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Shelton Pinheiro

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Tranströmer and the importance of ‘Mystery’.

Being brought up in a palpably Catholic household, the word mystery has echoed within me ever since I was a little boy. The mystery of the oneness of the Trinity and the mystery of the Sacraments among others. Over the years, I did go through my own interpretations of the existence of the word mystery – at one point I wondered whether the very concept of religious mystery was a way of keeping people away Read More

Breaking News. 10 January 2015

Standing in unlit corridor, I spread shabby white sheet

over cool blue rexine: number twelve, side upper berth.

Train, wracked by deep cough trembles, moves. Explosion

at restaurant in Lyon in France: Source AFP. I push

dark suede moccasin under seat across. Shots fired in car chase

north east of Paris say police sources. 20 year old unrecognisably

smudged picture is me enough: ticket inspector nods.

Hostages taken North East of Paris, say police. I swing myself up

to reach berth over woman reading book. Kundera

smiles on cover. Police, helicopters

rush to corner two missing suspects in Paris attack,

say French officials. I prise open rusty jammed reading light,

draw curtains over faint urine smell leaking into

warm banana fritter. Paris massacre suspects holding one

hostage: police source to news agency. I close eyes before I close

book. Suspects killed, hostages emerge from Paris

supermart, say officials. I emerge through

small, crowded door. Birth into dark.

Tomas Transformer?

I was watching the news on a regional channel recently when the ticker below declared that Tomas ‘Transformer’ had won the Nobel Prize. This sudden transformation of Transtromer did bring on a smile, but it also reminded me of the kind of effect the poetry of this man had on me when I stumbled upon him some time in the mid nineties.
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Waiting Room

I am waiting for the doctor at the  clinic. There’s something quite transitory about this room itself. As if the collective anxiety of people who have waited here for years have crystallized into invisible stalactites of fear. I think of all the pointless waiting. Prisoners waiting to be gassed, murderers to be electrocuted and couples to be married. I think of corridors that never lead to rooms. Then I think of people in stores asking for extended warranties. I think of permanent club memberships. I think of home appliances that last for a decade. I smile through the stalactites as the lady calls out my number. Read More

The Meaning of Obscurity

Like monsoons in March, I am writing again. Happily out of season.

I remember reading Celan’s Deathfugue for the first time many years ago. I did not know what to do with it. Like a  funeral procession passing by my window on a monochrome evening, I watched it go by. I looked up from the book to reassure myself that everything was alright. Black Milk of daybreak. I’d never heard anything of the likes of this before. I did not even understand it fully. But understanding was the last thing on my mind. I quietly sat, listening to the dark rhythms of death sloshing around. Read More

Remembrance of Things Lost

Everything I remember in life revolves around forgetting. Pencils, erasers, books, keys, friends, poems and things of every conceivable kind. With apologies to M. Proust, here’s to forgetfulness.

Pens:
I have always had an almost fanatic fascination for pens – and an equally unfathomable talent for losing them at regular intervals. I distinctly remember a thick blue Camlin pen that I lost in primary school. It had a transparent part in the middle through which you could see the ink moving up and down as you wrote. It leaked near the grip and I used to seal it quite unsuccessfully with soap. However carefully I wrote, I would come home with interestingly inky palms to the horror of my mother. In the years ahead, I would go on to lose pens of different kinds and colours. I remember being really upset twice – when I lost a deep green Chinese made Hero Fountain and when I misplaced a new Cross ball pen. I am writing this post with a hardworking matte black regular Parker fountain (incidentally, I write all my posts longhand before I type it into the computer)  and hope to hold on to it for a long time. Read More

An Unscheduled Meeting

Recently, I ran into John at the airport. He seemed to be having a severe attack of writing; more intense than anything I remember him having any time recently. I had caught him in the middle of a week long writing break from work. So we started off on writing – and in a few minutes into our conversation we were discussing copulating lizards, Portuguese galleons and Catholic bishops. Even as I was wondering how every conversation with John travels into such bizarre realms, we had moved into advertising and poetry. Read More

Making Sense in Spite of Language

I once read about how the insight that wheels limit speed became a revolutionary concept in the world of terrestrial travel. Thus today we have bullet trains without wheels that ride on magnetically created cushions of air, almost completely eliminating the resistance of friction. The greatest invention in travel, thus seems to have become its greatest limitation.
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Art in the Time of Terror

“No man who’s shot a rifle at his fellow men can look at these properly”, says Gomez the painter as he refuses to look at the paintings in the Museum of Modern Arts, in Sartre’s Iron in the Soul. Surrounded by the mushrooming impact of World War II, he instinctively feels that he is part of a violent spectacle that somehow obscures his ability to appreciate the paintings he loves. Moreover, war has changed everything, even the paintings he’s known so well. Under the circumstances, perhaps, he feels that art itself is pointless. Read More

If

If detected early enough,

poetry can be cured without even a whimper.

If tugged at when the soil is still moist

banyan saplings can be uprooted in silence.

If slept over when the dawn is still hours away,

Older Posts

bad to verse

Scattered reflections on a curious vocation