CEILINGS

by GITO MINORE

    SANTIAGO BASSO, Translation

      �Human unhappyness is due to one only thing: the incapacity to stay quiet in one place�

                  Blais Pascal

      FOREWORD

      Poems contained in this book were written between 1997 and 1999. They've been originally publicated in an independent fanzine called "Cielorrasos" ("Ceilings"),
      edited from October of 1998 to July of 1999. These were 10 in total, 2 of them special numbers ("Algo acerca de la paz" -"Something about peace"- and "Perdidos en el paraiso" -"Lost in paradise"-)
      Of the 66 poems that this collection contained, 22 were included in "Fuego en el pecho" ("Fire in the chest"), 18 are included en this edition and the remaining poems are forgetfullness' patrimony.
      I share with you, my friendly readers, this firs electronic edition of a book of mine.
      I'd appreciate your reading and diffusion.

      Gito Minore - April 2004

      Thanks to Guido Olaguivel for his unconditional and disinterested support to my work.

CONTENTS
Selfportrait
1-Now
2-Soul
3-The dead one
4-Placidly asleep
5-Frozen pictures of a quite and cold winter
6-Sleeping pills
7-Before the mirror
8-17 August 1997
9-Soul's mirror
10-The lucky ones
11-Something 'bout death
12-One cigarette after another
13-The reason of my singing
14-It means you're not there
15-So many admirers you can't imagine
16-Leave your mark
17-For the moment the end comes
18-Time is over

 
Dedicated to Carla and Beto.
 

SELF PORTRAIT

I'm just what these four jeaulous walls
of my hell contain,
an anguished hermit
distressed by that stain of dampness
that looks at me omnipotently
from the high ceiling.

 

NOW

Now that every way
ends up in wolf's mouth,
which means mean and selfish
desperation.
Now that every wall
exhales indifference.
Now that no saint
wants a candle for their sake.
Now that heart yells,
and bowels complain.
Now that we ran out
of wings to fly high.
Now that destiny
became bald
and stole from God
the black eyeglasses,
letting everyone kvow
He's got cataracts.
Now that we're no longer one.
Now that's impossible for us
to cry, even to laugh,
'cause laughter stayed
begging for a ride
in the middle of the road,
with no money and terrified
at night.
Now that we've pawned
our last piece of soul
for a piece of half-cooked meat.
Now that neither magic, nor poetry
will save us,
not even the heat from our
enemy's body,
sleeping by our side
after a night of mess.
Now that we're not longer one,
but a pair of legs
wandering by the darkness
of Buenos Aires instead;
and they don't bump into each other
never ever.
Now that security
is a free murderer
that travels by bus
sat by our side.
Now that we've discovered that catechism
was naive with those
fantastic images of hell
it wanted to instill into us.
Now that the value of the burden
we carry on our backs
has depreciated to the
value of feathers.
Now that no one
gives a cent
for a song of ours;
and that we know
that everything we once feared
has become real.
Now that we are almost human beings
I wonder, soul of mine,
does Hope of finding
the path to the Paradise we were
kidnapped from still exist?
Or is it only the foreword
of this tragedy
that have just begun,
and that many happily
call Life?
 

SOUL

It became a narrow aisle
of uneven floortiles,
of walls torn by dampness and time.
An insolent place to watch,
where rain moistens
the few plants that grow
in old paint cans.
It became a narrow aisle
where from time to time
-if her kidneys don't hurt-
an old fat lady
slowly her slippers drags
to get close and turn
an old lamp on
which hangs from a black cobweb.
Then she gets back home,
unable to sit for a while
under that minimum roof
that does not protect her from water.
Rats from the shed
feel shyness as they get near;
as moths do,
as filthiness in the air does.
It became an inhospitable place,
a desert in Buenos Aires,
a hole in the wall of night.
It became a narrow aisle,
an aisle that links
home sweet home of envy
with a house taken by gipsies.
Not even one of them
dares to pass by there,
not even running,
not even drunk.
Only from time to time,
the fat lady worries,
and goes and turns the lamp on,
'cause if it burned
no one else,
nevermore,
would be able to state
that that narrow aisle
was a soul once.
My soul.

