/
They don’t want to see you spin
a globe at full speed
to stop it dead with your index finger or
then have to put up with seeing you theorize
with the brains your flaming skull guards
about a country picked out by chance, you could
say straight out that they don’t want to see you
seal a pact with the toughness of the nut
that all men carry inside them
you could say that they don’t even want to see you
but it’s not that, sweet little bastard, it’s not that
let’s see if you get it once and for all
what they want is to see you dead.
 
/
Mauro Silva’s with his chick
In a Brazilian hovel
They smoke a joint to celebrate
The death of the novel.
 
/
I strummed the strings of my satirical sitar
until an incurable headache began
to dance to the rhythm of a nasty little waltz
on the lid of my brains, turning my
cerebellum into mush like that of a
senator whose head falls into
his plate of spaghetti. I strummed
I strummed that sitar, but I swear
by my days as a Rastafarian
that this will never happen again.
 
/
Here come the Ethiopians with their ruined parkas, the sellotape
sellers, the serenade tamers, the race of
the Arielas with necklaces
after playing games of Super Mario
here they come, they’re at twenty paces,
no, I lie, it’s twenty-five paces
at twenty-two paces they stop
to give a deserved welcome to August
here come the, the, the, after they
sha-sha-sha-shake
from the boulevards, the prefectures, the citadels,
tuning radios to get their courage up
with filthy audio blaring they’re at fourteen paces
no, I lie, they must be at about nine paces, here
come the jaguars after the season,
they’re at three paces, no I lie
they’re here.

/
I’m the new elegant
Though I don’t look brilliant
I’ve got the talent
I may seem distant
But I’m bien-pensant
I love John Frusciant-e
Wait for me a moment
To the front to the front
Like the commandant
I don’t need no grant
To feel important
You can hear it in the amp’.
 
/
To fall in the sharp fingers of a shivering
fever, fine, fluorescent like the orange
needle on the speedometer
to stay in the strangeness, ultra-altered
by the repetitive hours and their stupid repet
ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-tion.
 
/
Some say Südamerika
some say South America others
say Sur América others say
Sud-Americaine.
 
/
The money burnt in the hands or the
hands were burning money
the sequencers gave off a pulse
walls of couplings, the algebraic
formulae served incongruity
in quantities fit for Pantagruel, the mummies
coughed up their disgust.
 
The syrup was mixed with syrup
the bread was made with bread
they founded whole cities
where there were already cities
the cruelty was mathematic
or the mathematics was cruelty
quadrupled by its cold.
 
March’s comrades didn’t want to
see me again, they asked each other what happened
to the chimpanzee who smoked in the film
the Mapocho ran like a river of beer
shifting anything in its way
under the same intact sky it was all a boxing match.
 
/
That cart pulled by an ox
Carries us two
 
That black syrup
Won´t fix the flu
And this little red
Book is for you.
 
/
Assuming I was done I climbed
onto the two-wheeled carriage pulled by an ox
to look for the burning star from which I came.
I took Route 1, I took Route 2,
I followed the constellation of the dirty swans
leaving behind buildings, casting
blasphemies at the heavens in several tongues.
In a crystalline lagoon I stopped
to wash my brain.
 
/
The Ethiopian son is the fruit of the black fig tree that child is
Ethiopian fruit, the most Ethiopian fruit
of the fig tree, I must let him be Ethiopian
or I must not let him be Ethiopian, I must manage him
or not manage him, I must leave him
the option, I must not leave him it, the unmanageable
option, the unreal option
the correctional option…
 
/
Who threw in the towel
Who licked the oven from top to toe
Who built the barrier
Who got here asking
Who stays and who goes.
 
/
All the lions in the world
fit in a football ground.