White Cliff Powder

Guitarra filled. Drum struck. She is so silly, stage walking was nothing she had done before. Clumsy, walks against an ivory microphone. She engages her jaw, her voice unleashes a first note. Like machinery in the middle of the night, constructing a skyscraper in the middle of an empty valley. And she unleashes an "ah" and an "oh".

I listen intently, wait for her to finish. She grabs my hand and we walk uphill, to a bench made of pyro plastics that shines in the night. Inside it: water, see-through bright fish swim.

She tells me to put my ear on the bench's end. Water drips through the tiny hole. My ear gets soaked. She walks to the opposite end. Puts her mouth in the hole and takes all the water in one gulp. All the fish dive into her mouth until the inside of the bench becomes air, empty transparent bright air. She keeps absorbing and pulls my ear inside. It is now only air. My head unable to move, its all empty space. My body cannot move, I give in, I deform and all of me goes in, one limb at a time, Through the hole and into the bench. She jumps in.

We are both miniatures in the summit of a hill living inside a bench. We walk to the edge of the bench and she places my ear agaisnt the pyro plastic wall. I stay still. Those would be the best acoustics I will ever listen. Pitch perfect in G minor she sings:

Unwashed coastal cliff
You have waited too long
Stabding tall alone
On the water's edge
Dry, desertic, salted

Oh, coastal cliff, unwashed
Your toes dripping
Containing tides
Most of you dry

Today is when waters rise
Today, we claim you
Today, coastal cliff, you get washed

The wait is over
Coastal cliff
Drown and float away

**You Baby**

You baby, you will like the sky

The pillows and the cotton

Falling upwards, you baby, you will like the sky

You baby, you will like closed eyes

The muscles and the start of my hand

Reversing tornado, you baby, you will like the sky

You baby, you will like the ice 

The corners and the center transparent

Sliding water flow, dripping, unable to contain the heat 

And when life become serious, you baby, will be held - in that hand too 

And when life becomes tedious, you baby, will slip - in that water too 

And when life continues, you baby, will sleep in that mattress too 

You baby, you will like the sky 

Self Portrait: 4 Pasts

To Paulino

Today, Paulino, I become Seneca. And I speak to you from London, the seat of my empire. And Paulino, your name here sounds Roman. It opens like seconds, in a cobblestone street, in Notting Hill, where horses recently flung and men and women did not shower. And only centuries later, I live in a series of concerning delays: the fragility of present. And the expectation, almost certain of future.

In three decades, one only, was lived in adulthood. And I lived in delays. In delays of self. Never clear. Barely honest. Barely capable to stand, own, as I am. 

This insight is water deep. Need to pause.  Paulino, I am sorry, indeed. Be right back.

Electrolytes

All of the lights, illuminated.

All of the lights, pointing at you.

All of the lights, white.

All of the lights, like a thunder.

All of the lights, pure electrolyte.

All of you, standing projectile Center.

All of you, Waiting for ignition.

All of you, ready, for a rocket to be shot. All of you, an experiment. 

You place yourself.

Close to gravity this time. 

You get on all fours.

You baked a cake the night before.

Your skin is fresh. 

Your mind has no weight.

And you look pristine.

Your clothes firmly cut.

They reveal flesh.

Your muscles.

Your veins.

Your tatoo has never felt better.

You wear a smile.

It is photographed.

Up there in the green fields.

Birds chirp.

Cows live their day, unperturbed.

Clouds disperse in the bright blue.

Most scientists have gone. 

Everything is a secret.

Masses are not informed.

And then that person walks.

And people are formed in aisles.

And you look aside.

And you exchange a glance.

And all of the lights.

And all of the electrolytes.

And all of the moment collides.

Will you take the?

Yes. Yes, I will.

I do.

This. Is. Marriage.

Self Portrait: Neon Works

The Cornfields of my Sofa

Life was walking down the rolling hills of an island. Late at night, parting the air, across the humid summer she went, she walked with a harmonica at hand, a wristband in her forehead, a glaring sight, ready to cut a bitch, she chanted alone.

As she walked, she heard footsteps, sounds of a man walking, a journeyman, singing, unintelligible tunes, passing time from midnight to one. And so life quickly went rosdside, quietly she hid, like a spy, she went into the cornfields.

