Nothing has changed.
Except the run of rivers,
the shapes of forests, shores, deserts and glaciers.
The little soul roams among those landscapes,
disappears, returns, draws near, moves away,
evasive and a stranger to itself,
now sure, now uncertain of its own existence,
whereas the body is and is and is
and has nowhere to go.

- Wisława Szymborska
Aesthetic
 
via BBC

     essa estrada vai longe

mas se for
     vai fazer muita falta

- paulo leminski
paulo leminski, 1991

não busquei o sucesso,
não busquei o fracasso,
busquei o acaso,
esse deus que eu desfaço

- paulo leminski
limites ao léu
paulo leminski

poesia: “words set to music” (Dante via Pound), “uma viagem ao desconhecido” (Maiakóvski), “cernes e medulas” (Ezra Pound), “a fala do infalável” (Goethe), “linguagem voltada para a sua própria materialidade” (Jakobson), “permanente hesitação entre som e sentido” (Paul Valéry), “fundação do ser mediante a palavra” (Heidegger), “a religião original da humanidade” (Novalis), “as melhores palavras na melhor ordem” (Coleridge), “emoção relembrada na tranquilidade” (Wordsworth), “ciência e paixão” (Alfred de Vigny), “se faz com palavras, não com ideias” (Mallarmé), “música que se faz com ideias” (Ricardo Reis/Fernando Pessoa), “um fingimento deveras” (Fernando Pessoa), “criticism of life” (Matthew Arnold), “palavra-coisa” (Sartre), “linguagem em estado de pureza selvagem” (Octavio Paz), “poetry is to inspire” (Bob Dylan), “design de linguagem” (Décio Pignatari), “lo imposible hecho posible” (García Lorca), aquilo que se perde na tradução” (Robert Frost), “a liberdade da minha linguagem” (Paulo Leminski)...
mesmo
na idade
de virar
eu mesmo
ainda
confundo

felicidade
com este
nervosismo

- paulo leminski
Achar
a porta que esqueceram de fechar.
O beco com saída.
A porta sem chave.
A vida.

- Paulo Leminski
o tempo
entre o sopro
e o apagar da vela

- paulo leminski
E contudo não estou tão velho
nem tão magnânimo que consiga aniquilar o eu.

- Waly Salomão
Olhadela por trás dos bastidores.
- Waly Salomão
That was the problem:
I rooted for you.
And you?
You were just being you.

- Dawn Lanuza
You bring the sun,
But it keeps on setting.

- Dawn Lanuza
Maybe you wanted me to hate you
- Dawn Lanuza
ARE YOU OKAY?
I’m shouting this to the universe
In case you needed to answer.

- Dawn Lanuza
You are the dream
But I’ve had wake up calls

- Dawn Lanuza
narcissus
jayy dodd

if even in the mired river / you can be enamored / by your own reflection / it is because you are still a partial-god — how else to make sense / of divining affected desire / for a sight less temporal than a ghost — seeing oneself / can be a dream realized — though i have always had more faith / in fantastic things unseen.
Para Heidegger, Kant seria um pensador "genuíno" na medida em que olha para as profundezas e para os abismos do ser. Segundo Heidegger, o pensamento "ama" o abismo. Ele se deve à "clara coragem para a angústia essencial". O início do pensamento não é a confiança no mundo, mas a angústia. Assim, o pensamento bravamente se expõe à "voz silenciosa que nos dispõe para o espanto do abismo".

- Byung-Chul Han, Ausência 
Go out to come in 
- Paul Valéry
Mind knows only the things that are of mind. 
- Paul Valéry
Ah, consciousness, forever and forever demanding events! 
- Paul Valéry
Pathos
Paul Valéry

I
 
At my feet is the future of the object that I hold and shall let 
fall. I see at my feet the fragments of the vase.
 
II
 
Life prepares continually what she devours continually. 
She consumes beings in the group, and being individually. 
Life devours being.
He who smiles and holds his tongue 
Sees a shadowy hourglass hung. 

- Paul Valéry
Mottoes 
Paul Valéry

For a sundial 
LUX DUX 

*
 
For a library 
CHOOSE NOT BROWSE 

*
 
For a dream 
PLEASE OR CEASE
Sunset is feminine. 
- Paul Valéry
prisioneiro
da minha lucidez

tenho a chave
para fugir
 
mas 
ela também pensa

- AR
Mind is mixture out of which 
Each instant disengaged uprears the I.

- Paul Valéry
At this date (MDCCCXCII) two terrible angels, nοῦς and 
ἔρως, showed me a way of destruction and of domination 
and a fixed Boundary at the far end of that way.

- Paul Valéry
A ausência esvazia o amor e a amizade não para transformá-los em indiferença, mas para transformá-los em uma cordialidade sem limites que consiste em abraçar tudo igualmente e sem tomar partido.

- Byung-Chul Han, Ausência
Não era hoje um dia de palavras
- José Saramago
Do mesmo modo 
que da alegria foste 
ao fundo 
e te perdeste nela 
e te achaste 
nessa perda 
deixa que a dor se exerça agora 
sem mentiras 
nem desculpas 
e em tua carne vaporize 
toda ilusão 

- Ferreira Gullar
O sofrimento não tem 
nenhum valor 
Não acende um halo 
em volta de tua cabeça

- Ferreira Gullar
Ih, é preciso arrumar a casa 
que André vai chegar 

- Ferreira Gullar
sextou sexisfaction

Será
que a gente
ainda 
será?