 

THE DEAD ONE

He didn't cross the street unaware.
He didn't gel off the train in motion.
He didn't open the freezer with bare feet.
He didn't slip in the bath.
He didn't stand among bullets.
He wasn't thief. He wasn't robbed,
He wasn't hostage. He wasn't innocent.
He wasn't involved in dirty deals.
He didn't devote himself to an ideal.
He didn't take part of any revolution.
He wasn't Christ, nor Magdalena.
He wasn't sick.
He wasn't in hospital, in an asylum, in a geriatric.
He had not cancer, nor HIV;
he had not cough, nor angina.
He didn't eat gone-off food.
He wasn't affected by dengue
Not any balcony fell over him.
He didn't jump from 10th floor.
He didn't drink a cocktail of pills.
He didn't cut his veins.
He didn't shoot himself.
But we all knew
he was already dead
from some time ago
when we found him
looking quietly through the window,
smoking the 39th cigarette of the night.
No tears in his eyes,
no blood in his body,
not a little scratch
and his heart still beating.

 

 PLACIDLY ASLEEP

I was asleep,
placidly asleep;
that's why I couldn't hear
the noise made by
Mrs. Hope
when she was putting
things for the moving in order:
my roof had been auctioned.
I was asleep
while everyone else
went out to work:
their pockets full with malaria.
I was asleep
when they shoot Christ
and sold him
as a trophy to NASA.
I was asleep
but not because of laziness:
weariness had finally appeared
after such a long time
-that's why I don't regret-.
I was asleep
when they declared
impunity for thieves,
amnisty for killers,
freedom on bail for repressors.
I was asleep
when God wandered
behind the stars
searching for a good excuse
to begin with the Final Judgement
so as not to be arrested.
I was asleep
while Mom worked
as a slave to pay
my bed rent.
I was asleep
while Dad got drunk
and masturbated watching CNN.
I was asleep,
and I don't regret
after such a long time.
I waas asleep
while Irak was being bombed,
while Coke staged a world
that we could never reach,
while joy had her freeday
and was out of the neighbourhood.
I was asleep
and I don't regret,
so asleep, as I've never been.
I was placidly asleep,
contfortably asleep,
deeply asleep.
I was dreaming you came back to me,
sweet heart,
ands woke me up from my dreaming
with your screams
-as you are used to do-.

 

FROZEN PICTURES OF A QUITE AND COLD WINTER

A she-dog sleeping
next to her puppies
in the hall of
Santojani Hospital's guard.
A transexual shaving his-her legs
in the cheap hotel's room
before going out to get
the bread in the sidewalk.
A bus driver of 86 line
getting high
at the station al 2 AM o'clock.
A blind man singing in the train.
A bolivian man singing in the train.
A cripple man singing in the train.
Voices in radio and TV,
the same voices yelling
about the same usual product.
A lad getting in Cata's kiosk
in order to buy 8 Guaymallen for $1.
A one-meter-and-fifty-centimeter-tall woman
with her face in red and her hands cold
going home with three Ariz� crates
in her shopping bag.
Smilings of Soccer Worl Cup.
Smilings of Father's Day.
Smilings of Christmas, New Year's Eve
and the Three Wise Men Day.
A straight-haired lady
getting off the bus
half a block from Matanza's University.
Four or five banged boys
playing table football at 5 PM.
Mar�a Elena's mother
stiring the stew
with rice for Grandma.
Baby's diapper made a ball,
Nono 's diapper made a ball as well.
The same faces every day,
getting off the train, buying a choripan ,
tying their laces, scratching their heads,
missing buses, waiting in a bank,
waiting in the traffic light,
waiting the Lord comes again
wrapped in little beams.
The guy behind the glass,
selling a lottery ticket,
the guy of the other side
paying the ticket with his remaining
salary and hope.
the guy behind the altar
converting water with flour
into resuscitated flesh.
White-haired ladies
looking on the miracle from the 4th row.
Dried leaves from all the trees.
Humidity percentage
impregnated in railings
covered wiuth antirust paint.
Filthiness, cobwebs in my window,
blocking my view of the world.
Etcetera.
Etcetera.
Etcetera.
 

