in the following page
i go undressed,
i open myself, i get
rid of my shelf
the venom in these words
could have killed us,
we must die, indeed, but indigested
from our own old flesh
these verses won’t blow buildings,
won’t run guns,
ain’t crevices cracking
the very fabric of things
they’re beasts short of fangs,
knives too numb to feel, axes
too heavy to be raised
for or against
verses absolutely serve
to no use, whoever said there would
be something to fake or make
senses in a verse?
poems were never meant to be
sphynxes to no answer,
nameless streets in a country
where only the blindmen can read
they’re rather functional dyslexics:
if they still say something, they don’t mean it,
they just still say with words
when words won’t mean a thing
or simply: byproducts of attention,
flukes to no avail,
fingers stretching till a dead end, so we
can’t hang on them nails
Monday, December 20, 2010
THE MISERY OF POETRY
in the following page
i go undressed,
i open myself, i get
rid of my shelf
the venom in these words
could have killed us,
we must die, indeed, but indigested
from our own old flesh
these verses won’t blow buildings,
won’t run guns,
ain’t crevices cracking
the very fabric of things
they’re beasts short of fangs,
knives too numb to feel, axes
too heavy to be raised
for or against
verses absolutely serve
to no use, whoever said there would
be something to fake or make
senses in a verse?
poems were never meant to be
sphynxes to no answer,
nameless streets in a country
where only the blindmen can read
they’re rather functional dyslexics:
if they still say something, they don’t mean it,
they just still say with words
when words won’t mean a thing
or simply: byproducts of attention,
flukes to no avail,
fingers stretching till a dead end, so we
can’t hang on them nails
i go undressed,
i open myself, i get
rid of my shelf
the venom in these words
could have killed us,
we must die, indeed, but indigested
from our own old flesh
these verses won’t blow buildings,
won’t run guns,
ain’t crevices cracking
the very fabric of things
they’re beasts short of fangs,
knives too numb to feel, axes
too heavy to be raised
for or against
verses absolutely serve
to no use, whoever said there would
be something to fake or make
senses in a verse?
poems were never meant to be
sphynxes to no answer,
nameless streets in a country
where only the blindmen can read
they’re rather functional dyslexics:
if they still say something, they don’t mean it,
they just still say with words
when words won’t mean a thing
or simply: byproducts of attention,
flukes to no avail,
fingers stretching till a dead end, so we
can’t hang on them nails
THE DEFENSE OF NARCISSUS
In my singing years
I was the most astounding
youth and lyre
that one could hear
in these surroundings.
But ever since my drowning,
I was no more allowed
to leave this prison-flower,
made of barren stalk
and luminous scent,
as consequence of a sentence
laid out against the progeny of covet.
So, you can say, as a poet,
I also knew confinement inside a tower,
locked alive in a cushioned-room of mine.
However, whereas poets have always been singing
more than nearly necessary,
it was also my doom that my voice grew mute,
thereby rendering me deprived of the power
to stir the bush of fire named desire.
I argued an early spree cannot be the judge
of the strength a plant might attain,
nor could it take blame for the flavours its fruits
may produce. My punishers were deaf to any such claims
and set me as an example for oncoming men.
Thus my lot as that of my kind
was loneliness and everlasting echoing silence,
just because man have always been meant to,
and lamentably meant to
suffer its force and not be able to harness it,
and aim at synthesis,
without ever being fit
to change the course of things and be both halves
of that torn fruit
which goes by two.
I was the most astounding
youth and lyre
that one could hear
in these surroundings.
But ever since my drowning,
I was no more allowed
to leave this prison-flower,
made of barren stalk
and luminous scent,
as consequence of a sentence
laid out against the progeny of covet.
So, you can say, as a poet,
I also knew confinement inside a tower,
locked alive in a cushioned-room of mine.
However, whereas poets have always been singing
more than nearly necessary,
it was also my doom that my voice grew mute,
thereby rendering me deprived of the power
to stir the bush of fire named desire.
I argued an early spree cannot be the judge
of the strength a plant might attain,
nor could it take blame for the flavours its fruits
may produce. My punishers were deaf to any such claims
and set me as an example for oncoming men.
Thus my lot as that of my kind
was loneliness and everlasting echoing silence,
just because man have always been meant to,
and lamentably meant to
suffer its force and not be able to harness it,
and aim at synthesis,
without ever being fit
to change the course of things and be both halves
of that torn fruit
which goes by two.
CASUALTIES
The road that heads for disaster
at the very first appears to end
delusively farther.
You only manage to notice it
once you got stuck right in it,
hearing roaring the so-far unperceived
self-hidden.
The road that befalls you with a windfall
always falls somewhat short
of our skill to elicit
such things as wishings.
It requires a patient outwinning
of an ingrained habit of ruling out expectancies
stretching beyond our wildest dreamings.
The road that leads towards disaster
paces much faster than the grip we master
of a briefly-before and a right-after:
no rooms rests for manoevres
of old dear self-deception,
nor a wisp of a twist by whatever measures
improvized with bits of wishful thinking.
The road that whirls you into a windfall,
if it ever ends at all,
might hit onto the wall of an inkling,
that while some of our needs are met
all else may well be left
just as ugly and deprived
as spinster Necessity.
It is quite often tough
to tell one from the other.
You may be at this very moment
stepping over either threshold,
being seized
by the unesy gut-feeling
that they are somehow sort of brothers.
at the very first appears to end
delusively farther.
You only manage to notice it
once you got stuck right in it,
hearing roaring the so-far unperceived
self-hidden.
The road that befalls you with a windfall
always falls somewhat short
of our skill to elicit
such things as wishings.
It requires a patient outwinning
of an ingrained habit of ruling out expectancies
stretching beyond our wildest dreamings.
The road that leads towards disaster
paces much faster than the grip we master
of a briefly-before and a right-after:
no rooms rests for manoevres
of old dear self-deception,
nor a wisp of a twist by whatever measures
improvized with bits of wishful thinking.
The road that whirls you into a windfall,
if it ever ends at all,
might hit onto the wall of an inkling,
that while some of our needs are met
all else may well be left
just as ugly and deprived
as spinster Necessity.
It is quite often tough
to tell one from the other.
You may be at this very moment
stepping over either threshold,
being seized
by the unesy gut-feeling
that they are somehow sort of brothers.
A DANCE OF CHANCES
1.
At six, or precisely later,
when dawn
home in on us,
our dreams will stop levitating
from our deadened senses,
like exhausted najas
crawling down
a rickety crate.
The fiercest figments of our lips,
after some hasted debate
shall recede as well, together with
the airy nature of heavier things,
leaving our bodies as they wake up
still mesmerized:
they’ve known their lows,
they’ve known their highs.
O life!, life bigger than life itself!
Life so far contrived
of so many unreasons and so many wonders,
life full of gags and full of dramas.
And twists of luck and false fresh starts
as in the cheap dealings between
a lonely jack of broken hearts
and a diamond-jaded queen.
2.
Meanwhile, estranged from any sense of blame,
in the grip of an unabashed absinth nonchalance,
why don’t we escape not a moment too soon
into the next door room and join the dancers
who profit from their trances to take in one more sip and glance into
a remote preserve from the yesteryears before the age of wagers,
yearning and burning for some long-termed though undeserved second-hand ignorance?
Where the bottles and the glasses shall accompany us trembling,
the dealers, escorts and waiters, taking their stances,
the bouncers in spades, perfectly trained to appear to look askance,
the club bartenders, stirring and shaking,
the dead and the handicapped, raising and then relapsing,
the light through cleft, winking and wavering,
all of those eyes all around us like mirrors multiplying and enhancing
the high stakes we have dared to have chanced.
She would always say men see just black and white and shade,
women did see colors, is this why I still cannot say,
if her hair was black or red that day? So let's return
and check on the returns our bets may have earned us:
28's good number, but an alternate black outcome might tear us asunder.
Can you make out method in the rambling utterances of a mumbler? Then, what might be the odds today for melting heat or pouring rain?
What the odds for hail or an early frost?
And how about the chances for the season to start again?
3.
A man of unflinching will
will resist the weather.
A man, like a tree, is to be
told by the features of his fruits
(if not by the squalor
of his best pair of boots...).
But what if some unsung December,
resurrecting from its embers,
propped with anger, decides
to unhinge time, so that mid-summer
loses its temper, bitterer and drier
then we possibly could have remembered it,
bitterly biting off the very rest of his crop?
A method, that is probably
just the sort of algorithm we needed, but if even
that is not to be delivered, maybe an extra dose of whisky
(would you please?) could make a killing. For how else, after being
so far teased by events beyond justification and yet fulfilled in anticipation,
could one be stopped feeling tempted from reading
between the lines and habits, in the wake of gestures and words of wisdom,
a law that had better keep hidden?
4.
She was in her late twenties,
in the heyday of her beauty,
too uptight to take life so seriously,
too callous to indulge in new, impervious things,
all the more sophisticated to give in
to feelings of delicate sophistry.
Her husband, a well-bred
young gentleman, of fine figure
and an extra set of supernumerary wisdom teeth,
was the very sum
of all marital vices and virtues
a man of her class
should earn or possess.
Why then would the lady dump him for a fallen and ridiculous
aging romeo? And I insisted, I tell you so,
I confess I did even kneel and beg her, till the tears began to roll.
Many a friend shook my hand, said those same words
we are supposed to voice moved by both compassion
and the pleasure in the other people's throes.
Hence, self-confidence gradually watered down and let me see light,
dawning on me the fact that the jeux were already faits.
5.
A pale crystal chandelier, plundered from some unearned
eviction auction sale, scatters a swirl of light sherds
over the herds of penniless gamblers, a stock of self-proclaimed
anglers, only poor daredevils in action playing out their parts,
on behalf of the very excellence of the state of the art,
and sets out to drilling with their shrilling yells
right through the bull's eye in their dulling eyes, as if only meant
to wreave havoc on their just as well overburdened nerve cells.
Moles care to hold hoaxes and bouts at bay,
but drinking to the very brink of inconvenience
an outlived specimen of the first round clientele,
a sort of chain-joker, has yet some flat ones to crack,
before the waiter brings him the check.
And it is like this every and each morning,
as first you are told, and later testimony.
In the vermillion wall a venetian mirror glimpses us awry,
like an absent-minded passer-by
that goes past us in a hurry.
Opposite, a floating watch, jealous of its twin,
sulks and takes to humming,
like a snoring moon in a tropical sultry sky:
time prepares for its hit and running,
time prepares to be caught red-handed and burn us in the end.
6.
Eventually, only later than they should,
over the lawn and fences,
over the numb vigilance of our inattentive senses,
ghosts of all genres and kins
suddenly begin to surge in,
looming all around the gloomy whereabouts,
the less nonsensical in their appeal,
even the more ghastly real.
And, at the close of play,
what was lost, what was gained?
Why could I ever have thought, against all the odds,
that I still stood a chance?
For tell me how is fatality ever to be prevented?
Maybe all had been already lost
even before we began it.
O life!, life bigger than life itself!
Life so far contrived of so many unreasons and so many wonders,
life full of gags and full of dramas.
And so many lies that once unveiled, were revealed unforetold gold,
as this ring his hand renders back in, after having finding out made out of tin,
but which, in the end, was truly composed
of the dearest substance of all: for all what it was worth
was only glowing hope.
7.
And yet one must resign to his luck
and to his misfortune all the same,
and so take on both his bloom
and his doom,
one must, I repeat, in the end,
repent his very repentance.
And so purged of all scourge that make up
the human condition (if there is such),
pretend not to see his stakes
dropped all around the ground,
recollecting he is bound to bend and collect
his fruits wherever they may fall,
facing the faces, smiling at strangers,
frowning as always on the usually frowning clouds,
and then finally retreat, after all.
And as I listen to the morning telling the tolls of time,
I question why time so rich of hours robbed us of ours,
performing its unfailingly uniform
tick-tacking, tack-ticking, as if preparing for its flicking.
Hey Sir, per chance, beyond any bluff at hand,
what is the genuine chance of still earning some grands?
And would you mind if I dreamt of some,
long overdue and numb transcendence?
At six, or precisely later,
when dawn
home in on us,
our dreams will stop levitating
from our deadened senses,
like exhausted najas
crawling down
a rickety crate.
The fiercest figments of our lips,
after some hasted debate
shall recede as well, together with
the airy nature of heavier things,
leaving our bodies as they wake up
still mesmerized:
they’ve known their lows,
they’ve known their highs.
O life!, life bigger than life itself!
Life so far contrived
of so many unreasons and so many wonders,
life full of gags and full of dramas.
And twists of luck and false fresh starts
as in the cheap dealings between
a lonely jack of broken hearts
and a diamond-jaded queen.
2.
Meanwhile, estranged from any sense of blame,
in the grip of an unabashed absinth nonchalance,
why don’t we escape not a moment too soon
into the next door room and join the dancers
who profit from their trances to take in one more sip and glance into
a remote preserve from the yesteryears before the age of wagers,
yearning and burning for some long-termed though undeserved second-hand ignorance?
Where the bottles and the glasses shall accompany us trembling,
the dealers, escorts and waiters, taking their stances,
the bouncers in spades, perfectly trained to appear to look askance,
the club bartenders, stirring and shaking,
the dead and the handicapped, raising and then relapsing,
the light through cleft, winking and wavering,
all of those eyes all around us like mirrors multiplying and enhancing
the high stakes we have dared to have chanced.
She would always say men see just black and white and shade,
women did see colors, is this why I still cannot say,
if her hair was black or red that day? So let's return
and check on the returns our bets may have earned us:
28's good number, but an alternate black outcome might tear us asunder.
Can you make out method in the rambling utterances of a mumbler? Then, what might be the odds today for melting heat or pouring rain?
What the odds for hail or an early frost?
And how about the chances for the season to start again?
3.
A man of unflinching will
will resist the weather.
A man, like a tree, is to be
told by the features of his fruits
(if not by the squalor
of his best pair of boots...).
But what if some unsung December,
resurrecting from its embers,
propped with anger, decides
to unhinge time, so that mid-summer
loses its temper, bitterer and drier
then we possibly could have remembered it,
bitterly biting off the very rest of his crop?
A method, that is probably
just the sort of algorithm we needed, but if even
that is not to be delivered, maybe an extra dose of whisky
(would you please?) could make a killing. For how else, after being
so far teased by events beyond justification and yet fulfilled in anticipation,
could one be stopped feeling tempted from reading
between the lines and habits, in the wake of gestures and words of wisdom,
a law that had better keep hidden?
4.
She was in her late twenties,
in the heyday of her beauty,
too uptight to take life so seriously,
too callous to indulge in new, impervious things,
all the more sophisticated to give in
to feelings of delicate sophistry.
Her husband, a well-bred
young gentleman, of fine figure
and an extra set of supernumerary wisdom teeth,
was the very sum
of all marital vices and virtues
a man of her class
should earn or possess.
Why then would the lady dump him for a fallen and ridiculous
aging romeo? And I insisted, I tell you so,
I confess I did even kneel and beg her, till the tears began to roll.
Many a friend shook my hand, said those same words
we are supposed to voice moved by both compassion
and the pleasure in the other people's throes.
Hence, self-confidence gradually watered down and let me see light,
dawning on me the fact that the jeux were already faits.
5.
A pale crystal chandelier, plundered from some unearned
eviction auction sale, scatters a swirl of light sherds
over the herds of penniless gamblers, a stock of self-proclaimed
anglers, only poor daredevils in action playing out their parts,
on behalf of the very excellence of the state of the art,
and sets out to drilling with their shrilling yells
right through the bull's eye in their dulling eyes, as if only meant
to wreave havoc on their just as well overburdened nerve cells.
Moles care to hold hoaxes and bouts at bay,
but drinking to the very brink of inconvenience
an outlived specimen of the first round clientele,
a sort of chain-joker, has yet some flat ones to crack,
before the waiter brings him the check.
And it is like this every and each morning,
as first you are told, and later testimony.
In the vermillion wall a venetian mirror glimpses us awry,
like an absent-minded passer-by
that goes past us in a hurry.
Opposite, a floating watch, jealous of its twin,
sulks and takes to humming,
like a snoring moon in a tropical sultry sky:
time prepares for its hit and running,
time prepares to be caught red-handed and burn us in the end.
6.
Eventually, only later than they should,
over the lawn and fences,
over the numb vigilance of our inattentive senses,
ghosts of all genres and kins
suddenly begin to surge in,
looming all around the gloomy whereabouts,
the less nonsensical in their appeal,
even the more ghastly real.
And, at the close of play,
what was lost, what was gained?
Why could I ever have thought, against all the odds,
that I still stood a chance?
For tell me how is fatality ever to be prevented?
Maybe all had been already lost
even before we began it.
O life!, life bigger than life itself!
Life so far contrived of so many unreasons and so many wonders,
life full of gags and full of dramas.
And so many lies that once unveiled, were revealed unforetold gold,
as this ring his hand renders back in, after having finding out made out of tin,
but which, in the end, was truly composed
of the dearest substance of all: for all what it was worth
was only glowing hope.
7.
And yet one must resign to his luck
and to his misfortune all the same,
and so take on both his bloom
and his doom,
one must, I repeat, in the end,
repent his very repentance.
And so purged of all scourge that make up
the human condition (if there is such),
pretend not to see his stakes
dropped all around the ground,
recollecting he is bound to bend and collect
his fruits wherever they may fall,
facing the faces, smiling at strangers,
frowning as always on the usually frowning clouds,
and then finally retreat, after all.
And as I listen to the morning telling the tolls of time,
I question why time so rich of hours robbed us of ours,
performing its unfailingly uniform
tick-tacking, tack-ticking, as if preparing for its flicking.
Hey Sir, per chance, beyond any bluff at hand,
what is the genuine chance of still earning some grands?
And would you mind if I dreamt of some,
long overdue and numb transcendence?
SOMETIMES SOMETHING MISSING
sometimes it is all about taste,
other times it was just the rush of haste,
now you wonder how they could have been so rude,
then you feel compelled by change of scene
and walk out in the nude,
on occasions you can’t tell for sure
a single damned thing in this world,
the next morning all things appear crystal-clear
and their surfaces like unfurled,
one day you blame on chance and fortune,
another it has just happened as if despite you,
at the outset you count on pre-established facts
and wait credulously on their effects,
eventually you give up and read each event
as built onto reality the same way phantoms
cross walls at random,
sometimes this, sometimes further,
this should read for something is always missing,
something sometimes I just haven’t gripped,
and sometimes confirm delivery.
other times it was just the rush of haste,
now you wonder how they could have been so rude,
then you feel compelled by change of scene
and walk out in the nude,
on occasions you can’t tell for sure
a single damned thing in this world,
the next morning all things appear crystal-clear
and their surfaces like unfurled,
one day you blame on chance and fortune,
another it has just happened as if despite you,
at the outset you count on pre-established facts
and wait credulously on their effects,
eventually you give up and read each event
as built onto reality the same way phantoms
cross walls at random,
sometimes this, sometimes further,
this should read for something is always missing,
something sometimes I just haven’t gripped,
and sometimes confirm delivery.
EINE LIEBE ZUM VERKAUF
Verkaufe eine Liebe.
Aussergeordentlicher Zustand fürs Alter.
Mit vernünftiger Aussicht übers Leben.
Würde sicher bei der Familie einen guten Eindruck hinterlassen.
Passabel im Schlafzimmer, ohnehin mühsam.
Erst unvorstellbar wenn ausgereizt.
Verdient das Genügendes um sich selber zu halten.
Nehme gern Angebote an, aber kein Wiedergaberecht.
Ziehe Einkäufer vor, der in der Stadt nur auf Reise ist,
Und mit ihr möglichst weit entfernt weggeht,
So dass ich sie nie noch einmal sehen würde.
Bitte Kontakte am dringendsten anschließen,
Bevor ich völlig geistig unfähig werde.
Aussergeordentlicher Zustand fürs Alter.
Mit vernünftiger Aussicht übers Leben.
Würde sicher bei der Familie einen guten Eindruck hinterlassen.
Passabel im Schlafzimmer, ohnehin mühsam.
Erst unvorstellbar wenn ausgereizt.
Verdient das Genügendes um sich selber zu halten.
Nehme gern Angebote an, aber kein Wiedergaberecht.