Curious like a child, life observed the journeyman quietly: how we walked, his facial expressions, who he is on his own, that moment.

The nearby towns lights illuminated the sky, projecting upward, like a mushroom, lifting, it's intensity diming into vast black air, circular with no epicentre. It was not pitch black.

As the journeyman passed her, life quietly walked alongside mirroring his steps in the shadows of the cornfield. Like wind, she caressed leaves, touched the corn, pushed the stems aside. She did this for mile and then she grew impatient and suddenly spoke.

"Journeyman," she said, "tell me what consumes you and has you so deep in thought?"
Surprised, he replied, "who's out there?"
She said, "reply, reply to me at once!"
And he said, "I'm recounting. I'm planning my wandering, questioning past and looking at future. What is this to you? Now you answer me! Who's out there? Speak at once"
And she replied "its life"'
He said "precisely!", launched and started walking away.
She warned him: "Journeyman, wait not for a scare, wait not for sign to make your journey Yours... Now you shall continue."

And he did. Back he went to cutlery. Back to a sofa. Back to lying naked, with open windows, looking at the sky turning blue, and then grey. Grabbing the sounds of his street, alone, recounting, he persisted, in the warm year, returning the favour of the day.

Finally, a night again, life found him. And killed him. "You had your chance, you understood, ever since the cornfields."

This was the worst scare of them all. It all ended. He was aware all along.

Walking Backwards

Walking Backwards
Lisboa, July 2013

Their knees touched. They sat on rock. Curb side, behind them vintage aeroplanes landed and took off. Planes following the predictable, applicable schedule to that August day, and week, of that not so vintage year. They were the only unplanned thing in the sight. Never had two sat at this spot affront the airport terminal.

The span of five minutes was all they had allowed to say goodbye. Butterflies overtook stomach acids. Passion unravelled through every drop of blood. Body felt like made of iron, and their knees, electromagnetic fields that could not be set apart. Backward: A flight back to New York. Forward: A train back to Hamburg. Who would ever know that moment would be the clearest, most obvious, last time the two would spend in closest physical proximity? They did not.

And him, he was the worst, so unexperienced, so rushed, so insecure and obscurely frail. He, in need of proper path setting. Poor was his awareness. And when found alone that week, he did not know what was of he, of them, for this was secret that non one knew. But it did not matter. It did not matter because at last, he, for moments felt idiotic at sensing how vulnerability emerges, he also did not know that love was...
about to touch him, in between his thighs, across his collar bone, and on his mouth. He knew nothing, yet he had touched before. He just did not know. And should have been told.

As their knees started to let go, promises were whispered in clear and short sentences. There was an omnipresent knowledge of the chance and his mind rushed to make sense, to somehow pour acid on these incredible butterflies that have never felt better. In that hideous moment, finally, their bodies travelled away from the rock, their legs shifted, and they stood.

As a reflex, hands stretched out clasping in controlled motions but clearly, jumping, straight out of core and plunged into the other. Almost as fast, their eyes looked away. A goodbye is a terrible thing to say. Giving something up, is the worst thing to do.

A last glance. A last exchange. A social contract erected without signature. And planes landing and going. And announcements, and cars, and everyone coming and going. And the moment, staying. To depart. He HAD to leave.

And so, from the rock at curb side of that European airport terminal, one body started walking backward, the other, forward. A thread got caught in the middle, like a swirl, like the wire that holds the lamppost in the street where you grew up. Like the thread in the suit of that old man who gives a speech to hundreds, unaware, that his clothes are coming undone (as his charitable wife tweaks disconcerted on the audience and thinks "I ought to fire that tailor, I could have done this job better myself!"). Like the thread made of the stem of that green corn plant, that got caught by the wind, and got blown away, and up, and sent to a vaster field, and a drier desert. Like the thread of that bathing suit getting caught at the barb wire in the middle of this sand storm. In the middle of this heat. Like that, a thread developed.

A thread, to which he held onto, with the tightest grip. He knew its fabric was thinning... from the very moment when at the Terminal, then, only minutes later his feet stood on an electrical walkway with letters written saying: "stop" in sickening intervals that confused his footing as he still savoured that last kiss planted. A thread thinning ever since he read neon signs on the ocean asking rhetorical questions, that were lengthy, verbose, and confusing... "are you sure you need to continue?" ; "Why don't you turn around and stop that train"; "Love like this will never find you... will it?". And worst, the thread thinned with each of the songs he heard over loud speakers singing: "knees like those you are never going to touch."

