Wax doll

It takes someone who knows how to keep quiet

It takes someone to smile for no reason

and someone to stick fluorescent stars in the window

someone is needed to write projects

and someone to implement them

someone with a sense of proportion, realistic

is needed

someone with rich vocabulary

It takes someone who understands and is silent

who revolts with the mouth shut

who screams in silence

 

Most talk about their achievements and frustrations

don’t ask you anything

Some want to imagine a busty prostitute

or a nymph just out of high school

a mother who keeps turning the spoon in the cauldron

They want you mute and charming

ready to kiss their foreheads

however, lost or grim they may be

 

 

If you approve and don’t make a sound

you become their best friend overnight

They offer you jobs of great responsibility

always jobs

they want to train you not to want anything else

than a better, more daring job

better paid

 

They dream of you silently, as a mother or a whore

as imbecile chick

as scholar who knows the secret of self-sacrifice

They give you money and freedom

and a lot of peace

They feel they paid you back in this way

they offer you expensive trips, applause, prizes, odes in ancient meter

 

Thinking machines are needed

and text interpretation machines

washing and cooking machines

devices to clean nails or boots

machines for setting things in order

machines for listening to sad confessions

There is a huge need of picturesque women smiling from the window like mannequins

of chimera women who haunt melancholy

of wretched women to play the role of scapegoats for all cowardice and rage

of dumb women who understand everything too well

 

They pay you to dance, to charm them, to carry their coat or briefcase

they pay you to play with your curls

to let yourself touched, groped

without existing

 

They want the same like all good society

They pay you so that you don’t even hope to be seen

They want to operate on you like a rag doll

They pay you to pretend to be a rag

to pretend to be dumb

to pretend you don’t care that they don’t care

what do you want

and who is on the other end of the line

 

_____________________________________________________________
photo by: Katia Chausheva

Dünyanın ucunda

 

 

 

 

I’m not this awkward, helpless woman

ready to run away

who angrily measures every step made in vain

 

My hands are not troubled by resignation

I am not the one who looks calmly into more and more turbid waters

I am not this woman who caresses her fate like a blind animal

I’m the one raising my fist to the sky

I am the one who is able to stir up the seas

 

Heaven is not a place in space but a strip of time.

It’s a rite of passage

Dünyanın ucunda

He loved what was mortal in me

 

As a child, I imagined almost human creatures

Their skin was as white and fluffy as the clouds

but it suddenly turned into one full of shadows and streaks

Sometimes the opposite happened:

the disheveled skins peeled off, giving way to immaculate others

 

Anyway, this hardworking lady

that keeps cleaning stuff, sorting papers

it’s not me

I’m lazy, distracted, full of cravings

 

Now that there’s nothing left of what I’ve been,

When our feet and sights have been chipped

When our senses are faded

We have given up everything that kept us apart

 

“One day we will become fishermen

We will escape, we will reach the edge of the world

We will live in caves again”

Dünyanın ucunda

 

He walked to work when other children were getting ready for school

He hasn’t kept anything from that time. Not even a keychain.

He threw away even the memories.

He moved. He kept moving.

He went away.

He kept going.

He always knew in which direction the sea was.

 

It’s good like this

There are no traces left

There is no dust over the virtual remnants of life

The photos turn yellow, with spots that look like dry blood paintings

It’s good

 

There will be nothing left of us at the end of the day

Only small items, statuettes, lipsticks, a train ticket, a crumpled t-shirt

that sort of rubble that could belong to any others

 

There comes a time when things remain frozen

Nothing changes

We stubbornly say No, thank you, I’m tired

I’m not curious

We can travel in time on the streets of childhood

It’s enough

We can feel in the nostrils the scent of ripe chestnuts and figs

 

The more the waves dig our foreheads

and wash our chests of soot

the brighter we shine

young bodies

spotless

in the rain of that summer day of our first date

 

How beautiful is his curly, disheveled hair

And how invincible his smile, digging his way to my fever!

 

There is no need for temples, he told me

We can pray in the markets, in the trenches, in the bedrooms

He used to do it, secretly, in public gardens

in night trains

 

Dünyanın ucunda

He believed in the miracle hidden in the woman’s flesh

He loved what was mortal in me

 

As we throw pebbles from the edge of the abyss

The echoes make come back to us

the noise of the past years streets

mixing with the voice of the old lollipop salesman

and with the screams of the seagulls

who always knows where the sea is

 

And our more and more distant childhoods

Become one

 

Together

 

 

Our houses cry at dusk

the bricks whimper muffled

the windows bleed

our storms flood the untrodden cities

shaking the unlived days

 

Our bodies will one day feed a field

the goats will come together and fill the stubble with kids

they will feed on their blood firs or plane trees

their flowers and seeds will be carried by the wind

and they shall bear fruit in another land

or they will be swallowed by the waves

the sea water will evaporate and become a cloud

that will pour its pain or pleasure

over the ruins of the streets we passed by

 

It will be well

We’ll be together

You’ll see

In a few million years

Our bones will be dust and the dust with turn into river stones

and they will roll toward each other

like two lovers

ready to tear his bodies apart

 

 

ARS POETICA

Photo: Katia Chausheva

_________________________________________________________

Ideas are as cold as gold bars. You can store them in archives.

