Towards the thaw

As the days of spring are here, I should be happy having made it through the winter. The April breeze brings regret, remembering what had been pushed aside, no, I was no mother’s favorite son
Recalling every detail, overthinking every word said, reacting with angry silence as a defense to hurts felt as a betrayal. No, I was not a sweet boy happily playing in a backyard with a toy
The spring breeze also tells me of an ending, my doctor’s remark of scaring bathers with dark blue blotches on my white body, it is like the process of death has begun when still alive
My anger keeps me going. I was dealt a pack of cards and did my best, bought the small blue houses on the monopoly board the affordable ones. I have no regrets and wait in silence

Trees, cars and Elon Musk

The branches of trees on the avenue
Was stretching upward this morning
To be a decorative tree is not easy
Standing still looking leafy
Once they had been mere sampling
In a forest of other trees, feeling safe
Protected by tree too old or crocked
Stand under a tree and hear a murmur
They agree electric cars has no fumes
But older cars are better lookers
My car swell with pride she 28 to day
A self-driving AI long before Elon Musk
Said he had invented a driver-less car

True animal story

One-legged seagull
sat on the roof near the chimney
it was a male gull, its feather
worn like he had been
in a battle and needed a rest
when my dog  noticed the bird,
she barked the gull
shrieked, hate at first sight,
but for a truce
When the dog ignored
its presence and
the bird stopped  teasing her
the kitchen had a flat roof
in the morning, the bird had flown
the dog picked at her food
on Sunday, she listened to the sermon  
when the dog heard the priest say
something about angels
the dog knowingly wagged her tail

The tryer


in short bursts, the quiet expresses 
a need to communicate about work
done but not published

Self-critical, raked with doubts 
with no connection to the world
of publishing 

Offer from publishers is that he will pay
them, is like paying for ***; it leaves
behind self-disgust, this unbecoming
need to see one's words in print

The hard part is to admit to the lack
of talent, what else is there to do
other than collecting old stamps

Underage 

A moonbeam sat on a bough just outside my bedroom window.
The beam was of the shy sort, and it didn’t frolic about
in the forest during the happy hour.
I invited it, in the moonbeam was cold; I tucked it in
a blanket, careful that there was no physical contact
us the beam was of tender age; one must take care lest the Guardian Harridans find it nasty and demand a hanging party; no more playing football or forever being an outcast, lest I repent. 
Children and moonbeams like stories, and I told a few before the moon paled, and I sent the little moonbeam on its way
untouched by human hands.

A village in the sun

There is a small village with a few streets that have no name and houses have no number twelve I bought a small home that had stood empty for years when not used as a stable for the unique Algarvian white long-eared donkey
Retired workers in the village up the road where the shop was located next door to a café where they sat enjoying their beer fixed my house and soon I with my dogs everyone in the Algarve has a dog and I could spend my time writing poetry or walking in the wood
This Idyll was too perfect to last, one day a group of English tourists came to my village, and I, the only one who spoke English sealed the village's fate by telling them what a wonderful this place was and that there were several empty houses for sale the homes were snapped up and before you could say, Adam, the village became English
Cans of beer in the ditches, late-night parties ******* dressed women craving *** and sun the idyll was over it was time to leave my refuge from a noisy place filled with people who said how much they loved Portugal

Walking to Rome

On my way to Rome, I walked with a group
of Jews who had left Israel because it had
become a racist state
The Jews were a group of young men and
women on their way to Rome to seek an 
audience with the Papa to ask him to take
a stance against the **** of brutality 
against the Palestinians
Their goal was the creation of a Palestine
They, as Jews, could be a part of a new future
I listened to their ideology, and they were 
Young enough believed in the shared dream
I knew that, should they see the P, he would
be nice to them and speak in a measured 
voice, because the Papacy was a political 
too, and nothing must upset the balance 
I don't know if they got an audience with the pope
But I learned something vital, I had tended 
to speak about the Jews in a negative form
and didn't see the difference between Zionism and Jews
As for me, I met a wonderful woman at Travessa
de Santa Maria and had a splendid time

we had it coming
looking at pictures of an empty Piccadilly Circus
or the Eifel Tower in Paris is empty of life except
for police cars cruising to fine anyone breaking the law.
The emptiness is enormous and frightening to think
how quickly humankind can disappear forever
When the pandemic is over, there might be another one.
Millions of people all over the world rotting in their homes
the disappearance of humans is a near reality.
The only hope is that we lived a tolerable good life.
The future will consist of animals hunting each other.
Cities will crumble art and culture of no value.
We had it coming, I despair.

What the papers didn’t say

We read the octopus is an intelligent animal, I’m not sure if this is true but they can be trained to
play with dipping bottles filled with water. The sinister side is the female octopus, who after ***
takes her partner's fertilizing instrument with her
and soon the male octopus will die. In our world, it is not that bad, a man risks losing the house and
the lawn he had lovingly trimmed, but he had done his duty leaving her two lovely babies
his ending might come on the streets of San Diego Today I will not be cynical but leave this octopus behavior to Marina Hyde
Gerhard Depardieu is in trouble for ****** assault
which denies, ******* the maid, in the kitchen is
nothing to bother about and the maid was a willing participant, I think the great actor lives in
Russia, I hate to think why he does
The great IDF has killed 50.000 Palestinians and
those left alive are starving to death, if you are in doubt about not stopping mass ******
We are not able to hear their cries our sight is
on Ukraine to stop that war that the people in Brussels want to last till 2029 and never mind the killed soldiers, it's war baby take it on the chin

