All Tomorrows

  underneath the sky of mother-of-pearl no more need to close my eyes and drive over cliff for this is right. this is right. I stand upright on this big bright ball I do what I do love whom I love and that is you. in love with life. so short. go

we plunge into each other's eyes and live in here making everything right our souls the world

the virginal field of white flows up into the whiteness of no sky when a sudden speck of black becomes a deer becomes a tear from deep within a dream your postcard was the silent world now through which we drove, my heart white with the hum of love

after everyone died along with her after all caved in in the end the year turned inside again and the light withdrew into here into this warm core of passion where you and I have been creating a new universe for everyone to live in

  as I drive aimlessly along the late october coast under a dreamtime sky, I finally see that there are three ways to settle this: let her go - but she just won’t. so fuck myself and drown her with me – look love, I drive hands-free at 110 mph! accept her and live among ghosts forever. give myself to you. the choice is easy. I won’t drive over the cliff. take my hand.

no, I have not forgotten nor am I forgetting, but she lives in dreamtime now - too far away for a phone call. as for me, I've found shelter from the cold, and as I ponder all my impossible pasts and possible futures, I mostly hope I will live a little longer. this is what you become when you've lived at close quarters with death

o ar é de ardósia coberta de giz que escorre traçados cris de calor neste terrário hermético onde brotam orquídeas carnudas e um vaporoso cio no substrato do nosso amor perfeito

all conveivable tomorrows burn their bright spears into right now right here how to disentangle love and hopes?

I write prologues no longer, but epilogues to grapes and tides and honk the horn as I drive across the horizon of the day after

here you are, in my car so perfectly yourself so perfectly you so perfectly next to me at the wheel, where I overlap her ghost and have become perfectly she. freedom is indeed a concise ache for it implies nothingness & free fall, driving with no brakes through the black hole in the sunset-bleed sky into the darkening ocean. I roam the world over the cliff

amidst the late-summer hills, at the still heart of the sunlit bougainvillea cottage, we kiss until we are one on the old kitchen table in the cool shade and the pantry smell of ripe apples. hold still, as She becomes you and You becomes she and moves on to a world of her own. it is alright now we've become We

the river narrows into a           sombre still pool in the black cave of ancient drawings, unforgettable horrors, world-ends cast in rock, and the stale air of doom --  why do you do this? , she asks -- to be sightless and hide from these weathers: I am more familiar with desolation and a ghost as vast as history. what must I sacrifice so I may roam the world again? Photo  Historas de Cronopios

it all seems so easy our hearts flow effortlessly until we poke a silly joke into an open wound and discover the mind-numbing power we have over each other

of course it is early of course I have to make a conscious effort not to plug her in the hole in my heart not to confound her with ghosts not to erase her own life that I love so much of course it is early the alternative though is sheer horror: losing her losing myself

in this first weather of so many to come, her radiant face pervades the liquid orange light inside the warmth of our sphere of astounding wonder and skin aglow. around our sanctuary of glass dragonflies scuttle across the humming lake, scouring the hours, while time slows down until we are entrapped, immovable in its golden treacle. all was new when we emerged at dawn ready

           under the hot grey sky            casting microwave radiation.        at the dark heart        of the jungle.      deep down      in the ravine. we locked ourselves away in the sanctuary by the blackest pool – no food, no sleep, no water, no light – and buried our teeth in each other’s shoulders engulfed in the fluids of our souls until we became a single steaming ghost never to let go ever

ever more rarely now you join me in the tomb that I guard to shed a tear with me for old times' sake, oh my roadside companion family of all these years through which we were there for each other. but at the end of the day you always return to the homes that you still have of unsevered lives where every hour and every day have not been amputated. you throw stones at me now, bible-loads of them, because I will no longer guard this tomb for all the pay I get is the deadly silence after the daytime crowd is gone, and I soak your popcorn in my tears. we were eight at first, then briefly seven. count me out as well now, for this boat, this house, this no-more tomb, has risen anchors. the doors are open, the river is wide

