Ossídio Gaspar
The definitive collection of Ossídio Gaspar’s work from 2019-2020
The thought of the sun, which
in the retreating of the light
does not set with it
but holds candle
to the darkness of absence
and temperate sail
to the nautical night,
staying up
whether or not
a lunar desert
‘comes again replaced
by a warmer sky,
must not be mistaken for a lie;
is the uneclipsable fire of a human Star.
In the year of paralysis
where the world is reduced,
there is one endless winter
that stunts the common growth,
it freezes the known paths
and subsumes the old currents,
not just halting new life
but the seasoned one, too.
In that year of paralysis
where meaning is seduced,
there is one endless night
that closes the horizon,
it saps space of its colour
and shuts out all perspective,
not just starving time now
but the one to come, too.
In this year of paralysis
when our hope was traduced,
the summer and the day
did not come from without
but from those we clung to
who in turn clung to us,
which was all that was left:
the core of what we are.
So, the year of renewal
when the world starts to thaw
and the roots spread again
the light have other sources
and clocks can count more,
let none of that forget
the darkness of this year
and how it was all fought.
For Mum, Dad and Nick, who will
forever be at the centre of
my existence
If vivid and full
like a petalled sun
does a flower come
before the eye, then
what sun is it that
reproaches the eye –
when it reaches up –
much like a cactus
to a fingertip?
To those who argue for or subscribe to the philosophy of universal balance
that preaches “for every negative a positive, and vice-versa”
such that good things and bad things follow one another and ultimately cancel out,
I have a pinching question
for an internal debt has been growing slowly with each change
and I have not by myself been able to resolve it
thus, I ask:
is there not a sadness ineradicable that lives through all endeavour and hope,
despite all endeavour and hope
which fresh endeavour and revived hope never annihilate
only temporarily survive, then by which consumed, once again
no matter how articulate or vivid the promise of a Future
or how widely the children might be awoken to a new time
or how near or distant, audaciously or austerely, the parameters of paradise be set?
thus, is there not rather this understated melancholy so necessary and clear that it need not be said ever because it is already said always
said by a default mourning
every morning
there in the feeling that knows the difference between
gaining something and losing something
the irreplaceability of something, the absolute individuality of all things
that replacing one thing with another is not replacing it, at all
but trying to forget it,
to kill or postpone its memory with the presence of something else
as the day today does not replace the day yesterday
it is here instead
and all days are in their own way
once done, lost forever
tomorrow will come and be lost its own way too
and nothing will be able to replace it, just as it never replaced anything, either
the new only takes the place of the old and that is felt
the absence of the old is not covered or forgotten by the presence of the new
but is quietly mourned through the experience of the difference itself
as if the only real difference between a morning and mourning were a spelling mistake
fundamentally, are they not the same event?
to the philosophers of great balance, I turn and posit this
is not the miracle of birth still no consolation for the senselessness of death?
thus, is there not this residue in us that accrues like a debt
and no future able to satisfy
without adding to it when its place later taken, too
in the eternal return to the Negative?
When the trees
start to fall
sooner than
Autumn’s leaf,
the known seasons
will be done
the Year’s fruit
aborted
the ground turned
all unburied
and Truth offer
no distinction.
Sadness is the mistake
I make when
the unknown
smiles at me:
I avert my gaze
It scares me
because I know myself too well:
and in that knowledge
and also because of it
I know that I do not know the same capacity to smile.
A smile is like a beautiful lie
it not only stares from the unknown
but because of the unknown
If it knew itself, it would surely not exist
because to know existence is to know that the smile does not exist:
at least not more than its inexistence, anyway
for it is no smiling matter
that there is
not more to smile about
than less
and if this smile at me knew me, its U-shaped happiness would soon bend straight
it would forget its own capacity to smile
and if it did not, I would distrust its capacity to exist.
My fear
and sadness
come as much
from the things
that do exist
as those that do not
they come because I do not know what I want
because there is not enough world for all of my want
because my want
makes this world
too small
and me
even
smaller within it;
a smile looks happy with that
because it does not know
or because it does not want more
does not know more
and does not want that
it invites me
under those terms
every time
from the unknown
it tells me that this is enough…
will I
ever
give in
to it?
