terça-feira, 9 de agosto de 2016

The flood - 3rd version

A new version of an old text. Other versions in here and here (Portuguese)


Trashy all over
The unsmiling boy.
Heart, mind, body.
Not sick, nor broken.
Just adding one to one.

Trying to derive some logics
out of so much nonsense.
Afraid of the process
For recycling is destruction
then rebuilding.

Not completely lost.
Where is he standing?
Pushed out of the platform,
into the tracks. Luckily,
No train.

Helping hands
He’s out again.
But something dropped there.
Something he just cannot
remember what.


Imprisoned by reactions,
so free inside the cage
of fears and disillusionments
Of vices and habits
Of expectations and hopes.

He learns (the hard way) about
no certainties, no tomorrow-I-know's. 
Aware that he had nothing.
Possessions gone, once solid
Proverbially melting in the air.

He saw himself
with a car, an apartment, a cat.
He saw himself living in More's
Utopia, Shagri-la, Mattapoisett.
Deprivation feeds on dreams.

Distant thunders roaring.
Raindrops falling and splashing
on dirty soil.
Clouds gather and darken,
drops lick his face and he knows

The storm is beautiful
and he is home
and he is there,
in its heart, and it’s nobody's fault.
Simply life.

Swimming forward, dragged sideways.
The flow of water is merciless.
So are the debris of once grandiose
edifices. Only crumbles of what was
and what he had envisioned.   

Now, revelation molds images.
Shock and relief in a shriek.
He stops swimming.
His nerves, his limbs rest.
Darkness envelops him.

Annoying warmth and light linger. 
No one is to blame but
Fear, eating him main course.
His groin hurts. Virility vanishes.
Forcedly androgynous fallen angel.

Afloat, taken by the waves,
The storm gives way
To feeble rays
of a timid sun.
Rippling water a silver lining a rainbow?


The water is lowering.
The scent of mud, still
unable to stand up
A surge of hope like
belated lightning.

Euphoria meets enchantment
and twin sweet illusions are begotten.
He builds half blinded by old
prejudices and drama new worlds, a new
language. At last no shields or cocoons.


He craves for enlightenment.
His drama explodes in a show
Of firework and laser
(the more he thinks the slower his thoughts fly by)
But that no longer scares him.

Helped by songs new and old
Is he dancing?
In a frenzy of some otherworldly
Ritual, he thumps, he is clapping.
Unsteered, uncontrolled vessel. 

Like a chorus, he chants into
Believability those words.
Darkness and light embrace
And they are one – freedom
(from himself or whatever, whomever else)

He bows and completely
awake he hears the echoes:
As natural as the rain that falls
Here comes the flood again
Or not... Or definitely not.