Skip to main content

On prose poems and sleepless nights

I'm thinking of prose poems. I'm thinking in English about them, prose poems. I'm thinking of how I had never heard of them, for so long. I'm thinking of how a sentence sometimes pops on my mind, after seeing a leaf of uncommon, unthinkable, shape or of some more banal shape, like a heart. Or when a sentence comes to mind because I've been worrying, reflecting wondering and pondering about something in life. I'm thinking of how what I see or think comes back to me in a specific language. I'm a translator. I'm always here and there. And that is that. That is how it is. And the rest follows. The language chosen by the thought. The thought leading the language. The language flowing the thought. A wave brushing the ocean softly, the foam... Foam? A espuma. One language fails, the thought slips into the other. One language invades the other. 

I'm thinking of prose poems. Three twenty nine in the morning, I've been thinking of them for hours. The hours I should have slept, the hours I'll miss tomorrow. I'm thinking of prose poems and telling myself I should be sleeping, I should not be thinking of them, prose poems. I remember, before I knew they existed, I had written pieces that started with one sentence, followed by another and another and another... I'd look at that thing I had written, that text box, that group of words that formed sentences that made up... something. I used to wonder what that was. I'd think: "It's a poem!". 

The thing was a poem. I did not know prose poems. The poem was in the wrong shape, I'd think. I had to organize the poem. I had to align it, organize it discipline it.  I'm thinking now of how many possible prose poems I might have transmutated or amputated into something else. I'm obsessing, in the middle of the night, about prose poems. I'm thinking of them and taking little naps when exhausted. I decide, finally, that there is nothing I can do but to write about prose poems. I do it finally. I write about them. I think and write about prose poems and now I can, at last, sleep. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I upset people (This may be the first of a series)

I feel I upset many people. Maybe it is something I do, but the feeling I get is that what upsets them is the way I live, the choices I make. People get upset with me when they hear I don't believe in God. If I tell them that I once did, but have lost my faith after I lost my first child, a premature baby, they fail to grasp the complexity of it. They look at me with irritating condescendent pityful eyes and they think I can be "fixed." To be fair, maybe I fail to help them understand that after what happened to me, God as I came to know it and most people of Christian beliefs do, is of no use to me.  God proved himself either nonexistent or useless to me when my first born died and when I almost followed him due to Eclampsia and Hellp Syndrome (Go ahead and google it! Unless you are doctor or had someone in the family who had this, you will never know it.) He did not save my baby and he did not spare me the excruciating suffering I had to endure. And if you think I...
4 comments
Read more

The child that did not stay

I remember expecting a child that never came, a child I never held in my arms. I remember expecting a child who would have his father's hair, his kind eyes.  He would be curious of the world and I would follow closely all the things he would see with enchanted eyes. Everything would be new for his new eyes. Those were the words of a song about someone else's child, a song I used to listen to while waiting for this child. I remember dreaming of his future, of his smiles. I remember my hopes for him. He did not want me, this child. He did not stay.  He was not interested in the playground in front of the building we live. He was not interested in having my hand holding his while he walked his first steps. He did not care about the flowers, leaves, little dry sticks that fall from the trees in our neighbourhood. He did not want to listen to the slightly out of tune lullabies I was going to sing or the stories I would read at bedtime. He did not even care for the milk, all th...
1 comment
Read more

No espelho

  Olhei hoje para o espelho e me vi mais serena, me enxerguei com mais leveza. Não que esteja de fato mais leve, eu acho. Ou será que estou? Tenho ainda infinitas incertezas e dúvidas aos milhares, mas a imagem que me olhou de volta do espelho, não me olha com tristeza, dor pânico.     A imagem que vejo nesse espelho é de     calma, no olhar certa paz, talvez de se entender humana, imperfeita e aceitar essa condição.     Aqui, deste lado que estou, me observando no espelho, sinto ainda o coração encolher como se uma mão o quisesse esmagar. Encolhe-se para sobreviver e expande-se em seguida. Ao encolher-se, a respiração dá uma pausa e uma bolha de cristal sobe em refluxo, pausando ali no meio da goela. Assim que pode, o coração retorna a seu pulsar, seu ir e vir. Permanecem ali as dúvidas, as exigências, as demandas, mas também os desejos de só ser, irresponsavelmente ser e atender a cada quimera. Porque a vida é curta! A vida é sopro!    E o ...
Post a Comment
Read more