Friday, May 25, 2018

virada (contra)cultural


a contracultura
contrariou-se:

virou-se
a cultura

do contra!



Copyright © 2018 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

dureza


é dureza 

essa cama macia,
esse quarto vazio,
essa casa cheia, 

de tristeza...


Copyright © 2018 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Black Women, by Yzalú & Eduardo

Black Women[1]

Yzalú & Eduardo

While the leather whip cut the skin
The metabolized pain made us stronger within
The colony produced much more than captives
It made heroines who, to not breed slaves, killed their offspring
We weren’t defeated by social invalidation
We survived being invisible in films and television
The system may even turn me into a servant
But it can’t make me think I should be subservient
While conventional women fight against sexism
Black women struggle to beat sexism, prejudice, racism
They fight to reverse the process of annihilation
That incarcerates colored people in cubicles in prison
There ain’t no #metoo movement to protect us
From the violence of submitting ourselves to scrubbing toilets
From reading in the bathrooms of the ivory tower
Get out, niggers! Yeah…
Through whitening I’m not your typical beauty
But in all fairness I’m the personification of energy
Slave ships and nicknames given by the enslaver
Failed in their mission to make me feel inferior
I’m not the subaltern that power believes it has built
My place is not in the calvaries of Brazil
If one day I have to join drug dealers in the slum
It’s because justice is blind, deaf, and dumb
Security guard, you don’t need to be afraid,
I know you’re following me, because of my looks, my braids
I know that in your training to protect private beaches
They taught you black women hide store products in their breeches
I don’t want butter or shampoo in packets
I want to stop the machine that gives me mops and buckets
To make my people understand that it’s inadmissible
To be content with scholarships for failing schools
I’m tired of seeing my brothers and sisters in numbers
Of single moms, inmates, and hookers
New chains of steel don’t imprison my mind
They don’t buy me and don’t make me show my behind
Black women don’t get used to being called names
It ain’t better to have straight hair, slender frames
Our facial features are like letters in writing
That keep alive the greatest crime of all time
Stand up for those who were thrown in the sea
For the bodies that were fleshed in the pillories
Don’t let them make you think that our national duty
Is to attract gringo tourists by shaking our booties
They can pay us less for the very same services
Attack our religions, call us devil worshipers
Belittle our Afro-Brazilian cultural contribution
But they can’t remove the pride of our black skin
Black women are like Kevlar blankets
Prepared by life to withstand
Sexism, gunshots, Eurocentrism
They hurt but don’t hold our neurons captive


[Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQRJfD5PTnI]



[1] Translated from the Portuguese by Marco Alexandre de Oliveira 

rio de luz(es)

do alto do morro
surpreso:

embaixo as janelas,
em cima as estrelas,

o céu e a terra
acesos...


Copyright © 2018 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira