Dulce Poesia Radio Chat

On Tuesday nights at eleven, *LunaSolitaria* logs in with the same nickname from a town in Toledo where the signal is weak. The first time she came looking for Serrat's lyrics for a funeral; now she returns because someone always saves the verse she's missing. Last night, she posted a fragment of Benedetti that no one recognized until *ElViejoRomántico*, a user who's been here since 2012, identified it as "No te rindas" and said, "Nacha Guevara sang that in '84, but Ana Belén's version in '92 gave it more air." The room fell silent for three minutes, as if everyone was listening to the same song in their heads.

Here, we don't talk about *romantic music* as a genre, but as a state of mind. Someone asks if there's a song that describes the smell of wet earth after rain, and in five minutes, six responses appear: from Silvio's "Ojalá" to a bolero by Los Panchos that no one remembers well. Debates ignite when *LaDamaDelJazz* defends that the best poem set to music is Neruda's "La canción desesperada" with Violeta Parra's melody, while *RockeroConAlma* swears that "No woman, no cry" is pure poetry in poorly translated English. There's also space for cheesy things without irony: every February 14th, *AmorEterno* posts the same Los Ángeles Azules playlist and no one complains. That said, if you mention Alejandro Fernández, be prepared for *ElPurista* to remind you that "the real romantic is his father, and the son only knows how to make rancheras with autotune".

What makes this room unique is the *3 a.m. ritual*. When the rest of the IRC empties, there are always five or six people who, without planning, start sharing verses as if they were secrets. They're not famous poems: they're the ones you wrote on a napkin at seventeen, the ones your grandmother recited before bed, or the ones someone found in a used book with margin notes. *LaChicaDeLosSonetos* has a habit of challenging others to guess which poet a fragment belongs to, which she herself cuts and pastes without author; if you guess correctly, she sends you a private audio of her reciting it with her pirate radio voice. There's also the *Bingo of Heartbreak*, an unwritten tradition where every public breakup of a famous person (or a room user) triggers an avalanche of songs: from Rocío Dúrcal's "Amor eterno" to Víctor Jara's "Te recuerdo Amanda", including Luis Miguel's "La incondicional", which always sparks discussions about whether it's a hymn or a curse.

To join, just connect to *irc.chatzona.com* and join #DulcePoesiaRadio. No registration, fixed nickname, or IRC knowledge is required: your first message will be responded to in less than a minute, even if it's "Hello, does anyone know the song that says *and although the wind howls in my window*?". It works the same on mobile as on a 2003 computer. Here, there are no algorithms deciding what to listen to, nor likes measuring your taste: just voices that, at some point in the early morning, will whisper a verse just when you need it. The strange thing would be to be left without an answer.