Crânio Impromptu
Brassalano Graça
Lisboa: Mercador Editorial, 2025

O homem negro busca na memória colonial
o fracasso do seu futuro
um futuro aprisionado nas masmorras
da sua imaginação,
no esgoto da sua falta de arrependimento
ou sentido de culpa,
o homem negro é hoje uma estrela morta
resiste como ruína de um sonho
numa noite que se eterniza
sobre os ombros dos náufragos de África.

Poems come to me unexpectedly. They emerge when nothing else stirs the tail of the void. When the beauty of silence suffocates me. There is more instinct in them than thought or consciousness. They are pure survival. In them there is no optimism, only desire. A desire as inert as the silence they occupy like weeds. They possess neither form nor substance; they amount to nothing but ruins and inertia. They belong to the undergrowth. They are the body mutilated by desire. They are poems conceived upon the sonic wreckage of the body, born of the tragic darkness of Drum & Bass, Trance, Jungle, or Free Jazz. They are poems constructed as noises and anomalies of black bodies, amidst erotic nightmares, surreal wounds, and political cries. Torrential gushes of memories muddied by the anguish of the infernal machine of tropical dreams. Perhaps these poems are an attempt to answer the question – can Poetry save us? Perhaps it cannot save us, but it can certainly condemn us. To the clarity of our own selves, to a subterranean truth like the thorns of shadows, to the chilling scent of flowers, to the cursed beauty of Women. Perhaps it can condemn us to a wandering along the twilight paths of love. Condemn us to be uncompromising with our own insignificance.

Brassalano Graça