America ("América", Allen Guinsberg)

 America

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Let It Enfold You ("Permite que isso o envolva", Charles Bukowsky)

 

Either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

Paz ou felicidade

permita que isso envolva você

when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,

I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,

I didn't have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'I am going
to have to let you go'

'it's all right' I tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing,the
works.

(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I made them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
butt.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

I kissed her in the
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

Corpo LIvre

Livre o corpo 

das burocracias 

rubricas

contratos futuros

Bonito é o corpo livre 

O corpo que joga

as roupas e o chapéu

nas águas do rio

Livre o corpo que atira

os documentos e os títulos

nas águas do mar

Livre o corpo para sentir

o afeto do corpo

o afeto do afeto 

livre no corpo

Mundo Livre

Aos escravos, cultura e fala interditadas. A enteléquia de Aristóteles ainda pulsava para realizar-se na imanência da Capoeira e suas Angolas. Arma nova e incansável. Jogo, dança e combate que une Africa à América, como era no início, e continuou pelas guerras coloniais sem fim. Corpos que sentem, pensam e lutam, fazem música e alegram-se na construção de um mundo livre.

Ao Nascer do Sol

Vivo como se fosse morrer

Vivo como se fosse hoje

o meu último dia

Como se fosse essa

a última oportunidade de viver

a divindade através de mim

Com a quilotina do tempo afiada

a lembrar-me o preço da vida

Vivo sem eira nem beira

na margem mesma do existir

como se fosse dar a luz

a algo novo 

nem que seja essa extranheza

entre sentir-se igual e diverso

no correr das horas 

Ao nascer do sol

levo a noite às costas

Reafirmo meu derradeiro destino

Vivo como se fosse morrer

Vivo como se fosse hoje

o meu último dia

Como se fosse essa

a última oportunidade de viver

a divindade através de mim

Deus de Espinosa

Depois de intensa passagem

Pela vida e seus afetos

Incorporar no belo, no vento

Na luz da manhã

No pôr do sol

Para dar alento

Força aos que seguem

Corpos de atrito e poeira

Que o Deus de Espinosa

Incorpore os que chegam

Cuide dos que ficam

Na alegria que embala 

Corpos de atrito e potência

Agora e na eternidade

Borges

El poeta encerrado 

en su cuerpo y seta del fuego

de anis y roca

Entre Buenos Aires y Londres

Entre el grito en los pampas 

y el recital en la Casa Rosada

El poeta sigue un observador inócuo

de la belleza 

entremezclada en los destrozos

Hollywood

If Oscar were a general's first name

Each actor would be a soldier

In an unusual army

Its headquarters full of lights

Farther from Washington

Glows between the ocean and the desert

Unlike the Pentagon

Hollywood produces soft weapons

But who is Oscar anyway?

He is no one

He is you and me

While sweet bombs drop

Over our heads

Chernobil

Chernobil fica muito longe

mas perto do coracao dos poetas

A invisibilidade que macula a vida de lá

pode ser entendida pelos poetas daqui

Poeta é ser com defeito de percepção

so enxerga o que é invisível

como a radioatividade das usinas atômicas

Chernobil fica muito longe

dos sofrimentos visíveis da minha terra

O temor de la pode ser sentido aqui

Apesar dos vastos espaços que nos separam

das estespes da Ucrania aos cerrados do Brasil

Já tivemos uma Goiania e seu césio azul

Não conhecíamos este demônio

Não sabíamos as rezas e feitiços para tirar-lhe o poder 

Nossas mazelas são de séculos passados

Em Chernobil

a modernidade desnuda

crava seu punhal no coração das criancas

e desfaz nossos sonhos de grandeza 

Chernobil é longíssima de nossas mazelas medievais

mas abre-nos os olhos 

para não cair nos contos de vigário

das tecnológicas infalíveis

 

Amor e o Tempo (para Andrea)

O amor no sexo desabrocha

chuta a porta

afasta toda dúvida por um instante

encarna de verdade os corpos trêmulos

na potência do amor vivido

Os sorrisos

sobre os destroços do tempo

En el amor el sexo floresce

Golpea la puerta

quita todas las dudas por un instante

Los temblosos cuerpos encarnan la verdad

en la potencia del amor vivido

Las sonrisas

sobre los destrozos del tiempo