I've become comfortably numb

"Your lips move,
but I can't hear what you're sayin'..."

Terão os seres das mantas brancas cortado e servido a minha língua, terão eles castrado a minha mente do transbordo de outrora? Pois só me saem suspiros pulmonares. Respirarei já a chuva negra no verão?

Deprivado de um mundo exterior, olhava, e não havia fundo. O silêncio transformava-se no ruído de um rádio sintonizado no nada, pela pele sentia o palpitar das artérias, o vibrar incontestável de um diapazão que afinava o mesmo silêncio.

E como num gira-discos relaxadamente à procura do ritmo das rotações, o mundo vem ao de cima. Nada mais do que o despejar da companhia num copo, o momento entre duas gargalhadas, para sempre perdido entre o "ha" e o "ha". Esvaziam-se os pulmões, desprovidos de energia; até que de novo inspiram, num ciclo monótono escondido pela vibração que provocam nas cordas vocais. E mais um gole, para manipular a condição da própria condição de cada um.

The Golden Age of Grotesque

We're the low Art Gloominati, and we aim to depress!

The Scabaret Sacrilegends,
This is the Golden Age of Grotesque!

Evey? E-V... Of course you are.

And yet your smile unveils, burnt into my skin...

There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke

Such a boring life. Out of friends who love the same vibrating sound.

Angie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loa

Grande Brigitte touched her, without warning; she stumbled, almost fell to her knees in the surf, as the sound of the sea was sucked away into the twilit landscape that opened in front of her. The whitewashed cemetery walls, the gravestones, the willows. The candles.
Beneath the oldest willow, a multitude of candles, the twisted roots pale with wax.

Child, know me.

And Angie felt her there, all at once, and knew her for what she was, Mamman Brigitte, Mademoiselle Brigitte, eldest of the dead.

I have no cult, child, no special altar.

She found herself walking forward, into candleglow, a buzzing in her ears, as though the willow hid a vast hive of bees.

My blood is vengeance.

Angie remembered Bermuda, night, a hurricante; she and Bobby had ventured out into the eye. Grande Brigitte was like that. The silence, the sense of pressure, of unthinkable forces held momentarily in check. There was nothing to be seen, beneath the willow. Only the candles.

"The loa... I can't call them. I felt something... I came looking..."

You are summoned to my reposoir. Hear me. Your father drew vévés in your head: he drew them in a flesh that was not flesh. You were consecrated to Ezili Freda. Legba led you into the world to serve his own ends. But you were sent poison, child, a coup-poudre...

There was a terrible pain in her head, blood pounding in her temples... "Please..."

Hear me. You have enemies. They plot against you. Much is at stake, in this. Fear poison, child!

She looked down at her hands. The the blood was bright and real. The buzzing sound grew louder. Perharps it was in her head. "Please! Help me! Explain..."

You cannot remain here. It is death.

And Angie fell to her knees in the sand, the sound of the surf crashing around her, dazzled by the sun.

Inspired, expired.

Ah, just fuck them.

'Are you... Are you sad?'

- No.

'But your... Your songs are sad...'

- My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you. Watch my arms. There is only the dance. These things you treasure are shells.

'I... I knew that. Once.'

But now the sounds were sounds only, no forest of voices behind them to speak as one voice, and she watched the perfect globes of her tears spin out to join forgotten human memories in the dome of the Boxmaker.

'I understand,' she said, some time later, knowing that she spoke now for the comfort of hearing her own voice. She spoke quietly, unwilling to wake that bounce and ripple of sound. 'You are someone's else collage. Your maker is the true artist. Was it the mad daughter? It doesn't matter. Someone brought the machine here, welded it to the dome, and wired it to the traces of memory. And spilled, somehow, all the worn sad evidence of a family's humanity, and left it all to be stirred, to be sorted by a poet. To be sealed away in boxes. I know of no more extraordinary work than this. No more complex gesture...'

Dreams of Green in Dark

All those sins.

Hedgehog's Dilemma

No asilo dos trespassados as ideias tropeçam aos pés. Tropeçam e caem, desfazem-se, liquefazem-se em cacos e escorrem em correntes pelas grandes grades do graduado mentor da morte - o chão, onde tudo tem terrível término. E morrem ali sem mais evoluirem, à luz do esquecimento.

The bowels of the mind

A tragédia no álcool é gaguejar melodramaticamente aquilo que é indescritível. Dissecar com bisturis em mãos débeis e inaptas linhas tremidas na mente, cortando inadvertidamente ora um neurónio aqui, ora uma artéria acolá. É sujo. É deveras humano, mas no pior da sua verdade. A nudez do que se vestia roto, atirada a roupa para o lago juntamente com o discernimento. E aí vemos o que são os humanos. E quem somos como humanos.

Na manhã seguinte - ou na tarde, para os nadadores tardios - acordamos a flutuar no mesmo lago. Tomamos banho, secamo-nos, vestimo-nos, e pensamos "o lago parece ter ficado ainda mais sujo", o que nos faz desculparmo-nos desta forma ridícula. Quão pesadas são as penas das palavras.

Count Zero

"My daddy he's a handsome devil
Got a chain 'bout nine miles long.
And from every link
A heart does dangle
Of another maid
He's loved and wronged."