the dark wild waters of passion and despair had flushed my soul - the earthquake of my rites was over. I woke up in a canoe, gently swaying on the river and my mourning had changed to Indian white. sore with a pleasant post-fever ache, I sat up and inspected the shifted landscape, the unknown walls on the far bank, and in the clear distance the canyon opened up to an uncharted land, with brand-new mountain ranges and a sky promising a myriad new weathers. you were headstrong in life, you are headstrong even now, my beloved ghost. but it is beside me that you travel now. I picked up the paddles and began to row.

    the river sat the sun on me and spat me out again, and yesterday hurts so much today. I wanted to give her my world in my open palms, share all that I know, all that I have, all that I am, but none of it is mine alone ( should I add 'yet', as an unlikely flourish of hope? in my dream last night, drunk with passion for her, I reversed the car into a wall. your ghost was furious at the collateral damage.) today all is silent again, gone her voice lips eyes, and my river flows above the land, in all its untouchable dark glory. so I darken myself to jump into the black sky. I travel light, I travel with a ghost  

on this day today, I performed all the rites in all the places of rituals, to be able to let go of her, and with her my so recently acquired hope, and my daughter’s hopes. it hurts to the bone to relinquish her sheer exquisiteness, and all that we might become. but you see, the reptile brain is but a blind predator, so I must drink of this black river and my darker tears until the night fills me completely, until the sun can rise in me one day. not now. there is much darkness to drink still. so I ate from the black berries at the altar of farewells, and stole the only, the sweetest kiss. her smile hid her eyes and she said,  I knew . I turned and went away, as all tomorrows faded into a liquid golden shadow against the summer's end sunset and the darkening green hills. and as I leaned my screaming head against the mossy wall, the village idiot walked past me and said, bon voyage . indeed. both back into our solitudes. back in black with the ghost that I know how to love...

I wish there were a ritual to let the past take flight so these moments of silence won't pierce me anymore let go , the river says and swim on, for I can hold all your tears so my tears become one with the river as all that I was falls far behind

after months in the desert where your heart turned into a leathery mummy, the river lies before you now. and in you go, headlong into the dizzying rapids, you grow new arms and fins while cortex learns and reptile brain craves one pulling forward to the unseen land across and the other down to stranger pleasures, the wetness of willing lips whether I make it or not, tomorrow is beginning to look like a good place to be again

dança delicada, costas com costas adivinhamos apenas o pulso do parceiro contra o nosso coração, para contrariar a crescente força centrífuga encosto a cabeça na tua colo a mente à tua para, cautelosamente, nos virarmos, face com face, lábios com lábios

the white-hot air blinds, motionless, and the village is a ghost town. so here I stand in the graveyard, my hands scented with the rich aroma of the thyme that we planted on your grave. below me in the shimmering land, the fog horn bellows a far-away roar as the mist rolls into the Lisbon bay. I like to believe that you are now in the pine tree next to the grave, and as always, I lean my ear to the bark to hear the earth talk from underneath and the wind from above. today there is no wind, so the earth speaks louder, in underground streams, shifting slabs of rock, the faint cracking of crystal and granite. so what was it like? what is it like? hiroshima, ground zero. annihilation. the entire skin peels off, until you’re raw flesh. for weeks on end, you are an open wound, exposed to the piercing air and sun, the arrowheads of rain and hail. the pain is constant. and then you’re dropped into a pool of caustic bleach. you are nothing but pain, and this goes on, unbearably. bu...