If I ain't got no wings to fly
Why'd you hang the moon so high?

I now replace desire 
with meaning. 
Instead of saying, I want you, I say, 
there is meaning between us.

- Megan Fernandes
Meaning knows its minerals,
knows which volcanic magma belongs 
to which volcanic fleet.
Knows the earth has parents. That a person is raised. 
It’s the real flirtation, to say, you are not a meal. 
To say, I want you 
to last. 

- Megan Fernandes
I am a woman and last time, I was a girl
and when you are a girl, all you see is another girl
and when you are a woman, all you see is history
careening towards a girl who you cannot protect.

- Megan Fernandes
the wormhole of signs
- megan fernandes
I loved someone once who took me outside language. 
Have you ever had that?  
It’s a drug.

- Megan Fernandes
 I choose every day to get up and perform my antics.
- Megan Fernandes
Every person is an address the way every person is a calendar. 
You are a Wednesday afternoon on Rue Étienne-Marcel.

- Megan Fernandes
I’ll never get over that we used to be children. 
- Megan Fernandes
Not everything is language, not everything is meaningful. 
- Megan Fernandes
mosquito morto
sobre poemas
asas e penas

- alice ruiz
So do I

American Horror Story, S13E08
Where do we go from here?

BLOGUEIRINHA
Você trabalhava muito lá?

PRISCILLA
Muito? A gente tava ali, Blogs, o tempo todo. Acionava: “Precisa fazer uma pílula, um programa no domingo, liga para a Priscilla e o Yudi”.

BLOGUEIRINHA
Essa era a escala 6x1?

PRISCILLA 
Às vezes, 7x7. Já cheguei nessa fase.

BLOGUEIRINHA 
E como era negociar com o patrão?

PRISCILLA 
Então, negociar com o patrão é complicado. Pra mim, nunca funcionou. Eu nunca consegui ir negociar nada com um patrão meu. Eu mal conseguia ver meu patrão, que dirá pedir um aumento.

BLOGUEIRINHA
Nossa, imagina ano que vem.

Blogueirinha Entrevista, T01E03 (12/10/2026)
The bass was palpable, vibrating through my body. Every cell could feel the music. It was absolutely indescribable. I could pick out every percussion and melody. It was running through me. I was hallucinating and dreaming, standing up. I was asleep I think. Occasionally I would open my eyes and I'd moved to another part of the dance floor. I just kept swaying. Losing myself in the music like a zombie. I was entranced. I started tripping into another more enlightened part of my brain. I saw my dead grandmother. She spoke to me and sent her love. I had chills. I cried. My head stared to the ceiling. I evaporated.

- Sam Morris
I take red flags with gratitude
- Sam Morris
It’s such a short love story 
I just don’t know what’s good for me 
They always change their mind 
And I’m the one left behind 
Looking at pictures of you smiling 
While I'm at home, alone and crying 

- Sam Morris
If you've been through one too many

Slow Horses, S06E05

Somente quem se esvazia até tornar-se ninguém é capaz de caminhar. O caminhante não tem eu, não tem si, não tem nome. Assim, ele se esquece de si mesmo.

- Byung-Chul Han, Ausência
Zhuang Zhou descreve o caminhar na ausência da seguinte maneira: "Todas as diferenças desaparecem ali. Minha vontade não tem objetivo, e eu não sei aonde estou indo. Eu vou e venho e não sei aonde estou indo. Eu vou e venho e não sei onde vou parar. Eu caminho de um lado para o outro e não sei onde isso acaba".

- Byung-Chul Han, Ausência
A metafísica ocidental é dominada pelo conceito de essência, que reúne em si identidade, duração e interioridade, habitação, permanência e posse.

- Byung-Chul Han, Ausência
Pianissimo
Billy Collins

At first,
I thought it meant
a really big piano.
Page-Turner
Billy Collins

Desirable
in fiction.

Not so much
with a slim book of poems.
I’ve grown old—
now my own name
rings a bell.

- Billy Collins
Zen Backfire
Billy Collins

The only time
I cut myself shaving

is when I’m aware
that I’m shaving.
Dictionary Wanderings
Billy Collins

The two silent “els”
in talk and calf
found a place
of prominence in llama.
The Sociologist

I wandered lonely as a crowd.
Flaubert

As he looked for the right word,
several wrong words
appeared in his window.
Look
Billy Collins

The morning lake
was smooth as a mirror.
A few angels were even seen
flying down
just after dawn
to check themselves out.
Highway
Billy Collins

Hitchhiking alone,
I notice an ant
walking in the opposite direction.
I know I should
exercise tenderness for all
the people that want me
dead

- Kayleb Rae Candrilli
eu enjoo e não largo
 
A new language is like a fish:
first, you need to remove its spine
in order to chew it.

- Luljeta Lleshanaku
And you may falsely believe
that when you’re young, healthy, and beautiful,
the body leads the way.
Remember how often it’s been abandoned,
like a supporting actor on the red carpet
dismissed by cameras.