SLEEPING PILLS

God is bored
wandering among stars,
not knowing what to do.
Bored and absentminded enough
to pay not attention
to his pitiful looking world
that's crumbling down.
That's why he didn't care about
the thousands and thousands
of human beings
that day after day wonder
what they are fucking
doing standing here.
That's why he didn't read
in the newspapers tha loneliness
is the disease of this new millenium,
and there's no cure for it.
God must be so bored
within his isolated Godity
that even him must be
lacking of personality.
It's like that.
Look how he leaves everything going on
its fool path:
cars slip in the Avenue,
the woman from the opposite door
moves her little bare foot,
dancing by 'El tedio de la vejestoria' .
Trees go on growing up,
as if anything happened,
while in neighbour's home
TV has nothing to offer to youth,
but its appologies.
Poor God,
I've pity on him:
how sad and painful is
to see him getting old,
among his flatulences
that come from his
full of tediousness belly.
How much he must be
under boredom's shade,
that he finally forgot which was the sense
of our creation.
That's why you mustn't feel bad
if you're lonely
looking throw the window
guessing which was the star
supposed to guide to ourselves
when time has come,
and you can't find it
in the constellation mess
that our existence ceiling is.
I neither can find it.
Poor God stirs them all
quite usually,
trying to kill the boring state,
trying to find the place
where he left the sleeping pills
he lost for being distracted,
wandering round one of those
timeless afternoons,
such a long, long
long, long time ago.

 

BEFORE THE MIRROR

He just supposed he knew
where he storm came from.
Mad of lonely lonelinesses,
of pieces of ashes,
of dirty dishes
and of some groan
rebounding in memory.
Made of accompanied lonelinesses,
of cold summers, winters,
springs, autumns and Christmasses,
of the remainings of
the meal of yesterday.
Made of premeditated lonelinesses,
of screams, of tantrums,
of silences, of groanings,
of hearts wrapped in
cold meat paper,
of plastic bags.
Made of unexpected lonelinesses,
of deaf how's and when's,
of mude why's,
of absent where's.
Made of lonliness
after all,
or maybe of exile,
of vulnerable wishes,
of sterile promises,
sterilized, sterilizer.
Then,
he had no more doubts,
he felt sorry for himself,
and, before the mirror,
cried one tear,
a good tear,
made of pure selfishness.
 

17 AUGUST 1997

There were no news this morning,
but for the grey sky,
and for some birds
that still sing.
It's 17 August,
as any other one,
with some cold,
some humidity,
no saint of the sword ,
no freedom for no one,
no rebellion mood.
From the light posts
wires hang
and some drops fall.
It's still dawn
as any other,
plain and simple,
without dreams,
without hopes,
without discharged blood,
with hangover and headache.
Except for San Mart�n's
anniversary of 'fiambre' ,
there are not more news this dawn.
We could just add
we are now
a little more broken,
a little closer to the edge;
due to the plain fact that
another day's gone,
nothing else.
 