on my first day of school, there was a girl. I was too young to pay any attention to girls per se, but what mattered was that her name was Monica. as it happens, I had had dreams about being in love with a girl called Monica ever since I was five, so I was certain that this must be her. on the second day of school, I approached her and, blushing violently, offered her my favourite blue and transparent glass elephant (which I thought looked rather stately and well up to the occasion), wrapped in an infantile attempt at a love poem. the girl, taller than me, and surrounded by her girlfriends, unwrapped my beloved treasure, read my scribbled lines, laughed wickedly and flung the elephant onto the schoolyard tarmac. blue and transparent glass shards flew in all directions. while seemingly unimportant, this brief event shaped my approach to the female gender forever. but back now to what matters.

half a year ago to the day was the last time I saw you alive there was a last time you ate with delight. a last time you laughed at the sun. a last time you were on the beach. a last time you were in Africa. a last time that we danced. a last time we made love. on the 12th of february, the last thing I said to you was I love you

a thousand years ago we fenced words until we giggled the scallops off our plates, until they wriggled away from under the table the scallops have grown since into full-blown biotopes

once upon a time, a sorceress came upon a wounded, old lion lying in the shade of a baobab tree not far from her village. the lion's entire sault had been killed by hunters, and he was the last survivor. in her kindness, the sorceress decided to help the lonely beast, but fearing his nature, she kept at a safe distance, using only her words of magic to try and heal him. as the days and weeks went by, she grew fond of the lion, and used ever more powerful spells to save him, hoping one day they would become best friends. spring and summer came and went, and as the beast was becoming stronger, the sorceress was becoming braver. so one morning in early autumn, she left her village and approached the old tree, her mind set on caressing the lion at last. but the spot under the tree was empty. the lion had moved on to seek someone to caress.

it is changing. I am changing. a weekend's worth of potting flowers, weeding the lawn, recording new music, cooking, reading sophists, and unexpected smiles. the world is becoming mine. no, this doesn't cover it all, but I'm ready for myself. this house is clean.

I’ve exhausted the words that I write on your mirror, and shrivel away into dry brown hide within my house which is my tomb under the roaring sun and the harsh horizons. when the full moon floods the barren badlands I shall retreat at last into my cold sarcophagus, in stasis suspended for another thousand years, till the water inverts its song and finds me

for what is life but the shabbiest reflection of a perfect poem?

imagine, if you will, a horror movie of the truly terrifying sort. something evil is about to happen, and eventually it does. but your fear does not subside for you're not even half-way through the movie, and each new wave of sheer panic is going to be worse. stretch this movie over months and years. time is not a healer. it grates the core of your soul down to a hollow depression, that darkens, deepens you forever.

once upon a time, a miserable sod of a widower was made to retreat into his navel. in there he was spied upon from afar by a fairy whom he spied upon, for how else would he know? that lived safe and cosy inside her own belly button, from whence - incapable of fathoming his pain - she ranted and bellowed, proclaiming her museum of navel history to be the best attraction in town. should she have known how much he hated navels? to be continued

reboot complete. I've taken off the ring. yes, it hurt like hell but it's time to be happy without you and I can simply put it on again if I need to be invisible

is it a window or a mirror? he reached out in search of warm skin

full moon in the lemon tree and a warm wind travels in the woods above the house hush. it is the world’s darkest hour: every soul is closest to death now

in my hawaiian shirt and my tacky shades I stand motionless beneath the immaculate sky inhale the warm cerulean air at the core of the field of wheat freedom, you see, is a concise ache just below the diaphragm

sudden crystalline bliss - whispers in white within you are drops now of crisp snow descending within me

one might think that the constant pain should dull the heart. not mine. it ebbs and flows. here and now: half-time - I can peer out again through the window pain or perhaps the pane is gone for good to end this hurtful cycle and decay quietly into my half-life I wonder what's out there       take a handful of seeds,       a mouthful of dirt,       lie down and become a garden       ( Echolyn )

soon, oh soon, the heat will have turned mud into clay and baked all sadness all emotion out of me so I invert all my pores and seek refuge in someone else’s cascade of wonderous words hot cold

