Night of the fanfares

It's raining on the day of the Sun god
grey clouds descend from the skies
horses of crystal gallop
angels
bring storms of cold tinsel.
On the night of fanfares
of cold street corners
and smoke of cardboard
merchants
sell golden illusions
clerical dreams
cribs without children
in plastic trees.
The pharisee
in black frock coat and red hat
in his litany of holy man
dresses in peace.
In the name of the holy heavens
he raises his hand
blesses hypocrisy
blesses wars
and children's hunger.
He condemns women with white hands
who at sunset
wash lies from the shrouds.
The myth rises
from the fatuity of temples
and descends the streets
of dreams without hope.
In the dark room of deceits
a ragged cape warms my thoughts
twenty-fifth of December
Sun god disappears from the firmament.

London, Christmas 1987
© Carlos Reyes-Manzo

Christmas in Peixinhos

Ding dong bell, ding dong bell
ring the bells
it's Christmas in Peixinhos.

                                              A child is born
                                              many children
                                in houses of cardboard
                                        in houses of metal.

In Peixinhos the Child is born
children of love
children of suffering.

                                                 Ring the bells
                      in Peixinhos there are no stars
                               to guide the Three Kings.

Be silent bells
the mother is crying
she's crying for her child
her son in her arms.

                               Through Rua do Cóndor
                                           the mother walks
                                      the child in her arms
                                        she walks suffering
                                      the child in her arms.

The mother, the neighbours
and the priest pray for the child
pray for the children
who do not know Christmas.

                         The bells ring in the distance
                        ding dong bell, ding dong bell
                             it's Christmas in Peixinhos.

Peixinhos, Recife, Brazil 1987
© Carlos Reyes-Manzo

Human Rights Day

On Human Rights Day I would like to share a poem I wrote so that we do not forget what torture is


Torture

Darkness of the black hood
Torture

Loneliness of solitary confinement
Torture

Electric shock
Torture

Interrogation with dogs
Torture

Defenceless nakedness
Torture

Blows from the soldiers
Torture

Sexual violence
Torture

Endless hours of immobility
Torture

Detention without trial
Torture

Disappeared in anonymous prisons
Torture

© Carlos Reyes-Manzo

the door to the chancellor

So where is the door to the chancellor’s golden chapel?

The question is, to be in or to be left out of the kingdom.

Don’t come back to my door! How many times have I told you

the supermarket is full of prophets

and aspirants to the seat of God. For the poor aspiring princes

the pot is empty of good reasons beyond the end

of the midnight party.

Tomorrow let’s cook a dish totally new and familiar

dreams don’t have colours if you doubt the reality of life.

Good and Lucifer are the truths of the same changing face

of the crazy healer.

It looks like you still don’t understand

that the land of the golden night is owned by the angel of free trade.

Go to the doors of the temple. You will find merchants

selling white flowers, at first sight

they look beautiful,

but they are plastic, cool if you touch them

and they do not have the perfume of the flowers I love.

They arrive by aeroplane from the other side of the world

globalizing officials from the G20

promote them for the cemeteries,

every day somebody is in need of a celebration day.

If you ask me, every day is the day of the happy zombie

in the philosopher’s bank account.

So where is the invisible door to the private kingdom of Adam? 

a day in November, a day to remember?

It all depends which day is the day after tomorrow. How will I know

which day is tomorrow? I know that the space from today

to next year is eternal. Mondays are days

put in the calendar for people who live in one week. The world

of love is bigger than a single word written in the Book.

The world is as infinite as my mind, and as small as the seven oceans

if you like the five continents. Dreams are in a prison

inside a little box in the pocket of my jacket like the little boat I used

to use when I sailed around the table

in your bedroom. But I knew I would never live that dream!

Well, now I don’t have the boat anymore, it was sequestrated

by the bankers of Princes Street. I never knew them

till they came to the door of my fantasy. First they took away the tree

to put a flag on the window to the horizon,
the same horizon in front of the door to the internet.

I’m sure you don’t remember the day we are living.

It is just one day in November. For some people it is Tuesday,

for me it is the day after yesterday and the day leading to tomorrow.

What I need to do is to ask Machiavelli for advice

so I can buy the rest of Monday with all its hours, not one less

maybe some extra hours

even though I want all your Monday hours for the same price.

Don’t complain for my desire not to obtain a profit in the business

transaction but to smile like the chancellor of the kingdom.

I know the prophet of the capitalist dream says everything is ok

in business if you are a citizen from the G8.

Tell me, are we still living in the same day? Before I go to get a drink

to celebrate the end of globalization, do you know which day is today?

San Carlos in November

Good morning! Good morning! Wake up! The hot chocolate

is ready. And the next day the white birds run away.

A kiss as a present and love for Happy San Carlos!

Memories come back to the space of the same time.

It is the day that I was baptized by mother nature.

Soon I had peaches with love in C major

the next day I flew far away from preachers and vicars.

For the books, I left the green monster in the dark cloister.

Memories are for the moment when you look in the dictionary

for the words and the magical connection with Freud.

She offers me peaches for a night of dreams.

I will keep the very fine peaches in my personal museum.

For the other side of love, I take your hand on the journey.

Don’t tell me that nothing is nothing

today I just received the blue tree from the white forest.

One day mother told me, Carlos don’t close your eyes!

Not even for daydreaming! Tell the world what you see.

That moment is the moment when a dream is reality

or the nightmare is a reality as it is for the people of Babylon.

My eyes are open and don’t tell me that nothing happened

when you called me with the news

that your good god has killed one million people in Iraq!

One Million people! Yes one million people by generals

and politicians from the lands of freedom.

The land of history where the blue butterflies

fly in my dreams and the ball crosses the street in the hand

of a happy child, and lands in the hand of death.

Who cares what year it is, you and me were only little children

running along the peach trees.

Ha! the same tree I left waiting for another day of love.

The day of the return to nowhere in the 1940s of my calendar. 

Good morning! Good morning! Wake up to the hot chocolate.

I know the white birds have disappeared in my ancestral land.

autumn morning

The eternal dawn at different hours tells the day 

that this is the occasion 

for another day to live under the ubiquity of the sun’s light.

If you ask me the time and day I will tell you

it is not the moment you are thinking of, but the sounds are the same

in any early morning, the park and its trees

are empty of the physicality of life. But I’m not there

where I used to be

walking with Romeo dreaming and waiting for the goddess of love. 

Nothing is the same again, my friend is travelling

where only the gods of Olympus live. Today I’m looking for traces

of the past but I only find the present at the bus stop.

Past and present, two concepts for books of maths and maybe

ideas from the book of revelations but nothing about love.

From maths I learned to write and put together flowers on the table

next to the dark window.

How much for hours of knowledge in the big sale of the day?

I am not the seller.  I’m only the lover round the moon

waiting for the next time the philosopher comes to paint the tree red.

Let me tell you the metro buses are never at the bus stop.

Buses are for travelling to the bullring. As you know, it’s the place

where bulls are killed for pleasure.

Tomorrow is the last day of October.

Halloween for the lovers of death, with the spirits flying everywhere.

Business as usual at the banks in the City of London 

at midnight the number 8 bus crosses Bank at Princes Street.