Poems by Cristina “Morgothya” Nemerovschi

Winters, December

translation from Romanian by Margaret Wilmot & Elena Mihu [MTTLC student]

I was turning into a chameleon

I only enjoy writing about myself
I get bored writing about other people, it feels superficial
like sliding on thin ice
In any case, I could care less about pleasing someone else
Fuck off and that’s it.

Besides, they don’t exist, don’t count
I’m no clown, the circus is closed, go have fun somewhere else, don’t forget
to pay on your way out
The elephant died with a bleeding trunk, everyone cried
Santa Sangre is way more with it than Romania, where
Basescu-voters sing manele-tripe

Let them leap from the trees
Branches be sacrificed instead of Easter lambs
Christmas pigs
Turkeys
Let’s sit down and have a real cigarette by the red rain-gutters
It doesn’t matter at all what’s real, what’s not.
You can cringe, cut off your hands for the muse, or spit in her face

Vodka with stout
You’re driving too fast, I think I’m going to heave

I arrived too late at Mangalia station,
it was autumn, all the greenery dry as hell
The headlights are on
Groovier than the horror movie I saw at 4,45 am
I always said anyone can make up his own blair witch

You were the colours inside me,
So often exploding in a thousand nuances
Until I was a chameleon
Every facet a different way of being
My feelings too becoming colour
Each smile a different animal
In you, with you, moment by moment

I hardly remember the winters before the revolution
I’ve even forgotten some of those in the ‘90s

I remember fragments of thought from childhood
Feelings which, if I’d been different, I wouldn’t have acknowledged
I’m trying to pull a thick wing over them
I don’t want to see beyond, I no longer believe in obsessions
Incest is not all that different from sex with strangers

You always lagged behind, way behind
Naturally, I was always trying to tug you into the present
But it was then I began to draw away

I was obsessed; there were serpents and wild beasts’ wings, jeepers creepers
And condor events – I organized weddings
Maybe it would be an idea just to have a drink today
Christmas – all such bullshit – is more than a date in red on the calendar

You lag behind us, behind the car
Like an abandoned puppy
It doesn’t matter
It’s beginning to snow
Night has come
One of these days should be the one, yes; it should happen one of these days

II

It’s really cold
d. says it’s like where we come from
He’s proud of his Eskimo blood
He’s spent New Year’s Eve alone for some years now, laying out
the cards by himself
The freeze is really cool, man when you’re drunk
You don’t even notice it,
Like a monster ready to pounce, batter your bones

A. calls us, in a fever, tells us to hurry
The drugstores are running a holiday-timetable
I take the subway to crângaşi, people look at me strangely
As if accusing me of all kinds of things
I can’t say I feel innocent, just wonder how the hell they found out
It doesn’t matter, we’re getting there, I stick my headphones
deeper in my ears
On the next seat, there’s a pretty girl with a moonspell T-shirt under
her motor-cycle jacket
Memorial
It doesn’t matter, I’m just day-dreaming. She’s likely to be a dumbo
It’s better this way, saves time
She’ll be a creep, for sure

I get off at crângaşi station
It’s cold as hell
I’m shivering and it’s snowing on my hood
I don’t know where the drugstore is so I text
My hands freeze to the mobile
In five minutes he’s here.

The chemist hasn’t got laid for some time and she’s suspicious
A real nightmare
We’re stammering, one has a cat, the other a dog
Laughing all the time, nudging each other
Finally, she gives it to us

We slowly make our way to the flat
We don’t hurry, there’s no need
We buy chips and alcohol
They sell fir trees in crângaşi market

The smell of resin sets my nostrils on fire
And a dense and foggy thing creeps through my brain
I see myself becoming a fir tree
As if with a fir mind smell my bones rotting
Or even a spruce
A spruce among firs will seem like a black man or Chinese
Remembering my time in the shadow of student hostels
The unhappiest places in Bucharest

It’s warm in the flat
There’s almost nothing to show a.’s a tenant here
We snort for a few moments
And for the first time today actually begin talking to each other
About death
Sartre
God, and how all this shit came to be
V. comes and we begin to talk about pink elephants
She’s really high but still we think she’s laying it on a bit thick
You show up much later; you’ve been at work

It’s starting to snow
These miserable balconies are too close together
You can really feel the winter

I’m thinking again
We should go in with someone
Only for the rent
And only paying when we feel like it
Not forced to
On days when we’re not in the mood

I feel like building a snowman
But the shadows in my head are nearer
I feel at home there
And your hands don’t freeze when you touch them

We talk about everything
If we didn’t do drugs, there would be limits to our love
Two by two or maybe one at a time
That’s how we love things

The night passes slowly
We are listening to soad, rammstein, nightwish, pink Floyd, rhcp, metallica,
maybe travka too
It’s a.’s music, after all
It feels like the holiday will never end

But it’s Christmas
You go to your parents
I can’t imagine what it’s like to have family
Somebody waiting for you, dinner on the table
Russian salad, vine leaves, roast meat and cake
Wearing something nice just for you
Who’s downloaded the latest manele-album, just to please you
At the age of 20 I realized no one would ever decorate a tree for me
I thought a Christmas-tree stand might make things easier
Cheaper too
– So it seemed –
I just wanted to bring the beer