Just like that driver missing an obvious Exit, he ignored anything hoping the road will naturally turn and make the course easier . "I didn't see the signs," he told himself raising his shoulders. " And now, lets be practical" (because he thought life was about being pragmatic) "What am I to do. To throw the course of a life, by wayside?!" He was convinced answers like that would be uneventful. One, why was he to turn? Shouldn't both of them do it? Two, why was it all not to work organically?

And he continued walking backwards as he thought this. As he allowed questions like this for years to take off, rise, and land, in vintage airports in his mind. The crowds within observed and screamed: "look! Look! There goes a question?! It's going to hurt him! He won't have answers to it." And then they would wait for the landing. And few of those ever did. Questions rose. And would not stop.

In a journey inside, one day, he decidedly grabbed a shovel, and decidedly carved graves everywhere in the take-off fields. Like a five year old, he saw himself walking towards that internal velodrome audience and yelled with a red face: "no moorrreeee queeeestiooonns!"

And when he finished, he turned around, grabbed that last question, and I mean that question, and planted it in the field. When he was done he walked back outside, in silence. And he stayed in silence for many years.

But it was fine, he could still hold to the thread. Time passed by quickly, like the clouds over a gray desert where oil spilt. Time flew by.


One day, he wakes up, sees night bedside, light entering his room diagonally, and the thread pulls him from sleep. "Life is fleeting away from us, my knees want yours". Five years later, his heart sinks. And collapses. Down into a well. Hitting every single stone wall on the way down. And as it sinks, it falls, and as it falls, it plummets like a bullet into water. And as its arteries and veins swiftly pull up for air, a gasp, his heart finds a raft in the water. And as it holds firm to each side and starts planning in panic an exit, a swirl starts, and sea water springs from underneath, and covers every bit of space, and oxygen disappears, and as it all seems to end, he gets his heart sucked into a copper pipe, and air pressure makes it travel until, a BAM!!! Silence. His heart gets carried and thrown away like a canon ball, far, and hundreds of meters into the ocean. And now, his heart, truly, hanging only by that thinning thread. That yet agains thins and becomes musky with all this water, and gets further and further from those knees.

Now, back ashore, with caramel skin, it's all sand. And lying on the water's meeting point with shore, over continent matter, he breathes, and turns around, gazing upward to a sky that is blue. With a maniac's look, he thinks he has to let go off the thread, but it's still there. Thinly alive.

And so he hangs on to the thread and crosses an ocean, two mountains, and climbs over a rock. He arrives into a town where nobody knew his name. Walking backwards, he called strangers to question: "can I help you, what business are you here to conduct" And softly, he would reply: "Just looking for some knees kind madam" Strangers raised their brow and continued their way.

And so he sat at a corner bar. He had a whiskey on see through rocks, and the knees walked in. From that moment, the thread started melting. Every word exchanged, every eye sight given, every minute of night. It all started ending, and no matter how tight he held the grip, briskly, brusquely, it was all over. Every bit of it.

The image now lasts only for seconds. Like the sight of a rainbow in a park, beauty does not last. As he blinks, once, twice, thrice, his eyelids now conceal everything outside. The blue. The seconds. The swirl. The well. Every month, he could only recall those knees, the lost moments, the evening, the lines, the thread pull, that last thread pull.

Somehow that is all his heart remembers now, at this beach. He could not recognise those Knees now. They are not his to claim. Only the thread pull.

The one thing to wonder: how could he walk backwards for so long? Did people think it when they saw him pass them in streets? No one motioned him the other way! Could not quite realise what the problem truly was. He had not told them the story about his heart. And that shore. And those knees. Was he crazy? He could not confide.

And so he walked onto the cliff. He pulled out some thread he had been carrying in his pocket and turned it into a ball. He threw it into air and saw it collapse against the rock. It all washed away, in seconds. Minutes. All was done. He looked behind him, no one was looking. He took his clothes off, and folded each pieace judiciously. He left an envelope behind: "To R"

And for one last time, he walked 100 meters backwards, and started running, furiously, screaming away, and like a cannon ball, he approached the cliffs and threw himself away. Made of iron. Now a single force Electromagnetic field.