I have nothing to do with ideas. I have no important message to convey, nothing useful to give to the species.

I’m not good to play the sphinx.

 

My poetry is made of all the slips and noises, of the roar of the streets at sunset, of the broken light bulbs, of the passions that die virgins, of the books that no one reads.

Is made of gestures and impulses meant to be forgotten. From the waiting in vain.

From the lights that go out and never turn on again.

From the traces of the passage, from the falls, from the waste, from everything that was not said in time.

From the way a tramp smiled at me at the stop.

From the hunger of a certain dog.

From all that oblivion seizes and devours.

From all those little things and events that the wind pushes on a road without return.

My poetry is sometimes, in difficult times, even about the garbage falling through the pipe.

I have nothing to say from what could be translated into simple and clear meanings.

In fact, all I have to say cannot be put in words

I would write about the moment when neither the flesh nor the sky can fit you anymore

for your heart has suddenly grown too much

or the world in which he fled was small

things

untranslatable –

the roar of rain entering the room as a witness

the silence that is left after we love each other fiercely

our smell’s fusion

the ecstasy maps that remain embedded in our skin for two weeks

that’s worth writing about

because this something

it may disappear at any time

because we will no longer be

there will be others

and my poetry is about a sadness that is only ours

and about a way that is only ours to abandon ourselves

or to lose our temper, about an irony that is only ours

and of our fate

What I have to say has nothing to do with what composes and decomposes me

of what composes and decomposes you

what is essential is only between us

when the past, the governments, the rents, the waiting rooms disappear one by one

when all the words disappear

How the hell to translate into Romanian, Turkish, English

the moment you put your hand over my eyes

and tell me

live?

 

That’s what it’s worth writing about

The rest are gold bars.

 

The dog

The dog in your study, ma’am

He is gentle and understanding

He wants me to caress him, he looks at me puzzled

He is a kind and devoted dog of a rare breed

although I couldn’t say exactly which one

I know I’m a pain in your neck

I know I’m a lump in your throat

I know I fit you like a tie needle stuck in a velvet skirt

I wouldn’t bother you anymore, you see

but the dog got attached to me

even though it’s invisible, maybe even dead long ago

 

I know you can’t stand dogs, ma’am

That’s why you don’t even feel his presence

 

I won’t upset you either

I will only pass by from time to time

unnoticed

You won’t even realize

that I’m in the room

I only stay as long as I leave the dog a bone

And caress his head a little

 

The vulnerable

If you stick your ear to the wrist of my hand you could hear the cries of the defeated, the songs of the soldiers in the front line. The spasms of the lost ones.

I I hurt myself in my own words

They make convulsions invoking impossible places and situations

Every random glance covers me into black dust

Unwanted caresses leave me bruised

Even the wind in a book can knock me to the ground

I can see an eight-year-old boy carrying a wheelbarrow through me

It advances between my ribs like in a mine, in the dark

He walks with his head bowed and a knot in his throat

He does not dare to hum

The strong ones, the winners bury themselves with their horses, with their smoke and storms

In brand new bedding

They make promises that they break off twice a year

The strong make the raft on their backs

They let themselves fall, slip, break their bones

They can afford to be afraid or desperate

They believe in Ego

They shout “Me, me” when they fight monsters

They go out for lunch like birds of prey gushing from bottomless hats

They stop the traffic and shout their self love or hate

***

We stay embraced for years in transparent bed sheets

In a transparent city

In a world so broken that it’s almost gone

Two defeated among so many winners who never knew the shame of longing

winners sharpening their weapons in silence night by night

waiting for dawn

***

The invulnerable are alone and above all they handle any situation

They always find a crack in the wall

or a single woman from whom to make pencil sharpeners

or gunpowder

they always stumble upon an abandoned house in which to improvise a battle ring

***

I’m afraid to spill over

I’m afraid to throw my net into unknown waters

I’m afraid to look into the eyes of the child carrying the wheelbarrow through the darkness gathered in my chest

I’m also afraid to leave him in the dark

Everything passed away, hope first

But that flame continues to burn through the impalpable bed sheets

through the rubble of time

The desire remained untouched

***

The strong ones come with scandal, with whips, with handkerchiefs

They are alone and circulate everywhere through the hollow world

They fight heroically with bandages, with monitors, with labels,

with the greenhouse effects of synthetic happiness

And shout freedom “freedom, freedom”

Of course we’re vulnerable, I told him

Troy has not yet fallen inside us

__________________________________________________
image: Nara Lee

Don’t forget to buy bread

When I was a child and I studied piano

I always heard a voice in my head

“Don’t forget to buy bread”

“do not forget”

 

Until I gave up the instrument

and started writing

It didn’t spare me.