- Luljeta Lleshanaku
And we call “destiny” our common unknown,
a genderless, unconjugated, unspecified name.

- Luljeta Lleshanaku
The memories want fuel.
- Avery Lake
I almost held you, you were almost good, almost.
- Avery Lake
Pain from the angle of self-mythology
- Avery Lake
More Terrible 
Marie Luise Kaschnitz

Your distance is immense 
(We have heard something 
About galaxies fleeing) 
But far more terrible is your nearness 
Your secret presence 
Your footsteps 
Your breath 
Your whispered words 
Your cry for help. 
If you have ever wondered what
it’s like to be human,
keep wondering, brothers
and sisters, because that’s all
you can do
to try to catch
in your hands
whatever it is
that moves away
when you reach for it.
Pluto used to be a planet
and a dog, now
it’s a what?

- Ron Padgett
Only twenty minutes and
I already don’t smell
the peppermint oil
on the cotton balls
I have placed in this room
to keep the mice out.
I sit here in a cube of air,
a big nonmouse.

- Ron Padgett
I’ve come to the conclusion
that humanity is hopelessly stupid,
even more stupid than a raindrop,
but that if we could achieve the intelligence of a raindrop
we would be happy
to be one
and go splat.

- Ron Padgett
At sixteen
I decided to be a poet
forever
and now, sixty-one years later,
I stop writing
and slap my ear,
but the wily mosquito
zooms off in a blur of sound.
At birth he was a mosquito
but in a day or two
he’ll wish he had been a poet,
even one like me,
ear throbbing.

- Ron Padgett
Young men like Ruarí

Youth, S01E04
O Kant, dizem as más línguas da história da filosofia, precisava responder ao David Hume.
- Luiz Felipe Pondé, Linhas Crusadas (08/10/26)
I can hear little clicks inside my dream.
- Anne Carson
how move without moving?
remember      without despair?

- richard o. moore
behold the chain
of burned utopias

- richard o. moore
it is not easy     to give up
religious unrealities

- richard o. moore
There is no becoming, destinations have been proved absurd.
- Richard O. Moore
armadas of significance      always offshore
- richard o. moore
                                                Boredom
is the result     neverending creation

- Richard O. Moore
silence against silence
- richard o. moore
The dead, they live in the words
I say to them.

They reply in my words only,
in family talk.

Socrates, do you recall
smalltalk?

- Richard O. Moore
THAÍS
O que restou do Iluminismo?

PONDÉ
Muita melancolia.

Linhas Crusadas (08/10/26)
- Pet Shop Boys
Love does not
make me gentle or kind.

PYLADES 
I'll take care of you.

ORESTES 
It's rotten work.

PYLADES
Not to me. Not if it's you.

- Anne Carson
Caught between the tongue and the taste
- Anne Carson
There is no person without a world.
- Anne Carson
THESEUS
Stop. Give me your hand. I am your friend.

HERAKLES
I fear to stain your clothes with blood.

THESEUS
Stain them, I don't care.

- Anne Carson
You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?

- Anne Carson
A wound gives off its own light 
surgeons say. 
If all the lamps in the house were turned out 
you could dress this wound 
by what shines from it.

- Anne Carson
Don’t come. The pictures are fake,
Photoshopped stock foliage.

- Jason Stefanik
let’s not sleep yet
as long as the gentle music plays
and while we still have the chance
let's face the music and dance

- julia hartwig & irving berlin
Tell us we will respect the differences of others
carry out just laws

- Julia Hartwig
Everything to Measure
Julia Hartwig

Oh no—paradise is not disheveled nature
bearded unkempt pines shrubbery branches
blue-black colonies of berries
looking out with the eyes of hunted deer
Paradise is a garden
where everything is to measure
joy but not wildness
not despair but melancholy
It is the victory of order

So what if on gravel paths
you sometimes hear approaching steps
above which a body had no time to take shape
The Czech writer Hrabal said:
I have as much freedom as I take.

- Julia Hartwig
Higher and Higher
Julia Hartwig

   Born on a trash heap, victims of seven plagues, we
proclaim every day a victory.
   One more day. I am still alive.
   While the trash heap grows and lifts us up, toward
immortality.
O, white flowers of shadow, the wild glistening of the river!
- Julia Hartwig
Stay forever green tree of joyful existence
tree rooted in the sky
and tree drawing its sap from the earth
tree of illusion and tree of dream
solitary tree and tree seeking support among other trees
rooted tree and tree eager to travel
tree frightened by night and tree finding shelter in the night
talkative tree and tree fond of silence

- Julia Hartwig
slight 
holes puncturing 
the muscle 
of distance

- claire hero
steal inside  
this brain 
cave 

- claire hero
watch new morphemes  
hatch 
in the wounds  

- claire hero
falar de ti
sem te expor

te despir
sem tirar tua roupa

te fazer sorrir
com um poema
sem precisar
escrevê-lo

- nicolas behr
O espelho me olha com cara de quem
sabe exatamente o que fiz.
Mas como não fiz nada,
ficamos os dois
com cara de juiz.