 SOUL'S MIRROR

It's true,
we grew up frightened.
With so many watchful eyes
anguish blew her caressing breeze
over the chiken skin,
and it was logical.
There were so many eyes
chasing us,
that desperation turned
strongly to anguish.
Even walls blinked;
floors, closed windows,
dirty socks,
butts of every cigarette:
sleepless victims.
Everyone nailed their sights
with expanded eyes
dislocated by their peaceless fury,
filling our ears
with their discordant laughter.
It's true,
terror made one with our meat
and it was obvious
we would become tireless fighters
seeking that little piece of peace
we had been stolen of.
We became warriors,
utopian, obsesive,
paranoid with our seeking.
It's true,
we live frightened,
with so many watchful eyes.
It seemed even natural
that the outrage finally
wrapped us in the sheets
of the sleepless torture of waiting
that all those eyes
turned blind by miracle.
And it was logical
that such pain
made us wait the hours we waited
(that, in the whole,
were no so many:
only the enough ones
to blind our own eyes).
 

THE LUCKY ONES

Nightmother beared us in darkness,
and we grew up under her care.
She gave us milk to surfeit;
wetting our lips and ears
with her liquors.
We were protected.
With time we learned
to learn from our defeats,
and to toast her memory;
good moments.
We learned to suck
the juice from the bone,
to drink pools
of another's tears,
not to pray paternosters for no one.
And, even though more than once
we jumped blindly into emptiness,
we learned to fly with care.
That's why we've never been poor,
but rich in poverty;
specially from the day
marked in our memory
that we learned that
no one falls from the floor.
Who of us will dare to
feel helpless anytime?
Only when dawn comes
we shall see our skin and bones,
but we'll be already
used to sleep at daylight.
We are lucky.
Nighmother beared us in darkness,
she kissed us and blessed us
with her wine of knowledge.
Then she sent us to march through the world,
dressed by the strenght of her mourn.
Who could hurt us
from then on?
We are lucky.
We were protected
from the first day.
 

 SOMETHING 'BOUT DEATH

We invented paradises,
purgatories, hells.
We invented reincarnations.
We invented stars, talismans
in which we could our fears put.
We even invented chats with the dead,
to ask gosts how we could
go on with this calvary.
We invented suffering,
little and huge sacrifices,
so as to get even
about our own regret,
with our lack of responsability.
We invented saints
that give Bread & Work,
potions to open paths,
Jehova's witnesses that show us
houses in the middle of the jungle,
with lions and pandas
eating our own meals.
We invented praising,
miracles and resuscitations,
prayers, songs,
comunions, healings,
blessings, unctions:
They create for us a path
of repression, betrayal,
frustration; which are
believed to guide us
to a place behind clouds.
But we didn't get very far.
Our little development and
lack of talent are obvious.
We still lack the capacity
of imagining an end
related to a reality we ignore...
and it chases us, implacably,
every now and then.
 

ONE CIGARETTE AFTER ANOTHER

Night becomes
heavy dampness,
soaking through the bones of soul
and it seems untrue:
it's always the same.
One cigarette after another,
and the same reunion scene again:
my lack of talent and my lack of food
shaking hands, to see wether
they can regain this situation altogether.
Fucking misery,
this time they stole the maps
of the location of an open kiosk,
where one can drink some wine
in this labyrinth without exit.
This time we didn't need
to be told how lost we are.
It was plain intuition
after years of getting used.
No need to say
our feet do already know the way
to the eternal-vexation-alley,
of the wandering road,
of vulnerable doom.
One cigarette after another
and the same scene again:
my empty eyes staring
at the window open
to a different nothing;
the same B.A. postcard
as usual,
usual, usual, usual.

 