When love is a failure

The bird of love sits in a gilded cage, sometimes
it gets out and flies in search of mischief.
Anton, a young student from a middle-class family
sat in a crowded café drinking a beer, when Maria
entered, she had a coffee since the café was full
Anton beckoned for her to sit with him at his table.
Lovestruck!
In infatuation, they had met by chance and nothing
about them made sense; Anton was well-educated
Maria could barely struggle through the headlines
of the local newspaper, but she was of a generous
disposition, eyes that mirrored her warm nature.
The bird of love was back in its cage and felt smug.
Anton’s family threatened to disinherit him,
Maria’s family of Tinkers were outraged that she
loved someone outside the clan.
The loving couple lived in the poor part of the town
Anton had a horse collect ******* and brought
the stuff to the town’s waste depot, he
drank a bit, put him in a mellow mood.
After work, Anton sat in the stable reading books
and newspaper, sometimes Maria came and they
spent the night there.
At home were two sons who blamed their parents
for their poverty and lack of progress, they also
made fun of the mother, who had grown fat and
had rotten teeth, they also stole Maria’s cash
she stored in an empty biscuit tin.
Their love was so overwhelming they had no time
for the children; in the cage, the bird of love grinned.

When nothing makes sense

Let's go to Doctor Lunda, she said 
I found a place near the bus terminal that had no buses
A policeman came and said we could not park there
and rules are rules, but he offered to drive to Dr. Lunde
in my car, on the way, he got the gears wrong, and we ended up in a shallow lake
I called a truck, and the policeman said that the owner of
the car
I was responsible;  rules are rules; the truck pulled out
Dr. Lunde turned out to be a chiropractor, the policeman
said I had to pay because I was the owner of the car
where he got a bad back
Later, we drove to a furniture dealer and had a cheap 
Swedish furniture we had to put together ourselves
but the glue was free of charge
I am not a handyman
A lady came into the shop and said I had to clean
my car since everyone around here is posh
When I had cleaned the car, we walked to a café
that sold Swedish meatballs with mashed potato 
but on that day, they had no mash left; meatballs
and mash go together, the woman would not let
us buy anything, the policeman said rules are rules

The white wall

To begin a new cycle is hard not much happens around here, the street is the same as yesterday Rui, the English, is still working the till at the local supermarket, smiles, speaks upper-class English, And carries a secret, I would like to know about
I think he is from a wealthy family, but a scandal broke out, he made the housemaid pregnant, and in his circle, it was seen as the apogee of horror, or he was involved in financial fraud and had to leave, hide, and change his name to Rui
At lunch, in the café on the first floor of our building, the old couple sat. The man, who is in love with my wife came over for a chat, and his wife smiled she knows her husband was useless, as for me. How can I be jealous of a man who is older than me?
Nothing else happened that day except for Trump, who wanted The Panama Canal and Greenland too, this pathetic, old President with his blond hair trying to look young, but he is not fooling us, this idiot trying to buy Gaza and move the population to Egypt
Then it was late afternoon and time for a nap

Winter of Discontent

Cloudiness has settled in the sky
An act of unpalatable truth of the kind
A summer sun easily hides
Old dwellings are full of cracks
Sagging roofs and dust on the window sill
***-holed roads, dry as clay, lead from
From doom to the gloom of routines
Nothing changes, life is an endless struggle
Spring is far away
Then, a miracle happens, splitting clouds
I saw the sun, as the flowers in the garden
had seen
warming my face, letting the illusion continue

Worth a Fight.

It is no longer about right or wrong. it is about taking a stand
Against those who came to this country 
to escape poverty and tyranny, and now want to end democracy 
The unwritten consensus among people of different classes. 
We have become soft liberal,  Christianity, you said? 
Don’t make me laugh; we are far too Self-assured 
to believe in God. 
And we are giving way while their imams egg the people 
on and not for a moment do they stop 
No, not for a sneeze of hesitation do they think that 
if they went back to their forefathers’ country
A whip would await them in dank cells. 
Their faith has good points. No, it has not. 
But they have the right to return to their cherished land 
and practice a faith that is still in the Middle Ages. 
Soft liberal, giving way for the sake of peace
a peace I will not accept, and I will fill bullets in the chambers of my revolver to defend what my people fought for is called democracy, shaky, yes, with many flaws
But is a system worth fighting for

Writer's block
Today, while trying to write I noticed an ant crossing the opposite wall, for it was a vast expanse watching the ant’s progress, I noticed it stopped circling back like it had found something edible I thought it was disappointed resuming the walk until it disappeared in a crack between wall and ceiling to a hidden society we would never join
Are ants aware of our existence we are there like the day, spilling a drop of beer on the kitchen floor that teenage ants drink, get ****** and told off by their parents never to drink if they do they will be too fat to hide in cracks, by know I have lost interest I will write about Elon Musk, the biggest ant in the world

The conference 

I had gone to a writer's conference
The room was full of authors only interested
in reading and pushing their book
I had brought a book called Hunger, written
by Knut Hamsun, the pages were loose and
kept falling off, but there was a picture 
of him a stern man-looking intellectual  
The leader of the meeting, a man who was 
proud he had not gone to college and said
he knew more than anybody else
did want to read Hamsun's book, because 
Knut had gone to university in Oslo
Since the room was full of writers pushing
their work and didn't want to be influenced 
by other voices, I left
In the parking lot, all the cars were white, my
car was a Russian jeep called Lada, but
I couldn't find it, so took my leave of the scene