- AR
Realmente, pior que tudo
era a minha fome
cruel e simbólica.
Era o verbo morrer
ter algo de vivo;
ser tambem transitivo.

- Cassiano Ricardo
nascem anjos sem asa
dentro do dicionário

- cassiano ricardo
We are truly ourselves only when we coincide with nothing, not even ourselves.
We say the naked eye
as if the eye could be clothed, as if it isn’t the world

that refuses to undress unless we turn our backs.

- Maggie Smith
Is it too late except to say too late and hear
the whole world take a rain check?
I worry it is.

- Maggie Smith
What we know of ourselves
gets compressed, layered. Remembering
is an anniversary; every minute, a commemoration
of being, or thinking—or its opposite,
a strip of negatives.

- Maggie Smith
Do we know anymore what it is to be human?
I’ve stopped knowing what it is to be human.

- Maggie Smith
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.

- Miller Williams
What matters is what remains not said, not said.
Which is what long silences are for.

- Miller Williams
Considerar a natureza do homem um pecado é escarnecer da natureza. Puni-lo por um crime que ele cometeu antes de nascer é escarnecer da justiça.

- Ayn Rand, A revolta de Atlas, John Galt
Aquilo que vocês denominam alma ou espírito é a sua consciência, e o que denominam livre arbítrio é a liberdade que sua mente tem de pensar

- Ayn Rand, A revolta de Atlas, John Galt
I'm not even a wrinkle queen.
- Mr. Zamboni, American Horror Story, S13E04
Declaro que a vida é ótima, 
a realidade múltipla, 
os nossos sentidos fracos.

- Adélia Prado
Eu olho meu olho fixo.
- Adélia Prado
Ó Pai, duro é este discurso, quem poderá entendê-lo?
- Adélia Prado
Não quero faca nem queijo.
Quero a fome.

Eu sou de três jeitos:
alegre, triste e mofina

- Adélia Prado
We're having the same colour palette this week, aren't we?

MobLand, S02E03

Dark Matter, S02E06
É impossível viver sem dizer eu
- Adélia Prado
Você existe, Jonathan?
- Adélia Prado
Quem é John Galt?
- Ayn Rand
É esquisito ser gente.
- Adélia Prado
Palavras, quero-as antes como coisas.
- Adélia Prado
Quero dançar
e ver um

filme eslavo, sem legenda,

adivinhando a hora em que o som estrangeiro
                                       está dizendo eu te amo.

- Adélia Prado
PONDÉ
Thaís, você acha que para ser ateu precisa ser inteligente?

THAÍS
Não, não acho. Até porque sabemos que tem muito ateu burro, principalmente aquele que, como você gosta de falar, troca a crença em Deus pela crença em si mesmo. 

Mas olha, eu acho que para ser ateu você tem que ter pelo menos uma disposição para ser minoria, não é?

Linhas Cruzadas (01/10/2026)
Na origem da religião ou da fé religiosa está o terror da contingência. Nós estamos ameaçados pela contingência o tempo inteiro e essa contingência não é uma abstração.

- Luiz Felipe Pondé, Linhas Cruzadas (01/10/2026)
Go to Denmark
AR

Been there.
But how to stay there?
I'd be an immigrant.
THAÍS
Ter fé na política é infantil?

PONDÉ
Completamente infantil.

Linhas Cruzadas (01/10/2026)
When you stopped speaking to me
what you really wanted was for me to stop speaking to you. To
stifle the sound of my voice. I know.
Didn’t want the quicksilver of it in your ear.
What does it mean
to silence another? 

- Vievee Francis
You don’t know what I need until I tell you
what that is.

- Vievee Francis
I need to say something true. What’s true?
You know what’s true. We all do. It’s a matter
of admitting it. Braving it. I won’t hate you
if you admit to hating me. I will hate you
if you deny it.

- Vievee Francis
music my religion
 
Acho uma citação que me preocupa: “Não basta produzir contradições, é
preciso explicá-las”. De leve recito o poema até sabê-lo de cor.

- Ana Cristina Cesar
Nada, esta espuma
Ana Cristina Cesar

Por afrontamento do desejo
insisto na maldade de escrever
mas não sei se a deusa sobe à superfície
ou apenas me castiga com seus uivos.
Da amurada deste barco
quero tanto os seios da sereia.
Sapo é um pedaço de chão que pula.
- Manoel de Barros
Agora a gente só sabe fazer desenhos verbais com imagens.
- Manoel de Barros
fósseis linguísticos
- manoel de barros
Agora não quero saber mais nada, só
quero aperfeiçoar o que não sei.

- Manoel de Barros
Cresci brincando no chão, entre formigas. De uma infância livre e
sem comparamentos. Eu tinha mais comunhão com as coisas do que
comparação.

- Manoel de Barros
I ask myself

Slow Horses, S06E03


Clarice Lispector: Vinicius, você já se sentiu sozinho na vida?
Vinicius de Moraes: Acho que sou um homem bastante sozinho. Ou pelo menos eu tenho um sentimento muito agudo de solidão.

Clarice Lispector: Isso explicaria o fato de você amar tanto.
Vinicius de Moraes: O fato de querer me comunicar tanto.