As I sat on the stool as it began.

 

I wrote what I wrote and it started again

“Now what do you want from me?”

I would slap it in the face

but it’s a voice

No matter how annoying would be

voices cannot be grabbed by the collar

an thrown out in the street.

 

I bought bread for an entire neighborhood

I kept buying bread

and it doesn’t leave me alone.

 

As I sit at the desk

It starts again: “see? you always forget to buy bread”

 

Yes, you’re right, bloody voice

I’m a loser

an unbearable one

I have an ugly and lazy character

I am capricious and passionate

I had a difficult teenage

and an even more terrible youth

leave me alone

I’ve only been eating raw vegetables for ten years

I also quit smoking a long time ago

and music

 

I don’t even write seriously

I’m just pretending

like when I was a kid

and I was imitating handwriting

putting down on paper lines and curves without meaning

 

Even now my words make no sense

 

You know I do nothing else but to carry

crates full of bread

as high as the church walls

and I have no one to feed

 

 

Better

They would have better attacked me like beasts

Since they hunted me

Not to come as minstrels, as explorers, as wisemen

They would have better left me dressed

Since they couldn’t enjoy my nakedness

I wish they gave me at least a flower, a pot or a some soil

Blindfolded me if they couldn’t help themselves

Let me drink the oblivion elixir

Hid my mirrors

Not to let me see

What a body looks like after being robbed

of desire

Gerhard Richter

They’d better have taken me to a temple

And stabbed me there

They’d better have thrown me into the sea

With a boulder around the neck

 Like they used to do with witches

They’d have better cut my hair

and left me alone in a dark forest

Maybe the wolves would have seen a resemblance in me and took me in their packs

Maybe the beavers would have hidden me in their burrows

 

Even better,  they would have abandoned me in the desert

Maybe a Tuareg would have taken me hostage

He would have dug through dozens of layers of melancholy

After my sleeping smile

Maybe an outcast, a loony

Would have looked for me and taken me to the edge of the world

He would have buried me in his silence

 

They would have been better stuck the knife in the chest that they robbed

 At the end

Since they didn’t desire me

Since they couldn’t love me

The fig tree

Towards the rising sun

Men carry the ground in huge locks

women are tied on the locks with thick ropes

they stare blankly

the sky of coal and cardboard shatters on their shoulders

it stains their hands with ivory dust.

The rains bath the fresh wounds

the wind scatters the remnants of broken lives

over the heads of newborns

Lovers throw their anchors in quicksand

they carry each other’s curses

*

Towards the sunset there are only ruins

brand new ruins

of freshly plastered houses

or luxury cars

ruins everywhere

It’s not a week since they leave the factory

and all things crumble

All over place

modern fiberglass buildings

through which the ruins groan

Strong bridges over which high-speed trains pass

all in ruins

A civilization as extinct as the one of the Romans

The souls of the natives speak a dead language

their gestures are faded and mechanical like those ones of ghosts

you look into their eyes and you see clearly that they are dead.

Dead.

*

There is no way to live here.

The ruins advance towards the few survivors like an unstoppable wave.

Everything turns into a pile of dust and landfill

which blows an ivory powder into the air.

I’ve lived on the edge for years.

I lean over the gap to say goodbye.

Towards the rising sun the sky swallowed the whole earth.

Towards the sunset, the earth collapsed over the sky.

*

Pieces of the world crept into me

like rainwater through the cracks of the walls.

I get rid of them

I’ll go with my love to the wilderness.

It doesn’t matter what age in the history.

He used to hunt since he was seven, like Enkidu.

He had a fig tree that is no longer.

It doesn’t matter what language is spoken in those lands.

No matter the name of the shore or the mountain,

the shape of the cave in which we will hide.

*

We’ll run away to towards the beginning of time

*

I’m going to plant a new fig tree for you, my love.

Somewhere

I do not know where

I’ll see.

The sunsets of the childhood

 

The most beautiful thing, in a big city, in the summer evenings, is when kids play out at dusk, when the voices mix and fade into each other. If you sit somewhere inside, lie down in bed, with no thoughts, and listen to them, you may capture echoes from other times and worlds.

It seems to me that the voices of the neighborhood have been silenced. They are covered by other sounds, artificial or by a quietness that isolates.