December 24 smells great in Bucharest
Neighborhoods bustling, being a part of things

It’s still snowing; they’ve all gone home to their families
We burst out laughing, screw them; let them drink with mom and dad

We pass crangasi market on our way home
The subway has stopped running
All the abandoned fir trees are lying in the mud
They look like soldiers who’ve lost the war
They smell of resin
Of Christmas
Of then
And once upon a time

It’s 6 o’clock
It’s Christmas
The 660 bus is coming
We’re the only passengers
The smell of fir is everywhere
It’s some hours now it has begun, I think it’s begun

III

A cough is like a ram with a double set of horns
This fellow is really getting on my nerves
I can’t understand why he can’t find the lighter
Or if he’s such a clot, why on earth he doesn’t just ask for one

It was great at the seaside, strange too, and so cold
Some people from Timişoara wanted to kill themselves
But for the moment they’d forgotten why
I gave them some wine

Little angels shit on our heads
I explain what I really want: for a parson to piss on the graves
with twisted crosses
And a crow on a branch above shits on his head

In the mountains we met some people from Craiova
They all had wine, we’d have killed for some miserable beers
The punks from Craiova were having a beer
Until some creepy woman kicked them out
Her type shouldn’t have the right to vote
Not even when it’s a question of who gets to stay, who not

I also want to write something about mom & dad
It’s a bit complicated
Hurts some yet I enjoy it too
But they ended up like little kindergarten-friends, the smallest ones
If you tried really hard, and remembered their names, you could find them somewhere here at home or abroad
On facebook

The Christmas of the Revolution was great
For the first time, he went to the market and bought tinsel
and artificial snow spray
He died when I was 11

A little bit later he became a monarchist, which was strange

The party was always lively, even wild
I don’t know what the shit people find so entertaining about me
Fireworks, the ram on the cover with a double set of horns
have retreated for a while
He was shy
I really don’t want to go on about the ram, I just find it funny
And I really saw him that night in Cheia
However, he only appears after long and tiresome periods of meditation
Not just whenever

There have been other New Year’s Eves since our ex-something
and “once upon a time”
Now the blizzard is battering at the one and only 2009, on the 20 something
of December
All that’s left are car tracks on the dirty snow, which seems whiter
than in recent years.

There’s nothing for you here, you lazy alcoholic coward, stupid dull bitch
Live your slimy life and leave me alone
We’ll invent worlds in which you’ve never existed
In which we’ve spent no Christmas together
No New Year’s Eve.

hardporn

translation from Romanian by Graham High & Elena Alina Cerchez [MTTLC student]

evening is coming and your brain plunges more and more into black
the night is coming and so we don’t recognise each other
…any part of us
in the morning there will be nothing left.

First you bind me to the bed
you cover my wrists in black velvet strips
and move your tongue on every piece of skin.

I became versatile indeed
and you saught yourself in every line of mine
you always found what you were looking for.
Strange, you looked different from how you remembered yourself in reality.
You were more beautiful,
more innocent.

The smoke of the dope goes slowly through the cells of my lungs
while you’re touching my breasts:
I wouldn’t hurt you, you know I wouldn’t,
wouldn’t hurt you that bad.

You’d feel incestuous, lousy and maybe a little bit of a pedophile
with me by your side
you’d know that you crossed the border
that here you were able to be everything you’d imagined
that I continued to be yours

I would do things I hadn’t done to anyone before
It would be our secret, pure and wild.

The poems and things I had written for you,
the drinks drunk only for you
just to feel you somewhere inside me;
the wanderings under the bridge, thinking of you
my vampire look
the killing instinct which went through me everytime I had imagined other possible worlds,
other realities
which you unconditionally belonged to

The dope-bars and the dealers that sold weed
sometimes mild, sometimes very intense, so intense the poem disappeared from my head for two days after I smoked it
the music you listened to once
was already a kind of you, almost you.

wanted to know how deep it is inside me
closer to the place where I keep my romances and my obsessions
yes, you were afraid of me
you were afraid from the beginning
i could imagine us together floating in blood
in a pot over the fire
so that the roof was on fire
so that I could evade you entering my human self and me entering yours
invading ourselves like cartarescu’s twins
find a way to get away
without finding our way

for our nights of sex you’d learned from sadistic movies
but for this one time
with me you would be
not like you’d be in reality
but this time perfect

It will never end
we won’t find our way out
of this demented carousel
which spins again and again and again and again
the same view
trees sprinkled with blood, children with their heads cut off and snags that holds sand balls
running happy
till you will resort to the ultimate solution to stop it
you’ll cut your hair off, you’ll shove your fingers inside me and pill out bits of sticky brain
you’ll throw them as far as you can, to not feel anymore
not to be anymore
to slip away from this crazy spinning which make you feel sick, that throws everything in you leaving you empty
bizzare purity
bizzare innocent black velvet, trying to tear it
like a game of wit
meanwhile my wrists are shrinking
wriggling in my bed like that devilish serpent from the novel
i’m not going to rush, you’re not going to rush
you’re going to bite me like a mad warewolf while you bang me
and when you have an orgasm you’ll go on the balcony, break the window and roar to the moon

i don’t know what will be next
i might have to escape the track of neon
to enter into another world
another reality with you
and take it from the beginning
cruel, ignorant and perverse like two children