a sacred recipe painted
all the way around Your holy head.
And then there were the ways You caught me
moving back into my cave where the wheels turn,
same wheels that drove You off.
I should have told You
before talking in terms of Forever
that any given day wears me out and works me sour,
that there are nights when the sky is so clear
I stand obnoxious underneath it
begging for the stars to shoot at me
just so I can feel at Home.
What’s left of You now is a shrine
built from the pieces I kept of Your presence,
Your incredible stretch of presence.
It sits in Our room like a sandpiper
cross-legged and crying,
remembering the night we met
and the day You left, and the Light
shifting in between.
By the side of it stands a picture of the poem where I promised,
“You will never have another lonely holiday.”
The words “I Promise” and “Forever”
begged me not to use them
but sometimes I don’t listen to God,
so You can imagine how much it hurt
to let Your last birthday pass
with no word. August 3rd.
You weren’t the only one comin’ up lonesome.
Listen, if I had to make a list
of everything everywhere

and I mean everything… everywhere –
the very last to-do on that infinite list of
every – single – thing – would be – to hurt You,
so I need You to know
that in an attempt to keep my promise
I did write a letter to You on Your birthday.

It was covered in stickers of flock-printed stars,
choir claps, and a bonfire of buttercups stuck in the air,
but when I finally drew enough courage
to send You all the Love in the World
my hand snapped off in the mailbox
from clenching.
It was returned to me with a gospelstitch, a hope stamp
and a note etched into the palm I had to pry open
with the pressure of pitching doves
reminding me
we agreed to let each other go.
There is a point when tears don’t work
to wash things away anymore.
Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.
I miss You so much some days
that I beg for the airplane to crash
with just enough time in the freefall
for scribbling “I Love You” across my chest.
That way – when they find my burning breast plate –
they will tell You how the very last thing I did with my life
was call out Your name.
A. R. L.
I know You’re momma didn’t raise no sissy,
so it’s best if I believe
that You’ve bounced back and been born again,
but in the bottom left corner of dreams
in the dark spot
where it gets windy and hollow
I can still see you flailing,
eating knuckle cake,
full torque and tender,
heart pounding from being pulled under,
feet bleeding from bracing for endings,
tongue dying to curse Forever
because promises murder us backwards
when people like me don’t keep them.
And sure, we all deserve absolution,
but especially You. You and Faith,
You’ve got the same hungerpunch,
same song
still rising off the watertrain running through the laws
of a moon dead set on daylight
digging marbles from the trees
in a Love not scared to make no sense
and monkey enough to see
the same devastating reason for living this life
My Giant
Saint
Everything
I promise You
Forever
these words have buckled my lips
so far back to the beginning
that I am now allowed only
Today,
so from my snap-chested heart spraying
fully flying
sending out the birds:
Today I stop believing in words.
Today all my visions converted to blurs
like the night We saw the Light
and I could not shut up
but I swear I was feelin’ silence.

Giant Saint Everything, by Buddy Wakefield

They told me I was everything

Fierce

Bright

Emotional

Hypersensitive

Volatile

Dilettante

Passionate

Detached

Elegant

Regal

Unapologetic

Unapproachable

Big hearted

Generous

Impulsive

Daydreamer

Blunt

Fair

Melancholic

A good person

Serious

Elegant

Shy

Boring

Sarcastic

The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.

C. G. Jung, Memories, dreams, reflections

‘tis a lie, I am no ague-proof

References

William Shakespeare, King Lear

Life, friends, is boring

Dream Song 14
BY JOHN BERRYMAN


Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.   
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,   
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy   
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored   
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no   
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,   
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes   
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.   
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag   
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving            
behind: me, wag.

What bores you?

Numbers bore me, data bores me. People complaining about their comfortable lives bore me to death. The lack of consistency between words and actions both bores me and infuriates me. My lack of discipline bores me and, sometimes, my indifference frustrates and scares me.

View from a Ferris Wheel

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.”
― E.B. White, The Points Of My Compass

Porto, June 2018

Not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

Irrevocable condition

It has taken me half a lifetime and a little over 100 days to realize that this where I belong. Because I eventually had to come home.

