AND

A book of days 

and a verse made of nocturnal syllables

The sweet fragance of flowers at night

and the tiny, even sweeter trace of a recalled moment

The taste of salt from yesterday's twilight

and the kamikaze dive of seagulls

The somberness of some thoughts

and the tides that wash them down

The newly-found harmonies

and the screaming dissonances

A shiny shell found in the sands

and the echo of a silvery voice

The stony vessel that takes me into the night

and its austral, unbelievable moon.

Sándalo Naranja

NÓS, ELES, OS OUTROS

Aprendemos o silêncio como quem bebe um copo de água sem ter sede.

AMAN

A CASA DO RIO

Primeiro foi o mar. Depois veio o rio.
Devia ser meia-noite.
Toda a cidade dormia, enrolados os corpos ao sono, a caminho do sonho.
A mulher percorreu toda a estrada que parecia nunca mais acabar.
Enfim, o rio. Ali estava ele sossegado, correndo devagar, quase despercebido. Uns lábios pronunciando uma melodia repetida e meiga . E as suas árvores antigas debruçadas na água.
E os candeeiros alaranjados, tristes e solitários, iluminando a ponte.

 

E os bancos de pedra vazios e, lá longe, muito longe mesmo,  as estrelas intensas e magnéticas.
Chegou. Parou o carro e esperou. Desde que nascem todas as mulheres aprendem a saber esperar e não desesperar. Para quê? Não vale de nada. Uma pura perda de tempo e um gastar de energia desnecessário. Há tanto para fazer, para pensar, para escrever, para ver, para sentir, para descobrir, para.....
Número vinte.
Quando se chega a algum lugar, durante a noite, todas as portas representam  uma possibilidade de reencontrar guarida, o calor, a paz, as palavras doces, o chá acabado de fazer, bem quente, a música repleta de palavras mágicas, a cama feita de fresco com lençóis brancos de linho. Por fim, o silêncio.
Todas as casas que se abrem e te recebem com uns braços onde poderias ficar a dormir até ser de manhã.
Aí, chegou aquela mulher numa qualquer noite do mundo.
Aí chegou e aí ficou.
Cassandra.
                                                                                                                                                             AMAN

BLISS

I make a hollow space between my arms and my body... Like this, you see? Then you step into my dream, and the space is just perfect for you. Like a glove. So there you stay the whole night,  barely moving at all. You feel whole, safe, soft. You do not tell me but I can feel your quiet joy under my arms. 

I wake up and I am not surprised to see you are still there. Back to sleep, I start to dream again, and when I wake up in the morning we were exactly in the same position, both of us wearing the same satisfied smile.

Sándalo Naranja

SMILES

So you say your smile 
doesn't come out so often,
well, maybe not...

So I say that a music 
beats in my blood,
when you smile

(beautiful blacksmith,
shaping my soul to your will
with your every move)

Sándalo Naranja

ECHOES FROM AFAR

Yesterday an image came to my mind. I pictured you as an echo chamber.

And your silence acquired a different nature, a new density. I suddenly thought you were not really silencing me. You were just resonating, echoing my own words, sending them back to me, like a boomerang. My own words, wrapped occasionally with a polite half smile, shyly drawn on your lips.

Getting in touch with you is so hard these days. One does not dialogue with echo spots, in fact. One screams at them, or gets infatuated by their dramatic effect, but the echo spot never contributes anything for the conversation. They never tire from echoing the words of the walkers passing by. People shouting at them, eventually do tire, and keep walking.

Echo chambers are empty, a vacuum often carved by nature itself. They are hollow and their walls are curved. Smaller ressonance chambers, like the fibonaccian nautilus were created slowly by nature, then wisely transmitted for thousands of generations, through genetics. They carry the sound of the ocean and the mermaid's songs, but otherwise their nacreous walls are empty.

I remember a time when you were not hollow. Not at all! I marvelled each minute at your thoughts and other beautiful contents of your spirit. Your eyes told me often how full of life and will your spirit was.

It came to me yesterday that, sadly,  you emptied yourself of your most precious and unique treasures: thoughts, feelings, dreams. Even memories, perhaps. By pretending they are not yours, you became the most polished and beautiful ressonance chamber.

We all change overtime. Your human side was a luminous experience I will never forget. You are absolutely irreplaceable.

