Armando Halpern

Write Angle - Petersfield - 21/09/2010

2010-09-22T00:06:00.001+01:00

I read the poems:

- Sense of Peace
- Memories from Limbo
- The Song of Icarus

Write Angle - Third Tuesday of every month
Hosted by Leah Cohen and Jake Claret
Address: Upstairs @ The Square Brewery
7 The Square
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 3HJ

London Literature Lounge - London - 16/09/2010

2010-09-21T23:48:00.003+01:00

I read at the London Literature Lounge:

- Falling
- Mythology
- The sequence Definitions of Silence:
1. Music
2. Hand
3. Box
4. Bow
5. Beat
6. Violin

The London Poetry Lounge at the Poetry Cafe - Third Thursday of every month
Hosted by Anjan Saha

The Poetry Cafe
22 Betterton St.
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9BX

Complexity and Simplicity

2010-09-07T19:00:00.001+01:00

I have heard quite often either dismissive or enthusiastic comments imposing simplicity of language as a must-have for any sort of written work. As a consequence of this perspective, anything complex or elaborated tends to be seen as excessive and out of place. This view applies to long or convoluted sentences, paragraphs and less used words and embodies a discrete sort of fundamentalism that strives for a literary canon that requires for every published work to be uncomplicated and concrete (as opposed to abstract). This view is unconsciously consubstantiated in the tendency so many of us have to refer to a novel or a poem starting with the expression “it is about…” as if the about word could bring everyone else to a ground of familiarity and understanding that summed up the essence of that object.

Abstract items, to be removed from a literary work, be it poetry, fiction, essay or drama, are emotions displayed separately from the context that causes them; values claiming some level of universality if explored without the scope of objects and references of any length to anything non-physical such as interior monologues, states of mind and so on. Complexity, in its turn, is identified in texts with long sentences and series of paragraphs with little space for dialogs.
I hear at times people complaining at how some unexpected complexity of writing undermines the understanding and enjoyment of the plot and that, in turn, has made me realise that, in fiction, language is seen as the invisible vehicle for a plot. Sitting with friends and praising Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, as one of those fiction books that is written in such a way that you feel like reading it out loud, even when reading it in the quietness of your home, I got some stares of perplexity, as if the sole role of the language was to remain in a neutral, indifferent state.

Nowadays, the rejection of complexity starts at school, where complexity of language is discarded in favour of ease of learning, with learning being understood as achievement of a pass grade. In this context, complexity becomes the unseen companion of the Political Correctness fantasy of an all-inclusive language that does not challenge, but implicitly smothers and impairs our view of the world. It goes on, then, through life, in our culture of entertainment, of favouring a reading experience almost entirely based on impoverishing plot-centric fiction that leaves out the full blown exposure to the complexity of the others in their states of minds, emotions and alternate perceptions of time and reality; that leaves out as well the enjoyment of a language that can be bigger than life.

What we lose with the forced oversimplification of language is, however, more serious than some literary works and is rapidly extending to the way we express ourselves in our everyday life and how we communicate our thoughts, feelings and emotions; how we analyse our surroundings and the issues we have to solve and how we transmit to ourselves and others approaches to solve them. A fact that should be simple and obvious in a commonsensical way is that we need a complex language to express a complex situation; in some cases, keeping it simple is achieved by leaving information out of the equation or, even worse, gives to what is read an equivocal and blurred sense. Failing to cope with complexity, we have no choice but to rely on pretending to understand so well that we don’t realise that we effectively don’t and expect that someone out there can tell us what to do.

I am not suggesting that everything should be expressed in a complex way, but that complexity should be regarded as an available option seen, if used properly, as a natural use of the full resource spectrum that language provides us with, and the same should be true for simplicity. What is, in fact, implied here is far more serious: We should fear that the automatic rejection of complexity without any further thought is already impairing our ability to fully deal with a complex world and society: ours. By rejecting complexity in favour of an artificial and impaired simplicity we are nurturing and creating a society based on stupidity.

Tall Lighthouse - London - 02/09/2010

2010-09-04T18:37:00.001+01:00

I read at the Tall Lighthouse poetry event at the Poetry Cafe:

- Effective Range
- Magic Mirror
- Mythology

Tall Lighthouse at the Poetry Cafe - First Thursday of every month
Hosted by John Citizen

The Poetry Cafe
22 Betterton St.
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9BX

Tongues & Grooves - Portsmouth - 25/07/2010

2010-07-27T00:22:00.000+01:00

read the Poem:

- Rosetta Stone

Event hosted by Maggie Sawkins

Every last Sunday of the month at The Florence Arms

Florence Road, Southsea, Hants PO5 2NE.

