Eating Pessoa

Pessoa was a text invented by Portugal.

It just so happened that it had eyes and glasses. Hair and a hat.

Sex and a fly.

Portugal is a brilliant author.

It just so happened that Portugal was into import/export
like courtesans often do.
That is why a whore is more important
than Álvaro de Campos. And Alberto Caeiro
as important as a barrel of liquor.

But more on that later.

Pessoa was a fiction
that made letters and words burst. And when without rhyme
it came from pure thought
it was a thirst like no other.
With a heart, you see.

But more on that later.

When Portugal starts writing
it is a drunkenness of flesh in the first person.
With ships and diaries; and letters and volumes;
and a taste for the tenderness of words immemorial;
of draft and of talent.

In the mirror, Pessoa is a fish. Semantic.
Tears time along the river and the windstorm. Decisive.
Has margins with images of villages. Prepositions.
Of, to, in, for. Floods towns. Adverbial, adjective.
Beautiful nonetheless. Submerges cities. Ancient verbs.

But more on that later.

Let us eat Pessoa, you say;
for the obvious, for the incest,
from the front and in re-verse,
while the poet sips on its coffee, nibbles
its fingers, gnawing at sleep
within its skin and within its papers. What a meal.