THE REASON OF MY SINGING

Perhaps because destiny
needs my singing.
Perhaps because there's such a
huge hunger in this Hell
that bread won't kill it.
Perhaps because I see B.A.
dawning in disgrace,
with the plain image
of electric wires
crossing the winter of its sky.
Perhaps because I need to believe,
because I precise strenght
to avoid sleeping
in dayly boredom's bed.
Perhaps because it depends
on the flowing of these words
the piercing of your fortress
to rock myself within your heart.
Perhaps because it's the only remedy
that gives me the chance
to cry for love.
Perhaps because I'm so vulgar
that I take advantage on this excuse
not to get in the
huge wheel of mediocrity,
coarsely and legally allowed.
Perhaps because my soul muscles
get cramp when I refuse to scream
with voice of ink.
Perhaps because it's like that,
plainly.
I find these words
indispensable to beg a little ride
in heaven vineyards with style
and to share some wine
with God there.
Perhaps because I'm blessed
or cursed with this gift
and/or fault.
Perhaps because if it weren't like this
the remaining story
wouldn't have sense.
Perhaps because of that,
or of many things more
I sing;
because I need this pain
of bearing songs
a lot more than the caresses
I'd need to calm it.
Perhaps because my destiny just
put me on her way
because she needed my singing
to make it more interesting,
and I can't choose
What the hell do I know.

 

IT MEANS YOU'RE NOT THERE

The open window
undressing the city
and her dwarfish roofs.
Dirty socks
decorating the environment
where I survive.
The cobweb that holds
my smile gone with
my years of youth.
Smoke from the cigar
corrupting the already damaged
smell of my confinement.
My collection of classics in paperback:
other's nostalgia
consolling me at night.
The remembrance of your kiss of good bye.
Sadness that returns to install her shop within my heart.
Walls that make me sleep
with thir sordid lullaby.
My hope buried
in the graves of yesterday.
And everything I forget
in a daring act of selfmercy.
 

SO MANY ADMIRERS YOU CAN'T IMAGINE

Cool and naked,
in this meeting
you're going to jump
from terrace to terrace
over the whole city;
but you won't get my bed.
No. No.
You're going to smile
while the pray lasts
looking effusive and joyful,
with your better party smiles;
and you're going to cheer
with your out-of-place jokes
the burial of every christ
that falls to your feet;
and you won't allow in your face
not even a leak
that denounce the flud
-logically and unavoidably-
that waits impatiently
behind your eyes.
You're going to survive this way,
and you'll see
how lucky you'll be.
I'm already imagining
the applauses
you will steal,
over the planks
of this world theater,
a crowd of masked absenses
that stand in ovation for you.
You're going to be the chosen one,
the only one, the spectacular one
with so many admirers
you can't imagine,
with fans, lunatics
who go mad for you;
and the owners of this bussiness
who fight for your contract.
You'll see you'll do well.
You'll see you'll make it.
That's what calm me the most,
specially tonight,
the night you leave;
but do not ask me why,
'cause I've no reasons,
o I've too much.
Cool and naked,
in this meeting
you're going to jump
from terrace to terrace
over the whole city;
so that everyone wakes up
and admires
the charms of your magic;
but you won't get my bed.
No.
Not tonight.
It's your leaving.
Go and wander through the world;
it's my order:
that everyone covets your beauty
and dies madly for your love...
light of my eyes,
sadness of mine.

 

LEAVE YOUR MARK

While sleeplessness
is the main character
of this story
hold on me,
despered and selfish.
Pierce your fingernails
in the senseless skin
of my back
till you get threads of blod from it.
Leave your mark on me
so that your remembrance survives
in the ransacked house
that my memory is;
so that the day I'm hungry
I can get sated
with the sap of your kisses.
So that the day
I've no candles
(after the last 25 W lamp burns)
I can be lighted by the nostalgia
of having dreamed you
a radiant angel;
or of having got stubborn
to make my imagination
and my vulgar ego believe
that your legs were the Col�n Theater,
or your black eyes consolation.
So that when I feel too old
it comes to me the oath
that said
you'll never be lonely.
Please,
leave marks.
Hurt me to the point
you don't leave me scars,
but wounds that never heal instead.
Don't lose yourself
under the sheets
as your moans do.
Tie to me.
Get inside my bag,
inside my underwear,
in the filthiness between my fingers,
into my inferiority complex.
Please,
leave marks,
while sleeplessness is the main character,
install in me,
become rooted to my nervs
so that the fact that we're one (ever one)
embodies me,
so that I don't even forget
the day I put
my hands over the fire as I sweared
that poetry was precisely
making love to you
in a bar toilet,
or throwing up
the flesh of a disdain
mixed with wine
in the same place.
To be always sure
that this night is not anguish
but nurturing to calm
the noise of my belly,
thirsty of emotions.
Stay with me,
be part of my blood
as of my complain;
don't lose yourself, remembrance,
in this house's disgrace,
with no inhabitants and dust,
that my drunk and
hopeless memory is;
'cause I swear
I won't be able to find you
once you decide to leave
and we have stayed
one lonelier than the other.
 