as you all are all saying: I should be fine now. no, it’s just begun - this hurts now . but yes, there’s an upside: I chuck out what I never liked and cook the stuff that you never liked

yesterday the black curtain rose after a handful of words - 'successfully excised' I am clean I am blessed for I will live a little longer so the time has come for the heart to set off on its long journey of healing and learn to rejoice in the soothing solitude underneath the lemon tree that is mine now today I bade you farewell

anything would do anyone would do to fix the hole in my heart what I know now: it'll have to heal by itself

wake up coffee cigarette check skin check garden check email no thought of you until walk to grave pain cigarette dance with you dance with you follow you beyond someone says fuck the first 6 months

what a miserable sod... spot-on, gentlemen, spot-on. you see, two years ago to the day was the happiest day in our life. spot off.

so deafening at first, your death bell's toll is receding at last into the close-by hills but no - the echo bounces back from an infinity of mundane objects until my soul rings like a Tibetan prayer bowl rendering what's worldly frivolous I love not, desire no one no room now for the feedback loop of subsconsciousness oh my love, my only love - could I only write about anything else, but the damage is done, and the crowd shoves in to see nine lives gone at once . I'm yearning for a friend

new data over old data erase-overwrite as life moves on at least while it does, for will I join you in the grave sooner or later? later would be fine so I can become myself again in the meantime, a flower would be fine

the distant sky above is filthy like mud this must be the lowest point in-between this world of hills for whichever way I turn I always roll back until I don't move again. so spit in your palms and rub your hands - there's work to be done, old man

lightning’s split the thinking tree in three there's nothing to think about anymore, nothing to decide

hollow empty quiet – this house in the rain where you will never know that, yes, I'll be driving the damn mercedes any day now where you talk to me no more when I report the 2 nd orange slice of cancer they’ve cut out of me. [no, it won’t get me] hollow empty impassive – these pointless underwater days where you hear me no more as I fight back sadness like an urge to retch until only a numb, deep pain in my gut remains. I miss you in these silent days. the key is gone

I think I have to rephrase: you said não sei viver sem ti, e agora vais ter de viver sem mim - I don’t know how to live without you I don’t. what we did together has become nothing now, and I sit and stare

you brainless idiot, you said.  you can't cross the street without falling in love . rightly so. but now it's like this: a gorgeous-looking widow next in line in her early 40s gave me her discount coupons at the supermarket today. true, I could not help but size her up (but I do not pride myself of it): short and sexily plump, stylishly-trimmed black hair, off-beat black gipsy clothes, a sort of deeply sad serious well-to-do NY-type left-wing latina intellectual. breath-takingly sexy. then, bursting through our common gloom, she offered me the cutest of smiles and 18 euros' worth of coupons. off-beat widower, meet off-beat widow. but why on earth do I think I have to fill the giant hole that you left? I don't. it's part of me now. I returned as dark a smile as I could muster, and never looked back. wrong key.

the sun breaks through the gloom and I recall being awoken rudely by björk singing 'all is full of love' - how much ecstasy must it take to be that silly? I hope the sky will clamp shut soon again and wipe that idiotic bliss from my face any key, as long it's minor

you called your cat oliver twist, and he’s an orphan all over again – like me, he only loved you and loves no one now. so everything’s changed, just nothing is as it was before nothing hasn’t changed not too bad for a start. press any key

the cinemas are packed screaming kids yelling parents popcorn revolves I pretend all is well no carnations required for this renewal, a mildly pleasing fuck-you-all feeling I managed today without you: a way up through the lemontree leaves and into the rain not bad for a beginning

I can't live without you, and now you'll have to live without me. your words to me a few days before you died alone at midnight. I don’t know what music I like now, what books, what movies, what people, what weather I don’t even know what to wear now it seems we defined each other, and your death has undefined me without you, I'm becoming a ghost

my essence has been distilled now: all I feel is her. just that she is no more. I know it’s profoundly wrong, but my soul has set its own course into the heart of the sun. words alone won't change this any longer. so in the end, one is nothing now, and the others have been crushed in their own ways. at the end of the spiral there's nothing. words alone

