About a Ten Minute Walk

I still know the route to your front door,
that room of books, the chequered floor.
My shoes come off and then I see
your mother’s hair, turned white with grief.
And then two pictures break my heart.

Isn't it funny that I can forget about people
the way I forget about needing a haircut,
putting people at the back of my head.
It's not funny.

It's about as cool as a school made of ice,
Which is cold, and not cool.

I'm not funny. Or cool. Big. I'm clever
enough to know better:
a school made of ice
would melt in this weather.

White Ghost Bikes

At first it looks like a piece of art, tethered for display -
A delicate use of white paint has covered the whole frame,
Wheels, chain, pedals, and brakes.
The D-lock keeps the back wheel safe
From thieves, if they would dare steal a shrine.
The handlebars, curved like a Rams horn,
Rest on the roadside railings.
It gathers glances from drivers at the lights;
They scan from red to white and read,
This marks the place where he lay dead.

33, with a wife and child who lay asleep
At home. His frame fell flat, then crushed
Under the weight of a lorry turning left.
The wing-mirrors didn’t catch
His thighs push off in a low gear.

He’d contacted his wife by text
As he handled the back roads,
Telling her the new shorts she bought him chaffed,
And wondered if she’d help him slide them off
When he got home.
Instead, they pulled down the zip to show her his face.

Youth Today

The problem with the youth today
is that they’re too much like their folks.
Back in my day, I packed a knife
amongst my pens and showed it off
to my closest friends, just for jokes.

The first time I saw a gun was at home,
I also saw someone die on my road.
We’re just ten years behind the States
Wake up. You know that’s utter shit,
It must be at least twenty-six.

Loucura (a translation)

I am made from Fado,
living the poem that is sung,
My soul is absorbed into my voice -
only the souls of the earth know how to hear.
Cry! Cry! Poets of the land!
Branches from the same tree, we are together in life.
If you weren’t all by my side in sorrow,
then this wouldn’t be Fado.

Cry! Cry! Poets of our land!
My voice is full of pain,
It is because of you that I feel this way.
Our singing, our suffering.
But without you by my side, this wouldn’t be Fado

Translation By Mark Farinha


original Portuguese...

Loucura

Sou do fado! Como sei!
Vivo um poema cantado, de um fado que eu inventei.
A falar, não posso dar-me,
mas ponho a alma a cantar, e as almas sabem escutar-me.
Chorai, chorai, poetas do meu país,
troncos da mesma raíz, de vida que nos juntou.
E se vocês, não estivessem a meu lado, então, não havia fado,
nem fadistas como eu sou!
Esta voz, tão dolorida, é culpa de todos vós
poetas da minha vida.
É loucura! Oiço dizer, mas bendita esta loucura, de cantar e de sofrer.
Chorai, chorai, poetas do meu país,
troncos da mesma raíz, de vida que nos juntou.
E se vocês, não estivessem a meu lado, então, não havia fado,
nem fadistas como eu sou!


Written By Carlos do Carmo
Performed by Mariza

Half Of Me (extract)

You weren’t there that night,
I didn’t feel you around.
The lights were off last night.

Midnight talks had broken down,
The echoes of warm breath rose through
The floor, claiming words but not sound.

I tried hard instead to hear the cat’s mew
Over the pounds of disagreement,
Which I could never sleep through.

(When the neighbours from Tashkent
Went at it, hammer, sickle, and tongs,
I never understood their accent,

Which helped me sleep.) I tried listening to songs,
All sorts, blaring into my ears, but the bass
Of your voice would rattle my lungs

And I would hear nothing else.
My fault for wanting that futon;
Three inches of foam between the floor and my face.

Some mornings I’d wake to my ears being bitten
By the pistol pops of a cowboy’s gun below me.
You were watching Rawhide again.

Ice

Everything seems sorted
For the first time in days.
And we haven’t passed a word
In so many weeks, months.

I wonder if you know,
My guess is you haven’t
Opened your wallet to
see my face. Aged six years old.

My heart is the orphan
That I never was

And I didn’t win
But lost love

Although I held it once
For the same length of time you can hold water
Or blood
Without turning it to ice
And slipping it down my shirt
As I turn my back

Untitled

And now love has flayed
Let us splash the rawness
Which we abrade
With your mother’s whiskey
My father’s wine
Taking turns to turn
The knife

You dropped your bags
And I dropped my towel
It affronted you at first
Then made you speak foul

You thought I said lecturers
When really it was lecherous
Which goes to show
Sex is better left mindless.

I, Beard

I stroke, twist, and knead my cheeks
It doesn’t looks like worship
I make sure of that
In a meticulous use of the guardian.
Instead it seems
I’m thinking
In more depth than The Thinker -
Incandescence, set in bronze, cast
Internationally - although,
I look more like the Affe Mit Schadel.


I blame the
Iberian in me
I.e. my lime-green and red blood,
Iambs that run in my veins - an
Irascible nature pours forth. My
Identity can both boil and molt.

Evolution

In a Catholic school aged ten,
I told the world the truth.
An animated timeline span the length
Of the whiteboard fourteen separate stations
And fourteen separate men.
All equally drawn
With graphite lines on graphic paper,
A picture of some balls in 2D
Didn’t shock my mates, but it was all
The real evidence they needed.

Oreopithecus. Paranthropus. Homo Erectus.
Just one boy trumpeting the names
Like they were footballers,
They say they ate from the Cola nut, which is why we love the stuff,
No one understood the heresy,
Except Sir, who knew something we didn’t.
He was young and had a glint in his eye.

On a pew gripping our thighs, tension
Hung from the monkey bars of the assembly hall.
A few murmurs were read
And as I said cheese and clapped like a seal
Dmitri collected the award
For his theory of dinosaurs
(His felt-tip work was what won it).


Copyright Mark Farinha.