When Dawn Arises

by Andre Fernandes



  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.