I knew what it was about,
I agreed and I wanted.
Turns out, things were different.
Now I want to explore further,
I want life to be more,
I want it to be transit,
I want melt things into fluidity,
I want to be unleashed,
I want be part of someone else's envy
(What does that say about me?).

I expected nothing
And yet, now I can't
Be where I was,
Contained.

It's not expectation that frustrates.
It is the void after a great experience.

Every time my city comes to me
I find it hard to seek my buried treasures.
They still exist, but layers and layers
Of novelties, of sediments, of landscaping
Make them miss my eyes.

Every time my city comes to me
I am in a different shape, but recognizable,
Old stories cross by, new futures become possible,
Life goes on, but never again in the same way.

Whenever my city arrives with its lights on,
Inviting eyesight and welcoming reflections,
I know I am grateful for every footprint
carved on some fresh cement on the sidewalks,
For every friend met in the way,
For the bonding loneliness,
For the distracting crowd,
For the provincial beliefs (to be conflicted).

Every time my city comes to me
I know and I don't know
The good things and the bad things,
That happened here, all at once.

Compose my reality,
Warn me of last year fashion,
Or a poisonous frog in the jungle,
Be my guide, at least when there is light.

Be my virtuosity inside what's real,
The three dimensional message
To make sense at the failure of words.

If all fade, let the lack of colors
Inform the dawn of my days,
Or of my senses,
Or of hope.

Through greyness I'll distinguish
Light from dark,
But I'll miss all tones
To tell me the sphericity of the world.

All that's left, substantially.
The structure kept in the three-dimensional world,
Backbones and spines and ribs,
Cranes, femur and phalanxes.
But they're no more than memories,
A touchpoint of the past.

Everything else flows like the wind,
Present, but invisible.
Important, but immaterial.
Immortal, but perishable.

Bones are frozen clocks,
Remnants of stories and events.
In the end, they're more important as records
Than as personal memories.

There are hidden prices
To go through the highways.
The destinations are always known,
The landscape is known,
And there is only repetition.
Nothing is created, and
Movement becomes ephemeral,
Incapable of producing anything
That will outlive the own highway.

There are hidden rewards in clearing territories:
Everything is new,
Opportunities lie anywhere,
Everything will make you stronger.
But harshness comes alongside,
Callused feet, cracked hands to open ways,
Sleepless nights in a mixture
Of cold, fear and anxiety with the things to come.

There is no authenticity in routes already traveled.
In somewhere, still unaccessed,
Lies what composes us,
Our unique voice tone,
Our journey that might lead
To our potential super-humans
If we learn to use discomfort as a weapon
And comfort as a momentary prize.

Every calm lies fury within.
Like flowers on a tomb
Of an unexpected death.

It is the inner aggression,
The forgetfulness of the world,
Calm is ancient and, as such,
A vestige, the remnant of existence.

Calm is remote,
Keeps us faraway,
It is the missing ship
Never to arrive.

Where there is calm
There is latency
Of a sleeping giant,
The  outlying asteroid
Sudden to collide in an Earth's desert.

I want to act above calm
So, in fury,
I'll let peace reign.

My own pleasure
Denies itself.
I spend my moments
Within others' needs
Inside others' heads,
Fulfilling others' desires.

I want to be me
But how can I be?
I want to discover what I'm here for
But where I am?
I want to be complete
But what do I miss?

My pleasure is not mine
Or it is my pleasure
Pleasures that are not mine?

I dream of freedom
But I have no idea
What ties me.

The pleasure
Is something to be understood,
Maybe just lived without considering,
But surely experienced.

To be self centered
Is the only path
To being something else.

I know deeply my solitude,
Its unique smell,
Its thick cloud,
Its condensation,
The solitude within my solitude.

I know I am not there when it comes,
I know that, small or big,
I become tiny,
I know the weights get lost,
The orders become vain,
The moments accumulate
In a constant unperceived passing through.

I know every search for oneself
And for belonging
Cannot be otherwise lonely.
One needs to be lonely in order not to be.