FOR THE MOMENT THE END COMES

And if only silence remains,
the sleeplessness of a faucet
that doesn't get tired of dropping.
And if only a story remains,
a story without story,
the null night
of 40 cigarettes
crashin themselves with no sense.
And if it's just about
picturing always the same landscape always,
always thge same window,
always the same misery.
And if this heart felt asleep
with local anaesthesia
and it feels shallow
beating at half engine,
crying at fake tear.
And if the only remaining joy
is this lexotanil peace,
that tedious song,
this monotonous melody,
this double-beded loneliness.
When the improvised end overcomes,
there won't remain anything
but a 'resign yourself, brother'
to pay the entrance to eternity,
or the nothing that waits for us as well.
Only tired muscles will remain,
only tired lips, only tired hands,
only tired fingers,
only to justify
this absense of existance
which we never get tired
of conceive overunderstoodly present;
vulgarly, and ironically.
Special and eternal.


 

TIME IS OVER.

'Cause we've got eyes
that refuse not to see
beyond our nose.
'Cause we're desperatly hunger of dreams.
'Cause we're fed up of
avoiding the word 'love',
'cause it reminds us to a
vulgar advertisement;
'cause we've got legs
that cry their willing to run free.
'Cause orur hands
are the strongest, buy they are unuseful.
'Cause our mouth hushes.
'Cause our eyes do not cry,
'cause the roots of our nervs
feel always dizzy.
Air,
just a bit of air.
'Cause heaven is blue
but we inherited it gray
an there can't be complains, shit.
'Cause we've no longer got sun.
'Cause we've no longer got moon
where we can put
our dreams baggage.
'Cause we've no longer got stared nights,
but Night of Stars.
'Cause we need
not to be infected in the blood,
or at least not to be rottened more than it is.
'Cause life is not the stage
of a B class soap
where Romeo and Juliet
play to live or die together
and resuscitate in the next chapter
(only if rating demands it).
'Cause our existance
is not exclusively based
on buying, buying, buying
an advertisement after another,
a perishable need after another,
a soda after another,
a president after another.
'Cause there's a hunger for freedom
and for blood flowing.
'Cause there's a desire
to scream 'amr'
and nothing else.
'Cause it's unfair having to pay
the broken dishes
after 2000 years of decadence.
'Cause we don't deserve
being treated
as if we were the new era geniouses,
and being sodomized by thir fingers
as they will.
'Cause our asses are already tired
of being sat for so long
watchingt in TV
the shit thy did to us,
the one they do and the one they are about to do
with this world,
with our world.
Air,
just a bit of air.
Our nose breathes toxics
and our brain doesn't receive owygen enough as it should.
'Cause they keep us drugged,
with nailed needles all over our bodies
carrying the drug to the bone.
'Cause they keep us dumb.
'Cause they keep us sleepy.
Air,
just a bit of air,
that clears our mind,
so that every arm raises
-all at once, after all-
and defeats our nightmare.
'Cause the waiting is over,
'cause someone has to take the bridles
and tame this matter.
'Cause ours is this paradise
of pigsty thy left to us.
'Cause ours is this land.
'Cause we ran out of why's.
'Cause we're alive,
and we're running out of time
and our time is being stolen,
our time.
That's why we must fight.
For that tiny thing left
called hope,
which, according to
this morning news,
is no longer ours.
 

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