The rhythms of the artificial heart beats of the big cities, with which we are bombarded everywhere, are sound buffers between each and every one, they amplify loneliness, raise sharp, even menacing walls between people. One associates that unnatural sounds with concrete and wire, not with the beautiful images that follow the chuckles and laughter and rumbling of the streets of the evening.

 

All of my childhood I saw old trees in my reveries, country roads, strangers whom I could guess the fate and the character in the features of the face, the same type of people like those unknowns who appear in the dreams, and we know somehow, even if we cannot call them by name. I have longed for the roads that lead to the sea or the forests, to the hills. I dreamed of the ones that bake their own bread, cultivate their garden and drink their tea under ancient walnuts, make love in secret attics or under the open skies. I dreamed of worlds in which, if you raise your eyes, by night, you can see the stars.

In the big cities the sky is black. The stars are no longer visible.

 

Industrialization has not marked just our clothes, but also what we wear inside. The new generations of children dream of scenes, reflectors, luxury clubs, top models, fetish images of an entirely artificial world, ice stars, halls full of illusions, roads that all lead to a giant screen.

 

Since I were 10 I felt the need to write about the melancholy and the destinies of the beloved ones, that we carry inside us.

Who are all those people, angels, and beasts that show up in our dreams?

 

What the source of desire is? Where does it come from? What made us blind to some people and able to see so vividly some others?

 

Unclear then, lucid now, my wish as a child was to become a peasant.

 

Becoming a villager is not a destination in space but in time. I wanted to emigrate in the past, in the simplicity of a world where people did not delude themselves about what was natural and what was not.

We are prisoners of big cities, with the minds caught in fights that are not our own, in huge holograms build by recyclable words.

 

Take me by the hand and lead me to the spring of longing. Come with me in that land where everything is unnamed yet.

 

“Few sea birds are quarreling in the sky for a few pieces of cane. I picture myself on a desert beach all day long. At dusk, the water which is already calm becomes even more silent. Is there any meaning in all these? Charming fear of being, sweet neighborhood of a danger whose name we do not know, is living only meant to guide us to our own loss?” “It has always seemed to me that I live somewhere on the seaside, in the heart of a kingly happiness.” Albert Camus, The Summer.

 

 

Control

Aren’t you tired of the dictator from inside you?

Aren’t you sick of that inner guardian

that commands you to be better

to love more

to love less

to move forward

to hold on

to let go

to get up from the dead

 

Aren’t you tired of this soul-predator that keeps you awake

and running

aren’t you exhausted of

running away

running inside

running around the same rusted ghosts?

 

Aren’t you bored of the tyranny of this Soul

bullying you like a prick

mocking your hunger, blaming your fears

 

Haven’t you been enough in his service

like an obedient slave

born blind and helpless

and pushed by his Master

to creep through impossible wonders?

Soul mates

Image by: Leszek Bujnowski

We could have carried huge sacks in one of the world’s harbors.

We could have been two teenagers captive in an oriental brothel.

We could have been moonstruck.

We could have been two fat moles digging their tunnels under the frozen land

ending up together in the skewer of an old Eskimo.

We could have been some irate nerds preaching the socialism to a pack of hungry dogs.

It’s not that bad what we have been fated to.

I could have had the luck to be a sleepwalker and go, through the night, to head for your lands,

like a turtle pushed towards the sea by her primordial thoughts

One day we’ll be meteorites

or bodies of water

trees

maybe elephants

aren’t you curious how the elephants desire might be like?

We will recognize each other instantly

and the fever will break out

there are other lives

don’t cry

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Like a bullet

 

It must have pierced your chest like a bullet

If definitely must have been true

to come to know how devastating,

how scathing happiness could be

 

How wracking  his empty coffee cup looks like

left on the window still

in the moment when his absence

fills the house

like a snow fall that hurts

everything

 

paint by Anthony Garratt

 

Confusion

 

No, mom, it’s not me the woman in the photo

It’s another one, don’t you see, her cheeks have been sculpted by wind

Her lips are thin, her hands are exhausted by labor, you know how lazy I am

She has mild, compliant eyes

You know with how much anger I fly at all jerks throat

Don’t you see how humble she is?

I am all revolt all pride

 

And, besides, you are younger than her, mom

In all of my reveries.

Troy for instance

When I was little I imagined myself with long hair with thin arms and skinny knees

I  invented myself breasts of all shapes and sizes I was afraid they would never grow

As a teenager I screamed: Fuck ”communism” in the streets and I invoked a homeland

Flocks of mysteries and fears passed with the rage of bullets through my fabulous hair which has grown in my dreams up to my knees

Heroically I fought all the nightmares and all the chemistry exams

All the locks and ice lands

Heroically I stood the lost of springtime

Everytime I heared “No” I insisted to say: “Oh, yes”.