Poetry Unplugged - London - 13/07/2010

2010-07-15T13:29:00.000+01:00

I read at Poetry Unplugged:

- In Transit (poem in 3 parts)

Poetry Unplugged, Hosted by Niall O'Sullivan
The Poetry Cafe,
22 Betterton Street,
WC2H 9BX
London
Every Tuesday at 7:30 PM

Poetry Jam @ The Tea Box - Richmond - 09/07/2010

2010-07-10T15:42:00.000+01:00

I read the poems:

- One
- Rosetta Stone

2nd Friday of each month
reThe Tea Box - 7.30pm
Address: 7 Paradise Road
Post Code: TW9 1RX

Tall Lighthouse - London - 01/07/2010

2010-07-05T00:15:00.001+01:00

I read the Tall Lighthouse poetry event at the Poetry Cafe:

- Senses - Sense of Home
- Casualties

Tall Lighthouse at the Poetry Cafe - First Thursday of every month
Hosted by John Citizen

22 Betterton St.
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9BX

Tongues & Grooves - Portsmouth - 27/06/2010

2010-06-28T00:05:00.000+01:00

I read the Poems:

- Pompey

- Casualties

Event hosted by Richard Williams

Every last Sunday of the month at The Florence Arms

Florence Road, Southsea, Hants PO5 2NE.

Poetry Unplugged - London - 18/05/2010

2010-05-21T00:21:00.005+01:00

I read at Poetry Unplugged:

- Pompey
- Circe's Pigsty
- Carlo Crivelli, Virgin and Child

Poetry Unplugged, Hosted by Niall O'Sullivan
The Poetry Cafe,
22 Betterton Street,
WC2H 9BX
London
Every Tuesday at 7:30 PM

Parallel Mirrors

2010-05-21T00:21:00.004+01:00

The world, as we see it,
is a mirror of the mind
which the mind glares, trying
to look back at itself
but always falling, lost
in this Narcisus stare.

The mind, as it is,
is a mirror of the world
and when the world moves
a strong godlike right arm
a bantam left hand points down
at the dark back of the mind.

I stare at you often
as if you were my world
for you to stare back at me
with a deliberation
and mischievous intensity
that undresses will and thoughts.

Will I dare to return it
or was I the one who started?
If I am a reflex
let me be aware of it
so that your gaze on my face
a mirror with a purpose.

Spell Out - Manchester - 29/04/2010

2010-05-03T19:11:00.001+01:00

Due to an exceptional concourse of circumstances, I ended up reading much more than I anticipated. I read the poems:

- Fuck me an Angel

- Penelope's Welcome to Ulysses

- Circe's Pigsty

- Excuses

- The sequence "The Rivers of Hades"
- Lethe, the River
-Styx
-Phlegethon, the River of Flame
-Acheron, the River of Woe
-Kokytos, the River of Lamentation
-The Secret River

Spell Out
Lloyds Hotel - 8pm
617 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton
M21 9AN

Last Thursday of each Month

Write Out Loud - Trafford/Manchester - 27/04/2010

2010-05-02T15:07:00.002+01:00

I read the poems:
- One
- Summoning the Dead

Write Out Loud - Trafford
Waterside Arts Centre - 7pm
Sale Town Centre
M33 7ZF
4th Tuesday of each Month (not this May)

Blank Verse - Guildford - 21/04/2010

2010-04-23T19:00:00.000+01:00

I read the poems
- Family Reunion
- Terminal 1

Blank Verse - Hosted by Susie Campbell
Every third Wednesday of the month
Address: The Boileroom
13 Stokefields,
Guildford,
GU1 4LS

Write Angle - Petersfield - 21/04/2010

2010-04-22T23:02:00.001+01:00

I read the poems
- Family Reunion
- Terminal 1
- Pompey

Write Angle - Hosted by Leah Cohen and Jake Claret
Every third Tuesday of the month
Address: Upstairs @ The Square Brewery
7 The Square
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 3HJ

Blank Verse - Guildford - 17/03/2010

2010-03-20T22:30:00.003Z

I read the poems:

- Penelope's Welcome to Ulysses
- Moon River
- Dark Bliss

To be honest, this wasn't the selection of poems that I had initially in mind, but rather a response to a poem by Rodney Wood setting Ulysses and Pemnelope in a contemporary context.

Blank Verse - Hosted by Susie Campbell
Every third Wednesday of the month
Address: The Boileroom
13 Stokefields,
Guildford,
GU1 4LS

Write Angle - Petersfield - 16/03/2010

2010-03-20T22:27:00.002Z

I read the poem "One"

Write Angle - Hosted by Leah Cohen and Jake Claret
Every third Tuesday of the month
Address: Upstairs @ The Square Brewery
7 The Square
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 3HJ

Summoning the Dead

2009-12-10T19:33:00.003Z

Suddenly words visit me
and when they do they come all at once
and, sitting here, I am nowhere.

Sometimes I give up on life, then,
to tell you the wondrous story
of what life could not have been.

I sit again by your coffin, mother,
and talk wordless to what remains,
still evaporating from the body

and appeasement comes at last
from colourless sounds and images
anchored in thin, dim air.

