Life’s Chart: No, My Hat is a Tube
As the ogre’s hunger, as a blaze licking the desert Passes the stream and pulls off my hat I am not living, I’m flowing My today’s I is wolfing down my yesterday’s I And so I survive Licking my lips after eating myself, I survive I build a shelter inside my bones I survive Falling and falling again down my own hat I manage to make it from one day to the other And all days are one sliding down That rolls as the hunger of a blind ogre And all days are the one and only day – The day when I was born and I died. Only after I die I will finally start to be When I cease to be, I will be I will be the stream, When I stop loving, I will love the stream, I will let myself, I will let myself dissolved in each tiny drop of its flow I will be, I will be a grain of sand carried by water to the end of the world when the flow blows the blind walls Then, for the first time, I will be Together with you, I will all be the stream unfolding in strips of clouds and rain.
Ianus, Beer-Bellied and Bald
I’ve met Ianus fucked up by life. He has a newborn baby, a beer belly and he grew balder He works in the print layout service at adevarul newspaper. He, who used to make fun of big-bellied, bald-headed men Who used to curse and write poems, Now he looks respectable, drinks beer on the Free Press House terrace and says „when I was young”.
Let us not be deceived by appearances: this one is Ianus’s true youth not the one he lived before. This is his true poetry. He gave up the ideea of marius ianus He is free, no longer imitates himself. Eventually, he found the genuine way to failure that we are all taking. Failure illuminates one. I felt peace when I met Ianus Happily caught in the stream of time. He, who was dreaming of revolutions, is alive, a lazy fly walks on his arm as he lifts the beer mug to his mouth.
The Box
I put it on the table, I look at it. If I watch attentively I only see a box But if I watch through my eyelashes, with half-closed eyes, I also see a box That contains a smaller box That contains the smallest box That contains the tiniest, most impossible and ridiculous box That is hiding the BIGGEST WHITE BOX, a dancing and singing box, That shelters the most fantastic amusement park How small mom and I look there, We laugh, eat cotton candy and try all the games. Yupeeee!
The pregnant woman’s belly grows bigger the dream grows smaller Shadow comes first, then comes the bird. The bird of the shadow and not the shadow of the bird. Matter is dreaming, therefore it exists.
In the Subway
He frowns and waits for the doors to close. The train starts to move. That’s it, we belong to him. God turns into a ball. Ping, right in our face, then pong, bounces back into his mouth. We shall not drop God on the floor An ugly lady feels she is beautiful Because she has arms and legs And spares some change.
He stares at me, and I can read it in his eyes: I made a pact with God to give me and not him, arms To give me and not him, legs Teeth, food, love, I got them all So I take out a bill Using all the arms, legs and teeth that should have been his, not mine. He stopped by me and waits. His eyes scorn my belly button (with a little luck, he could have kissed it) He throws the ball towards me and I fail to get it The ball stops in the air and hangs on While my foot would really step on his last arm Because I know it for a fact that God took him apart and they made a pact: Whenever I pray, I should inquire myself And I should utter the questions at the blushing morning (once my blushing cheeks).
The beggar and I are afraid of each other. He is afraid of me because I could crush him I am afraid of him because he would like (oh, yes!) me to cut his last arm, When the train stops between stations, in the dark He would like me to steal his money, to do it quick, using the knife he hid in his rear pocket Especially for this. The Plastic Bag
Early in the morning, bam! poetry came round the corner. “You’re goin’ where?” she asked. “There, buy some bread”, I answered. “Umm… Got any gum?” she popped. I gave her a piece of gum. “You, where to?” popped I. “The other direction”, she mumbled, staring at a tomcat which, staring at a sparrow, licked the Kojak-style lollipop of the sun reflected in a pond left by the rain last night. “Coming with me?” I tempted her “…see, I gave you a gum” “Nope”, she fumbled just when a plastic bag, rolling aimlessly on the sidewalk passed us by, posing and fussing like a star. Phuah, what a coquette, she does belly dancing on the brim of the wind Why don’t I challenge the wind a little bit Poetry said and blew a big big balloon of gum Stuck to the balloon, the plastic bag ascended to heaven and left the wind gaping. Just then the tomcat jumped at the sparrow which flew from the fence and bang! into the balloon and splash! The gum stuck onto poetry’s nose. The wind laughed and tore a hat away, poetry walked sulkily Only the big white plastic bag against the big blue sky Was happiness itself with its mouth open wide with handles to grab it Just to tiptoe and get it One morning when poetry stopped for a chat with the tomcat, at the corner of the street And then passed by, infatuated, wishing me a good day.
I HAVE TRANSCRIBED THIS POEM FROM A DISCOVERY PROGRAM. IT DOES NOT BELONG TO ME, BUT TO THE WOMAN WHO TOLD IT
It has not been yet known how lightning picks a certain path from heaven to earth. Why they choose to strike a certain tree, and not another one. This woman had been struck by a thunderbolt in 1995. “I was out in the field and it suddenly started to rain. I like summer storms. Lightning has always fascinated me, so I stayed there and went on working, together with my husband and our two children. Thunderbolts fell all around us and one of them hit me. I haven’t recovered completely. The doctors said it was a wondered I survived, after all that electricity ran through my body. I still like summer storms. And I can’t help staying under the lightning”.
Translations by Mona Momescu
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