Breathing another dimension

Going back to my home town,

streets have changed in form and function,

trees are there all right,

shadowing windows still,

through which I used to gaze

from in and outside.

City expanded like hell

this is no hand full of glass in a

Murano's craftsman glass factory

but I had to accept the changes,

forging my inner perception of it.

Entering 25th April Avenue,

you have to put on your strongest sunglasses,

tighten your vest as strong as you can,

say, as if at any moment

their gonna burst from inside your breast

inflating both thorax and heart,

just as the craftsmen did with the horse

bringing him (in no time) to a splendid fragile life.

Men I've cried a dozen and will if I need to,

some more, waking a reality long gone

is no sweet holly bread melting

as you let it rest inside your mouth,

stuck to your tongue rocked by alleluias on a

virgin Sunday morning afternoon.

You need more than that!

Acute senses won't let go off

the decadence of the buildings, then new,

(off) the wonderfully naive pattern drawings

on the sidewalks' stones,

recognizable in every Portuguese city,

will pull your imagination to countless lazy

city trips, the frenzy of young boys and girls

between two rings of the bell,

in and out of school,

the two bookstores on the north side of the avenue,

one on the left, the other on the right,

stylish, encyclopedic, pregnant of musty knowledge,

still the same owner?

I don't dare to check!

But the worst if not the best (part of) is

when you get to my stomach,

apparently in the middle section,

between north and south,

just before the high school where I got

my grade from and precisely in

front of the tank station my father stared at

while smoking his SG-filtro cigarettes

under the porch.

There lays untouched

a very similar to ours, 2 floor building,

same doors, same gardens, same colors and even

incomprehensibly some of the same people!

Every brick got older,

colors fainted,

paint fell,

cracks got widener,

maybe there are more rats now,

plants got wilder,

what I thought to be bushes now look like trees and

Mistress Maria dos Gatos has

shrank and crumpled just a little bit.

My family is not there.

We inhabited the ground floor

on the right side,

the best one!

View to the south and to the west.

Very important!

The sight was always a challenge

of light variations adjusted

by blinds, half, full or not raised,

allowing a complete depiction

of the tile panel on the house

across the street,

a flamed scene of a sunset with a seagull flying above the city,

as well as a pleasurable focus on

the feminine population waving

to and from school.

At weekends

peace invaded the quarter as high tide does,

steady and firmly,

allowing setbacks only for special occasions

as bakers selling cakes,

the ice cream van and the circus.

But that was about it.

I don't want to remember,

but it's impossible not to, because

the urge leads me to the 

very same spot

once in a while.

It feels like breathing another dimension!