Edilson Afonso Ferreira

Our July 2016 Featured Poet

Mr. Ferreira is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than Portuguese.
Recent works have appeared in Red Wolf Journal, Right Hand Pointing,
Creative Talents Unleashed (Featured Poet), Indiana Voice Journal, The Lake,
Young Ravens, Synesthesia, Every Day Poems, Dead Snakes, The Literary
Nest, Mocking Heart Review, among others. Published in four printed British
Anthologies and short-listed in four American Poetry Contests, he lives in a
small town with wife, three sons and a granddaughter and, unhurried, is
collecting his works for a forthcoming book. He began to write so late, after
his retirement as a Bank Manager. See more of his poems
at www.edilsonmeloferreira.wordpress.com.
The Poet's Bookshelf
"The Poet's Bookshelf" is crucial to the creation of poetry. These are the poems, poets, novels,
stories, and art pieces that inspire the art of writing.
Here are the ten items on Edilson Afonso Ferreira's Bookshelf, that have inspired his poetry.

ThePoet'sBookshelf:
1 - Anna Karenina, by Leon Tolstoy
2 - Rivers to the Sea, by Sara Teasdale
3 - Flame and Shadow, by Sara Teasdale
4 - The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, edited by John Kelly (four volumes)
5 - The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman
6 - The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley
7 - The Gifts of the Jews, by Thomas Cahill
8 - Modern Times, The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson
9 - John Singer Sargent, by Richard Ormon and Elaine Kilmurray (three volumes)
10 - Van Gogh, Complete Paintings, by Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger (a huge volume)

CollectionofPoemsbyEdilsonAfonsoFerreira
Brave a New Man
From immemorial times I feel a dust
always hunting me wherever I go.
It blows softly and lightly, furtively
involving and deluding me.

It is peculiar a dust, that has in mind

not my body but my soul.
Created by the power of my enemies
and my disillusions, it works to calcify
the framework of my entire being.
But by night, at home and asleep,
you have all the right not believe me,
invisible angels pour cleansing a rain
and by dawn it is a new and fresh man
who faces so old-fashioned one world.
A Love Story
Genesis 6:1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land
and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of
man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose
The Bible does not tell us, but,
when the sons of God began to fall in love,
their parents tried to prohibit such incipient
and abnormal courtship.
Their sons had to marry, as always had,
women of their lineage, not the daughters
of those strange and odd people.
But there was the first, second, third and so on,
and a new ascendancy has been established,
as of the conquerors and the conquered,
the Lords and the Serfs, and,
most noteworthy, that of
the Gods and the humans.
*Previously published in Mocking Heart Review, Spring/Summer issue 2016.
Where I have come from
I am proud of the youth of my generation.
I came from a past that only must be seen
in its black and white.
Current bright colors cannot even approach
warmth of singular and peculiar bygone era.
Just we who lived and loved in it are enough
and qualified witnesses to so amazing a past.
Time of the candid, simple and naive living,
with fewer choices, as only black telephones

and only white fridges.

Moreover, time to encounter enduring lovers,
that endure lifes disillusions, jointly reaching,
so many years ahead,
these colorful unsettled contemporaneous days.
*Previously published in Whispers, April 29, 2016
Joie de Vivre (Caressing our Joy)
I am not able to capture or, at least,
understand eternity, that people say
it is the congruence and consentaneity
of all human thoughts and all feelings
squeezed in a lap of time.
So a time never clashes near me
and never have I heard its sound.
I am contented to single moments,
indeed rare and randomly created,
bringing to me and my lovelies all joy,
any of such eternities could ever know,
quite human and ground-floor they are,
candid, tender-hearted and deity averse.
*Previously published in The Gambler, April 2015 issue
Loneliness
I wander by unvoiced, almost secretly,
like a ghost by corners of a sleeping city,
fearful they could awake arresting me
to die at dawn on merciless lethal light.
*Previously published in Right Hand Pointing issue 83-1, February 2015

When I Fall Asleep

Since I and this world have been introduced,

many, many years ago,

we have nurtured unconditional a passion,
that has lasted all the time.
We have enjoyed every day lived together,
although huge crowd gathered around us,
prompt to envy and end this endearment.
Never have I been afraid of,
for they dont know, or even fancy,
what the kind of power is clothed
so true and tireless a lovers heart.
When I fall asleep, afar from world,
I dont let it on strange hands,
averse to my delight.
I let it, in the brumes of night,
in the care of nothing less than
its Creator.
Money, as Viewed by a Poet
I suffer from cold fits when I hear of money.
Does a poet need money? Does he understand it?
They ask if I want to sell my house, my car,
how many dollars do I want for them.
I rarely remember if they are mine,
or how much had I paid for them, if so.
They do not know how impertinent they are.
Should I value my things, my labor, my time,
or, by chance, my life?
People cannot understand poets measures.
Is it possible they do not know that they are
the human happiness,
a plain smile
and permanent beautys ravishment?
*Previously published in Right Hand Pointing, issue 78, September 2014.

Silent Witnesses
It is common our disputes about this and that.
Really, almost daily, we are at opposite sides.
Friends say we are not well-settled a couple,

and so misjudgment, I know, hurt us equally.

In the deeps of night, standing awake in bed,
I look at you asleep and feel all friends error.
Who would bear testimony of us, I ask myself.
Walls and roofs by sure know our inmost life
but they do not speak, are invalid witnesses.
I ask them if just to me would they say of us.
They say of our confronts, furies, rough words
and revilements but also remember hugs and
hot kisses. Likewise, remember have listened
some words like it is cold out, dear, wear your
coat or dont be late, darling; some little things
only beloved ones are capable to.
They say we are at hard and arduous a battle,
on pursuing, although scarce, a bit of true love.
They also say to keep the route and fear nothing.
Tiles and bricks, indeed, they are; but perceive,
unlike our best friends, the very plot of the play.
*Previously published in TWJ Magazine, October 2014
Lights of Innocence.
On Sargent Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
Two girls lighting Japanese lanterns,
early evening in an Englands garden,
late nineteenth century.
Preventing from dark night, arranging
for so happy a party.
Painter has had no opportunity to speak,
but now we know,
like old Greek priestesses,
in white gowns,
also offering prayers on glowing tapers,
relieving unsure forthcoming days.
The purity they have lighted that night
persists until our present days and nights.
*Previously published in the spring issue 2015, The Provo Canyon Review
Confessional

They say I have forgotten to turn out

my lights of the ambition and desire,
of the hurry, the youth and cockiness.
I add, by myself, also the ones of love,
looking for, lust, yet envy. And finally,
I am sure never will be lost others like
the rejoicing to be alive and dreaming.
It would be good they get out of my way,
for a loadstar still warms me so fiercely,
that I mirror fire, I burn and, sometimes,
I inject sparks.
*Previously published in Mocking Heart Review, Spring/Summer issue, 2016