Sometimes, in the dreams I never tell,
I am leaving a single flower by your grave
as you would have done to me.

The flower lies, seen from the distance
of different unblinking eyes,
like a pulsating living heart

and the single gesture carries then,
a single purpose that is painful,
slow as the conscience of things to come.

Sometimes I see you again
standing by your deserted body,
I am telling you about motherly love.

I tell you how it can be a prison,
a poison that blinds and contaminates
robbing from gestures the carelessness of birds.

Words amongst us were never free,
they carried the weight of ancestral rules
as if the god of time fought us.

Sometimes, though, I am still sorry,
as if I could cry again
the damnation of knowing too late

that examples set to follow
should not be fought but dropped
before fighting becomes another restraint.

I mourn you so that the night closes,
I mourn myself for the dead birds
still in my chest, still seeming to fly.

Sometimes I just sit and stare
as if listening behind the sounds,
as if writing was more than writing,

I sit down and write out of time,
filling with passionate and angry words
the gaps between the bricks of my house.

Quietness spreads then, and I see
that experience shaped my heart into a pump
that time and rust will eventually stop.

Tongues & Grooves - Portsmouth - 25/10/2009

2009-11-30T23:04:00.004Z

On a session dedicated to the theme of Exile, I read the poems

- The Magician
- Farewell in Heathrow
- From Exile
- Roadside

and deeply enjoyed the readings of Adnan al-Sayegh, Stephen Watts, Maria Jastrzębska, Vahni Capildeo and John Haynes.

This special edition of Tongues & Grooves was hosted by Richard Williams who produced a memorable evening.

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - 26/11/2009

2009-11-29T19:07:00.001Z

I read the full sequence Definitions of Silence:
- 1 - Music
- 2 - Hand
- 3 - Box
- 4 - Bow
- 5 - Beat
- 6 - Violin

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - hosted by Grace Gauld
Every last Thursday of the month - 7:30
Salisbury Arts Centre
Bedwin Street
Salisbury
SP1 3UT

Memories from Limbo

2009-11-28T23:15:00.002Z

There was a serpent in me
curling asleep at the bottom of a lake
and the lake was deep and cold,
dark, still water where nothing would live,
nothing would cross or touch
the large, motionless, sharp scales.

Now the serpent is awake outside,
feeding on lust, passion, and anger,
untamed, ungrateful, like the jinni,
to you for waking her up not knowing.
Me, I step back and watch in wonder
the joy of long forgotten emotions.

Nothing arises from my will,
just observing the strong tides come and go,
like bright fresh lava to new senses,
new uninvented words, sounds meaning more
than the letters used to raise them,
for you released what should never be kept.

Time will come to call the dragon
and the fierce birds of fire
to fight for me within my chest
where I keep safe, in secret drawers,
things never seen, never given,
never there to fill my days.

For dragons will be nothing but serpents
with the wisdom of open wings
and a ruthless breath that burns
deeper than the flames we raise and fear.
I shall summon him to come to my help,
for I can only be the struggle of the beasts.

Ye Olde Leathern Bottle - Alton - 24/11/2009

2009-11-28T23:00:00.006Z

At the Ye Olde Leathern Bottle I read the poems:

- Falling
- Endymion
- The Magician
- Fuck Me An Angel
- Violin (from the sequence Definitions of Silence)
- Gravity Pull

Event hosted by Chris Sparks

for more details, see:
http://www.yeoldeleathernbottle.co.uk/HTML/poetry.html

Write Angle - Petersfield - 17/11/2009

2009-11-18T23:02:00.007Z

I read the poems:

- The Magician
- Violin, from the sequence "Definitions of Silence"
- Fuck me an Angel

This time, the poems chosen were a response to requests made while chatting before the Apples & Snakes event of last month.

The Magician is one of two poems in English that I wrote originally in Portuguese and I enjoyed the experience of reading it in Portuguese before delivering its adaptation into English.

Write Angle - Hosted by Leah Cohen and Jake Claret
Every third Tuesday of the month
Address: Upstairs @ The Square Brewery
7 The Square
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 3HJ

Late Morning

2009-11-13T19:44:00.001Z

Life came late, this morning before thunder,
just as the still faded call of spring
over slumbering bodies yet asleep.
The dark clouded morning is not seen,
as eyes open, still not knowing
which past and which role will they resume,
to which haunted place will they return.
Touching carries, then, the lightness of a whisper,
fingers drawing those tracks with no path
where we find ourselves secretly suspended,
ignoring where we are but not lost,
fearing the threats that will hold us to the ground
but not raising the defence of the arms.
We do not fall because we do not think
about the movements of walking, as we do,
when we meet and stare under the sun.
We do not turn back, as we are told,
not to see our emotions become statues of salt.
Life came with no fight nor surrender,
through open pores and nostrils,
stringent, and soft, and green,
taking the stretched fingers
as the warm summer wind may do
at certain hot dusks of wonder,
when we just sit and gaze
the hidden trail of the sun,
not thinking, not remembering, not whispering
how life may come and go.