I dragged my imaginary sins through all catacombs

Until the day he  invaded my wonderland with his long hair, disheveled, like a savage From then I couldn’t spell certain words without blushing such as Troy, for instance

Until that moment I didn’t even have a language of my own or a truth dignified to wear my name

I had no homeland or breasts

photo: Jen Kiaba

The Black Box

 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27970134-the-black-box

by

Ilinca Bernea

The three protagonists of the book are painters and the narrative follows their biographies blending together, uniting and separating at some point. Tristan and Norman were born at the beginning of the 60s, in working class families, in an English industrial town. Their friendship emerged in early childhood, in a Catholic boarding school. The story of their relationship and of the experiences they are going through is told by each one of them, so that the reader deals with the same narrative exposed and focused from two different subjective angles. The third character of the book is a Belgian female artist, two decades younger than them. She is the disciple of Norman and, through his confessions, she discovers the fascinating world of London of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, with all its specific contrasts, temptations, fetishes, conflicts, illusions and disillusions. The plot of the book brings into the spotlight a part of the wonders, dilemmas and controversies of an entire generation of artists that had overthrown an aesthetical system of thinking that stood as a foundation for the great cultural currents of modernity and had anticipated the dawn of postmodernism as well.

 

Interview

The bitch

 

 

The woman I feared the most

dwells now in my living room

wallows in my bed sheets

uses my laptop every night

 

gorging herself with the chocolate that I keep for the neighbor children

The woman I despised with fury in my 20ties –

I used to call her bitch in three languages –

lays now in indecent positions on my brand new couch

I paint her nails, I adjust her eyebrows

I moisture her body with dozens of lotions

 

I invent stories for her to cheer her up

I promise her that she could seem as stupid as in the dreams of the prince

 

The woman I feared the most

makes gymnastics every day

counts calories

cries for almost nothing

she has no glimpse of pride

she stays locked in a books tower

making scenarios to tear it down

 

and to take all over again

from the level of primordial tides

 

She is a nymph that came to be naught in a foreign life

like a white whale brought by storm on a desert shore

 

I bemired her in my poems

I wrote humanist slogans against her

 

I had hives anytime when I thought

about how lustfully one like her

offers her heart to any hungry beast

 

And now she lives in my house

in my mind

in my desires

in my flesh

in my mirrors

 

 

Poem with lace dress

 

I’m dressed in a white lace dress as if I should go to the ball.

I write from the first hour in the morning as though it would mean a thing.

I’m struggling to make the autumn come as if something was going to happen.

I’m studying my face as a traitor, as if I had a choice.

I’m arguing with impossible and untrue things, then I apologize, as if someone knew.

I regret what I thought and felt in vain like an evil act, as if someone cared.

I run through the others’ illusions like a rat lost in a dark cellar.

 

I even have an icon at the edge of the bed as though I had faith.

 

There are terrible struggles given inside me and there are only beaten men in the end.

 

Fall

The falling leaves and the light that embraces them,
the frozen air and your burned lips
are the same
and the buses that will survive our happiness
and the coffee cups from the day with no return
and our shadows embraced on the floor
and the world that will continue after we have leaved
with its hospitals with its chosen ones with its dogs trimmed by the best stylists
and the air that passes from lung to  lung
and the wind that blows from the south
are the same

and the sun heating my temples over which your kisses have once passed
and all those unhappened
that are so hard to abandon

once buried in memory
are the same

Responsible

                                                                                                                                              image Mirjam Appelhof

 

I’ve always imagined myself as an animal, one who takes himself for a human being.
I’ve been told: No. You’re delusional. This is just wishful thinking.
You are and will always be but a poor human being.
An unhappy creature, confused, a miserable dreamer, an outcast possessed by doubt like by a legion of demons.
An idiot contradicting himself every other day.
The animal is pure, it’s a perfect being. Don’t lie to yourself, they told me. What are your arguments?
I preferred to be used rather than contemplated, I babbled.
It’s not enough, they’ve retorted. The animal does not do any harm, he does not make mistakes, he does not know anything.
But your ignorance leads into the madness, your ignorance hurts, tangles, produces earthquakes.
Okay, but we’re born animals, and we turn into people. Perhaps some succeed in avoiding the transformation, I dared to guess.
They laughed and laughed.
Nice try! You cannot escape like this.
No one is excused, lady. From the very first moment we come alive, we do not cease to fall in man like in a deep pit
Deep
From which
Nor  love
Or fear

Could ever take us out

the same story

The romantic version

 

They both hope the impossible.

He hopes that she might desire him in a man’s way.

She hopes that he might realize how a woman is built and that he would accept her with her issue. It is not a crime. It’s just her way of desiring. She will not bother him anyhow. He could follow his chase at his ease.

We are always told: men and women are the same species. No. They aren’t.

 

One cannot hope the impossible forever. The thread that all the sunrises hang on, breaks at one moment.

