Poems
Poetry not as craft, but as necessity. Fragments of days that wouldn’t fit in prose.
Most poems are in their original Portuguese. Translations are provided where they exist.
preciso preciso preciso
April 2025
I need I need I need I have I have I have I did I did I did I said I said I said I heard I heard I heard I felt I felt I felt I forgot I forgot I forgot and now I’m here where was it I had to go?
alegria, alegria (joy, joy)
23 April 2025
so beautiful and so fragile if I don’t notice you, you fade if I don’t celebrate you, you leave and I, who thought I knew now all I have to give you is you yourself, joy
joy, joy so light, so brief if I don’t see you, you dim if I don’t hold you, you slip
and I, so sure I knew you am left with empty hands because all I can offer is what you already are: pure joy
I wanted my friends
27 July 2025
what I really wanted was to gather all my friends I really wanted that one day all of them would know how much I missed them but what I really wanted was that last round of drinks that day that hadn’t ended and already left me with that nostalgia what I really wanted was to make clear that I lived and that if one day I stop living that you go on living remember me friends remember our smiles but don’t forget you too will die and between my crying and your smiling I’d rather we laugh together one more day with many, many joys because if life is as brief as it is for the fly or for any being I dare not even name because for my friends those yes, by name I will always recognise you what I really want today is to live like this, simply with that simplicity we stopped having don’t forget or perhaps let me not forget that life was made to be lived in pain in joy in poverty and in wealth let us be happy.
There is an anxious monster inside me
November 2024
There is an anxious monster inside me We tend to talk He makes me uncomfortable Every now and then This tidy little monster Comes out when I’m not able When he leaves There is a different peace Every now and then The relative side effects Left in the void This wonderful monster Walked me through the shadows Brought me into the light How can a being like this coexist with me? Every now and then I realise These small silly things in life That end up becoming Such a terrible monster I must be Without any regret I wanted to be But the road ahead Calls me What a wonderful monster this life made of me!
The unchained world
September 2024
In the quiet corners of a restless world, I dream of a time when silence Is not the pause between bombs, But a lullaby from the earth, rocking its children
Freedom, they say, is a gift, But for the imprisoned, it is a distant star, A glow they see but cannot touch, Fingers stretched through iron bars. What is freedom in a world in chains?
Chains of fear, of greed, That imprison minds more than fists, Where the desire for peace drowns in the noise of war
But there is a whisper, A hope that grows like a seed in the dark, A murmur of dreams that refuse to die, Of voices rising above the clamour
Let us break these chains, Melt them into bridges, Bridges that cross the chasms of hatred, And join us, hand in hand, To a horizon where peace is not merely the absence of war, But the presence of justice, of love, of understanding.
it humbles you
September 2024
It humbles you, Study makes you small. So much to learn, So much to unlearn, Endlessly after all.
sensation
July 2024
What a sensation, strange or not, I was just a boy.
What a sensation, this morning when I woke, everything seemed new.
What a sensation, this strange opacity of all that was and won’t return.
What a sensation, this strange morning, when in disagreement my soul, the image in the mirror, my youthful impulse to believe that every day is a new day to begin.
What a sensation, this strange sensation that my tomorrow is today and that from pilgrim I became the path.
Sometimes, just silence
April 2024
The fascinating thing about words is that the noise they make is observed like dots on a smooth, clean surface. How much is a life worth, how big is a life, how many days or dots does a life have? What is a good life, what is a bad life, what is a non-life? If white reaffirms black, and death affirms life, wouldn’t it be a mundane constant — this volatility of meanings we seek by joining small dots on the timeline? Even time, a line, an intrinsic set of billions and trillions of dots, of times or of lives? History told, written, uttered, added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. History is what remains — it sits in the general fable of every person’s everyday life, of those who lived a hundred years ago and those who will live a thousand years from now. How much is a life worth? How much is a story worth?
There is an incredible place
2024
There is an incredible place That I call paradise It no longer exists here Only in my childhood memories
The people of that patch of earth Had almost nothing, but what they had That yes, they lavished
My people of that place were love My people of that place were resistance My people of that place gathered on Sundays And the clock was our day-to-day social life
Each one from that place that ceased to exist leaves me with longing And that longing feeds the memories Of that place that one day ceased to exist But that sometimes I keep thinking was just right there!
Home, Casa, Lar
10 January 2024
Home, Casa, Lar Strong words. I’ve been around, to many places, Many cities, I carried with me my house, my home. Home is a sacred place, Where we take refuge from the world, Where we are, or should at least be, Protected. Home is made of many small things, But mainly of everything we want it to be. If we bring stones and fire to the home, We’ll have a rough place to live. If we bring sand and water, We’ll have the sweet breeze of a summer beach. But not every day, not every season is the same: Some days we need the stones and the fire to warm us. On others, we need the sea breeze And the tranquillity of the horizon. Life is like this, one day after another. If there is no desire, what remains is affliction. Children, wife, husband, woman, man, father and mother: We are all the same, With the fears, the afflictions, The anxieties and the passions. What unites us goes beyond the chance of the life that brought us here. It is our desire to be and to exist, Our particular dream, In our home.
For my parents
21 January 2024
Every day I wake and see myself in the mirror, even before I look, I already see myself in you: my father, my mother. Today I can understand, as if it were now, all those days, the struggles, the joys, like a film that plays and stays. In the tick-tock of life’s clock, I watch time pass, and I see us. We were three, then five. I miss the Sundays, our little madnesses, those only we understood. I’m happy, because I know: it’s not over. And if God in His great mercy allows, on any given day, on any Sunday, we’ll still sit together. We’ll smile at each other, tease each other, and say, in our way, that we love each other. Because you only understand what that means when time has passed. And when I look in the mirror, I see my father’s eyes. I look deeper, and I see everything of my mother. How I miss you. And I think that’s what saudade is: carrying you inside me, with all the pride in the world. I am the son of Edson and Izabel. And I hope, in this life, to give back everything you gave me. Thank you, papai. Thank you, mamãe.
Vincenzo
August 2020
Vincenzo, I just wanted to let you know You mean the world to me Only a heart as kind as yours Would be generous enough to give without expecting anything from me The many things you did Allowed me to arrive here Two beautiful jewels I now have I don’t carry just your name The one that holds within it the story of the cross Santacroce — the holy cross I carry you with me Each one of our afternoons On any given Tuesday Those glasses without lenses Those Lego pieces on the floor That Eiffel Tower we built together I just wanted to let you know That I carry your story with me We will fly and travel the world We’ll go round and round And everywhere we pass You will be remembered. My Nonno, the storyteller. I love you.
The Chain Not Taken
(with apologies to Frost)
Two chains diverged in crypto wood, And sorry I could not merge them both And be one coder, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent with miners’ oath;
Then took the other, just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it signaled BIP so rare; Though devs for months would stand and glare, Their mailing list debates aflame,
And both that morning equally lay In blocks no node had validated. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing forks lead folks astray, I doubted I’d revert once fated.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere onchain, years and hence: Two chains diverged, and so did I — I took the one with Drivechain nigh, And that has made all difference.