Ziehe Einkäufer vor, der in der Stadt nur auf Reise ist,
Und mit ihr möglichst weit entfernt weggeht,
So dass ich sie nie noch einmal sehen würde.
Bitte Kontakte am dringendsten anschließen,
Bevor ich völlig geistig unfähig werde.
LES GROS MOTS
les mots d’amour
les plus gros mots d’amour
et encore pire les terribles (à lire
entre lignes) mi-mots d’amour
la valeur nulle de tout ce qu’on dit
la valeur nulle de ce qu’on tait aussi
je me dis
abandonnes le ton ressenti
et fais-le sans ronçonner
le vers les vices la vie
(ces gros mots) on s’y attache
ou on les quitte
les plus gros mots d’amour
et encore pire les terribles (à lire
entre lignes) mi-mots d’amour
la valeur nulle de tout ce qu’on dit
la valeur nulle de ce qu’on tait aussi
je me dis
abandonnes le ton ressenti
et fais-le sans ronçonner
le vers les vices la vie
(ces gros mots) on s’y attache
ou on les quitte
ON RENOUNCING
Learning how to lose
should teach you
nothing ever should only have gained
import to the extent
it could have gone missing in the first place,
and all the worse
for what it really might be worth.
Well, that is old-school conformity:
renouncement endows you with the excuse
not to want anything whose want
could knock a whole throughout you.
But the fragility of the object of my will
just adds to its, say, marginal desirability,
regardless any such self-preserving skill.
Reconsidered,
learning to lose could in the least
allow us to retrieve
the smiling or the grieving
of a day we did live or made-believe,
before oblivion wipes away
our tears as rain.
Or else, renouncing could earn us in the end
the very freedom from a memory
whose sudden vexing
fading absence
I honestly don’t want to
summon on
any longer.
Then again, who knows how soon,
it could make us become deserving
of frail fresh yearning, turning
eyes ears arms wide and ripe and ajar
to receive from future its dearest and most elusive boon:
the glow of a tomorrow that resists our resisting
from being so far drifted.
I am not definitely the guy
who can so easily put up with resigning.
I cannot avoid the thought that life
is made up of single moments
and no repeat mode.
In that I insist fully at a distance
from any sect of fanaticism or self-deception.
And thus, I can only cope with defeat
by means of a hope, which lectures me
that by letting go, I do recede,
but only to move on and feed
all of my needs
on the uncertain seeds
of a new inception.
should teach you
nothing ever should only have gained
import to the extent
it could have gone missing in the first place,
and all the worse
for what it really might be worth.
Well, that is old-school conformity:
renouncement endows you with the excuse
not to want anything whose want
could knock a whole throughout you.
But the fragility of the object of my will
just adds to its, say, marginal desirability,
regardless any such self-preserving skill.
Reconsidered,
learning to lose could in the least
allow us to retrieve
the smiling or the grieving
of a day we did live or made-believe,
before oblivion wipes away
our tears as rain.
Or else, renouncing could earn us in the end
the very freedom from a memory
whose sudden vexing
fading absence
I honestly don’t want to
summon on
any longer.
Then again, who knows how soon,
it could make us become deserving
of frail fresh yearning, turning
eyes ears arms wide and ripe and ajar
to receive from future its dearest and most elusive boon:
the glow of a tomorrow that resists our resisting
from being so far drifted.
I am not definitely the guy
who can so easily put up with resigning.
I cannot avoid the thought that life
is made up of single moments
and no repeat mode.
In that I insist fully at a distance
from any sect of fanaticism or self-deception.
And thus, I can only cope with defeat
by means of a hope, which lectures me
that by letting go, I do recede,
but only to move on and feed
all of my needs
on the uncertain seeds
of a new inception.
VAIN VIRTUE
Stuck on a jammed motorway lane,
I cast a glance to my left side,
Only to see all these other drivers
Ride past me by the road shoulder.
Well, I might just do the same,
But realize that I have to stay put and pay the price
For the vanity of feeling like
A better person.
I cast a glance to my left side,
Only to see all these other drivers
Ride past me by the road shoulder.
Well, I might just do the same,
But realize that I have to stay put and pay the price
For the vanity of feeling like
A better person.
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