WHEN DAWN ARISES
ANDRÉ FERNANDES
Notes On Poetry
BOOK III
MARCH 2015
THE SENSELESS STARE OF THE STARS
and it begins, slowly
thru the vowels of the night
as they laugh on that unending spring
and dance fiercely as night collides
& dawn arises on the other side
of morning.
their senseless stare,
their last everlasting light
has been corrupted, ultimately,
and has it has been before
so it will be now,
while we watch, alive,
at death’s claws reaping stars in the skies.
O they will rise again,
empty souls will be refilled
& spring will come again,
after the rain and the thunder,
and knights shall be revived
& swing swords from their graves.
O they will shout out of blood,
as they have nothing to lose,
& winter shall forever be banished,
leaving the ground to flourish,
and maids shall be fair again
& no longer be lost.
To celebrate life
is to celebrate the unknown –
where we live –
uncertain of the days
of the nights we
have but left.
I reminisce springs,
as if my eyes were there before,
surpassing the ages of men,
as if I was alive for a long time
& couldn’t tell for how long.
I watch the dawns & the dusks
just as the knights of old,
and as springs come & go
the eyeballs lose their motion
& the stare slowly becomes tired
& wasted, as if stuck in
eternal dream of life
before life itself
has ever happened.
SUNSET OVER THE CITY OF STONE
Can I kiss your lips
now that the sun set his wings?
(rest him well & forget the day.)
We should wait
until the time is right.
and what I did
I kissed her, I forgot
the time. Time didn’t exist then,
it doesn’t exist now. It’s
us and us alone. There is
no such thing as time.
So we were one & one became two.
We walk on parallel sidewalks,
unaware that we are faded
to stick with each other
forever and ever.
It’s still the same sun
that sets and rises,
but that golden magic has
long been lost.
I still have
the memory, the exact nature
of your lips, locked inside
my heart of soul,
somehow,
somewhere.
As I grow old and rise
to be a man,
I realize, sun or no sun,
that a kiss is untouchable,
and nothing could ever
be so pure as a kiss.
A kiss is untouchable
even
by the jaws of Time.
THE EYES
the Eyes dance
& adjust to a quick stare -
adjust quickly to fit
their sight;
and the moist stare poises
& erupts
in eternal harmony
as if
childhood had
returned
again.
She joins the music
in a slow place, gently
conquering every soul –
far from the heart,
the core,
the cloth of the dress,
the outskirts of a city
filled w/ impatience
& unaware of its own creations,
unaware of its own
existence.
the Eyes feel death near
and dance, and how they dance -
as if they’d never had
a dance before.
LOSING IT
People are losing their
eyesight, bit by bit,
when they expect
things to happen,
doors to open,
doors to shut
& to close.
People have forgotten
the magic of a smile,
the magic of the
world outside,
and what magic can do
for them.
People need to be reminded
of the future they’re
holding in their hands,
before it’s too late
to start again.
They work too much
and forget about sex,
and music, and they forget how to dance -
and when they dance, can they really dance
or are they just dancing for the sake
of a dance?
WHEN DAWN ARISES
When dawn arises,
we shall rise again,
to die
or be born
somewhere else.
Listening
Django’s guitar again,
as the memories of the past
try to keep up with me.
I close the doors of reality,
I open myself to my dreams;
I live in a castle, beyond the sea,
near the gates of the golden sun,
where gods rebel & angels fall
out of season.
Love is the answer.
It is also a question
and a truth
and a fallacy
and a woman in black
and a woman in white
and a dry lake
too high to fly on little wings
when all they wanted
was to sleep forever
in the arms of
heroine.
Things get too soft
too son;
my ink dries
& planets die for
no reason;
girls smile at me
as I lose
their sight in the
crowd;
And in the morning,
I’ll be
drinking my coffee
waiting
for the universe
to erupt
or to explode,
because
life has granted me
one chance
to watch the sun
&
not ask questions
about
the stars and the moon
and
all those hidden ways
and
hidden secrets,
and
I try hard not to
but
I have to wonder:
why me?
IN THE SUN
Well we tried.
We tried
and you weren’t
a hole in the ace.
Maybe I was no
Jack Of All Trades myself.
But whatever it was that I was to you
it was the real me
and that can confuse people, sometimes,
because people get confused, sometimes,
but not you –
You couldn’t never be fooled;
A shadow, they will tell you,
is no more than the absence of light
in the material world,
but
we didn’t live there, that’s
what I’d like to believe,
and I hope I was bright enough for you.
Of all the gin joints in the whole world,
Rick, and she does that to me.
Still I’ll try. Life has happened
to me. It has also happened
to you. It has happened
to all of us, the
beings in the light.
And whatever happens,
let me tell you, I’ll never
let you go,
because Love, I found out,
doesn’t always happen
in the sun.
JE TE VERRAIS DANS ME RÊVES
the hour of the sleep,
when the soul strives
to find the core of the heart
dancing endlessly in loose.
It's terrifying
not knowing when it’s coming to hit you -
just like Death -
you don't feel a thing;
you don't feel the brain
shutting down.
and there's the fear
of never waking up again,
as night embraces your mind
and picks the most secret of all your secrets
& with them she reinvents the weirdest scenes
of another bald dream;
and another bizarre nocturne show
of buried memories slowly begins -
and faces and places slowly rise
with moments long gone by
or made new -
which sometimes coincide
with what you
want.