Tall Lighthouse - London - 5/11/2009

2009-11-08T21:55:00.003Z

I read the Tall Lighthouse poetry event at the Poetry Cafe:

- Summoning the Dead
- Excuses
- Lethe, the River

Tall Lighthouse at the Poetry Cafe - First Friday of each month
Hosted by John Citizen

22 Betterton St.
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9BX

What a Performance - Bath - 30/10/2009

2009-11-01T17:36:00.004Z

At this special edition, a hommage to Moyra Caldecott was performed by some of her friends, who read Moyra's poems. As Moyra isn't now able to read her own poetry due to a stroke, this reading had a very strong emotional value that went far beyond the words that were read, like a deep sharing of the silence that lives at the roots of all true poetry.

I read Moyra's poem: "On listenning to a poet reading his own poem"

As well as my own poems:
- Penelope's welcome to Ulysses
- Moonshade

Event hosted by Richard Selby

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - 29/10/2009

2009-11-01T17:30:00.004Z

I read the poems :

- The Blue Glow of the Night
- When Heroes Return Home
- From Exile

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - hosted by Grace Gauld
Every last Thursday of the month - 7:30
Salisbury Arts Centre
Bedwin Street
Salisbury
SP1 3UT

Tongues & Grooves - Portsmouth - 25/10/2009

2009-10-27T00:49:00.004Z

Nine poems of my sequence Senses were presented in a special Tongues & Grooves session hosted by George Marsh and almost totally devoted to the Chinese poetry and culture.

George Marsh had the brilliant idea to dramatise the presentation of the poems by having them read by four different voices:

- I - Sense of Silence - Read by Armando Halpern
- III - Sense of Prophecy - Read by Jan Fowler
- V - Sense of Love - Read by George Marsh
- VI - Sense of Touch - Read by June Merrigan
- VIII - Sense of Peace - Read by George Marsh
- X - Sense of Home - Read by Jan Fowler
- XI - Sense of Sight - read by Armando Halpern
- XII - Sense of Eternity - Read by June Merrigan
- XIII - Grail - Read by George Marsh (lines 1 and 2), Jan Fowler (lines 3 and 4), June Merrigan (lines 5 and 6) and Armando Halpern (remaining lines).

I thank George, Jan and June for their commitment, enthusiasm and the quality of their reading.

To George my special thanks for a remarkable evening of Chinese poetry and insights on cross-cultural influences.

Viva Voce - Southampton - 24/10/2009

2009-10-27T00:45:00.006Z

At Viva Voce, an event organised by Apples and Snakes, at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton, I read the following poems:

- Summoning the Dead
- Sense of Silence
- Excuses

Write Angle- Petersfield - 20/10/2009

2009-10-22T00:30:00.005+01:00

I read the poems:

- From Exile
- When Heroes Return Home

Write Angle - Hosted by Leah Cohen and Jake Claret
Address: Upstairs @ The Square Brewery
7 The Square
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 3HJ

No Title

2009-10-14T00:30:00.001+01:00

What is kissing but these two souls
reaching for the limits of the skin?
Spirit will be hiding there, in silence.
The time marked by the rhythms of breathing
but spreading far beyond the reach of our lungs
fades, then, into the undivided present,
continuous, moving and still,
still in our eyes when we wake,
when we take and live by the troubling emotions
that angels envy and convey,
drop our fears, surrender and smile
and kiss again.

Angel Poetry

2009-09-27T19:00:00.001+01:00

There is an ancient gnostic legend that tells how angels fell so much in love for the beauty of earth’s bodily world that they dove into it while looking for their own reflection. They gained in the process a body that imprisoned their immortal nature, becoming, thus, human. What they gain (and lose) in their newfound humanity are feelings and the strange connection between emotions and an individual body.

When we look at how both angels and ancient gods are depicted, they offer us a common lack of feelings, being feelings human by nature. Going a step further, feelings could be seen as a learnt layer that channels emotions, giving a psychology to them. Being a layer sitting between reasoned thought and emotion, they are also the perfect ground for morals.

Emotions, being immediate and potentially impersonal, do not accommodate principles and rules easily - they appear and take, with or without them. Discursive thought, on its turn, is only called to speak after the immediacy of the authorless emotion was allowed to manifest itself.

Some relatively recent views of angels tend to present them as intrinsically good – no good angel would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah; no good angel would manifest jealousy of the benefits that god granted to men; no angel could ever fall from the divine grace and fall, a little like Prometheus. Drawing a parallel with the Classic gods, we can see wrath, anger, lust and, at times, a short-lived tolerance towards the acts of humans, but none of the morally nice feelings that seem to guide the life of their human subjects.