Looking back across, once more,
in search of my answer
holding my gaze more steadily since
privy to the meantime vision
of all this quiet acknowledgement
perhaps it is
me who
for the smile
at least
and its distant chance
stands, really,
most Unknown?
Sadness, then
would be
the mistake
of seeing-through.
Pyramid organisation
is triangulated through one
fundamental premise:
it is within the exercise of the body
that horizon endlessly more visible
than the cloud to threaten the clarity of the way forward.
To counteract this rigid truth
that the least visible be at least visible in its invisibilising cause
must the neck be trained, the head prepared
for the body of the Pyramid, in turn
is divided in levels top to bottom
the lower, lower, than the higher, higher
the lowest of all feeds all
the highest is fed by all
the at-bottom at the bottom run by all the above
the topmost running everything altogether.
In this principled pyramid
easiest does focus come where levels the same
and over-all especially against those below
and, according to principle,
hardest under-all for the sufficient stare to see
through to the top and build vision really:
So, does not the empirical distance of this pyramid in itself to itself therefore explain
the breeding of as many myths for the skies it obscures to its many grounds
and likewise uphold respiratory structure to that down-the-neck breathing of a total power exhaled through the layers by a crown placed singular, final, atop all?
Well, now, if to build this neck with hopes of observing the full distance of the structure it feeds and the crown it empowers without folding over itself
the burden on its spine and sight would have to be shared amongst a collection of angle-shapers
each in turn taking in different part-moments of an image and presenting the evidence across a language yet to be levelled out…
To outstand pyramid organisation
and the inter-level division it reciprocates neckline intra-level
only a head-sharing language could entwine the sufficient point of view to bring about a structural collapse.
Different things can only behave indifferently
for their difference is at stake,
their indifference, met by other differences behaving the same,
begets more difference, unbeknownst to their selves indifferent
next difference comes as a shock
a destabilisation
turns a simple change to ex-change:
the future presents without the full sight of its pre-sent property
this is what turns history on
what sexualises history
and a bastard is born.
The search for Genesis
that seeks the day before a birthday
comes as history makes visible
the Invisible
is at once the interruption and resumption
of an ever land-ing fall.
Where the fall is just the continuous bastardisation of everything.
In the permanent fall
Red and blue are different colours
one falls red, the other blue
Because the fall,
although permanent,
must at least sometimes land
otherwise it neither falls…
(permanence is not permanent
unless it can be some time interrupted
and then full Time resumed
the interruption that which makes it visible
with resumption later confirming what was seen)
…sometimes these colours will spill
on the surface of an interruption
and then they act on their differences
red flows out from its landing place
blue likewise from its own point of contact
there, on this sur-face,
red and blue difference is not just a distinction
it is an indifference of red to what is blue
and of blue to what is red
in logical spread they will meet
the faces earlier they distinguished
will clash
this is the violence of being indifferent in
a room of limited difference
limited visibility
where the horizontal shape to being visible
causes a movement of indifference
spillage, that spreads
goes on to over-take, from itself,
and does not change itself in that
but will be differentiated again
The encounter
Red clashes with blue
What happens?
Purple signals the resumption
from indifference to difference again
the interruption has changed
confirms that everything is falling
I am the puzzle of a forgotten memory
or
just the presence of an impossible one
Either way, the process is always re(-)collection
to recollect a distant but motivated past informing the present
or
to re-collect the confusing terms of a present to build a more sensible future
Either way, being is a re(-)minder
a reminder of what of time now points unknowingly to a time before
or
a re-minder of how all time ongoing is but the repetition of itself without a full concept
Either way, there is a di(-)stance
a distance of time broken between past and present that reduces the latter to the former’s lunar re-presentation
or
a di-stance time put together by a difference that will never be caught by a single invitation
Either way, a person is a people
from the many possible iterations of a buried experience to the complex personhood they hold today
or
by the mercurial stand they cannot but assume from all the unstable difference perpetually flowing through them
Either way, the weather still needs company
the solar smile to wake us up from the ever-returning nightmare of the repressed
or
another half to complement the mere halves we rain down into at every possible moment.
Either way, either way.
Everything is the puzzle of a forgotten history
or
just the presence of an impossible one
A beach State 