This is why I knew from the early days I would be missing you dearly, and possibly forever. Unless a new miracle follows, and the echo becomes a dialogue again. 

How wonderful that would be! 

You see? Having desires and dreams is a most beautiful thing, even when they are never realized. Just trying is worthwhile, and a sure sign of humanity. We are the dreaming species.

Sándalo Naranja

EVERYTHING IS SO PERFECT

everything is perfect,

oh-so-perfect:

my unwritten verses
your silence
my dreams

your unspoken words of love

everything as perfect
as the sea line on my window

or the sunlight on your eyes
perfect as your fingers' e-motions, 

your smile (yes, so perfect)

perfect chances and delays
perfect encounters and memories
perfect thrill

blush, perfect sunset on your face, 

perfect movement as you walk
perfect charm that mesmerizes

my surrender, perfect dance

my drinking your minutest gleam

oh perfect stirring of my soul

perfect eternity that fits
in that famous second of laughter

such a perfect coincidence

unlikely crisscrossing of paths
perfect shiny miracle
poetry of your eyes

just can't believe how 

so much perfection could bring 

such a deadly hollow winter

nested on its perfect hands

like an hideous fate or rather

a liar, fucking bastard destiny

Sándalo Naranja

PERFEIÇÃO

A perfeição não existe. É uma ilusão pensar que sim. Uma ilusão do coração.
Se dizem que somos anjos caídos do paraíso, toda ela se desfez durante a queda.
No preciso momento da nossa chegada, mal pousamos os nossos pés nesta terra, todo o corpo percebeu a força da vida nova e a possibilidade de construir um destino pela luta das mãos, rasgando véus, subindo montanhas, atravessando noites eternas sem sono, habitando dias vazios de gente, percorrendo caminhos sem mapa, numa viagem nossa à qual sabemos pertencer e da qual tantas vezes duvidamos, sim, dúvidas, incertezas, sempre, sempre. E outro dia vem e recuperamos a fé. Já não vamos sós. Nunca fomos. Acreditas?Sim, acredita. Nunca.

Somos homens e mulheres e andamos aos tombos nos dias. Caímos, levantamo-nos, amamos, choramos, sorrimos, vamos e voltamos. Assim, ir e vir, um baloiço, uma água corrente, um trapézio. Quando o sol nos bate nos olhos, ao final da tarde,ao fundo aquele céu infinito e largo, todas as memórias voltam e, à nossa frente, como se de um filme se tratasse, vão-se sucedendo, lentamente as construções  passadas da realidade que o tempo refez. Agora são histórias reconstruída interiormente, dobadas a fio de oiro, a tua riqueza.
Tu tens a tua, eu a minha, ele a dele, eles, elas, todos.
Seria uma chatice não ter histórias para contar, uma valente chatice, reconheço!
Como uma estátua muito bela de mármore, muito bela, formas equilibradas que te agarram o olhar e não te deixam ir. Bela mas não se pode mexer, não fala, não sente, não vê. Pobre beleza!
Porque é na certeza  da imperfeição que reside toda a possibilidade de criação.
                                      AMAN

THE SPIRAL LOVE

Yes, loved she was, and quite so; subsequently, all the nearest planets altered their rotational axis and their orbital paths. They had to. The tides also answered to that love with typical tidal, femenine confusion. Some birds' migration patterns changed as well. Butterflies. Absurd climate shifts. Raining toads. You name it.

But this is just normal. 

As soon as he felt the sparkle that ignited it all, that massive, vertical NOW like a ball of blue fire, his life filled up with symbols. Suddenly, he started needing things: like knowing the exact boundary, the sandy line where the earth ends and the ocean starts. Which is something he never had thought before. Also the need to absorb all the azur marine.

He also needed belonging to a place, and that place was ready for him, and the seagulls' heads all pointed in the same direction, the pier, the ship. After owning a ship, acquiring navigation know-how became an all-important matter; the magnets turned red like carnations, the compass went crazy at times, the undercurrents were hard to predict. But he had his senses and his spirits. And a handful of songs he knew by heart. And even a garden, for the quietest moments. All previous thoughts turned into feeling.

All things considered, it was a bewildering spring. Many songs spoke directly to their ears, inhabiting their days and nights. Words travelled at cosmical speed, forming streams, meticulously carving the souls into new shapes, new forms of perceiving everything.