If we look at feelings as something that is learnt and imposed upon us as a tool for social conformity, they become a socially accepted response to a given emotional wavelength, repressing emotions or channelling them into compensation strategies regarded as harmless, or, then, frustration. Feelings introduce into the equation words in their standard dictionary sense, creating, thus, a dimension of time (and strategy) for our actions and thoughts.

If emotions are so mutable that they seem to disappear or change while remaining there, feelings try to remain in sameness of state and intensity. Their perpetuation tends, however, to be self-induced, trying to satisfy our craving for identity and permanence. Feelings are history; emotions are the moment. Feelings develop strategy; emotions don’t project into the future (or time). The eternity of the angel is an eternal present of vibrations of the same selfless emotion in its multiple colours and oscillations between what we perceive as the most absolute kindness and the most intolerable cruelty.

Angel poetry becomes the work of the angel in us, an unblinking and uncompromisingly attentive stare at the moment seeking that magic intensity by which the woven fabric of reality is revealed. Poetry of the angel is amoral, carries no concept of right and wrong but looks at the world and sees everything with a newness as it has never been seen, because each moment is irrevocably different, and when truth is stated as a state of sight, there is no point in reasoning about it; we either see or we don’t.

This view of the essential matter that feeds and threatens feelings is direct and wordless and needs forms of verbalisation analogous to the symbolic forms of thinking found in myth and magic to guide its transgression of the everyday use of language. The poetry that attempts to capture the wordless moment of revelation, oscillates between light and darkness, redemption and fall. It is the poetry of the angel. It is the poetry of the damned, condemned to commit their lives into a chase that will never be taken to its term.

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - 24/09/2009

2009-09-26T18:10:00.003+01:00

I read the poems :

- Endymion
- Unguarded Angel
- Penelope's Welcome to Ulysses

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - hosted by Grace Gauld
Every las Thursday of the month - 7:30
Salisbury Arts Centre
Bedwin Street
Salisbury
SP1 3UT

Write Angle - Petersfield - 15/09/2009

2009-09-17T19:42:00.003+01:00

I read the poems:

- Phlegethon, The River of Flame
- Shade
- Moonshade

Write Angle - Hosted by Leah Cohen and Jake Claret
Address: Upstairs @ The Square Brewery
7 The Square
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 3HJ

Poetry and a Pint - Bath - 14/09/2009

2009-09-16T23:30:00.002+01:00

Poetry and a Pint was one of the poetry cafes where I first read some of my poems when I lived in the Southwest.

Returning there, as a featured poet, to read for the first time the sequence "The Rivers of Hades", was something that I felt with a particular intensity.

I read the Poems:

- Lethe, The River
- Styx
- Phlegethon, The River of Flame
- Acheron, The River of Woe
- Kokytos, the River of Lamentation
- The Secret River

Poetry and a Pint - hosted by Richard Carder
Every second Monday of each month (except August) 8:00 PM
Address: St James Wine Vaults
10 St. Jamess Square, Lower Lansdown
Bath
BA1 2TR

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - 30/07/2009

2009-08-01T16:50:00.001+01:00

I read the poems :

- The Canvas of the Night
- Pachebel, Canon for 3 trumpets
- Shade

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - hosted by Grace Gauld
Every las Thursday of the month - 7:30
Salisbury Arts Centre
Bedwin Street
Salisbury
SP1 3UT

Write Angle - Petersfield - 21/07/2009

2009-07-22T19:11:00.007+01:00

Returning from a short posting holiday, I read the poems:

- Pachebel, Canon for 3 trumpets
- Giordano Bruno's Journey to London
- Acheron, The River of Woe

Write Angle - Hosted by Leah Cohen and Jake Claret
Address: Upstairs @ The Square Brewery
7 The Square
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU32 3HJ

Broken Lines Poetry at the Keystone, Guildford, 15/07/2009

2009-07-16T20:21:00.002+01:00

I read the poems:

- Lethe, the River
- Excuses
- Pachebel, Canon for 3 trumpets
- Summoning the Dead
- Giordano Bruno's Journey to London
- Rush Hour

My thanks to James (wollow) for organising this event

Poetry and a Pint - Bath - 13/9/2009

2009-07-14T17:46:00.001+01:00

Returning to one of the first poetry cafes I went to, I read:

- Acheron, the River of Woe
- Summoning the Dead
- Excuses

Poetry and a Pint - hosted by Richard Carder
Every second Monday of each month (except August) 8:00 PM
Address: St James Wine Vaults
10 St. Jamess Square, Lower Lansdown
Bath
BA1 2TR

Angel Poetry - London - 9/07/2009

2009-07-11T19:39:00.000+01:00

I read the poems:

- Lethe, the River
- Excuses

Angel Poetry - hosted by Agnes Meadows
Every second Thursday of the month (except August)

Waterstones - 7pm
Address: 11 Islington Green
Post Code: N1 2XH

Scratch Poets - Manchester - 08/07/2009

2009-07-10T19:00:00.003+01:00

I read the poems:

- Summoning the Dead
- Lethe, the River
- Match Point

Scratch Poets
Every second wednesday of the month
The Spread Eagle - 7:30pm
526 Wilbraham Road
M21 9LD

Wimbledon

2009-07-06T20:30:00.005+01:00

Just to make things clear, I usually don’t watch TV except for DVDs (films and some music) and I take this principle so seriously that I don’t even have my TV connected to an aerial. To make it even more clear, I specifically avoid watching sporting events – I tend to find them particularly unpleasant.

That said, it just happened that I sat in front of a TV showing those excruciating last moments of the men’s final at Wimbledon that lasted for ever. As I sat there, sipping an espresso and chatting, I was progressively drawn into the images. I wasn’t paying as much attention to the game as to the players and to their features and expressions.

Their expressions surfaced, at times, an unmistakable anger that education and training soon would move out of sight and, seeing them, I was transported to other times and places. I wasn’t watching anymore a tennis game in this civilised contemporary Britain, but gladiators fighting to death in a barren arena and adhered to the game as if I could expect to see one of them falling gushing blood and guts from a deadly, vicious blow.

When the retiarius achieved his victory with his net and trident, I could see the defeated Murmillon drop his shield and sword and sink into the ground just as Roddick sank into his chair. The time they took to speak was the time they needed to regain humanity.

After Twilight

2009-07-05T17:36:00.001+01:00

We could sit for ages by this half-lit table,
staring quietly, hands touching,
wordless through the magic evening
in the half-deserted rooms of our choice.
What separates us, as we stare,
is by our eyes made different from air ,
thicker, with deeper colours and a purpose
that binds the senses of close and far
and brings warmth to the silent breath
before releasing the rhythms of fire.
I tell you a poem when you least expect,
like a story of wordless emotions,
like whispering to your lips
and, when the words become remembrance,
we look for the smiles reflected on our eyes
as if time was the dim candle by the side.
On warmer days, though, we may lay down
on the soft green scent of the grass, like floating,
and it is so poignant it erases the other senses.
I whisper to your ear the secrets of the birds,
I search for your smile as a sign
that hides and shows,
for your lips as a gift of self forgetfulness
that empties and fulfils,
for your arms as the only shelter
as the day fades into the evening
and a perfect moon lights the clouds.

Shelf Life

2009-07-02T23:05:00.001+01:00

Best before it all ends.
Best before it is too late.
Best before you think
this is the future being made.
Best before your fear losing.
Best before you covet.
Best before you give up.
Best before the morning comes
and the children wake you up.
Best before you sleep.
Best before awakening from your dream.
Best before your heart is numb.
Best before your senses burn.
Best before your guilt.
Best before you set to study
the square patterns of your quilt.
Best before you decide.
Best before you remember.
Best before you describe.
Best before you regret.
Best before you hand over
the sparkle of joy you have left.
Best before you hurry.
Best before you stumble.
Best before you find excuses
for what your moral can’t handle.
Best before it is gone.
Best before you’ve done too much
but have so little done.
Best before you ask.
Best before you make a point.
Best before purpose is guile.
Best before you gain conscience
of the stretch of your smile.
Best before you are only baggage.
Best before the date shown
in the inside of your own package.
Best before you sell.
Best before you buy.
Best before you voice reasons.
Best before you die.

Note to “The Eye”

2009-06-30T00:32:00.002+01:00

“The Eye” is, in some sense, an autobiographic poem triggered by the adult memory of a childhood event. Curiously enough, events of an autobiographic nature have rarely a direct, explicit presence in what I write, being rather there in an indirect and elusive way, whenever the past allows for some enrichment of what is written.

My father was drafted to the army in the 60’s, when Portugal was involved in a colonial war and posted as a doctor in Mozambique. Some months later, my mother, my siblings and I joined him. We lived there for about 2 years.

I was 6/7 years old and one of the main interests was a playground where were made available for the children military transport vehicles too old for any other use.

I remember one day seeing an eye peeking through a hole, as I was climbing to the rear of a truck. I stood still for a while, not approaching it nor running away, fascinated by its emotionless, unblinking stare, till I moved away, called by some other game.

I heard shouts some minutes later and saw the caretakers running towards us with sharp sticks on their hands poking with them the hole where the eye had been. I saw moments later the dark body of the snake being taken away. It was a deadly snake, we were told. I felt, by then, fascination and curiosity.

Fear only came later as time made me realise the danger, however remote it might have really been, and time itself coloured memory, turning the unblinking eye into something else, something of an unnatural dimension that visited my childhood nightmares again and again. With them came an image of evil as a stare devoid of feeling and emotion that needs not doing anything to be what it is.

The Eye

The Eye

2009-06-28T14:53:00.002+01:00

I saw clear the snake’s eye
peeking through the empty hole
at that African playground.

I saw it so clear that I kept its memory,
unlike the faint remembrance
of fright, sticks and shouts

and the dark, thin body hanging loose.

It was dead poisonous, they said,
It could have killed us, children,
from a brisk bite, a lightning,

and it stared at me, unblinking,
the passionless stare I wouldn’t evade.
Was it meant for me,

the eye of evil that constricts my dreams?

See Note

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - 25/6/2009

2009-06-27T17:44:00.002+01:00

I read two poems about rivers at the Salisbury Poetry Cafe:

- Acheron, the River of Woe
- The Secret River

Salisbury Poetry Cafe - hosted by Grace Gauld
Every las Thursday of the month - 7:30
Salisbury Arts Centre
Bedwin Street
Salisbury
SP1 3UT

Den of Voice - 17/06/2009

2009-06-18T21:02:00.005+01:00

At the Den of Voice, Guildford, I read the poems:

- Rush Hour
- The Canvas of the Night
- Falling
- Excuses
- Giordano Bruno's Journey to London
- Acheron, the River of Woe
- The Secret River

Hosted by Jennifer Gale
the Boileroom - 8pm
13 Stokefields
GU1 4LS

Poetry Unplugged - 16/6/2009

2009-06-17T19:43:00.002+01:00

I read at Poetry Unplugged:

- Rush Hour
- The Canvas of the Night
- Falling

Poetry Unplugged, Hosted by Niall O'Sullivan
The Poetry Cafe,
22 Betterton Street,
WC2H 9BX
London
Every Tuesday at 7:30 PM

Y Tuesday Poetry Club - 2/6/2009

2009-06-04T12:51:00.003+01:00

I read the following poems at the Y Tuesday Poetry Club hosted by Ceri May:

- Summoning the Dead
- Lethe, the River
- Excuses
- The Birth of Sound
- Rules of Engagement

Y Tuesday Poetry Club - Every first Tuesday of each month
The Three Kings (Pub)
24 Clerkenwell Close
EC1R 0AT

London Literature Lounge - Harrow Arts Centre - 31/05/2009

2009-06-01T19:28:00.002+01:00

At this special edition of the London Literature Lounge hosted by Anjan Saha and Siobahn Curham, I read the poems:

- Haunted House
- Lethe, the River
- Excuses

Glitterbest - 27/05/2009

2009-05-28T23:29:00.007+01:00

At this event hosted every Wednesday by Andreas Grant, I read, in an intimate and informal atmosphere,

- Summoning the Dead
- Lethe, the River
- The Birth of Sound
- Metempsychosis
- The Blue Glow of the Night
- Home
- The Fall
- Excuses

Glitterbest,
Bacchus
177 Hoxton Street
N1
Every Wednesday, 8 Pm - 12 AM

Seeing Sounds

2009-04-25T18:00:00.000+01:00

As if sight saw a sound. Something watches me as I watch the street and it's evening traffic. A visible sound is then installed, a vibration that is a breath, a background of perception for the perception. It is a vibration of quietness, immutable, that has always been there. Something watches me watching and what is watched ceases being observed, belongs now to a sameness without difference or separation. There would be no perception without this vibration.

The Tomb of Cleopatra

2009-04-20T17:33:00.000+01:00

Cleopatra gained such a reputation, that she has almost changed from an undoubtedly real character into a near mythical one, equivalent to Helen of Troy or Circe, the sorceress. The fact is that she held the decaying kingdom of Egypt and managed to seduce and manipulate the powerful Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. The truth on who manipulated and who seduced and charmed is debatable, as anything in life that concerns human matters, but it is nevertheless believable that Cleopatra was the author of the seduction part.

Learning from the news that archaeologists think that they have found the tombs of Cleopatra and Marc Anthony set my imagination free for some minutes as I heard of the possibilities for rebuilding her face and body from her mummy, DNA samples and forensic techniques. It felt sickly and fascinating at one time, this act of violation of the privacy of death and the question: “Was she really beautiful?” as if it mattered.

For what it really matters, however, I keep feeling sure that the key for the person, the source of the beauty and seduction power of Cleopatra, lies far from the shape of the body or the features of the queen. That will always be the question to remain unanswered, keeping the dead at peace and undisturbed.

The Prodigal Son

2009-04-13T13:50:00.001+01:00

We tend to visualise a story when we think of the parable. We see the father, the jealous older brother and the prodigal son who returns from his unfortunate journey across the outer world. We see a story based on the images, a game that is played between two players, forgetting the brother, and we have the morality of the tale, which is not its ethic.

Let’s forget the moral in order to challenge the story. Taking one step further the challenge to our naïve realism of persisting in seeing literal meaning or unequivocal explanations for everything set before our eyes, we should ask ourselves whether the parable really contains a story, if the prodigal son has ever left the house of his father. How could we read it if the parable spoke about the dreams, wishes and fantasies of its own characters?