 

He hopes that her way of being would synchronize with his tides.

She hopes that one day he will stop leaving. But she doesn’t understand the low tide and the ebb tide.

Ulysses is a story written by Penelope.

 

He is revolted because she doesn’t treasure freedom. But he suffers to know her with another.

He would love her to belong to him… but like the lust of music or the silence of noon.

He would love her to be always the same, like the sea. Time not to touch her face and breasts. To be a statue of marble.

The more he desires her to be a thing, the less he lets her see inside him.

By the contrary, she gives herself the more ardently as he strives to turn her into a ritual object.

 

She explodes into an attack of fever and melancholy.

His idol falls down and crushes with noise to the asphalt.  He spits with disdain.

He casts her away.

She remains locked into the cell of insomnia to haggle with his shadow.

 

The postmodern  version

 

the idealist rationalism and good part of the civilization’s archives consign that men are endowed with a stronger metaphysical sense than women, that have been proven to be more carnal.

 

Empirically, things appear to be different.

She tells other women: he has a contagious smile that wraps you up into the vapors of other centuries. His heart is pure ember, his sights are healing water, his arms are the promise land’s ground. And when he kisses me, it’s like trying to suck the whole life out of my breast into the unforeseen depths of his being.

He tells other men: she has a perfect ass. I don’t know if I can make myself clear. By perfect ass I mean The Perfect Ass. It’s such a pity she is a sentimental cow.

 

Night is falling over the city of Troy.

Women are washing their blood spotted headdresses into the same waters for centuries.

 

Psychology

 

The mind is a mirrors system. Everything is backwards in reality.

 

This explains why victims have complexes of guilt,  why intelligent men are convinced that others are smarter, why arrogant pals suspect their fellows of vanity, why the ones full of envy are convinced they are coveted all the time, why women believe in men’s love.

 

The scientific version

 

The good side is that male potency is not just a myth. The bad side is that every potent man is conscious that he is a rare exemplary and he could have an army of slaves. Women that sustain they can make a devoted partner out of a potent man, applying various strategies, have never met one.

 

 

Zen version

 

You better die of a God’s hand, after he offered you the happiness, than living a long live with a devoted slave that kisses your feet because he has nothing to offer.

 

The personal version

 

I always hated the word hope.

 

Anytime

 

You may come anytime

even at the hour when the scavengers pick up the forgotten umbrellas from the bus stations

or in the middle of the night

it’s good anytime

 

just come

 

even only in my sleep

all I want is to see you no matter how

to touch you

nothing more

to sniff your smell

 

show up for only few minutes

no matter when and where

when I barely drag my feet on the beaten tracks of solitude

 

you may come when the leaves are falling

or  in a misty winter morning

when the walnuts are blossoming

or next springtime

even for a few minutes

or less

 

just to let me know that you breathe

no more

 

you may come anytime

even now

when everything is too late

Midsummer desert dream

Midsummer desert dream
(poem)

 

The only man who ever said to me “You’re beautiful”

saw me as a slut with unexplored potential.

I went with him of course; even ugly women

yearn to be told they are beautiful,

even as they pretend to struggle for truth, justice & other Gods.

 

He saw a genuine slut in me, good for instruction

he asked me with much tact and grace: May I hurt you?

I said Yes

You’re so beautiful with all of these bruises!

May I cut a finger from your right hand?

I told myself: a finger is not a big deal, I will quickly learn to manage with only four

I agreed, and he exclaimed: you’re unbelievably beautiful with this generosity of yours

and he cut my finger

I thanked him with a gnash
May I chop your hips? Of course

The pain, he said, made me more and more beautiful and attractive

May I take out one of your eyes?

I hesitated a bit, I was not concerned about my eyesight, but I feared that the mutilation would make me ugly
but what are two superb eyes, two perfect hands, the most sensual carnation, the finest skin good for

in a world wherein nobody sees you and tells you: you’re beautiful?
He saw me

I could have listened to him breathing even with a single ear

I could have caressed his tensed temples with only one hand

I could have sniffed his smell of animal in heat with a single nostril

 

He was determined to take his trophy out of me

I consented to everything

I let him haggle my tights, my womb, my arms

while doing these he never ceased telling me how beautiful I was

The blood fits you so well, my slut!

May I cut your heart in two pieces?