I've seen the sunset today
So I could say:
Set myself into complete ignorance,
Into the grandness of irrelevance,
Of an irreverent existence,
Just to be, once again,
A shadow, never contained by light,
Diminished by sunbeams,
Uncontained within my own forms,
Informed by anything surrounding,
Nonconformist by the rule,
A follower by design,
Bounded by a thin membrane
Half permissive to toxicity and medicine,
Filtering dreams and passions and connections
And that same red light of the sunset,
That one profusely shining million color tones in the sky,
That one that reminds me every day I forgot to seek it,
That one majestically telling me the distant limits of the world,
Pushing night no matter what.

Set me up, for night is a friend.
Set me down, make me sleep while you're awake,
Set me into a wheelchair, down a ladder,
Uncontrolled, but just for fun,
Set me with a straitjacket,
Set me with anger, **** my innocence,
Set the controls at the highest volume,
Explode my eardrums and whisper spells of happiness,
Let darkness prevail
For the most beautiful feelings
Require fertile soil to flourish.

I feel my head weak,
Trembling thoughts,
An imminent ache,
A taste of alcohol
Extending up to my fingers.

I don't drink for my body,
I drink to say hi,
To sign contracts,
To gain opacity,
To be rewarded.

Whenever I'm alone
Drinking isn't necessary.
There is no one watching,
Nothing to claim,
Just the silent fall off a giant tree.

I drink to be a cell,
A mimetic exercise.
An externalization.
A reduction of a self
For the sake of community.

Then I saw  the world collapse.
I saw life be swallowed
by hungry geological cracks
(don't know by what chance I escaped).

I saw mountains smashed
as if they were sand castles
by wild wind gusts.

I saw matter disintegrate,
I rode in a light beam,
touched accidentally an unnoticed electron,
and I watched from inside a chain reaction.

I read the book where lies all the rules
of every relation, of every physics,
and the letters started fading,
the sudden white pages would say no more,
these pages were now endless (but white),
and by my side volcanoes started spitting ice,
my body were now bigger than Earth,
that covered my body,
that covered Earth.

And, suddenly, all that were bad
were now good,
and I was judged by the people I helped,
and was punished by good behavior,
and was calmed down by deep darkness,
and what I did wrong freed me,
the cold burnt me,
the beauty hurt my eyes,
and thrash would raise me to sublime,
and when I jumped of the edge,
I felt the ground further in every second,
I felt the sky braking me,
I felt life run through my stopped heart,
and everything say goodbye in a deaf beat
produced by light vainly flouncing to avoid its end.

In the end, only I remained,
and nothing else matters.

Let me accumulate doubts
Stepping carefully in swamps
(Please, don't bother the smell,
You may not be used to it).

I run from maps and fences,
The lenses of superb.
Believing any truth
Is less sure
Than fortresses in clouds.

All is there to do
Is to change;
To remain is to sink.
At the best case scenario,
A free fall to the uncertain ground.

Everything we see
Is a corruption of the sun.
The inadvertently diffuse trajectories of light
Reflected on a recognizable world.

Standing near the sea
Where horizon is plain and outlying,
Is as distant of a mirror we can be,
Where we can realize the negation of oneself.
That steady line hiding all storms
Is a reference for no reference,
The endless end.

To think occupies the place
Once belonged to sense.
We see, hear, touch,
But whenever thinking takes place,
We become blind, deaf, hypoesthesic.
To understand is to shut and close the world,
But all start with sensing.

Yet, we are so small
That everything we see
Are mere obstacles
To everything behind.

There's nothing more extensive than being.
All sets, chances, creations,
Occupies all possibilities.

Being is not a privilege,
Existence is not unique,
It's just a mere fact
That things came to happen:
Since then, nothing else could be possible.

Hu-ray for existence,
But only through nothingness,
And subsequently denying it
Creation happens.
We owe all to the generosity of no thing.

A mattress to the floor
Bent, thin,
Something to soften
Its rough fabric
Is enough to hold
My every regret.

The sleep is heavy,
The mind is light,
Sometimes even
With reasons not to be.

There is something
Like a survivor instinct
That makes me forget
Damage, bruises,
There is a certain dementia
To keep things going on.

