I read this after participating with Silvana in a Soma workshop and I thought it really said a lot about the many ‘Is’ coming together to create a greater energy, which dissolves, while also invigorating the ‘I’

There is no “I”

If you look into my eyes

Of the storm

You will see. At the Centre

A calm,

That is surrounded by chaos

The never ending

Twirling and swirling

And intermingling

Of the many souls within.

All battle for space in the “I”

All trying to get to the Centre

Of Peace

Of stillness

Of Illuminated Darkness

To swim free in the Sea of Tranquillity.

They fling themselves

About the Eye

Like the Twister

That sucked up Kansas

And left Dorothy in a place

She did not know

Or understand,

But where she found herself,

Nonetheless……

All these separate “I”s

Not all can be happy

At the same time

Some unite in an attempt

To be a whole

Others rebel, just to spite.

How dare anyone tell them

What’s wrong or right. S

o, how to convince them

To all come together

And in doing so

Not lose their separateness

Their uniqueness

Their individual voice

And words

Which each must be given -

Their turn to be heard?

The conductor, you and I

Must orchestrate

The harmony of all “I”s

And listen closely

With our ears

To the music of the Spheres

And all the “I”s fall into place

For each has its phrase

It’s movement

And its pace

For each there is

Its single solo space

And then it will

Happily harmonise

With all the many million “I”s

Translated by the author

Cameroon conquered Argentina, but the invincible lions were unmanned by the Soviet war machine. Czechoslovakia showed the American opportunists a thing or two about defenestration and laid the Austrian tyrant to rest. The Scots spiked the guns of the Swedes. But Costa Rica was their undoing. Germany dismembered the United Arab Emirates and blew Yugoslavia to bits. The Arab Emirates were powerless against the confederated Yugoslavs, who flayed them alive. Italy rode roughshod over America, while Belgium crushed Uruguay to a pulp. Teutonic pride was humbled by the trigger-happy Colombians, Swedish ambition got the third degree from Brazil, and yet it was Argentina who led that Brazilian samba all the way to the chair. England barely had time to clip Egypt’s wingsbefore the pharaohs’ descendants nipped Ireland in the bud and mummified the Netherlands. Spain bludgeoned Korea into obedience and Uruguay only hastened their end. The Costa Ricans put Brazil to the sword but their joy was short-lived, for Czechoslovakia trod them underfoot. Romania beheaded the Soviet Union but Cameroon gaveas good as it got. The Germans impaled the Dutch, Uruguay was the ruin of Spain, Belgium burned Korea at the stake. Italy cremated Austria in a burst of poetic jurisprudence, Argentina tarred and feathered the Soviets. who promptly bit the dust, while the Americans, gored on all sides by the Swedes, shuffled off their mortal coil. Colombia exacted its pound of flesh from the United Arab Emirates and Ireland treated Romania to rack and thumbscrew alike. Uruguay underwent vivisection at the hands of the Italians, Yugoslavia signed Spain’s death warrant (but was embalmed, alas, by Argentina), England crucified Belgium yet had its own throat cut by Germany, who gave no quarter, so the English took up arms against Italy and were swiftly consigned to earth. On July 8th, Germany spread a white sheet over Argentina and pointed its feet in the direction of the blast.

well, for a start, they haven’t transferred well to the blog. Line breaks have gone all weird (except for some on the 2nd page – if you get that far) Mail me openbracket@riseup.net for a pdf of them if you want to read them as they look on the page.

Secondly, old because most of them were written in Brazil, lyrical, before I started writing with found language to allow other vocabularies and voices into my writing. Still, I like these poems – they remind me of a time of great adventure and humility and honesty and openness. 

Whirlwind in my hand,

sepia stains fingersblurred slightly by the activity inside the walls.  Like bread dough – full of space.  Rising, sometimes blossominglike a late starter; lion-coloured,it can even smell of honeysuckle to some.Nosediving, I follow the snails-trails to the solar eclipse at the bottom of the glass. 

(Rio de Janeiro,  March 2001)

A car drags its tyres up cobbled stones.  Pencilstap-dance on my desk as the bus steams past.Pushing his bike with rattling wheels, the baker honks,head down, building up a sweat, climbing the steep slope. 

The dogs of the hill bark, bark.  Children say whatever bounces in their heads; a boy, a girl, another girl, the first, the second, the boy again.There is a plunk and skid of a ball.  And now  

from a different direction, a whistle, a cackle of disbelief.Upstairs, the strange, awkward man plays Mahler to the neighbourhood, noone complains.  My window of sound, my window of colour.  

Wasteland, where the bougainvillea lives,festive for months, not just once a year.Tatiana, the neighbour’s girl isn’t here yet I remember How she entrances me when she grabs her dog to dance.  

Memories catch up with me; the night’s warmth begins to ooze in. I smell again the perfume of cigarettes Goia has smoked as I’ve lain looking at him, looking at what’s beyond.   