LISPECTOR, Clarice. Clarice Lispector entrevista. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2024.
Honremos, como ideal,
O homem vertical,
Embora valorizemos
Só o horizontal, mesmo.

- W. H. Auden
RESISTIR, à sombra
da ferida aberta no ar.

Resistir-por-ninguém-e-por-nada.
Irreconhecido,
para ti
somente.

Com tudo o que aí tem lugar,
mesmo sem
linguagem.

- Paul Celan
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever
- John Keats
haverá de ter
no mapa astral

um novo corpo 
celestial?

- AR
Aesthetic
 
via CNN

The remember isn’t a road.
- Marianne Boruch
How much I love you
Peter Balakian

because your shadow walks through the wall

because my heart is a double-beat

because throbbing moves around the room the way
floaters spin across the eye

because the pale green of wet grass
because the confusion of new leaves

because the brushstrokes are blue

because buds of azaleas spread across lawns

because daylight is water
 hi-fi blasting “Somebody to Love”
- Peter Balakian
We know that time isn’t a circular abstraction we move
along with the hope of eternal return. We know that motion
and emotion are embedded in each other

- Peter Balakian
It takes years to remember all the things that always mattered
Now I'm lost in my own lies

Egotrip
AR

entrei 
e não sei 
se saio
não estou aqui para dar aula
já fiz isso
mas não eu 
sendo a matéria 
minha linguagem não é padrão
eu sei 
não sou ninguém
e ninguém
é melhor
Se joga! Mas se joga de verdade, não apenas no discurso.
- Stella Vianna, Meu nome é Preta (T01E03)
False Senryū
Philip Whalen

A cough
waits for the bus.
Dharmakaya
Philip Whalen

The real thing is always an imitation
Consider new plum blossoms behind the zendō
For each of us there is a place
Wherein we will tolerate no disorder.
We habitually clean and reorder it,
But we allow many other surfaces and regions
To grow dusty, rank and wild.

- Philip Whalen
Watching the “waterfall” (more accurately, “water curtain”)
- Philip Whalen
I love you very much
But sometimes I love you even more from a distance
Never to the vanishing point

- Philip Whalen
What do I want
What am I really after
Sometimes a tree answers.

- Philip Whalen
All the constituents of being are
Transitory: Work out your salvation with diligence.

- Buddha
Now I am old and infirm. I fear I shall no more be
able to roam among the beautiful mountains. Clarifying my mind, I meditate
on the mountain trails and wander about only in dreams.
- Tsung Ping

I always say I won’t go back to the mountains
I am too old and fat there are bugs mean mules
And pancakes every morning of the world
- Philip Whalen
PAY NO ATTENTION TO ME
- Philip Whalen
I guess my troubles are pride
And doubt.

- Philip Whalen
Suppose we were the first to begin
Living forever. Let’s start
Right now.

Do you want this peach?
It’s immortal.

- Philip Whalen
We can’t easily imagine another world
This one being barely
Visible

- Philip Whalen
still learning to speak the language
of revolving doors

- leslie mcintosh
coriolis effect
leslie mcintosh

one man calls another
                                                         baby

                             though not in comparison
the alternative is to drown in silence
- matt longabucco
A word is a thought
- Dorothea Lasky
Whispering save me save me
- Dorothea Lasky
Death is a burnt mirror
- Erika L. Sánchez
How can I ask you 
to be kind in a world that isn’t?

- Erika L. Sánchez
the hours viscous
- erika l. sánchez
the “I” is forever 
insatiable

- Erika L. Sánchez
I write disappearing scut. 
I write rut. 

- Frederick Seidel
I am civilized but 
I see the silence 

- Frederick Seidel
O Grande Buda
Apenas dorme
Na primavera

- Shiki
O heart, O troubled heart
- William Butler Yeats
The Term
William Carlos Williams

A rumpled sheet
of brown paper
about the length

and apparent bulk
of a man was
rolling with the

wind slowly over
and over in
the street as

a car drove down
upon it and
crushed it to

the ground. Unlike
a man it rose
again rolling

with the wind over
and over to be as
it was before
If you really bug me
Then I'll say goodbye

One is fun 
Tengo un millón 
why not two?
y quiero dos

Any number is fine with me
As long as it's more
Quiero más
Siempre quiero más

- Madonna & CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso
Lo que antes me servía no me sirve más

(...)

Tengo un millón y quiero dos
Tengo un ángel, pero quiero a Dios

A verdade não é uma especialidade
Para especializados clérigos letrados

Não basta gritar povo é preciso expor
Partir do olhar da mão e da razão
Partir da limpidez do elementar

Como quem parte do sol do mar do ar
Como quem parte da terra onde os homens estão

-  Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
The language
Robert Creeley

Locate I
love you some-
where in
teeth and
eyes, bite
it but
take care not
to hurt, you
want so
much so
little. Words
say everything.
I
love you
again,
then what
is emptiness
for. To
fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full
of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.
O amor é mais forte que a morte vocês diziam
Mas a vida é mais forte que o amor e
A indiferença mais forte que a vida 

- Michel Deguy
moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face, in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe

- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines.
- Ahab, in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.
- Ahab, in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort 
of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea

- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
- Ishmael, in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, as featured in Unabomber (2026).


am i skeptical
or simply without discipline

- gianna patriarca
there is something different 
in my nostrils
it is unpleasant
i cannot decipher the lie 
the truth or the memory

- gianna patriarca
a draft of silence
at my shoulders

- gianna patriarca
i am a name and a landscape 
a language and a dialect

- gianna patriarca
The call of memory no longer makes me sad.
I have no complaints about memories.
In fact, I have no complaints 
about anything,
not even my heart
aching nonstop like a big tooth.