The mattress
Is now
About to merge
To the floor.

What are the insanities
I use to keep me sane?
Maybe a consuming job,
Or a will to keep flying,
Or saying yes,
Or a self disbelief
To be resistant
To my flaws.

I have to give away
A love, a cat, a car, an apartment,
A traveling bag, a loved shoe,
The phone signal, a guitar, a world map,
intense moments,
So I remain sane and free
To choose a prison to live in.

I shall be naked,
Eaten, chewed and spit,
Until I'm left only
The bones of being
So filters would all be broken
And things would appear
As they are:
No front, no verse;
Whole.

The world had to be strange,
Chaotic, unfair,
So you could be beautiful.
You cause all that's bad
Just by being so good.
Everything has to have an opposite
(Not by ontology, but for our comprehension).
Every sunken ship, every poor town,
Every ****** with power and an empty speech,
Remind me of the details of your face,
The unstable order required
To the exquisite combination to result in you.
For you to be possible,
A whole world of madness was created.

Prologue:
I Am:
A permanent state of being

I am:
A transitory state of being.

The poem:
I Am nothing
For every cell
Is dying, being born,
Getting old, getting replaced,
Everything is changing;
I am well,
I am fine,
I am worried,
But this are minor am's.
For I Am nothing.

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.

Life is the exhaustive experience of absurd:
More than this is inconceivable;
Less, it's just insulting.

As we live, we reach more and more
Of world's irregular shape,
Maybe it's all clearer with a blurred vision,
Maybe high definition keeps us distracted,
Seeking senses in objects, surfaces,
Where the thin film of thinking
Has not learn how to dive in the contents.

But we have to emerge and immerse,
Lose air in the deepness
And be restrained by atmosphere,
We are taught by diving and by breathing.

Through living, we embrace ambiguity,
We learn to be tough without losing kindness;
To be a fortress and, yet, weak;
To see beauty where we know no reasons to see it;
To know the approach of an ending and feel life grow.

The tragedy of dying young
Is to not have the time to see
Life must be small
In order to be great.

I often misplace myself,
The wrong place and the wrong time,
The repeated search of a lightning
That, in an effort to not strike
The same spot twice,
Hits the exact same coordinates.

To place yourself is to create a label.
It is written in my packing:
Person, curious, kind, perfectionist, independent.
But the course of happenings is organic.
Rules are only a posteriori things.
I can't be a person because
There is no such thing as a person.
Curiosity is a movement,
Kindness, liquid.
Perfectionism, illusion.
Independence, a vague concept,
Lacking definition and sense,
Useless to be argued.

To be correctly placed
Is to be sole,
A desirable, painful choice.

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.

What are we but fishes?
We are baits,
We bite what we are
In the quest to seize
The little life
Tied to what
Wants us bones

"Where" is any junction
Of two spaces,
Two parallels in the common infinite,
Finally touching,
The realization that all extremes meet themselves
Like the skin-envelopment of a body:
Everything closes in themsleves
Inside something bigger.
There is nothing analytical in it,
But two curious eyes
Dissolving what t sees
To avoid the certainties
Of this hard, impassable world.

All movement is a rearrange,
A fugue or search for balance,
But never indifferent.
There are potentials everywhere
And there is just where we get the discomfort,
That thing that puts us in movement,
That air mass that occupies
What just a moment before was my body.

All that transforms
Leaves behind
Traces of the irreversible,
The dust that no longer will be soil,
The cracks that no longer will be building,
The explosion that no longer will be bomb.

All encloses in the extremes.
The coldest cold, absolute,
Lean lightly absolute hotness,
And the dichotomy disapears,
Everything ends up in a circle
And what once took far
Can only lead to the starting point.

The farther we can go
Is the exact place we are.

Life is a never ending circle
(Or a one time ending)
Of breaking down and recovering
Breaking down
Recovering
Breaking down.

The capital of vertigo,
of the hollow structures,
of the lack of space that evidences
the abyss between us,
capital of deviations
in our ways and looks,
of the events,
of circulation, of movement,
of the people oppressed in villages, favelas,
and occupations,
of the ugly smoke that arose
erasing people,
erasing
what has never been seen.

