Alma Novaes

 Lyrical Essay on the Present

You have to take the reins after the derailment

And run away from those who promise everything

of those who build poems in the wind, 

of those who sit on the benches of houses 

and public buildings waiting for their turn to shout.

Dilutors, simulacra of peace, so-called threats 

to freedom, castrators of others, bureaucrats 

of tired democracy and of all the rigged systems 

like dictatorships, masters and masters

of demagoguery, fraud, paedophilia and global atrocities

You have to use your brain to think and contest

It is necessary to put an end to the herd 

and the conservatives of omen, to the 

complacency of plasmas and soap operas

and to remove the leaders accommodated to power

It is necessary, as Manuel Alegre says, 

to say no but to emphasize it

and put an end to the vices of the systems, 

to use acts and not stratagems

make use of lucidity and reason

Extinguishing the emblems of corporatism

contaminate the rewards of humility,

it is necessary to call to the dock

The executioners of our consented silence

The hoarders of our soul, the dealers of Prozak

violators of thought, those responsible 

for the transfiguration of reality,

dominators of the weakness of others, 

of the others that we are, placebos of our misfortune

It is necessary to take to the streets 

and urge the truth and tear out the laissez faire 

to which we have become accustomed

it is necessary to staunch the blood 

of a wounded vanity,

from an aimless identity, to the abyss, 

to madness and nothingness.

It had to happen, to be many or to be more

But it was necessary, first of all, to have us aware