crystal

– Haroldo de Campos (Trans. gringocarioca)

nowhere left to go but home

there is nowhere left to go but home
there is nowhere left to go
there is nowhere left

there is nowhere left to go but home
there is nowhere left but home
there is nowhere but home

there is nowhere left to go but home
but there is nowhere to go
there is no home left

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

hyperhypocriticitus

Do what I say, not what I do.

Do what I do, not what I say.

Say what I do, not what I say.

Say what I say, not what I do.

What do I do? What do I say?

Say what I say! Do what I do!

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

organic poetry ...

“Our languages are on the road to formal simplification, abbreviated, restricted forms of language are emerging .… Does this restricted and simplified use of language and writing mean the end of poetry? Certainly not. Restriction in the best sense – concentration and simplification – is the very essence of poetry. From this we ought perhaps to conclude that the language of today must have certain things in common with poetry, and that they should sustain each other both in form and substance. In the course of daily life this relationship often passes unnoticed. Headlines, slogans, groups of sounds and letters give rise to forms which could be models for a new poetry just waiting to be taken up for meaningful use. The aim of the new poetry is to give poetry an organic function in society again, and in doing so to restate the position of poet in society.”

(Eugen Gomringer, “From Line to Constellation.” Trans. Mike Weaver)

alcohol and constellations ...

“Everyone has his own alcohol. I have alcohol enough in existing. Drunk from feeling myself, I wander and walk to the right place. If it’s time, I go to the office like anyone else. If it isn’t time, I walk to the river, stare at the river like anyone else. I’m the same. And behind this, my sky, I secretly turn into a constellation, and I have my infinity.” (p.40)

(Bernardo Soares / Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. Trans. Alfred Mac Adam)

stop ...

stop doing this stop doing that stop working so hard stop worrying so much stop thinking about things stop wishing things were different stop hoping for a break stop believing what you hear stop the nonsense stop it stop it now you’d better stop or else stop smoking stop biting your nails stop staying up so late stop staring at the computer screen stop typing stop searching stop looking for who knows what stop scanning the headlines stop surfing the net stop wasting time stop procrastinating stop stalling stop dillydallying stop lollygagging stop fidgeting stop your whining stop crying over spilt milk stop arguing stop complaining about this that and the other stop comparing yourself to others stop being so critical stop being so mean stop being so naïve stop being silly stop being indifferent stop fighting the system stop trying to change the world stop meddling in other people’s affairs stop messing around stop fucking up stop jerking off stop getting distracted stop losing track stop feeling down on yourself stop fooling yourself stop running away stop hiding stop making excuses stop saying the same thing over and over again stop repeating yourself stop asking questions stop changing the subject stop everything stop … and start over

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

From the time of Martime ...

“For where truth builds, and lying overthroes,
One truth in rime, is worth ten lies in prose.”

(John Lyly, Mar-Martime – 1589)

Bloom for President!

“(Impassionedly.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bug-bears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev...”

“My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.”

“I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival, with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.”

(James Joyce, Ulysses)

Pornosophical philotheology ...

"So that gesture, not music, not odours, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm."

(James Joyce, Ulysses.)

postcreation ...

“His words were then these as followeth: Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation.”

“And as the ends and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First saved from water of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see from what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his whenceness.”

(James Joyce, Ulysses)

oquadradoquadrado

A ti, Tati ...

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

popcorn factor

It was a dark and stormy night …

[insert story here]

It’s gonna be a bright, sunshiny day …

[play music there]

THE END

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

NO-THING ...

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

On Nothing in Reality ...

“Nothing. But there is no such thing as nothing. The word is already something. Try to imagine nothing without the word or the concept of nothing.”

– John Cage, notes on 4’33’’

“A word can replace an object in reality.”

– René Magritte, “Words and Images”

The Art of the Word

Poetry is the art of making words out of the Word ...

A poesia é a arte de fazer versos do Verbo …

– gringocarioca

after a long rain ...

after a long rain

a lone weeping willow

bathes in the sunlight

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

colors ...