- Nazim Hikmet
The Perfection of Loss
Jane Hirshfield

Like a native speaker
returned
after long exile,
quiet now in two tongues.
in days of vertigo and hesitation
- jane hirshfield
O ser humano é indefinido. Ele é o único ser que não tem uma definição na natureza.
- Pico della Mirandola citado por Luiz Felipe Pondé em Linhas Cruzadas (23/09/2026)
a thought is a forest
- jane hirshfield
I told my grief: patience.
- Jane Hirshfield
I pressed myself to the clear glass
between wanting and world.

I wanted to be lush, tropical,
excessive. To be green.

- Jane Hirshfield
Fire Strike
Margaret Noodin

At the threshold
of melancholy
is a voice barely heard

a light wrapped in fog
and a piece of steel
longing for flint.

Strike it.
I have my heart on my fist
Like a blind falcon.

- Anne Hébert
And the mirages, the
            mirages—

            I knew what they were
yet often

changed my course 
            and followed them.

- Robert Hayden
On some days, my depression is over there in a picnic basket while I am
over here looking at art.

- Victoria Chang
Now the name I was given is no longer fitting

We don’t remember our birth.
When a mother dies, it’s gone.

- Victoria Chang
The ocean is a
bully, always insisting
it understands hope the best.

- Victoria Chang
One by one, days died,
even they weren’t protected.
They have no symptoms
but keep dying. They want to
fix melancholy,
to keep coming back to no
answers, to take the
depositions of orchards.

- Victoria Chang
Waves in August
Victoria Chang

The waves never die.
In May, they look like reason.
They are not violent.
By August, all hope is gone,
even stars are arrested.

I will never love
anyone the way I love
my memories and their cliffs.

- Victoria Chang
The heart
Victoria Chang

Someone trimmed the tree.
Maybe there are no answers.
Small bits of blue sky through it.
Garden
Victoria Chang

Something is growing.
Plath said growing hurts at first,
but when does the hurting stop?
My fingerprints are
all rubbed down from touching time.

- Victoria Chang
The shipwreck
Victoria Chang

I sit at my desk.
Desire is an anchor—
I lift it and words come up.
There are no words here, just rain
on the nape of everything.

- Victoria Chang
Séance
AR

Someone calls for me.
It's myself.
It's terrifying to realize this—
The one who calls
is the one alive.
What can we call it
Victoria Chang

You can’t stop someone
from adding an s to a
word. Loves. Depressions.
Deaths. Griefs. Gods. Most of the time,
the plural of something is worse.
History is dead.
Apricots grieve their old shape.
A dry flower can’t reverse.
Some call this dying.
Those of us who live in it
know it is closer to love.

- Victoria Chang
I write a word and
attach it to a speaker—
someone please listen.

- Victoria Chang
I’m left behind, waiting for
the birds to return.
They’ve moved on. I now know that
being birdless doesn’t hurt.

- Victoria Chang
Is silence a gift?
I can’t hear my bones shrinking,

- Victoria Chang
The past is never finished,
the future is scared.

- Victoria Chang
Avoiding news by the river
Victoria Chang

All the announcements.
The mayflies land on a leaf.
No one there ever looks up.
The flight
Victoria Chang

I no longer watch
the birds during the day. I
prefer to save them
for my dreams where an owl’s face
has more than one expression.
Youth stretches over
everything, can be used once.
Then we turn it inside out.

- Victoria Chang
Forecast
Harryette Mullen

CLOUD COULD 
CLOUD COULD CLOUD 
COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD 
CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD 
CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD 
COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD 
CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD    
COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD  
COULD CLOUD COULD CLOUD COULD     
CLOUD COULD CLOUD    
COULD CLOUD
is it love that you’re seeking, or permission?
- victoria adukwei bulley
when you’ve done enough, are you the last to know?
- victoria adukwei bulley
O país está cheio de boatos, de todo tipo. sobre todos os assuntos, todos eles perigosos. Quer dizer, prejudiciais. As pessoas só fazem cochichar. Não acreditam nos jornais, não acreditam nos melhores oradores, mas acreditam em todo boato assustador que aparece por aí. As pessoas... as pessoas parecem estar à beira do pânico.

- Ayn Rand, A revolta de Atlas, Jim
Poet or poem or reader, the same
ectoplasm. 

- Diane Seuss
My adult son calls me at noon to ask
if I ever loved his father. How can I
express that marital love is twelve banalities ago?

- Diane Seuss
A word can be overused into emptiness,
which is also a banality, so don’t tell anyone you love them.

- Diane Seuss
To return
to the world, I must learn
how to love the world again. My problem
is with the word again.