I read what you say, and am stunned at the sad irony. but despite all our pain, we won't do anymore - time for me to move on and live alone in the open

your grave is complete now. our grave. for I will join you there. sooner rather than later, I expect. people say one day I will feel hopeful again. not that I discredit them, but what point is there in hope? hope that something glorious will happen again, they say. Well, hope my arse, I’ve had all the glory I wanted. ever needed. so I’ll focus now on becoming a thoroughly grumpy, intolerant old man. sarcasm rather than irony. I’ll tend to the garden that you created, cantankerously making it mine. I used to be blindly trustful – no more of that nonsense. I’ll become the guard

last night, we danced and I would not let you go    I've been in love    six times in my life.    I have loved    only once,    and that took me 23 years to learn.    in all likeliness    I shan't love again,    for there won't be time now    to absorb anyone else's sum.    I am lucky    to have loved    once we danced

I could. I can now. anything I want. but all is gone: culinary.musical.literary.amorous limbo only the words on which I thrive. I mustn't move. stasis amidst the oceanwide void that I must populate now with myself

food & wine & sun-drunk laughter the fourteen of us, tightly knit, amidst the myriad of flowers you planted. in heaven with you.

sanity check: everything's still as in my nightcap photo album except that all has lost its value. lights off. dull pain. vivid dream something terrible is going to happen. awake: it's happened already. vivid dream you are calling me, submerge me in your living fragrance. awake: the bed is cold and empty. I hold your pillow. vivid dream you cut the straps that held a piano, I visit the hospital all over again. awake: dr faustus (p. 55) & st. augustine (untouched) on your bedside table. glad the cats are with me. vivid dream awake: half my pillow is wet. sweat. tears. awake: sanity check. kitchen. garden. coffee. cigarette. erase. back in black

first day no black in seven weeks I feel profoundly wrong.

if I get it right, I got it wrong. blind me. can I see you? [black stitched on white: door closed.]

only ten weeks ago, you were driving our car, cosy in your rocket. your sunlit profile to my left smiled and we sang the words of the last song of our last hope. now I am driving upside down and you're not here to hold me as I hit the world full on. with no brakes. off course. I'm grateful for the driving instructor to my right even though he's even more melancholy than I of course it would all be easier if I believed in a soul. of course.

after the titanic sank I swam for six weeks against the ice-cold sea was battered at last against a rock, so here I squat now growing a beard of icicles in the storm that howls across the barren islet, and desperately labour to obliterate the three kinds of grief - for those who have drowned, for those who live, and for myself. while far behind me, washed up on the shoreline, all that I once loved is decaying now, waiting to be discarded for good:   my case with the music in it   my book with the words in it   my trunk with the recipes in it   my soul with all that I felt so I start anew now in the frozen wasteland for time is seemingly endless

last sunbeam last cigarette last eagle’s soar last kiss last steps last smile last breath last thought .

your clothes have no owner your books your cushion the you in me needs them still

you were the soil from which I drew you were the rain that kept me alive you were the sun that lit my leaves you were the cask in which I aged the soil is barren now it does not rain and the sun is black only the eagle remains

life erupts in a thousand colours yellow green perfume of lilac into the living glare of sunlight blessing our shortcomings — seen from behind my defensive carapace of black clothing relegated I am to the geriatric darkness of working through bereavement you do not see me here. you don’t even have eyes anymore I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words how wonderful life was while you were in the world

The waitress looks like David Gilmore. TV: 'George Clooney is in Sudan protesting against violence' Yeah right , the guy says at the next table. Breaking news, ay? 'Twelve children shot dead in Palestine'. So my kind of kind of news, innit? As if. When’s football on? Another bloke, late 50s, gelled hair, checkered shirt put on by wife: I was alone at home till half past three - missuz was at a corpse's viewing. Neat, innit? First bloke: Yeah right... I bet she was having fun somewhere else. Stage 4: ANGER