Largo dos Leōes, Porto, April 2018

References

James Baldwin

The will to

I sing the will to love:
the will that carves the will to live,
the will that saps the will to hurt,
the will that kills the will to die;
the will that made and keeps you warm,
the will that points your eyes ahead,
the will that makes you give, not get,
a give and get that tell us what you are:
how much a god, how much a human.
I call on you to live the will to love.

Credo, Alfred Kreymborg

Photo, Campo dos Mártires da Pátria (Porto, May 2018)

Early in the morning

Hoje de manhã saí muito cedo,

Hoje de manhã saí muito cedo,

Por ter acordado ainda mais cedo

E não ter nada que quisesse fazer…

Não sabia por caminho tomar

Mas o vento soprava forte, varria para um lado,

E segui o caminho para onde o vento me soprava nas costas.

Assim tem sido sempre a minha vida, e

Assim quero que possa ser sempre —

Vou onde o vento me leva e não me

Sinto pensar.

13-6-1930

“Poemas Inconjuntos”. In Poemas de Alberto Caeiro. Fernando Pessoa.

I went out very early in the morning today
Because I woke up even earlier
And there was nothing I wanted to do…

I didn’t know which road to take
But the wind rose strong, sweeping up from one side,
And I followed the road where the wind pushed at my back.

That’s how my life has always been, and
That’s how I’d like to be able to have it always be —
I go where the wind leads me
And don’t feel like thinking.

Translation here

Photo: Afurada on a perfect Saturday morning

Only a ten minute drive

And the World is different. And it’s summer in February even though it’s still the Northern Hemisphere.

Photo: last Sunday, somewhere in Gondomar

Welcome song

Here’s your Mom, here’s your Dad.
Welcome to being their flesh and blood.
Why do you look so sad?

Here’s your food, here’s your drink.
Also some thoughts, if you care to think.
Welcome to everything.

Here’s your practically clean slate.
Welcome to it, though it’s kind of late.
Welcome at any rate.

Here’s your paycheck, here’s your rent.
Money is nature’s fifth element.
Welcome to every cent.

Here’s your swarm and your huge beehive.
Welcome to that there’s roughly five
billion like you alive.

Welcome to the phone book that stars your name
Digits are democracy’s secret aim.
Welcome to your claim to fame.

Here’s your marriage, and here’s divorce.
Now that’s the order you can’t reverse.
Welcome to it; up yours.

Here’s your blade, here’s your wrist.
Welcome to playing your own terrorist;
call this your Middle East.

Here’s your mirror, your dental gleam.
Here’s an octopus in your dream.
Why do you try to scream?

Here’s your corn-cob, your TV set.
Your candidate suffering an upset.
Welcome to what he said.

Here’s your porch, see the cars pass by.
Here’s your shitting dog’s guilty eye.
Welcome to its alibi.

Here are your cicadas, then a chickadee,
the bulb’s dry tear in your lemon tea.
Welcome to infinity.

Here are your pills on the plastic tray,
Your disappointing, crisp X-ray.
You are welcome to pray.

Here’s your cemetery, a well kept glen.
Welcome to a voice that says, “Amen.”
The end of the rope, old man.

Here’s your will, and here’s a few
takers. Here’s an empty pew.
Here’s life after you.

And here are your stars which appear still keen
on shining as though you had never been.
They might have a point, old bean.

Here’s your afterlife, with no trace
of you, especially of your face.
Welcome, and call it space.

Welcome to where one cannot breathe.
This way, space resembles what’s underneath
and Saturn holds the wreath.

Joseph Brodsky

Enjoying Porto’s sunsets and making Monday’s poetry late again.

Living by the sea

“When I die I will return to seek
The moments I did not live by the sea.”

Sophia De Mello Breyner

Selected Poems, translated by Richard Zenith, Carcanet Press, 1997.

Tour Guide

even though it isn’t mine

even though I feel at home in most places I travel to, even though I can’t wait to leave, even though it now looks mostly as a theme park, I sometimes can’t help but feel that Porto belongs to me because I belong to it.

References

Truman Capote