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

spring falls upon midwinter summer ...

comparative literature

Apples, oranges, and pears. Nothing compares. An apple. An orange. A pear. An apple is an apple. An orange is an orange. A pear is a pear. Nothing compares. An apple is not an orange. An orange is not a pear. A pear is not an apple. An apple is not an orange or a pear. An orange is not a pear or an apple. A pear is not an apple or an orange. Nothing rhymes with orange. An orange sounds like an orange. An apple and an orange and a pear are not a pair. An apple looks like an apple and tastes like an apple. An orange looks like an orange and tastes like an orange. A pear looks like a pear and tastes like a pear and even sounds like a pair. Nothing compares. An apple does not look or taste like an orange or a pear. An orange does not look or taste like a pear or an apple. A pear does not look or taste like an apple or an orange. An orange is an orange. An orange is orange. An apple is a fruit. An orange is a fruit. A pear is a fruit. All fruits are fruit. Fruits are fruity by definition. Fruits are not vegetables and vegetables are not fruit. Fruits look and taste like fruit. Vegetables look and taste like vegetables. Fruits do not look and taste like vegetables and vegetables do not look and taste like fruit. There are exceptions. There are exceptions to exceptions. Etc. Vegetables are edible. Fruit is edible. An apple is edible. An orange is edible. A pear is edible. To eat an apple, an orange, or a pear! Nothing compares. There are many kinds of apples. There are many kinds of oranges. There are many kinds of pears. Apples have different colors. Oranges have similar colors. Pears have different colors. Apples are red. Apples are green. Apples are yellow. Oranges are orange because an orange is orange. Pears are red. Pears are green. Pears are yellow. Pears are brown. Apples are white on the inside. Oranges are orange on the inside. Pears are white on the inside. Apples can be brown on the inside. Oranges are not brown on the inside or outside. Oranges are not red. Oranges are not yellow. Oranges are not green. Oranges are orange. Period. Pears can be brown on the inside. Fruit rots. Apples rot. Oranges rot. Pears rot. Apples have various origins. Oranges have various origins. Pears have various origins. Apples are from temperate climates. Oranges are from tropical climates. Pears are from temperate climates. A temperate climate is not a tropical climate. A tropical climate is not a temperate climate. There are various fruits in various climates. An apple is sweet. An orange is sweet. A pear is sweet. An apple is sour. An orange is bitter. A pear is bland. An apple can be too hard. An orange cannot be too hard. A pear can be too hard. An apple can become sauce. An apple can become butter. An orange can become marmalade. A pear can be baked in a pie. An apple can be baked in a pie. An orange is not baked in a pie. An orange can become juice. A pear can become juice. An apple can become juice. There is fruit juice and there is vegetable juice. Fruit juice is sweet. Vegetable juice is sweet. Fruit juice is sour. Vegetable juice is sour. Fruits are fruit and vegetables are vegetables. There are frozen vegetables. There is frozen fruit. There are fresh vegetables. There is fresh fruit. There are raw vegetables. There is ripe fruit. There are cooked vegetables. There is fried fruit. There are dried fruits. There are dried apples. There are dried oranges. There are dried pears. There are also nuts. There are also seeds. Apples have seeds. Oranges have seeds. Pears have seeds. Fruits have seeds. Vegetables do not have seeds. Vegetables come from plants. Fruits come from plants. Fruit flowers from plants. Fruits are the fruit of plants. Vegetables are parts of plants. There are edible plants. There are inedible plants. There are plants with toxic effects. There are plants with narcotic effects. There are plants with hallucinatory effects. There are mushrooms with hallucinatory effects. Mushrooms are not plants. Herb is a plant. Weed is a plant. Grass is a plant and a weed. Plants are planted in gardens. Vegetables are planted in gardens. Fruit is not planted in gardens. Fruit trees are planted in gardens. There are apple trees. There are orange trees. There are pear trees. Apple trees bear apples. Orange trees bear oranges. Pear trees bear pears. Nothing compares. A tree is a tree. A tree is not an animal. There are many kinds of trees. Not all trees bear fruit. Trees have roots. Trees have leaves. Trees have flowers. Trees have seeds. Trees stem from the ground and branch out. Trees form forests. Trees are cut down. Trees are planted. There is deforestation and there is reforestation. Now there is a pair! Planting trees can bear a lot of fruit. There can be lots of fruit. There can be lots of apples. There can be lots of oranges. There can be lots of pears. Apples for everyone! Oranges for everyone! Pears for everyone! Apples, oranges, and pears! Nothing compares.

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

the only lonely cure

Are you suffering from anxiety or depression?

Have the constant stress and rapid pace of life got you down?

Are you tired all day, having trouble sleeping at night, or just unable to get up in the morning?

Does it feel like you carry the weight of the world upon your shoulders?

Do you experience existential anguish in light of the absurd?

Then what are you waiting for? ACT NOW!

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SUICIDE^® makes you feel better than ever, or else like you’ve never felt before.

*Warning: Possible side effects of SUICIDE^® include (but are not limited to) loss of vision, hearing, sense of touch, taste, and smell, dehydration, skin discoloration, bleeding, loss of breath, unconsciousness, and even death. Please consult your local witch doctor before you try SUICIDE^®.

Copyright © 2008 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira