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More than one language we are In a life yet to come and more to go
Michael Maier, De circulo physico Quadrato, Oppenheim, Germany, 1616
Georg vonWelling, Opus mago-cabalisticum, Frankfurt, Germany, 1760
Assorted Times
in Singular Spaces
Papo Colo, (Papa)
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CONTENTS Introduction I. Time Wall II. Going Around III. Envision IV. Stormy V. Jig Saw VI. La Tarde VII. Propulsion VIII. Alright IX. Time Data X. Stupor XI. Speed We Become XII. The Bed XIII. Impermanence XIV. Music Happens XV. Soul Escort XVI. Alone and Together XVII. Listening XVIII. Chiaroscuro XIX. The Multiplying Organ XX. Perfume de Gardenia XXI. Nights XXII. Different and the Same XXIII. Absent XXIV. There is this Silence XXV. Spiritualism XXVI. In the Middle of the Day XXVII. Happy Dreams XXVIII. Jumping from Point to Point XXIX. Twilight XXX. Sun Tan Epilogue
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Introduction There is a God in each door and a goddess in each window, to escape to look, to enter, to dream. Without them we are condemned, to be confined within ourselves.
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Knowledge is partial, incomplete. History is the distortion of convenience. Languages are sound barriers. What is to be done and undone? But you, in many versions prepared, running the infinite circle of zero, to find more emptiness, back and forth.
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I. Time Wall Like to begin a life without time. In a new dimension revamped with nostalgia with euphoric desires in mayhem. The heart set by illuminated contemplation traveling at the velocity of light from universes to black holes, from my house to the corner. Or around the world clapping sounds that in my ear ‌ murmur. A singular idea that transfixes places as time crashes space. Inside a void belonging to symbols old, new, in this very present tense. Embarking in an adventurous discourse with voices lost and found. Informed by turbulence, sealed with radiance, pretending to escape immune at every instant. Influenced by all and belonging to none. Becoming happy with metaphors, acting as if we are permanent in this temporary reality Here today and gone tomorrow, convoluted with ashes, occupy. 10
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II. Going Around Sound is the essence of space, it travels in and out of our bodies. Vibrant and identifiable but unclassifiable, going vigilant and invisible, in the blood stream, where it functions with the veins as conductor. Ears classify its vibrations, sending roaring emotional waves with hit and run signals to the processing brain. Sideways Up and Down, decisions are explained in echoes and mirrors, Temporary reflections of the permanent picture that imagination shapes.
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Sounds creates metaphors, blurs images, explains thoughts. Sincerity expands vision. Will commands force. Fantasy discovers the image of who we are but we are not. Where there are no more words, only echoes pulsating in the heart. Walking in an infinite road with never heard steps Only conscious by a faith commanded by faraway ghosts, we are.
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III. Envision Overwhelming filtrated smell, showing how friction is measured.
Conquest my nostrils, sharp my taste, excite me into a frenetic atmosphere, Sex is in the air but desire can be unsatisfied By blowing on an empty hole without escape.
Pain is what delight imagines, in voices inside the heart, Producing gestures of perverted hallucinations like banging with the palms of the hands against leather made of lizard skin.
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Fueled by a pleasurable dignified groan, Organs crash, climax appears, ecstasy faints.
Where to place good? If bad is not far away, where is life, when death survives in heaven? Total endurance is when sadness is gone, and the soul relaxes with memories. Wrapped in blush and fears, while tomorrow happiness arrives, in casual incoherent ways.
Do not resist flesh temptation, recur intercourse as medium. Blissfully merge, and love all as yourself. 15
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IV. Stormy Life runs in fertile memories and dry absences. Its soaked air going from inside out expanding time. Permeate borders, supply hope, encounter visions, discover nonexistent actions and take us to undisclosed locations. I was, resting against a declined full moon. In a day of empty clouds, with the sun drying any surface Sizzling and turbulent, events are ruled with calm. Near and far surging light, illuminating objects to make what they are, innate functional subjects Passion inhabits space
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surrounding what makes objects change, as they are taken to a misshapen place, where wicked forms change its proportions. Opposed to the benevolent forces that expand and contract its purposes, speed performs those actions. At risk to deteriorate with time its dimensions with excessive sentimental ways. Where is home? If not forgotten or gone, Where has time gone? Toward emptiness’ edge? Or into visions installed in puzzled images. Living the fantasy and making desires real, As the splendor of a storm...remember.
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V. Jig Saw Earth’s curve always keeps us up with the correct ways of seeing, In any position it shows its bow from a distance revealing its bending that arranges the schedule of tempest and calmness, in a seascape immersed in a perspective dancing with the precise rhythm of waves. Its horizon never missed a beat, rotating like the perfect clock in a space where all weather fits. Every sun starts in the east bewildering and finishes overshadowed by its own speed in the west, measuring time. Every sun’s heat builds vapor mirages, illusion we always need. Close and open the eyes and feel these glowing absorbing forces through the skin, to empower the body and enhance the soul.
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Open and close those eyes again and understand the beauty fancy delights of a rain storm as they escape from any catastrophe with imagination, like when the sky touches the water. Or is it reverse? Sky clouds mirrors on the sea surface, inside the hidden radiance of the moon during daylight, creating reflections without a copy, in these reverberating forms of changing visions. There are no straight lines in nature Only arch edges building spheres.
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VI. La Tarde La tarde sad, melancholy, meditative, sensual, with interior joy in friction. In afternoons time reveals itself by enhancing speed. Sunny, cloudy, at interval both, overwhelmed by capricious weather, this space moves around without any preference other than to divide the day, going or coming, lingering or fast, stays as it has always, composed. Vapor glass fronted cabinet where unidentified rituals grow into splendor faith restoring doubt. Peeping thoughts posses with apparitions, the closing eyes, dry and bold with sweet long tongues in flowery wet light dreams. As whimsical presence reaffirms, it was, will be, no yes, perhaps, equation. 24
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In the middle of the afternoon deep sleep hole, bow the spirit until ecstasy. This mirage of stopping time created a void where silence talks. Where leisure becomes an occupation, meditation is a form of survival. And rest continues as desires roll. Late in the afternoon light grows into darkness escape between changes of shadows seemingly waiting moving slowly for its destiny. As the afternoon is overpowered by loss of light, run scared understanding obscure unstoppable power, while vision is overwhelmed and moves to eye’s corner, announcing: The Night is on and we are possessed by the pleasure of its might.
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VII. Propultion Sex life is being in a bubble on the edge of explosion, bad and good orgasms arrive and fool around in expected and unexpected, rhythms. The body needs joy as spirit demands happiness. Insisting in surviving catastrophe with glorious moments, in its multiplicity of emotions, and walking the tightrope without distortion, penis tumble.
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Firm as oceanic rock, cruel as cannibal fish, mellow as a vagina, wet, in the style of trance, walking around naked protected and vulnerable. This object subject searches for indomitable encounters with the hardest intention his universe has produced and fixated for a noble ending, by smiling to those vertical lips with fluid burst delight delirium tremors, purpose exposed. Flying reckless in that sphere, until pleasure overcomes elation and without a trace, fade away in a fizz.
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VIII. Alright Still, frozen in gravity, flies move constantly in unexpected ways. Their wings movement appears to kill time its humming melodies rocks in this enigmatic space. Eyes move with their rhythm and wet lips make the tongue lubricate in convoluted ways. As doors open and a breeze flits a humble ray announces its entrance, face moist, body tremble, thoughts fly, in conversation, quietness is disturbed by speed. Dignified, solitude dissolved in complicated air, decisions are made enchanted, in a quiet blow. 32
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IX. Time Data Time meets in the mornings, as we are glued to each other with skin masterly, there are few yawns but intensity overcomes boredom as we playfully embrace inside the welcoming light. Â Time engages and instantly devours the present that becomes future. Coming and going as a wise clock, while we connect the swinging fleshes from my window. The sea foam collides with Resounding waves in palm air, Sizzling, life is in a grain of sand.
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Time placed the sun to eat the mystic fog, Helped by winds that happily evaporated, Into an infinitum of shades free from the limited space imposed by light, the day passes with sanity, its hours. Â Time possesses People until they are gone, Never changed or satisfied, its presence ends and begins with the new. Here and gone inside out are its rules, and is always old. Time god omnipresent, in diverse ways, absolute surviving by not stopping. Fade away in an illusion appears and is.
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Stupor Memory is magic. Therefore everything that we do is too. To remember is to reconstruct. Weaving languages on the guts with a tattoo, and then scrape it, to place a similar one. To recollect is to live as the song said, but to live is also to exist and memories die or hide or go away traveling. Illusion endures because it comes before. Circumstances betray, they are temporal. Reminiscences come and go in dissimilar images, from far you forget metaphors so close, circumference comes back to measure impulses. The best is to trust the truth that you are.
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We have to talk about the unconscious where we see images diluted as they are created, intermittent, shaping peace to raise trouble, melting thoughts to create fantasy. In a sphere as big as the universe with you inside out, with speed delivering space as remembrance brings life back. And time past, becomes future, where we are condemned to oblivion.
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XI. Speed We Become Running, with no place to go, mind speeds confused knowledge. Visions are perplex, blurred, unstable but real. History contract, space stretch, time is. What happens with seconds when they are devoured by hours? Or weeks that multiply months, to become the contradictory years that travel non-stop on century roads, confirming that time is more than counting; time is‌ emptiness. Our calendar is a version of the original, never seen and indefinite, adding more mystery to the expanding wisdom of the divine without information how to fill that space we stumble across theories, speculation and ephemera struggling with history as heavenly earthly creatures thinking in time, with its infinite duality used as motive to believe.
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There we are, enlightened and bewildered with a lot of faith in the awareness of mortality, us in the center of what we do not know, where psychosis and sanity converge. Time is against us, in every space we inhabit in any action taken we are possessed by it. I propose the dissolution of all forms and the diffusion of every feeling of joy, the resurrection of mystery and claiming victory with the triumph of failure. An unpopular imprint but valid in this maelstrom process of extinction, rotation, circumference, self mutilation and of not having a clue of the evolution in our planet or the growing wisdom of our spirit. Tragedy follows as destruction constructs, maybe by transforming we will survive living, Conspiring with drastic actions to fill the void that is there, but never found. Ending with the incomprehensible passing of ourselves, I on me, you and all, be and go, we change before and after this existence with time as a passing blink too fast to catch. 45
XII. The Bed The Bed is full of instants, Where infinite eternities collide, Crashing voices in the body that rest, where Images move with immeasurable speed. Walking around we think vertically Horizontally the brain functions in another way, Body positions are energy distribution Dissimilar motions created unexpected options The heart is the engine where the blood is fuel The brain the information source where the blood circulation changes thoughts, Is this the riddle of the Gods? Where our mystery hides.
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XIII. Impermanence Every object disappears, all subjects too. Your charisma is important but expendable. Matter always reconstructs its source. transforming life into unexpected forms. As the system goes, change is inevitable. No permanence is king, no beauty is eternal, no god is stable. There is much more no than yes, because life moves and death is at a stand still and in blindness you observe more of the spirit. Why don’t you see, but imagine fear? Sadness has its fury, violence, incomprehensible when compared to happiness.
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Incommunicado you find how to interchange infinite mindscapes that orbit in old circumstances echoing images with the presence of future, influencing the present by feeling temporal freedom. But when plans revolve around routine you get tired of yourself because desire builds destiny up to a certain point, and then crashes into the reality of failure. Optimism has its limits, and our life feels shorter by the hour. Where is permanence? But in the fallacy of time.
When alone you stay with your ego and echoes and mirrors experiencing your own ghost. In how many ways do you put on being others every day? When infinite surviving modes ignite, essence reappears under the penumbra of faithfulness. All this happens when you vanish step by step. 50
As the body shrinks while your psyche grows into the underworld and there you are‌ alive, life with the hope of reincarnation, insisting that there is more than one in the old skin. And that you are indispensable, a delusion to extend permanence, impregnable pretention, in the ever transmuting, stages of the soul.
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XIV. Music Happens Harmony shapes rhythms in the body with the timing of the mind, where emotions are invented. Its wisdom defies any disturbance, Its substance absorbs tranquility in the interior clock that divides sounds creating melodies in mute spaces that are inhabited by narratives where compositions are subject to predilection. Its balance created choices of infinite possibilities that overwhelm. Any action proposed by complicated wits, assuming that any sound divided in spaces and silences is there to be taken to add more echoes to our voices. Harmony is the supreme origin Moving across nature’s multitudes.
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XV. Soul Escort The space I promise is an unknown one, where fear is melted by hostile will, creating impulses in our speculations. Transforming desires into facts where fantasy controls how reality moves. In the circle where everything we know is true and false, illusive and transparent. Pretend to be and you will not be who you want to.
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XVI. Alone and Together Dreams travel in bunches, hopes in floating ideas, doubts survive in fade away images with humbleness bestowing humiliation and masochism. There is a collective arrogance in this thought. But also expectation of a faithful vision that alters reality. Senses create perception, and the distortion of conscience of absolute truths where lies live and facts are rerouted at convenience. Nightmares are individuals
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XVII. Listening Sounds pierce stories in three-dimension rhythms, creating images of what we listen to, as we find answers to sounds. The mind becomes spiritual and the ears, eyes.
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XVIII. Chiaroscuro When light breaks night’s darkness day creates a story. Sleep wakes up and the rush is on. Episodes are born in and out, absent is present, past future. Present steps made its road and constant thoughts fly. Circles inside circles redo life, fantasies capture wishes. But time after time reality rules. Eyes go on and off, the inverse plays its role. And darkness night fractures lightness day. Letting us know that between shadows we are.
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XIX. The Multiplying Organ I run from my shadow becoming the silence that listens to my steps. Carry on the mother tongue in my emotions and the father tongue in my body talks, Cleaning the tongue that kisses, rubs and licks, Capturing the mute tongue lost and untranslatable worlds becoming words. Instigating the axed tongue that writes and pronounces gestures that explode into particles in every direction. Mooring the finger tongue with the story telling one To point out memories that never happened, fleeing from the wicked tongue that destroys countries with a simple order. Multitudes framing with deceptive tongues their borders. Creating... The infamous influential tongue that salivas the will into submissions, Welcoming the wise tongue‌that multiplies with the public gaze its opinion And applauding the tongue, that performs for you
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by soaking letters with revolving revealing revisions. Reinstall ideas hidden by the escaping emptiness, existing on the back of your tongue. Repeating the adios tongue that kisses in darkness becoming words. Framing, the claustrophobia of speech. Releasing sounds that give meaning to the heavenly tongue that controls faith, telling secrets in ecstasy that divides and unifies. Entrusting power to the living and justice to the soul. How many languages are created in your name? In untold stories, moving ideas with the voice on the loaded road. Where the organ’s apparatus is a Holy Grail idiom. Go ahead, speak in tongues, and add more sounds to the known.
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XX. Perfuma de Gardenia Dampness perfumes and cohabits our smell, circular as hole of pure gusto, redeems and places me in more danger than usual. Refresh my memory and return to the first exquisite moments because there is more joy to come, open the mouth of knowledge and let me introduce my will into your vastness. as the world turns again and we don’t notice. Our thoughts seem static, levitating with everything that moves. Our feet drag in a storm without getting wet. Feels sleepy. The globe is elastic and lively, going around up and down, far and near, this magnetic convolution induces pleasure.
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Grabbing the flow, going from the veins to the brain, as blood ties melancholy with facts and bones crush every possible future. Detach to the ground, blowing screams shock senses and then you see that the imperfect planet is divine. A grain of land floating in the universe, going around in the center with the margins round, warming volcanoes melting icebergs in overflowing currents travels instantly in elliptic time, showing the way weather changes. While our sphere is gravity glue creating another smell in the atmosphere of wetness this time, slippery with the sky in place and the land moving constantly, where we hang.
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XXI. Nights Dimension Where senses travel and the soul spies. Where oxygen feeds the stories in the brain producing insomnia. Informed by interrupted sleep; nights, confused and lucid, quiet but with a lot of sounds inside. Shaking spirits going wild. Silence successfully composing, until dream tides, creating new images, different in dimension and having their own rules in a fluttering unruly shuffle. Closing the eyes is going into darkness. Where the body rests and the mind works, encountering images of this and the other life. As the heart pulses unstoppable, into the next reality, similar to none. Where are these images in motion living? When I am in slumber and when vague memories open up, who are these people in this room?
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XXII. Difference and the same, The soul is always alone; Its retainer, the body demands others as completion of the self. Good, evil, difference is none. In a state of grace which is a space of faith. Threshold of multiples waiting to reveal all the known characters of emotions at rest and in rush, while another world exists inside, dissolved. When eyes open, the atmosphere overwhelms life in invisible ways. We more than matter of flesh possessed by thoughts. Are we filling the void with an illusion? Or with the lost spirit that appropriates our corpse?
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XXIII. Absent Void A whirlwind twister of will created with the sleepy muscle of desires, storming my patience that remakes your presence in imaginative forms. Rules change, expand and contract, describing your silent mouth, murmuring gestures in spaces never mentioned. Inside the outcry of external joy like a long kiss, or a brief tender embrace, or a sleep between your legs, or licking the lips as you smile. Yep, my desires are huge but I can wait until impulses rule and regrets are none.
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XXIV. There is this Silence There is this silence in the middle of the night that makes you think, in the senses of time. There is a wall to jump and a mind to explore full of the infinite possibilities of dreams. Sleep is the excuse for the body to rest. Quietude is needed for the adventures of the soul. In the world inside the head always active. Absurd memories come back an forth, playing with your will, fooling all your thoughts. Here and there synchronized. The body with a blind vision inside the mind room, hidden realities in the heart that never sleeps. Traveling in every way through improbable events. Every night, this mirage happens, and most of the time you forget.
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Spiritualism
Flashes are rays of wisdom in light forms populating the earth without our comprehension. These elements we are, renewed in energy, spirits working beyond dimensions into the senses, constantly transforming the ways seen and how we see them. Lonely life is bored with the afterlife. And a reason to come back, inhabiting again the light, that feeds others to become us. Born and reborn again. Transporting dark matter in space ships. Difference between here and there, surviving the equation, this transmutation refreshes our world.
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XXVI. In the Middle of the Day In the middle of the day thoughts are unclear And your body is still thinking about the dreams from the night before. Balance is making its way. Light is directly on top of your head. And shadows disappear heating the body in glowing wonder of gamma rays fueling the brain. In intervals of images, still to be born.
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XXVII. Happy Dreams Sleep is excuse for the body to think without the disturbances of the mundane. There is this calmness and turbulence dancing with traveling times of images exploring full infinities. Absurd memories come back an forth, playing with the will, fooling logic. Here and there synchronized with the illuminated visions inside mind room. Hidden realities in the heart that never sleeps in events by no means what they appear. Every night remember, every day forget All moments dreaming the impossible, And they are never coming back.
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XXIX. Jumping from Point to Point When lost in my thoughts, flying my psyche goes, as my character stays cemented in the raw. Change is never forceful because constant aims are the source for finding any goal. Jump point to point, Run, walk, stumble, fall into the void. Blame desires never accomplished and embrace permanence for more inventions than default. Endorse vast territories in other bodies and in yours. Needle in a haystack, the future you with the former he. Compare: factors build us, reinvigorate our will with gravity in your force as we are looking for firmness in the soul. 85
XXX. Twilight When light breaks darkness of the night, the day create its story. Episodes are born in and out, sleep wakes up and the rush is on. Absence is present, past future, Steps make roads and constant thoughts fly. Squares inside circles redo living, and fantasies capture desires. Time after time routines rules, eyes go on and off as life wrestles with shadows.
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XXXI. Sun Tan As my body stretches in the sand small particles attach and penetrate to form another universe in my skin. Layers upon layers using the breeze as fuel ultraviolet rays multiply thoughts. When remembering forgotten truths lying to myself in the process. Giving and taking features to the future, Eyelids shut, enclosed in another world. Air feels distinctly peaceful breathing with antic intentions. Cracking bones support the flesh cheerfully, and all the smells discover that water is their companion. Fluids pollute grinding wrinkles as thirst imposes its power, while the body of the sea is the corpse of desires. And you surrender unconditionally to your own heat.
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There is pleasure in the interior while the exterior burns, translucent visions in a crossroad of crouching colors with waves of salt, and desires caress by way of pointy rays. There is paradise and hell, pulgatorio with escaping thoughts. Trade winds, storm winds, no winds, With silence in the water and sounds in the sand, there are armpits being fresh and you demanding a touch by my hands.
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Epilogue There is a moment where everything stops and days move faster than usual. A thought is confused with other thoughts, a life ruined by another one a birth that overcomes death a rescue in every capture. There is calm when time moves fast and ugliness overwhelms beauty. At risk to take danger easily time indulges as a small space becomes big and elastic, in an aggressive, docile smile, while opinions contrary and similar, dance joy rhythms. Carried by logic with the body’s tide and with the occasional betrayal of being with someone and alone.
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Walking on an infinite road where we never hear steps only conscious by a faith commanded by faraway ghosts, we are. Words have this tendency to the dramatic but the melody in them creates stories and infuses contradictions as passion, such as love, hate and the melancholic future, gathering sourcesv for the highest bidder, when visions are catastrophes of reason. Yes, there is an end of life death fallacy is the supernatural where mystic dreams are overrated. But there is love, there is sex, hope, and confidence that there is the unknown, To continue in the never ending answers without questions‌. and survive.
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New nights, old mornings survive inside the day The sun moving and static, contemplate. As light and dark discover their meaning, the neutral moon, serve as witness. Arriving with changes in every turn, time juggles the occasion.
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Afterthoughts Poetry is a visual art that has a long tradition. Words are the imagination of the visual, language is philosophy. The first human act is an outcry, the voice out of the womb, The first human function is to listen, inside of the womb. The scribbles, drawing, come as a consequence of such primal performances. In my poetry you listen to the rhythm of language, Imagine the meaning‌.and look at the drawings. The drawings are people inside of me We are than one language. Every one has a long dialogue with sounds We come from the instrument of thoughts. Build from letters to symbols like bricks, in Actions devoured by the mouth, and delivered by the tongue. Narrative clockwise and straight, up and wide , down and low, all shapes included, in a space occupied generously by the how. Interpreting emotions that give and take tones and melodies, making meaning inside light and shadow, presence and absence. Using silences as universes in interlude, existing in the incandescent room of our minds. Where the what is looking for the who.
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With an anticipated gesture and caressing the fire, everything ends.
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This publication was produced in collaboration with the drawing show Papo Colo: Assorted Times in Singular Spaces, curated by Beatrice Johnson, and on view at the Clocktower Gallery in New York City in the Spring of 2013
These poems are part of an ongoing series that is the work in progress, Where the River Finds the Sea. Special thanks to Charlie Rubin for assisting in the outcome and design of this book. Also thanks to Alanna Heiss, Melissa Rachleff, Stuart Anthony, Mary Anne Staniszewski and Will Rogers for their continuing support. All poems and drawings copyright Papo Colo, 2013
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assorted times in singular spaces papo colo, (papa)