fleeting things

I tried to look at the starts tonight, and finding none I loked around me. The sight was a real delight to my eyes: centuries old walls looked at me, surrounding me with history and so many untold stories about this place I know inhabit. This place that is so familiar to me now, that I can call each blade of perfectly tamed grass by its natural name.
But the summer night wind blew sideways and I realized that life will blow me away and take me places that are yet unknown to me, and I might never come back to those walls again. This is the last time. I try to take everything in at the same time, but memories fade almost as fast as they are created.
I will have pictures, I say, comforting myself. But how often will I look at them? How often will I remember what I felt, how the cold breeze felt against my skin, how desolating it was to see a starless night.
All my decisions, all my mistakes, all my acts of valor will guide me inevitable to my death and then all my memories will die with me.

Orange Blossom (Draft 3)

It is my name they want, my claim. Not the gold.

There is no gold. There is no forged iron

It should be a party, but it’s just me, some

toothless matrons and unwashed maids.

My mother let’s a single tear scape from her

good eye. She pins my hair down, scrubs

my feet, gives me a bouquet of sad flowers.

The tear leaves a white trail on her face. Discreetly

she squeezes the vial in my hand and I know

she knows my secrets. My secret afternoons

in the hay, in the abandoned towers.

I thought it was called happiness

Now I know

it was the devil

He is everywhere, looking at me from the

church walls. Sometimes the blond fallen angel,

sometimes a beast with a trident. The vial of swine

blood is my protection spell, the shield against

my sins — maidenhood is no redder than pig’s blood

The vial burns a hole in my dress. I try to conceal it,

I have to conceal it, but all the men are looking

— beasts adorning shields and breastplates,

cloaks of different colors, all tones of black and

grey — Anointed Knights, Lords and Sold Swords.

They call me sinful, false, barbarian,

so many meaningless names…

still they want me wedded and bedded,

but not under the sacred stars, not our way.

My sweet days are over, the haystack boys

are dead, heads preserved in tar.

The veiled threat

The silent promise of death

I hope for him, Sir or Lord, to be fond of

oysterwenches and washerwomen, bring me a

bastard or two every so years. That would be a

good life. Bracing myself and that goddamned

vial for the destiny of a gauntleted hand against my face

I make me strong with my own armor: A moth

eaten dress, the veil that once was tablecloth, a

crown made of orange blossoms.

Tamed, I surrender myself to him, dressed

like a wife, like a mother, cloaked in silence

until he is wounded by war or sickness

I will have his blood then,

I will have him suffer.

The Worst Year

You should have been poor, black and stupid

You should have been the monkey we saw on TV,

            dancing full of feathers in a crowded avenue.

You shouldn’t understand what we said, but you did.

            You did.

I don’t really know what we were expecting.

A maid, a nanny? A piano teacher, maybe?

You were no such thing. You couldn’t do anything.

            Cook, wash, clean, fix, teach.

You had maids and gardeners in that damned rainforest

            from where you came. You had never been in

            the forest.

You shouldn’t have been light brown and rich.

You should have been the monkey we saw on TV.

            Not this smart ape, humiliating our Aryan child,

            making us look stupid, simpletons.

  

On a day of exceptional compliance we told you that
Arbeit macht frei. It was a compliment, 
            you see?

You never complied after that. You still lived there,

            in the attic, above our heads

but only physically.

You should have been poor, black and stupid

You should have been the monkey we saw on TV

a maid, a nanny, a cook.

A simpleton. A slave.

Amnesia/Amnesty

I knew a boy once, but he disappeared

one day he was white teethed smile biting

on half a stale bread, swimsuit and bare feet,

the next he was statistic, room tidied up

by a grieving mother, his obvious absence.

Once, looking at a school picture she wished

she had given him away. That was the pain

talking. She really wished for a body

to mourn, because him being alive was so…

that hope was like anti-freeze poisoning

killing so painfully, so slowly. Merciless.

Alone at night she could almost hear his knock at the door,

the lame excuse for being almost two year late for supper.

She wished, realistically speaking,

that a bullet had gotten to him

before the blunt knife to his scalp,

the ice axe to his kneecap,

the pliers to his healthy teeth.

Angrily, she cursed his image ­

­­­– the sepia toned portrait of a tanned boy

stepping on a decrepit soccer ball–

She had taught him to lie with a smile,

keep his head low, salute and shut up.

She taught him so well! She taught him

to kiss the flag when he wanted to burn it,

to praise the president, when he wished

to be the national revolution/traitor/martyr

She cursed his name, the name she chose

for him so carefully, so lovingly.

She wished he could have been mute

or even blind to the absence of people

living without fear. Once there was a boy

in that house, but he disappeared.

Fire

I prefer the fresh wind of an open window,

a quicker end, a body to put in the coffin.

I can remember what it felt like

when the fire was eating at me,

the smell of barbecue, the fear,

the scream stuck in my throat.

I remember the anguish, but the pain?

The pain is gone. The pain is a thing of the present.

Once I felt it, but not anymore.

It is my father’s eyes I think of

when I think of the pain, looking

at me in that picture. Was I five or four?

He knew I was something else

besides dolls and church and well behaved.

Now, the years having passed

I wish I could have put this fire down

before it consumed me, but I didn’t.

It was a harmless type of warmth and I

drank it like a good cup of java,

I liked the feeling of it warming my belly,

I liked the danger of it burning my thong.

I have learned (too late) that

fire is the enemy of our gender.

It burned us once in the bonfires

It burned us twice in factories

But it burns the strongest inside.

It burn as red as rage, as hot as passion,

relentless.

The brain is really a funny thing.

I remember the bows in my hair,

the pink dress, the smell of lavender

in my wrists,  the smell of

tobacco on your fingers,

but not much more.

The brain is a really funny thing.

I can still remember the fire, the fear,

The smell of frying meat,

but I really can’t remember how

or why

I let you burn me in your pyre.

It doesn’t really matter now.  The pain is gone.

I feel only the wind in my face,

the absence of your hands in my hands,

the freedom of forgetting. 

great South-American novel

I wanna
write
the
Great
American Novel, I do,
the problem is
I am not American
I am South-American
says my skin
says my voice
says my name,
even if my name was changed for me
(or did I change it myself?),
I am still not Die-Anna,
I am Djy-Ana, Diana Leite,
not Dianne L'itchy, as the gringos say.

The aliens call me in the streets
and I never answer instinctively
as I would if my Dad called me: "Dica",
Dica da Bahia,
singing Garota de Ipanema in
Português,
tanning in the beach,
swimming like a fish,
yet
here I am
in their land,
their territory
yet here I am,
the Alien is me,
the strange Stranger estranged,
the foreigner
trying to beat the gringos
at the Gringo's Game
so I let them call me
Die-Anna, Die-Anne,
Miss L' itchy, Miss Lie-Tea,
whatever they wanna,
as long as I keep on
beating the gringos
at the Gringo's Game.

Call for rain.

Call for rain.

There

is nothing

like a desert sunset,

all tones of red, pink and

yellow, the beauty

surrounded by

dryness,

the colors

of the

wind and a

vast emptiness

on the landscape, the only

sounds being that

of snakes and

lizards.

There

is really

nothing in the

desert for me besides

dryness, now my

body and soul

yearn

for more

fertile

lands, lands

filled with the same

rich green that fills my

mind with some

sort of hopeful

memory.