The debris are heavier
than the building.

There are many things
That burn
And are not fuels.

Curiosity burns
When we are in doubt,
Minds burn
With ideas that are to big for them,
Even coldness burn:
We freeze, and it burns,
When we miss
The velvet touch
In our souls.

Most of all,
Forgetfulness burns
For, more than exist,
We want to be memories.

Love just for a moment
Is to love forever,
Even if love is over.

In my bones
and in my skin,
I can feel it,
all of it.

My heart pumps
warm blood
just to meet the freezing
of the coldness inside,
and the coldness outside,
the ice of every look,
the crystal of every saying,
the burning cold
of a perhaps deserved indifference.

Suddenly, the phantom of your touch
heat all of me in my endless fury
to repeat all my mistakes once more.

Today's gray heaven
hides a bright sky
above the clouds.

Heaven, the Earth's limit,
seems closer today,
in a homogeneous,
tedious gray.

Distant buildings,
somewhat tall buildings,
seem like a printed landscape,
almost as gray
as the gray cloudy sky.

I can hear fading airplane sounds
hidden in the vast grayness,
and I can hear pigeons
competing against cars,
singing joyfully,
ignoring (so I imagine)
the lack of color above all.

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.
Still not warm,
still not bright,
but there are definitely
light beams bravely leaking
through deep, depressing clouds.

There is a certain kind
Of laziness, of apathy,
Which contaminates
Bones, muscles, tissues,
Rendering physics useless,
Psychology whines,
Neurology cries,
A vacuum installs
And curiosity fades,
Our countenance betrays
The deadly inertia carried
For reasons yet to be understand,
Held against what we are unaware,
And the very passage of time,
Countless seconds stinging
Where we sense the passing hours.

Maybe it's the death of a supermassive star,
Maybe just a lost bug carried by the wind,
Maybe there is no reasonable cause.
It all depends on what answer
You are trying to observe.

I am in need of a routine,
A habit to keep me disciplined,
To maintain my goals on track,
To make my joy productive,
To put into the world
Everything I think
I can do to make it good.

Relentlessly I fight
This urge to reach greatness,
I feed the monster father of procrastination
Delaying laurels and rejection
For an inexplicable fear.

I need a routine
To allow me mediocrity,
And the immediate consequence of evolution.

I need to act,
More and more,
Frequently,
Carelessly,
Intentionally.

Act is the inevitable movement
That accompanies the one-way arrow of time.

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.

You've just missed
the starting gun,
and you missed again.

It is not the noise that escaped you,
it is not the muscles that failed,
it is not your brain who mislead.

Feel the track, the traction,
feel the wind slowly growing with speed,
listen your own, intense, heartbeats.
Feel your empty lungs, tired.

Fatigue, pain,
all you will feel.
Compete: lose and win.
Believe the race,
believe the run,
and they exist.

Convicted murderer locked in his cell
Watched by guards, news and defenders of morality.

They say about the case: "Thirty years? Too few!"
They say about the judge: "He's a *****!"
They say about the policeman: "He should have killed him!"
They say about the prisoner: "Human? No, he  ain't!"
They say about the dead: "He's a saint!"

We sleep peacefully seeing the beast jailed,
the criminal act contained,
as a reward for the things we were deprived:
The murders we did not commit (but wanted),
The aggressions suppressed (but wanted),
The lack of character we did not manifest (but, hell, we wanted!),
The sick look in the mirror we learned to mask.

Killing is not just pulling the trigger.
It is about the indifference,
about all the fingers pointing out failures,
about the accumulated pain of every struggle,
about greedy desires fueled by what we see daily,
about the lack of power, from cradle to coffin,
about the eyes we meet everyday but cannot see.

What is worth a fair sentence
over an ever unfair life?
What dose of love will fall
in the remains of a life built in such lack of compassion?
Why do we keep on returning to eyes and teeth
while Hammurabi remains buried for tens of centuries?

