translation from Romanian by Barbara Dordi & Anca Bălăşoiu [MTTLC student]
Since he felt he was a waste of flesh
Since he felt he was a waste of flesh
he paid for his euthanasia and set the finale.
Since he knew there were people who needed
his insides to go on
he donated his liver, eyes, heart, lung and kidneys,
and those people lived on.
Since they were grateful to him,
and since otherwise they would have joined him in the graveyard,
all six of them reserved a table at the restaurant,
to drink and eat in his honour.
And when they clinked their glasses,
they felt him amongst them,
smiling.
Does dad enjoy it
Does my dad enjoy it
when I sometimes end up asking him
to lend me money
his heart
his face
and wallet all grin
when he takes out his card and inserts it in the ATM
!because he is practicing usury!
and he withdraws tens of thousands
until he manages to regenerate the wounds in my budget
with a 15% interest
and a real estate, vehicle, blank promissory note
as a guarantee
making my blood sting in my veins when I pay to get them back
that’s my father
always reminding me to stay away from bastards
always reminding me that we are a family
but when it comes to money
it’s as if we didn’t know each other
that’s always the case when I end up where he wants me
but dad is smart
and knows that I know all too well
that I
will take after him 🙂
Wanda
I am getting close to the age when I should be married,
have children and less and less poems like this…
Fucking hell, I am getting old! And the few years I have left
are not even enough to finish living my teenage years.
But Wanda… ah, Wanda! she twists my thoughts into a knot when I watch her
with the string of her panties between my cerebral hemispheres
letting her nipples drip on my Faces*,
on milky white sheets… In the morning she talks with a Banatian accent.
In the afternoon she throws her textbooks all over the bed. And in the evening,
in the evening she has a lisp. It is strange how this chick offers me a sort of comfort
and trust that neither money, nor glory, nor power
have ever managed to give me. When she holds me tight in her arms, I feel
like a tornado is embracing me. When she kisses me, my soul goes
to heaven. When we make love… that’s purely our business.
This high school kid, with a little heart of a tush,
with firm breasts out of which I suck only delight, with skin the colour of
sour cherry jam, makes my life
greyer and my poetry glossier… now
while she is not yet a memory
[* Faces (Chipurile) is the title of the author’s first book of poems]
All my life I have been chasing a green horse
As early as when I was in diapers I would hear it trotting or neighing
on the grey walls of my childhood.
It was only when I was four that it really showed itself to me
after crying
over a bowl my mother had thrown
in front of me. He glowed in the dark, like the eyes of a beast in the night and
each time I would reach out to touch it,
it would vanish in lime, or maybe it only ran away
where my sight did not dare go anymore.
Later on, when I finally managed to use my fists to get
through the wooden door of that room
and enter the world, I had no one anymore.
However, the horse showed itself to me again
greener than any red seen by a colour-blind person.
It had been gone for countless years – years of loneliness, of unfulfilled wishes,
of hate – when I became a man as black
as the blood in my veins. I was something of a dog
ready to rip and tear anything that came in its sight.
I heard its wooden plank walk, closing in, from somewhere behind,
from a wall I was leaning against, deep in thought –
and when I turned around, for a moment I thought
it would jump out and crush me with its hooves.
It raised on its hind legs and a large piece of plaster
came loose and broke hitting the asphalt. I then tried to mount it
but it took off as if whipped. I followed it all the way to Bucharest
on every wall that came in my way. There, out of breath,
I stopped on the steps of the faculty of law and I stayed there
for five years, thinking that, in a moment of unawareness,
I would manage to throw my saddle on its back. All I managed though
was to become a lawyer. I immediately fell in love
with a woman who dreamt of giving her virginity away to a knight
on a white horse. I then begged my green horse
for three days and three nights to take me to her arms, telling it that
no one can have the right person by their side,
but they can make them right; then again, I was no knight,
but I was a good lawyer
and it was not a white horse, but at least it was a bright green one.
I did not manage to succeed this time either. So I got a 300 horse power
BMW and won her over.
I did not make it by her side for too long. I left her behind,
with two small children and a mountain of debt,
chasing my green horse,
to the place where I was to ruin my life.
Now that I am old, and I realise
I have been chasing a green horse all my life,
I imagine that precisely at the moment of death
it will let me ride it
and carry me beyond death
A sort of sonnet
To Ana D.
When I broke up with Raisa
a world collapsed inside of me
and another
over me
(……………………………………………………)
When I broke up with Raisa
I broke up with much more
much
much more
just like when you lose your money for electricity
and you’re actually left in the dark
with no Internet access and no telephone battery
Because that’s how I felt
no light, no access, no battery
(……………………………………………………)
It was as if I was stepping into a forgotten world
somewhere way back
in time
a world with strange manners
with joyless events
with strange places with unknown faces
with new and meaningless roads
(……………………………………………………)
There was grass there
that always brought me back to the moment
when I lost her
Nothing made any sense there
(……………………………………………………)
That is where I met you
and a scab began to grow
over the void left by her absence
and that world
that had began to flicker
like a small light bulb when the electricity is back on
(……………………………………………………)
And still I think I want more
(……………………………………………………)
What if you were the one to turn the light on
and give me access
to something
something by your side
#
versiunile originale ale acestor poeme pot fi citite în EgoPHobia #24