He asked me this with the smoothest and warmest voice like a true gentleman

I said yes

Without any shade of regret

He went away

And I remained with only one half of my heart

With a life split in two pieces

But this is not the worst
What I hoped for was that he would have killed me

That’s the truth

I don’t care about the wounds

They will heal
The worst thing is that I should return to a place

Filled up with wonderful, well behaved men,

Who think only in the highest respect about me

Men that would never hurt me, not even with a gun pointed at their heads

Men descended from contemporary fairy tales

That never told me and will never tell me

You are beautiful

Reeducation / The intruder

Reeducation

No, ma’am, I didn’t do anything wrong
this must be a mistake,
I’m sure there was some misunderstanding
I was the best of all good Samaritans
I faithfully served both gods and humans
I don’t belong in the reeducation ward
please check the registry books
it must be a mistake
I haven’t shed one drop of blood from anyone
all I did was clean wounds, wash the shadows of the floors as I was told to do
I haven’t committed any errors
I’ve guarded the windows against the invasions of migratory birds
I’ve timed the heartbeats of soldiers and dreamers, following superiors’ indications
I’ve done my duty
I haven’t cheated, I haven’t missed one challenge
I’ve climbed all one thousand steps I had to climb
I didn’t even dare yearn after the great illusions
freedom, truth or love
please believe me

everyone says the same, the she-devil snapped at me,
you all act the innocent
I’m sure that at least once you thought that you could break the rules
I’m sure it crossed your mind that you could open the window and let the flock of birds run wild
I’m sure you cheated when counting the stairs
I’m sure you’ve abandoned a shadow on a wall somewhere
or at least thought about it.

The intruder

An animal of an archaic species has turned my body into its den,
You know the type of invisible animal that only appears dressed as a human
At first I thought it was harmless
I even found it nice, since it used to hum in the evenings, before going to bed
exalted songs that resembled German marches
When I went out it would tickle me and make me laugh precisely when I needed to be serious
Or it would push me through the door, compelled by implacable necessities, precisely when a distinguished contemporary man was beginning his speech
But I didn’t mind because I liked the way it sang
After about a year of cohabitation it caught a cold and started to belt out vulgar choruses like a drunken sailor
I thought it would get over it, but each day it would sing even more out of tune and mockingly, I even believed it was doing it on purpose
When I pointed that out and told it to build a lair in another individual
As a protest, it began singing like a deportee in the Siberian wilderness
And it went on like that for a long time
It wouldn’t let me sleep until I took on all its sorrow
I started to pressure it into leaving me
I dragged it to conferences, I closed it up inside libraries, I kept it in front of the TV
Any animal would give in under such circumstances
But that animal that had taken shelter inside me held on, it bore through everything singing romances, which drove me crazy,
Until one day when, exasperated, I gave up and told it
You can do whatever you want with this body, it’s yours, I’m giving it to you
And then, overjoyed for getting rid of me,
It began singing in my very own voice,
A divine music, nothing less than Schubert.

 

I don’t exist / performance

Marguerite Yourcenar – “Feux”

https://soundcloud.com/lincaernea/feux

 

good manners

To be always reliable, to fall on your feet, to be generous but modest and, meanwhile, to be aware of your strengths and special qualities, to be always sincere, to never let yourself humiliated, but to never offend another with your pride, not to lose your temper, to be honest in all circumstances, to be in charge but never patronizing, to talk moderately, to make yourself clear in essential matters without expecting the other to acknowledge what you find essential, but to treasure your values and, meantime to consider them relative, to love with devotion and dedication without neglecting your own person, to have courage, to never lie to yourself, to be inspired, to dream big, but to be always realist and well grounded, to never betray anything of what and who you are as if you would perfectly know who you are and who you’re meant to be forever and ever, in other words not to change, to be consequent, but to keep evolving, to never contradict yourself, to be responsible and enthusiast in everything you enterprise, to fully enjoy life, to take it seriously, but without losing your sense of humour, to tell only the truth, without exposing yourself, to be cautious and very mature, all these atrocious imbecilities and precious contradictory advices are stuffed on our throat with the hose, with the funnel, are sowed in our heads with the trumpet, are stuck in our brains with the hammer since we are little children; we are fed with this junk-mental-food continuously and everywhere: in schools, in public reunions, in conferences, in churches, in social groups, at every corner of the street; this kind of stinky “wisdom” is the elixir we are injected with from the birth of our consciousness, we can recognize its stench in the kind advice of the old virgins, in the deadly boring conversations with the neighbours, in the discourses of the television gurus, in the best sold magazines, in the priests’ jabber, amen.

Freesome

The truth is I only did what I wanted in life. I was an open eccentric and everything I let show from me was related to a true culture for excess, and everything I did as a normal man I kept a secret. I was even embarrassed that in some respects, I was simply an ordinary guy. The last thing I would have wanted was for someone to find out. The house specialty was the extreme sports that I practiced in all senses, from illegal car races to rope climbing, to cursed and impossible romances, to relations with people that society generally keeps hidden in closed spaces, under strict supervision, or treats as freaks of nature, when they should just extend their ideas about normality and nature… I liked to live “on the edge”, as they say, my temperament was never a domestic one. 

