you, growing undesired herbs
over the sandy ashes
of Christopher the Founder
made April everlasting.
Cloudy, bluesy, moody Thursday,
don't you dare bringing back
my aprilian anguish.
Killer, dreamer, softer Thursday,
fastpace and leave my month
quickmove and go away
suicide and show my May.
Minorchord in my ears
a sweet blue little lullaby
while blueing my sun and
graying my sand and
rustycoppering my sea.
Blueish, grayish, saddish Thursday,
die away.
Thou art my summertime jazzy tune
bringing alone thy trombones and
thy trumpets out of a tired-till-death
20th century to coöperate with
Peter A. Gilmore's frustrated desires
of a slow beginning of a fifth month.
Ta. Ta-ta. Ta-ta. Ta-ta. Summertime—
bring me an oxymoron in a box.
Gris nimbus, shine on.
Translucidreaming an Ellington
and a Coltrane and an Eliot.
A verse and ten notes and a scale and a stanza.
Voyez, here's my cool extravaganza.
Recycled sheets wrap some words in a bin
while I cannot know whether it's already May.
May I take your order, sir?
said he, the faceless man in a sloppy suit.
A café crème for Ernest
while I scrabble the moleskine.
A café crème it is.
Double-breasted, I think to myself
though I couldn't comprehend why.
Oh and a brownie, with almonds,
have you macadamias?
I'm afraid not, I beg your pardon.
Then cocoa and almonds.
There were those well-known aprilian clouds
coming out of the hot café crème.
The moleskine closes himself
and the newspaper gets into my hand.
Can't believe the soviets got there first.
Cocoa and almonds, sir.
The coffee clouds outside begin to liquefy.
I appreciate it.
My neighbor, Mr. Schrödinger,
has this cat, its name is Brás Cubas.
It's Brás Cubas who wakes me up in the morning.
It's a crier. Everyday, at 5, it cries.
Out loud. As if its life was being taken
away along with its heart, lung or liver.
Never saw its lit eyes, or Mr. Schrödinger's,
for they never leave the house.
So can't it extinguish nobody's curse entirely,
the isolation, i mean? I asked Mr. Shrödinger
through the door. He didn't answer my question
and Brás Cubas kept on waking me up.
Evey single day.
Nonetheless, I'd rather wander
through the city, 'round the streets
stalking people I don't know,
getting lost and found and lost again.
And poetry, that's the actual freedom of mind.
Yesterday I saw a lady in her mid-40s,
she had the voice of a hummingbird,
and dressed like a gypsy, walking nowhere,
she asked people speak English?, and if they did
she would foresee their fortune, or misery,
with enigmatic words and fake looks.
But I wanted to know what she knew.
Yes, I do speak English.
Eh well well mista, I will reed yo fate.
Please do it.
I see dark. And I see a finish line.
You a crossin' dat line, but you not win.
What does that mean?
Don ask questions! The gods a merciful!
And by that point I thought she was a lunatic.
But wait. I see.
Her looks were now transfigures into stone.
You have very deep secret, mista.
I know, I know!
And you willin' to say it to yo freind,
a woman, is dat?
She love you indeed, but don show.
And you tink you big poet
and writa, I know!
But you will bot be recognised,
not until the end of April, mista.
And be carefulla of the ones who
might know yo secret, it could be bad fo you.
Oh, I see.
And now you owe me a nickel.
I walked away, she didn't know a thing.
O silver clouds of April!
I hail to thee!
Thy heavy waves of falling eyelids
ooze from the smokey cafés
and the untidy beds
and the whiskey-drinkers
and the jazz standards.
O opaque beauty of April skies
and thy precipitation,
come flood these eyes
which no longer see or read.
O April the neverending
the sadist the cruelest
the saddest of the Twelve
the ironic the bully
O die away,
April skies, April clouds,
April chords!
Are you ok, sir?
Sir, are you fine?
Mr. Vímara Peres,
do you feel good?
I'm bringing you tea, sir.
Where am I?
Here's the pill, sir.
Where the hell am I?
Have I dreamed?
Sir, swallow it.
Have I had hallucinations?
Do not spit it, sir, please.
What day is it today?
C'est l'11 Floréal, monsieur.
Open the curtains! Please open!
The usual closed April skies.
So this is not a dream at all?
Calm down, Mr. Vímara Peres,
April is almost over.
When Brás Cubas woke me,
I was drowned in a puddle of not-so-quiet feelings.
Dreams had been rough.
Nevertheless, I got on my feet
and dressed my robe down the staircase.
Goodmorninged all my thirty wives,
fis la toilette, put on the suit,
not as as sloppy as the one from the café crème gentleman
and went out the street.
A café crème for Ernest, I have said,
and double-breasted vanished across the aisle.
Moleskine during coffee,
my coffee was Brazilian, I was told.
The lightning silently shooshed
outside the glass, I spilled coffee
on the corner of the paper.
On the corner of the café, a man,
double-breasted said he called himself Hans,
ordered a cup of coffee. Pure.
I didn't feel sympathy for him,
I went away, but took a glimpse
of the pyramid he drawed on the napkin
with a closed eye over it.
I despised it and escaped,
Hans had never been there before.
But Hans followed me to Rue de Spleen,
where I lived, where I was just a foreigner,
who loved the clouds that passed.
And he knocked on Mr. Schrödinger's door,
whom I had never met, but I couldn't see him,
though I could hear them chatting precisely
and monotonously in German.
I can't understand German, you know,
one day I will. Perhaps.
Didn't invite me to the house, so I stood outside,
with my scrabbled moleskine,
underneath the falling sparks
of aprilian water.
Honey, say the Thirty in a chorus,
dinner is on the table, hurry,
we are running out of rhubarb!
Rhubarb. Rhubarb.
The Thirty wanted me to have rhubarb.
Thake that rhubarb, you Thirty,
and put it up in you past.