The father, not loving equally all his sons, looks for a pretext to legitimate his preference. The eldest son suffers from nightmares whereby his father’s choices are revealed to him. The youngest son fears, on his turn, losing his freedom by having to return to the place that he never left.

If we move one step further and reduce all characters to a single one, father and sons within the same person in the image of a disjointed trinity, we will have some unspeakable entity who commands us through a whisper so low that no one else can hear: “go, and bring experience back to me”, and we go, wrapped in the warmest of orders, not even conscious of having abandoned our primeval home. What really matters, then, is to know which instance of ourselves has sent us and which part of our experience is worth to be turned into a story.

A Nice Part of the World

2009-04-06T22:20:00.001+01:00

It’s a nice part of the world, they say,
where the green and brown hills undulate for centuries
like the back of a tamed sea-goddess,
asleep, enchanted, fearful no more,
not fulfilling promises of lust years ago made,
and pheasants cross the narrow roads, unaware;
where nature lost its rudeness
and became soft, sensible and polite
as we should, gently chatting by the fireplaces,
tinkling glasses, waiting for the blue spring
to spread, like the breeze or the wings of birds,
becoming another layer of colour that you can taste.

It’s a nice part of the world, people say,
where you can leave your door and car open
that no one will come and take,
even if you want someone to,
to tear your from the inside with fire and pain,
where the detached politeness of people
mirrors the landscape without edges
and you gaze, contemplate, lost,
the wandering, dreaming eyes free at last
from the erring thoughts and restlessness
from days gone, erased, forgotten.

It’s a nice part of the world, you hear again,
but they won’t say it by other words.
Suppressed are expressions of greatness and awe,
where emotions and strong sensations go and hide
and express themselves behind closed cosy doors
where wolves, devoid of fangs, silently threaten,
with the gentleness of smiles learnt from habit,
their prey standing unaware by the window,
offering herself to that cruelty
that survived centuries of measure
and nice thatched houses by the side of the road.
It’s a nice part of the world, you say.

The River Lethe

2009-03-30T23:30:00.004+01:00

Hades, the land of the death for the ancient Greek, was crossed by 5 rivers. One of them, the River Lethe, was the river of forgetfulness and the dead, as they prepared to reincarnate and return to the realm of the living, drank from its waters, forgeting their previous life and experiences.

Alethea, the Greek word for truth, means the opposite of forgetfulness, something like unforgeting, bringing us to the platonic concept of knowledge as rememberance.

My personal Lethe takes often the shape of a narrow and shallow unamed Wiltshire river as seen by the faint light of a Winter morning, covered by that sort of low, thick fog that we can see from above and feels like something almost solid. The fog only covers the water and is a living creature, waiting for our consent to envelop us, guiding us through the memories we don't remember and then returning us to ourselves.

We look around with a vacant stare and the same feeling that we have when we try to remember and keep a dream that has already faded.

Lethe, the river

2009-03-30T20:51:00.006+01:00

You leave the car by the bend of the river,
where the mist hovers like a dream of a stream.
You see scattered fragments from a thatched house
peeking through the still maze of branches,
behind a hedge withholding the silence.
You smoke a cigarette, a last one,
and listen to this dead quietness
that is made of breathed embers,
like you turning into void.
You ask yourself whether you are alive
when you leave the road of the dead pheasants.
You look at your own hands,
they are thin and pale, about to vanish.
You gaze the river as if it kept a secret,
but it is now that all poetry turns into dull prose.
You ask yourself from what strange wound
has your will been drained for so long
and you feel too empty to cry.
You are alone, you left your car
as if it never existed.
You have nothing, you face the water,
the sacred water that makes forget
and start again, fresh and with no name.
There is an island, but no boat.
There is another river, but no path.
You take off your clothes and start crossing.
You hold secretly my fading image,
as seen from the other side of the mirror.
And you go.

Note

Performance and Delivery

2009-03-29T16:34:00.006+01:00

After finishing reading some poems at a poetry cafe, a friend told me "Good delivery" and that simple comment remained for some strange reason in the back of my mind while I drove back home.

I guess that what that comment made me realise was a significant difference that exists between what we usually call performance and delivery. Delivery is, of course, a form of performance, but it represents both offering the poem we deliver to someone who is listening and setting the poem free. By delivering a poem, I'm inviting the audience into something that is intimate and, in this sense, invites participation in an inward movement, setting the poem free from my own view of it; by performing, I'm the source of an outward movement, taking as a mission to impress my view of the poem upon the audience and thus not setting it free. I realised, thinking again on my friend's comments, that my concern has almost always been that of delivering poetry the best way I can.

Is it the only right approach? I don't think so. It depends on the interactions between poem and reader. Me? my purpose is to deliver poetry.