beabaptistaa's reviews
147 reviews

”I loved the writers who made you look through every line, to gaze downward and feel the vertigo of the depths, the blackness of inferno.”

And to keep under control the anxieties of change I had, finally, taught myself to wait patiently until every emotion imploded and could come out in a tone of calm, my voice held back in my throat so that I would not make a spectacle of myself.

If I am exposed to ants, I will fight the ants. If I am exposed to thieves, I will fight the thieves. If I am exposed to myself, I will fight myself.

A woman can easily kill on the street, in the middle of a crowd, she can do it more easily than a man. Her violence seems a game, a parody, an improper and slightly ridiculous use of the male intent to do harm.

We are occasions. We consummate life and lose it because in some long ago time someone, in the desire to unload his cock inside us, was nice, chose us among women.

I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

We don't know anything about people, even those with whom we share everything.

I felt something move inside me, a jolt of grief so intense that the tears seemed to me fragments of a crystal object stored for a long time in a secret place and now, because of that movement, shattered into a thousand stabbing shards.

I was like a lump of food that my children chewed without stopping; a cud made of a living material that continually amalgamated and softened its living substance to allow greedy bloodsuckers to nourish themselves, leaving on me the odor and taste of their gastric juices.

I didn't want to run, if I ran I would break, every step left behind disintegrated immediately afterward, even in memory,(…).

His desire had been to skate far away from us on an infinite surface; mine, it seemed to me now, was to go to the bottom, abandon myself, sink deaf and mute into my own veins, into my intestine, my bladder.

I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream, slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, even as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children.

I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.

"Stop or I'll cut off your hands," she would say when I touched her dressmaking things. And those words were a pair of long, burnished steel scissors that came out of her mouth, jawlike blades that closed over the wrists, leaving stumps sewed up with a needle and thread from her spools.

How heavy a body that has been traversed by death is, life is light, there's no need to let anyone make it heavy for us. 

How could I scrape them definitively off of my body, my mind, without finding that I had in the process scraped away myself?

"On Saturday night her everyday soul was lost, and how good it was to lose it (...). "— Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady

"She had pacified life so well, taken such care for it not to explode." - Love

"And as if it were a butterfly, Ana caught the instant between her fingers before it was never hers again." - Love

"And for an instant the wholesome life she had led up till now seemed like a morally insane way to live." - Love

"Just when does a mother, holding a child tight, impart to him this prison of love that would forever fall heavily on the future man." — Family Ties 

1.  Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady: 4.5/5 
2.  Love: 1000/5
3.  Family Ties: 5/5 

Guerra Ou Lisboa 72: 4/5
Lagos I: 4/5
Nesta Hora: 5/5
Com Fúria e Raiva: 4/5
A Casa Térrea: 4/5
Caderno I: 4/5
Museu: 4/5
Carta de Natal a Murilo Mendes: 5/5
Regressarei: 4/5
Açores: 4/5
Nestes Últimos Tempos: 5/5

Meia verdade é como habitar meio quarto
Ganhar meio salário
Como só ter direito
A metade da vida

O demagogo diz da verdade a metade
E o resto joga com habilidade
Porque pensa que o povo só pensa metade
Porque pensa que o povo não percebe nem sabe

— NESTA HORA

Com fúria e raiva acuso o demagogo
E o seu capitalismo das palavras

Pois é preciso saber que a palavra é sagrada
Que de longe muito longe um povo a trouxe
E nela pôs sua alma confiada

Com fúria e raiva acuso o demagogo
Que se promove à sombra da palavra
E da palavra faz poder e jogo
E transforma as palavras em moeda
Como se fez com o trigo e com a terra

— COM FÚRIA E RAIVA

Que a arte não se torne para ti a compensação daquilo que
[não soubeste ser
Que não seja transferência nem refúgio
Nem deixes que o poema te adie ou divida: mas que seja
A verdade do teu inteiro estar terrestre

— A CASA TÉRREA

Como eu só o via nessa quadra do ano
Não vejo a sua ausência dia-a-dia
Mas em tempo mais fundo que o quotidiano

Descubro a sua ausência devagar
Sem mesmo a ter ainda compreendido
Seria bom Murilo conversar
Neste dia confuso e dividido

Hoje escrevo porém para a Saudade
- Nome que diz permanência do perdido
Para ligar o eterno ao tempo ido
E em Murilo pensar com claridade -

— CARTA DE NATAL A MURILO MENDES

Nestes últimos tempos é certo a esquerda fez erros
Caiu em desmandos confusões praticou injustiças

Mas que diremos da longa tenebrosa e perita
Degradação das coisas que a direita pratica?

Que diremos do lixo do seu luxo — de seu
Viscoso gozo da nata da vida— que diremos
De sua feroz ganância e fria possessão?

Que diremos de sua sábia e tácita injustiça
Que diremos de seus conluios e negócios
E do utilitário uso dos seus ócios?

Que diremos de suas máscaras álibis e pretextos
De suas fintas labirintos e contextos?

Nestes últimos tempos é certo a esquerda muita vez
Desfigurou as linhas do seu rosto

Mas que diremos da meticulosa eficaz expedita
Degradação da vida que a direita pratica?

— NESTES ÚLTIMOS TEMPOS