T -20      the chemo room            where your last treatment wasn’t completed T -19      the hospital            where you lay in the east wing T -6       the gloomy pit under the staircase           where we sat, and you smoked the last cigarette of your life T -4       the bed            where we left our last battleships unfinished                  you never saw my ships.  I saw yours after you died T +8hs    the meal room           where my world was shattered T +31    back in the sun     ...

hot breeze in pine tree by your grave a handful of freesias wilt on a lump of earth my cigarette wet with pain while fierce first spring sun peels away the skin from my skull when the axis spins: high above in the perfect blue the three eagles you loved cry Freedom and pierce my mind with joy I’m ready for nothing yet

when we were children again trembling in fearful amazement of each other, in the sun-specked shade of the Thinking Tree. your skin a book of silent pearls - trapped in a golden sphere of time

you are dead. death-blow in the solar plexus of this world. you are dead. the choir has stopped. ‘how is Inês, by the way…?’ she is dead. blew the world to shards. I tread the broken stone of this heart this life ‘I can’t live without you, now you will have to live without me’, with the shard of a soul. you saw it before you. you are dead. the chair where you sat, the smiles you smiled: still lifes now. naturezas mortas. today I ate the last meal that you made with your hands, six weeks ago. you were alive. now you are dead. I love you, and you’ll never love me back again so I’m tying up the loose ends now so no question shall remain so to ready my world for the silence to come. you are dead now: I must live without you for such a long time to come. your scent still fills the room. did you know it would hurt like this? you are dead. I live on in the unloving dark

from a hole the size of you I knit myself back into the distant light through a thousand loose ends into my very first new cycle: waiting to reboot

half carcass bleeding out at the slaughterhouse the wound too wide to stop the haemorrhage

during the last week of your life you said (and kept us hoping): when I get out of here I want to swim in a large calm pool of warm water. get my swimming suit ready we made plans

arguably, Santini makes the best ice cream in Portugal. on Friday, the 10 th of February 2012, I went to Lisbon to register at last the copyright for the album I wrote and made for you, Inês. on my way to Rossio station, I decided I’d buy you your favourite ice cream: Santini’s honeydew melon. I bought a half-litre styrofoam box, which would keep the ice cream for an hour. I caught a taxi and instructed the driver to rush to the hospital, for I didn’t know how much longer you’d be alive. the driver understood, and screeched and honked us across Lisbon traffic, and then like a mad bullet down the motorway. in under 20 minutes, he got me to the hospital, where I ran down the endless, freezing hallway towards your ward, your bed no. 12. and found you asleep. alive. the bed not nightmarishly empty. I awoke you with a dash of honeydew melon, and you sucked on it, breathed it in, a sunbeam in your fading mind. my tears blended in with the flavour. there was so little of you then. you nev...

        (the light shone on me         between the preserved foods section         and the fresh fish counter.         bling. nonetheless real.                       bling.)    through all the pain and all the sorrow    through knowing that I’ll have to live              w i t h o u t   y o u    for a score of years,    I see this now:   the time is here   to master my tomorrows   to become my masterpiece   to determine my freedom. when tonight's night falls I shall look up at                    ...

without you. two words that hurt me to the bone

you were my country you were my religion now you're in the grave where I shall lie too and one day our atoms will recombine into a new possibility

today you said: "I can't live without you, and now you 'll have to live without me"

FEAR EATS SOUL

outside the window the world is in love with its carousel of rain: light: moss: clover while inside the globe of our air-tight world, the red hot wire of pain punctuates days.hours.minutes.seconds my enclosed mind soars ten miles high: the 737's gentle drone: the unread book: water twinkle in glass: sky outside fade into: space: above time.halts.