- Diane Seuss
please don’t tell me flowers
are beautiful and blood clots
are ugly

- diane seuss
I’m not looking for wisdom.
- Diane Seuss
You can’t be simile.
Deep down even
mud is not
comparable. 

- Diane Seuss
Do you think your suffering is exceptional?
Maybe. Maybe not.
The times are strange, no doubt.

- Diane Seuss
The danger
of memory is going
to it for respite. Respite risks
entrapment, which is never
good.

- Diane Seuss
Snuffed and alone in cavernous spaces.
Alone, a misnomer. A word whose
definition I had to find in a dictionary.
Language comes hard. Silence corsets
me.

- Diane Seuss
We’ve fallen into Love’s arms. 
We’re torn by Love’s claws.  
We’re carried by Love’s music. 

- Rumi
What I know of literature, of history, is spotty.
- Diane Seuss
my unscholarlinesss,
my rawness

- diane seuss 
Margaret Atwood. Toni Morrison. Adrienne Rich.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Plath. Sexton. Lorde.
Kate Chopin. Alice Walker. Djuna Barnes.

- Diane Seuss
You can’t stay vigilant and remain alive.
- Diane Seuss
Oh dream, why do you do me this way?
- Diane Seuss
You can’t hide
from what you made
inside what you made

- Diane Seuss
 Why do you dread being forgotten?
- Alison C. Rollins
I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment.
It is the memory.

- Jacqueline Woodson
Not burning, but aflame
- Gabrielle Bates
If I describe something, anything, long enough,
language will lead me back to wanting it.

- Gabrielle Bates
There is more to say, but my speaking
is done with me.

- Gabrielle Bates
Over and over, unevolving
- Gabrielle Bates
Complete focus can resemble utter distraction
- Gabrielle Bates
How can you go toward what you’re avoiding?
- Gabrielle Bates
Time and place are traps.
- Gabrielle Bates
What language did the angel speak
       My most private language

Was the angel fluent
       Nuances were lost

- Gabrielle Bates, “Conversation with Mary,” Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), excerto.
Os jornalistas estavam anotando suas respostas. Havia agora em seus rostos a expressão de um autômato que faz de conta que está ouvindo uma notícia nos pronunciamentos vazios feitos por outro autômato.

- Ayn Rand, A revolta de Atlas
Oh look,
a typo

in the
Rosetta Stone.

- Justin Chin
Does invincibility have more to do with persistence rather than the
possession of superhuman traits or is it dumb luck

Like telling an ant it is a lion, but an antlion is something else altogether

- Justin Chin
A thousand and one
monkeys pounding
away at one thousand
and one iMacs.

Oh no,
this morning
one monkey
called in sick.

- Justin Chin
In my early life, my need to belong
and my need for security made me accept
such stupid and lethal conditions.
            In my later life, I should have known
better but the stupid and lethal stuff
was always the most fun.

- Justin Chin
In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.
- Frank O’Hara
So I hear
you do weddings
                    now

- Justin Chin
We should
find someone

who does exorcisms

- Justin Chin
IHJÃC
Não consigo dormir. Meus olhos doem, meu coração tá acelerado. Batendo forte.

RAENE
Deixa de pensar coisas ruins e tenta dormir.

IHJÃC
Não tenho sono. Me sinto mal.

To drift is not surrender.
- Yanyi
The people we love disappear before our eyes.
We can’t follow or know where they go.
They lose the names we have known them by

- Yanyi
I am afraid of running into you,
of having to see you,
of having to talk.

- Yanyi
Leaving the house
Yanyi

When I say I’m in love with you,
that means I’m not alone inside of it.

Together we talk to people
we love, separately, in one voice.

When my voice fills in love with you.
When I sing on the outside.
minha gata
algodão

é o nome dela
algodão fora do pacote

ela vem e limpa
minhas feridas

- AR
There are no walls between the living and the dead:
only what you remember now and what you remember ahead.

- Yanyi
Metatextual?


MobLand, S02E01
The body is a fickle language. 
The way that rest means
to lay dormant   but wrest means
to tear        away.

- Torrin A. Greathouse
There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.

- Robert Hass
desire is full of endless distances
- robert hass
for poetry should not be therapy
- chen chen
Yaeji sings This product is called Depression
& I think about how I haven’t been out dancing
in a year, & how I say Because I’m a homebody
when my body misses the way bodies become song
& light.

- Chen Chen
This isn't black and white. It's rather pink.
 
I can’t decide
whether the university
is a refuge for the bookish lonely
or a T-shirt store
run by a soda company.

- Chen Chen
we’ll be gone after these brief messages
chen chen

god stopped by in his magenta rowboat

i said god you have to stop stopping by
if you’re never going to tell me the meaning of life

god said life is meaningless
while language often means too much

my grandmother stopped by & said no
the meaning of life is love
the kind that produces children
why don’t you have a girlfriend yet

my mother stopped by & said look
he’s busy with his studies stop asking

god got back in his turquoise steamship

life is a joyful thing he said
it’s probably very good for you
All beautiful boyfriends are transitory
- Marilyn Chin
I cry for you     but no sound wells up in my throat
Knock at emptiness    a house without your love
- Marilyn Chin
Ornamental     Oriental     techno     impresarios
      I am your parlor rug     your chamber bauble
Love me     stone me     I am all yours
      Pound     Pound     my father’s Ezra

Metaphor     metaphor     my pestilential aesthetic
- Marilyn Chin
Why cry over dried flowers?
They’re meant to be straw.