A kiss.
A dream of her and me.
Of all the gin joints in the world, Rick,
of all the dreams,
and she seizes them all in my sleep.
And as spring and autumn mingled together
that was when I knew
it was just a dream.
You can always tell
when you're in the middle of a dream -
there's always that flaw
in the cloth.
Green trees with falling leaves,
only in a dream could nature be so imperfect
and yet, so awkwardly beautiful.
TO THE OLD SAILOR
to the old sailor
who once grew a beard
and ever since then
has been fondly allowing
her to grow,
for he was not afraid
how it might look in its whole purpose
because he would rather
not have been born at all
than to never set his eyes
on the miracle of
nature
and even thou he failed
all there was to fail,
for that, he was the wisest men
I have ever known,
and the nights arrived and disappeared,
and the days began and ended with the same colors,
and the sun rose and went down,
and he grew old beneath
the stars,
poor in all earthly things,
but the gold in his soul, he knew it well,
would forever replenish -
untouched and preserved
as he now rules with no bounds
down the realms of endless summers.
TO THE WESTERN STAR CIVILIZATION
to the old decayed & tired
western civilization,
I watch you from afar,
like a beautiful woman striving
to find new streets
to spread
beauty & joy & wonder.
you tell me I have to gather gold.
that kind of gold
has poisoned your soul, and all your
statues rot at the
gates of the your forgotten cities.
you tell me I have to figure out life.
that kind of mystery
I shall never try to understand, because
the laws of time
are not within our reach.
I have nowhere to be, and I stay the same,
wherever I may roam,
because life I carry inside me
is the life I choose to wield in brave daylight.
Western Star Civilization.
There is a strange appealing freedom
lying outside your perimeter,
and an innocent beauty still preserved
in every forest, in every river,
in every corner bathed by the sun.
Your towers became too high.
They are bound to fall.
I know you lost your inner child
long before you were born,
and the magic that you can’t perceive
is worse than death,
if that is not what it means:
to be alive and ignore the stars
and the moon and the sun
and the spring in your window
and the winter in a warm fireplace,
that’s what I feel when I look at your children -
people hidden away in cold empty mansions,
in safe haven,
wasting away, killing the day,
exchanging
a life of thrills
for a life on the hills, in the same
lazy daily comfort,
behind the walls of fear.
and I watch you, western people,
and you look like you can barely stand on your feet,
but I see how you despise every other human
outside your life.
I look at your houses and families
and I see nothing that warms my heart,
and I still remember a
little girl with a few matchsticks
and she was the happiest girl
with a few matchsticks
I had ever known.
TO THE MAN WHO STOOD BETWEEN THE WIND
to the man who stood between the wind,
a time when the gods mocked us and
awaited our failures,
and you took your whole and made them
sweat water from their unholy faces.
I shall never forget your sacrifice,
the life you gave to defy the death of us all,
against all odds.
They say the world belongs to the dices,
well that can’t be true.
I see how you changed the color of the days
and that can’t ever be fate.
I shall always
remember.
the gods shall never forget you too
as your name now blows against
the whistle of the wind.
A MOMENT LOST IN TIME
to the little girl
who impersonated true love
& brought it into my world,
many came after you.
many I can’t remember their faces,
but you I know I’m bound to always carry
within the core of whatever it is
that I am (or must be).
your face haunts me and will forever ramble
somewhere inside my electric brain
which I do not seek
to shut down.
because no matter how many
teenage tears we both shared,
we were still warm plants
seeking for sunlight,
and when our raw lips first collided,
the entire world stopped
and watched us,
from afar.
Annihilation. To kiss you
was reason enough
to be alive.
Poetry was born
the moment you and I lost innocence
and it became object of nostalgia.
in the middle of the desert,
in the reaches of whatever it is that I am
or must be,
I know I’ve poured ma
gnificent love into the dry canyons of this world,
and for that I am grateful dead.
TO THE CITADEL POETS
the trick is to feel it
and write it down
later.
and never try hard
with words.
be simple.
there’s a strange beauty
in all simple things.
I BELONG WITH THE RIVER PEOPLE
I wait all spring
to see those long gone green summer days
and feel the sun
burning my skin.
I taste the cold waters
of the mountain,
and I drink from the leaves.
I feel the hot air in my lungs
and exude all hopes and dreams
because I’m living in my fantasies.
ODE TO JOY
There’s beauty on a misty morning.
My father & I, we rule the meadows
where we labor under the sunny sky.
My woman would understand.
A man’s grandeur lies in contemplation
of both Youth & Old Age...
WINGLESS
as the years went by
She lost her inner child
and turned into
a woman of stone -
motionless, empty bowl,
constantly craving
for my attention.
I left her in the rain
to grow.
Perhaps she’ll
find
her own sun.
I hope she makes it.
She
has so much to offer
to
the world, and she
doesn’t
know it yet.
Still,
I love her more
as the seasons change
& constantly rearrange
their childlike colors.
I grew
cold myself, as I rejected
countless
women over the years.
I could never
set foot outside
will my
heart trembles
&
seeks the same
sun.
a mere eye to eye
would be enough
to shatter
this fragile shell.
and I play my guitar –
my fingers bleed
as I don’t give a damn,
because life is pain
and pain is beautiful,
and life is beautiful.
angels who fell in love w/ God
& became forbidden,
and silly men, on the edge of their edges,
jumped the cliff, with no wings,
for no reason.