At some point, she did not feel like steel anymore, and noticed some movement, like a click, in her insides. Something warm and distinctively human, something that she felt was hers, as she recognized pieces of her own fragmented memories. A touch. It was his hand, trying to reach her. Their world was filled with concidences that made them smile and joke. In their dreams, they met with lips and hands. They painted worlds from afar, drew brief sketches of their normalities. Disembodied and a bit lost in their own distances, they opened wide windows over the roofs, found a stream of affection and emotion in each other's words, flew to imaginary, shared spots crying to be inhabited.

And perhaps their souls were pulling sideways, in opposing directions, and perhaps that precisely may have fashioned their peculiar, seemingly eternal alliance. She shone her light on his present, like a winter moon, muted, veiled, a star of unseen beauty, casting her comforting shadow on him. He turned that serene, pale light into a red-hot glow that burns like fever and obsessions do.

Her gentle, elegant thrust, always catching him off-balance, wetting his paper flowers, undressing him of his poor words, the irrelevant, the unessential. He is becoming a wave now, up and down, cruising the ether, gaining its full amplitude. A wave that reverberates with turmoil in his spiral love, in his endless desire... Sometimes, he fears the void that feels in his heart like a splintered bundle of mirrors.

But there is also a Present, a perfect zenit without shadows, gorgeous and deep like her eyes, shining with a brand-new insight. For him, that NOW is the frontier between land and water, where all the blues reunite in a radiant embrace, if only to dissolve again and again, battered by the waves.

Sándalo Naranja

MILAGRE

Acordei com o corpo cheio de areia. No primeiro instante não compreendi.
Também não te perguntei, pois dormias profundamente a meu lado e não se pode acordar alguém que habita o interior do sono.
Os lençóis eram brancos e azuis.
Apertei as mãos e senti que estavam líquidas.
De repente, imaginei. Podia ser um sonho, um pensamento brilhante e  fugaz daqueles que vêm num sopro, uma memória inventada, ou não, tudo depende do rumo desejado para esta melodia.
Sim, porque as palavras têm música dentro, notas, notas e mais notas, organizadas, sublimes, doridas, fantásticas, intensas, ansiosas, terríveis, inevitáveis, desejadas, cruéis, e esperam impacientemente que as oiças e as deixes tocarem-te no mais fundo da tua alma, aí onde tu és tu verdadeiramente sem mais nada que não seja a tua identidade misteriosa. Conhecem-te os pássaros da manhã, em bandos loucos no céu ainda recém-nascido, quase cardumes ao contrário (algum dia tinha de acontecer, o mundo ao contrário, já sabes, não é? tantas são as vezes que o desejamos!), as estradas,longas e agitadas, depois calmas e escuras, as mulheres de corpos cansados pelo peso das panelas gigantes, as que varrem repetidamente, dia após dia, o pó dos outros, o homem da portagem, as crianças dos teus dias, as da rua, as da infância, quando tu também eras assim.
Sim, a memória traz-te constantemente esse fluxo de imagens, de gestos, de sorrisos, de passos desalinhados, de olhares parados, fixos na janela ( o jogo de futebol é mais interessante que a voz da professora, repetindo, dia após dia as mesmas frases!quando cresces essas palavras renascem e aí percebes que afinal estavas atento às duas coisas: jogo e palavras, ambas marcantes para a tua vida).
A semana chega ao fim e o corpo exausto recusa-se a ceder ao cansaço.
Mas, ao mesmo tempo, é bom saborear,a mistura complexa do cheiro das rosas, com o cheiro do sol, o cheiro do canto dos pássaros,a languidez doce dos sentidos, derretendo aos poucos, enquanto desço a rampa até à saída do edifício.Misturar tudo e deixar-te ir.
Tu já terás chegado. As viagens de comboio são sempre um recomeço.
Regressarás?
Disseste que sim. Acredito. Mas preciso de ver, tocar, cheirar, sentir.Ser como Tomé. Aí saberei que estás de volta e és tu, outra vez e sempre, ali, diante de mim com uma beleza estonteante: a tua. O rosto apoiado na tua mão, onde caberia o meu coração todinho, sem tirar nem pôr.
Tens noção de que és um homem muito bonito?
(Não sei se isto se diz, assim, frente a frente, mas olha, já disse e está dito. As mulheres,não sei se são assim, mas eu sou.)

AMAN