- Marilyn Chin
As Robert Frost said, the best way out is always through.
Or as Alanis Morissette said, the only way out is through.

- Chen Chen
Your emergency contact has called
to quit.  Your back-up plan has backed
away. 

- Chen Chen
Life is a sack—with holes—and you carry it, you carry it.
- Marina Tsvetaeva
JASON2
But I didn't know I was unhappy. That I was just existing.
Doing the things that humans do, like pattern recognition.

AMANDA
Sounds like depression.

Dark Matter, S02E04
no volume máximo

Ha llegado la hora del recuerdo
A duras penas hago ruido

- Amanda Hernández
He sido vértigo 
en la carne de la lengua. 

También 
víscera amiga 
equivocación.

- Amanda Hernández
Pocket
Amanda Hernández

I carry a hollow. 

Fill it with everything big and small 
I encounter along the way 
only to realize 
not everything that fits in my pocket 
is mine to keep.
Noise
Amanda Hernández

Silence is impossible in this century.
Everything howls. It has no way to flourish.
The wild animal of ourselves, this learned condition
growls relentlessly.
 
Might we then remove ourselves from the bustle.
Build a nest atop some lull
or find shelter that’ll hold
our anxious knowing, that we die
 
awfully small
awfully momentous
among endless noise.
estou em paz e isso me apavora
preciso, meu amor, dizer a verdade:
a coisa que eu mais gosto de sentir por você é
saudade

- liana ferraz
Tem silêncio aqui.
- Liana Ferraz
Feriado seria
não ser eu por um dia.

- Liana Ferraz
A vida sempre é.
A gente é que nem sempre.

- Liana Ferraz
O que entrego de amor
não quero de volta.
Quero de novo.

- Liana Ferraz
the libido of a vowel
- ingeborg bachmann
Word, be that part of us 
enlightened, clear, and beautiful. 
Certainly an end must come 
to being careful.

- Ingeborg Bachmann
why then did you all stay silent 
and think no farther?

- ingeborg bachmann
Anhell69, 2022

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their 
exteriors—and that the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing 
another hearing, and the voice another voice.

- Walt Whitman
I was wrong about the categories, the binaries, S told me. I was wrong about 
who was weak and who was strong, ruthless and kind, gay and straight.

- Bruce Smith
Between oblivion and affection,
which one is fear and which protection?

- Bruce Smith
Is I the insomniac’s question?
- Bruce Smith
It’s all distress and excess
- Bruce Smith
the fiction of silence
- bruce smith
I walked in the romantic garden and I walked
in the garden of ruin.

- Bruce Smith
Thy silent eares
- George Herbert
The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite – to tell –

- Emily Dickinson
Saudade é um aperreio
- Patativa do Assaré
Com o belo amanhã que ilude a gente,
Cada qual anda alegre e sorridente

- Patativa do Assaré
Só canto o buliço da vida apertada
- Patativa do Assaré
I knew you. Didn’t I? Naked in that
open field, unhidden. We were bigger
than all of mankind’s metal gods.

- CJ Evans
err and armor
- cj evans
After the iPhone
CJ Evans

To fight back the ocean we use trees.
Plant them wherever money’s made

from money. In our expanding forests,
lustful, our bodies molt, flense, go wet

in the oxygen-rich air. In new soil we
germinate again, come together again.

Leaves stick to our new skins, dress us
as earthworms, as oaks, as chanterelles.
So I’ve been running on empty for some time, and
now I’m out
                    of anger:
Is this the beginning of memory? Who should
I ask? Who should be
                    asking?

- Ahmad Almallah
I wanted to write a love poem but instead
I watched the news

- Ahmad Almallah
in this house of fact, this house of ruin
- ahmad almallah 
stop telling me that I should no longer lie to myself, I know
I look ridiculous holding onto this memory or that

- Ahmad Almallah
only owning past echoes
- ahmad almallah
OTONE
I don't look for quick solutions. But you won't understand. 
I want to struggle with lots of different ideas.

KAKERU
You want to struggle?

OTONE
That's right. I enjoy it. That's the nature of life.

We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.

- Elizabeth Bishop
Um estranho abandono estava
ali, palpável

- Paul Celan
After Giannisi
AR

Our selves want to be silent though
language itself doesn't so how to
solve this problem they talk to a bot which
means they don't talk to anyone language
goes on
my seeing became too large for speech
- dante alighieri
although my vision is almost
entirely faded, droplets of its sweetness come

- dante alighieri
Because the moment is inconceivable
not present at all
the “present”
“that which is here”
space in place of time
the tongue speaks in absence

- Phoebe Giannisi
The word by itself germinates
exists
beyond our decision for silence

- Phoebe Giannisi
Leaves
Phoebe Giannisi

Inside these articulations
the beginnings of language
outside of yes and no
inside only the I want
the soul with the body meeting
in all the openly
meteoric leaves
and now, see:
one of them falls slowly
to the earth
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