World 01

One of these days
I’ll have to decide where I’m from.

Robed in you culture I left home
Thinking of distancing myself from all for your sake,

First lie I left for you, mother!

Like a Chinaman who’s proud of his new buildings,
I forgot to see the shit that covered your life as a woman,
And again like a Chinaman:
I didn’t want to hear the cries of hundreds of thousands of lost souls
Like that Chinaman, I left troubled and alone.

From the airport where my uncle lost his wings crossing the alps
I saw my homeland for the last time;
I looked into my face for the last time.
I left my coast without seeing my forests,
My imaginary mountains—Indian, Swiss—with windy slopes are still there.
In my memory I had to decide if Paris and its realities,
Sartrean or Camusian, were that which dazzled the Christian,
Which frightened the tepid faceless being, who had gone forth with faith only …

BRU VI

When all the more influential newspapers of the world talk about invisible populations
In major Western societies, what are they really talking about? What does the invisible social body of France consist of, for instance?
Does invisible mean of uncertain color?
Or simply different from the desired French citizen?

Or does invisible mean without a future?

It’s difficult to know why this topic worries me so; sometimes I think it is because of
The color of my skin, and that bothers me because it obliges me to accept that race continues to be a factor
That can alter a person’s intellectual behavior at some moment of his life,

WORLD 02

And go, go, go, [“Y mate, mate, mate”: the only context in which I know this is sports announcers, who cry: y mate, mate, mate, y gol! Hence the “go, go, go,” but I am really in doubt about this] I traveled and finally saw over my left shoulder;
I saw another internationalist negro laughing hysterically
The Lebanese, Cubans, Syrians, Peruvians, Argentineans, and the Irish were all laughing.
Before dying: smile.
Before loving: smile.

Before emigrating: smile.

Before walking the streets of the big city: cloak yourself with the invisibility of the poor,
And meander through any Babylon, your body transparent but your soul full.
Again my dead laugh, and I smile with them recalling that African sun,
Those skins that tear more brutally than in a Soutine, and that smell, and in the end,
As in the song, a kiss and farewell, revolution.

BRU VI

Before working: forget.

The fear running through Europe’s veins has no face
No smell
But has a name: the other, the different future.

Yesterday in China the president of my republic said:

In free translation, that trading with the empire of the blind
Would allow us all to be one-eyed: the dignity of the human being
Is not respected at all; but trains and nuclear power stations are up for sale, and that is our best answer to its
Cheap shoes and mp3 players as plentiful as there are consumers in Europe.
Let them come invisible, visible mass, but visible its consumption, let them suffer far from us …
Let them consume close by, and let them suffer further and further away …

A country created a myth: the liberty that bathed the world in blood in its name, and today that same country,
Sits atop of me and of all, all perfumes of the world unite, don’t let yourself be sold, stink like our times, be a permanent colorless stain, be old and
Ooze pus like old regencies, be transparent: the color of our times.

Be distant and forget if the marvelous whores of my country … who always sold themselves
To the passing time without objecting to your white temples.
I dream of a communitarian building,
As I walk into the office building that serves as the hideout of 15,000 Eurocrats I see to the left, again, an old gypsy woman straight out of storybooks panhandling like the hundreds of lobbyists and ministers of the entire world, nobody sees them they’re transparent in this panhandling center that the Berlaymont has become.

WORLD 03

You have no name,
No borders,
The sky follows you everywhere,
Your blue is dyed grey when you don’t want it
Your gods no longer exist
And your floor
Smiles at your face when you hide yourself.

Yesterday I saw you on TV, in your marine version, salty and black you were.
Seeing you I saw myself, drawing problems,
Filling my world of stone with castles
I saw your genitals steaming the air
And once more I went out transparent,
Visible only as a problem
Invisible only as a theme.

BRU VI

A pair of pants and a t-shirt, are they a set?
Or a way of paying less duties?

A head of garlic at minus 2, is that a frozen product?
Or fresh tomorrow with less duties?

Thus we think today of visible products and invisible men,
Nobody can be entirely software, not you, not me,
Not Europe,

My neighborhood in Europe is dyed suit-grey,
Grey the day,
Grey the bread,
Grey the frozen head of garlic,
Grey the frozen chicken,
Grey the parliament, which forgets about China and rejoices in regulated trade

Millions of cheap shoes and t-shirts
Fly all around the world, sail its oceans,
Avoid the conflicts and the smell of the poor, turn here again to my left
Not tasty like mango pits
Not desirable biblical names
They are detachable pieces
That shine because of their numbers.
It’s already midday in Brussels
The sun remembers the invisible and the grey and rises like priapus
Mother, there is a wide and alien world not called Paris,
It is called globalized world, not Hispanic or Portuguese,
Not Christian or Muslim
Its name is whatever you choose to call it,
If you can pay

WORLD 04

Te recuerdo, Amanda, la calle mojada … I heard that 73 times before

Wanting to go to the world where I would be invisible

Night, my beloved companion, says I know what you are, but I don’t care.
I have enough light to cover your grief/punishment or sentence? [hard to tell].

And I reply that an invisible man is not afraid of ceasing to be,
Only of being somewhere …

I wake up; reach for my gun, dream of Cuba and its color I dream of Algiers
And its beautiful whores,
I dream of snakes, in my language.
I no longer remember what I dream of, all I know is that I don’t know;
Classical root of my problem.
I want to kill and don’t know why
I want to survive and don’t know why
I want to frighten the wolf and don’t know why.
Being invisible is like loving, it’s enough for one person to see you
For life to be a carnival.

BRU VII

The European constitution, failed and beautiful like us
Is already as invisible as we are!

Something is happening because Brussels laughs,
Not only of itself and its complexes
Of its sufficient grief [su basta pena?]
Lights up with our colors
Hardware of the world where it can be invisible.

The Euro tightens its belt, which grows to the rhythm of its borders
New walls surround our tomatoes, white from
Almeria to Amsterdam,
Our ideas take refuge in Bologna or Venice,
Berlin and London are startled
Madrid dreams that it is its own
Paris burns black

And we, the invisible
From here or elsewhere;
Dodge grief and
Forget the distant shame of the Slovakian philosopher
Shoo away the death
That brings life to the elders of the grey world
Works in black, consumes, regards to you and yours
Don’t dream with Cayucos
Daydream
Dream of men and women dressed in grey
Who rule the world without knowing it
Observe them and cross the floor over your anger …
Let them also open their veins …

The president of the meeting tells the interpreter that the
Meeting must continue, and the interpreter, wise in
Years more than wisdom,
Replies that the rule says that everything has its time
That tomorrow is another day.

WORLD 05

We, invisibles, have known that since our first dream.