The tram is climbing the hill; a clanking, wood and tin theatre,  jumping and jerking,bursting with passengers.  I climb onand become a character in someone else’s song. 

We splashed out on a fish restaurantthe other backpackers didn’t frequent.Run ragged by the mountains, the jaggededges of our spirits were making largegashes in our blind and handsome love. 

The light inside was yellow;the colour of golden sizzled fish, of crisp, fruity wine, of a candle’s beam;it fed us, this yellowuntil the bread and wine arrived. 

I had my back to the accordion playerbut heard the shuffles and murmurs of his wife,dealing out nudges in quiet measures.She wasn’t over-helpfulthen softly she left. 

I was slooshing the wine around the glasswhen he started to speak, ‘I’d like to welcome backa long-time fan –
Arequipa born and bred,now resident of the
United States’.I twisted to see.Resembling a Latin dictator,big moustache, slicked-back hair,he looked embarrassed,nonplussed by the touch of the accordionistwho addressed the air the whole, darkening yellow airas a fisherman casts a net into the sea. 

The silent, fluent wave of the dooralive with people, ushered them in to places behind my back.The moon’s large yellow lightilluminated the steps of those outside walking the white city.The restaurant was now noisy and full. 

He was in his sixties, although on the poster outside, billing him as
Peru’s first accordion player,he is still a pert young man,already with dark glasses and the same straight face.He fanned the notes and chords of
France,
Argentina,
Italy and
Spain.  Spanning centuries; a declaration of love,a solitary city lament, an ode to the sea.The instrument sang of what it is to rest after a day’s work in the fields;of a picnic, a romp through the umber evening lightending up straw-haired and giggling in a haystack,after the day has been singed by the sun. 

Two young boys slid out of their seatsfour beady eyes plucking the spell out of the airin one fell swoop.They played a pretend flute, a stick-and-balloon guitar.I start to plan my words for the Accordian Player. 

Fingers tapped notes, arms squeezed sound, folds opened like a smile then puckered away  until the lung became silent. 

The moon is a hammock tonightA southern hemisphere smile in the sky.I have miles of minutes left to goall flattened out in a grey tarmac line.A night in the company of strangers, a day of my life, twenty four hours of not doing, just feelingthe percussion of the tyres of the bus.The road has straitjacketed me. The road 

I’ll wake up stiff at dawn and gaze beyond my glass reflection at the awesome mountain greens the gallery is tunnelling through.

I ask you for a tape – you send me five.I can picture you busy with buttons, with tapes at night.I’ve been continents away for five years, strangely more your daughter now than before.I feel I’ve grown into you, decided I liked you. Now I have forty tapes (you are excessive, passionate) rows and rows of them, breeding uncontrollablyin the cupboard and in my blood. 

I travel the world on the wings of these notes;
Morocco,
Japan, a Nepalese brass bandfourteenth-century
Cyprus,
Afghanistan.Music even rises in the silence between sound.

I’ve grown from knee, shoulder, to kite high,

finally airborne and free. 

You complain you’ve lost a daughter,

but here I am learning to fly. 

It’s just that you can’t see me.

I listen to my tapes again and again,each song is a poem I will write one day.I unfurl in the sadness and joy from faraway countries; going further, still furthercharmed by the singing world, down a dark inner tunnel of obstacles and bendsto find a lamp burning by a stereo and you at the other end.

You are disarmingly charming,in your ripe plum bald parts.I touch you; warming stone.You return a gravelly greeting.The sun has only fleeting power over you, great and ancient egg,cold as burrows at night.Your handshake is downright hostileand scrapes, and grates and peelsmy common vegetable skin.You are unruled, unruffleable, cousin of time itself.Mighty stone – you won’t clump under my grip,You won’t provide my toes with a solid ledge.My legs knock around like a puppet’s,neither up nor down, splayed like a dead insect.My species has never evolved wings,so if the earth moves a touch, I fall. I freeze 

Fast, like fungi, puffing spores of storiesinto the crevices of my mind -of unfortunate climbers and their eggshell bones – Memory and imagination for all their sophistication

send venom, send venom through my human veins.

Pedra da Gavea (((

This cool land whose cold hand

rubs my cheeks to a morello shine.This is where trees tessellate darklyand chins of hills jut and taper,bristling with the swish of pines.Here and there, the sun leaves scribbles. 

Here.  Like a laden basket; bending,buckling with its own weight,a riotous crowd of flecked limes,strangely orange and exploding in circles. 

The blade of time slices fruitfrom tree, as if hands were dropping sunsto rot in a damp and muddy terrain -a bruising jump from the wind’s feisty kiss.  

Weighing the heaviness in my bare, cold hands.Judging the speckled skin and plumpness of each,I choose five to drink.  They puncture me with raysjostling into the dark space inside me,whispering of the circles they have lived in and known.