We do not fear the murderer,
we fear our own rage, our frailty and lack of control.
We proudly watch the misery of the prisoner
for we renounced the free animal
for the imprisoned human.

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.

If you could only see the moon
I see now,
But our eyes are opposite direction,
With our sights never to cross
One another.

I remain the same child
Forever fearing being abandoned,
Being abandoned
For fearing abandonment.

I hear the sounds
Telling me change are coming.
I see a different breeze,
It slowly drifts me
Into an unexplored place,
Calm, fluid, balanced.

I never saw it earlier,
Never been there
Although the coordinates
Were always known:
Any map can lead you there,
Any compass points there,
Every single being can feel it.

Every change is announced,
Even sudden ones.
Our time is sometimes insufficient,
But warnings always exist.

To be present and steady
Is to absorb detours,
To apprehend discontinuities,
To live in ambiguity
Is to live at all.

Poem yourself
For nothing expects nothing from you.
You can only be
Rhyme, rhythm and content.
Everything else
Is superflouous.

Every tiny fraction
of movement and action
cannot be re-done.

Lost attention
is a lost moment,
forever a lost sight,
forever vanished
in the irresistibility of time.

Things we lose
are things we never ought to own,
are Destiny's belongings,
are other's gestures
never to be received by us,
connections hanging in thin air,
never to be captured.

Awareness is a warm gun.

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.

Wreckages are not despair,
They are the end of a storm.
They are a chance to decide
What's worth and what's not.

Wreckages are the art
Of the nature, of an implosion,
Of a disaster,
And the opposite of the disaster:
They are the calm,
The corrosive mold now exposed.

Wreckages are the place we climb
To see the extension of the destruction,
They make, out of tears, sweat.

Wreckages exposes us to the world,
For our caves are no longer there,
There is no room for a reform,
And eyes once again meet eyes,
We feel the raw earth within our toes,
Time fractures, and suddenly,
We're animals just like ages ago,
Vulnerable,
Without past,
Without future.

The wreckages
Are raw material of the healing.

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.

I once heard a story
That a man, alone,
Built his empire,
Dealt with all his ****,
Fought armies single handed.

He would follow his plans,
Be appreciated for his good work,
Defy all injustices,
Defeat his own corruption.

Of course it is a story,
Not because of all the accomplishments,
Or the act of bravery,
Open chest against the world.

What makes it unbelievable
Is remaining steady throughout it all.
To build oneself
Is to change oneself.

What we wanted
Didn't fit us anymore.
Fits us
That each should seek
I
Where there are no us.

The moon is bigger on the dark side,
But I'm moved by the waves of the bright side.
I hide, but I always know
What is it the I hide,
So what's the point?

Inside my missing spaces
I find my own pieces,
In what empty space I fill me,
If I'm defined by my emptiness?

How do I define me with words
Hollow as a flight in space,
Precise and distant definitions,
Incapable of adjusting to a vague chaos,
Only understandable by the light of a microscope,
Unaccessible to signs,
Dissonant of what I feel,
Of a laughable ungrace?

I run from what defines me,
From my sentimental proofs,
I locate myself in what takes me far from home.

I'm uncapable of recognizing me
For I look in the mirror, and I recognize myself:
I know I never had blue eyes,
I know how my hair was, and how it's not anymore,
I know healed wounds hurt more.

I've lived for 500.000 kilometers
Never counted the travels around my world,
But I keep going,
Map and territory,
Language and message,
Thoughts and actions,
Sailing through matter and frequency
Through the ocean that keeps me apart from the world.

If "A" equals "B",
"B" equals "C",
And "C" equals "A" again,
Why do we have three names to call them?

In the march
There is always those on the front
The avant-gardé whose faces are seen,
Whose eyes reveal cruelty and tenderness,
Arms in hands,
Rapid thoughts of past and future,
A will to be anywhere else
And nevertheless proud.

To lay down the arms
Is not easy,
It is not only a question of position:
It is a message,
It is a gesture of grandness,
But a difficult one,
An act of love
Beneath all the violence,
Often unnoticed.

Armistice is the ultimate
Brave movement.