I was a kid from the working class… born at the end of the ‘50s, more precisely in ’59. One of the most unpleasant things in this world is that poor people have children. They can’t help it. It’s incredible how fragile the sheet of reason that we pack our intentions in is, it’s just as fragile as the instinct opposing it is robust. Human logic is, in relation to instinct, what eating with a spoon and fork is, in relation to hunger. Of course it’s a foolishness to want to have babies if you don’t have the money to raise them,  but logic has no power over the rough force that lies inside you and pushes you to act or has the same power as the fork and knife over hunger.

I’ve always been hungry. I’ve always lived like a hungry man. I was constantly hungry for something and I never liked the food I managed to get my hands on, it always tasted like English porridge and smelled like chalk, sawdust or mould. I guess it’s not by chance that I’m so skinny. I can’t nourish myself properly. I get satiated much too quickly, without appeasing my hunger.

 

No matter how blonde or attractive my muses are, after a month of relishes, I begin to feel like a prisoner, I realize that I’m suffocating, that I have to take off. While I’m running, I feel balanced. The state of escape is the only happiness I’ve ever known. I resemble Clare in this respect too. She doesn’t like anyone and anything on a long term either, and she probably sniffed out a peer in me. It’s just that she fatally feels attracted to me and sometimes, I almost come to believe that she won’t get bored of me, or that, in any case, there is no escape from the relationship with me, as she used to say.

The relation with me is a seashell thrown in an ocean of melancholy… it’s the center of the world, the only point in the universe where there is no noise, no pain or yearning. That’s what she says. Clare loves me in a way which my love could never compete or complete with, because hers for me is based on a belief, on a myth. She sees in me more than a man, she sees a way, a reason for living… a formula of beauty that quenches her thirst for life. She can see me in a way in which I’ve long since quit seeing myself, namely as a well-rounded being. This is the faith. The one that makes any deep human connection possible. It’s about the myth of the soul. She stubbornly believes that I’m the same as the kid who fought for Norman in secondary school and the same as the fellow who, 30 years later, told Norman to get the hell out of his life once and for all; Clare believes that these two guys who existed in me, consecutively, are one and the same and that’s why she suffers so much, because she imagines that there’s a little boy inside me who regrets the deeds of the adult. When, in fact, I don’t suffer at all and when I do, I console myself quickly, either with a woman or with a bottle of wine.

When I was younger, I had higher standards… I don’t believe in existential consistency. Coherence and consistency are characteristics of thinking: they don’t apply to the way in which we live each moment. In real life, important and decisive matters are related to certain moments of intensity and inspiration, which can very well contradict each other… The only form of coherence of real existence is survival, and memory is nothing else than an impalpable proof of survival, it’s a black box that records inside our heads the things that happen, in a stronger tonality. Not even a shadow has remained from that past “you”. Only a few fetish objects have survived him. A few pictures have remained. Plus what the black box records. “Only the present really exists…

That little boy is no more than a dream, mine or yours, Clare, of the people who met me and loved me or hated me. We are and aren’t at the same time, if you manage to understand this in due time, I believe you might live in the present in a fairly reasonable manner. Not that I managed to.”  I too believe there are certain inborn traits. In my case, running. But that doesn’t mean that we can revive in the present what we felt and were in a previous stage of our becoming, as Clare would want. She would like to make me young again, maybe even physically, and she obviously doesn’t manage to and therefore suffers. And I indulge in this suffering of hers and I leave her like that, I can’t make her happy or disappoint her, so that I might set her free once and for all. There are basically two types of people: those like me, who don’t even believe what they touch, see, understand, and the others, who are made for a belief. My skepticism always finds a gate to squeeze through and infiltrate the guts of any good faith. For example, I don’t doubt Clare’s feelings, that would be too much… but I do doubt that we will manage to remain in this state of emotional soberness or effervescence, or whatever you want to call it. We fall in love because we’re mortals, but when we shake that love off, it’s also because we’re mortals. One type of anxiety turns against the other, or one type of humor violently flares up against another. One humor kills the other. That’s how a purebred skeptic thinks. He sees the absurd in the guts of any situation, not the meaning. Whereas the man of will always sees something that counteracts the absurd, because he’s not necessarily a moron.

Clare believed in me and loved me without me even knowing that she existed, she didn’t care about what I could offer her, I could very well have despised her. I might not have given a damn about her. Or I could have looked at her like a madwoman. The truth is I do believe she is a madwoman, but I don’t despise her, on the contrary… I wish I had her faith. She communicates in a strange manner with all the men who have lived through me and she somehow manages to gather all of them in one, in her mind. Sometimes, she looks at me like I’m a little boy, like I’m a snotty, scared teenager, or a reckless, hyper-sensitive young man. Like a haunted artist. In a way, this madness of hers almost contaminated me, I almost started to consider myself an artist again.