Translation from Romanian by Merryn Williams and Adriana Boagiu, MTTLC student <\/p>\n
attempt<\/strong><\/p>\n I am snipers<\/strong><\/p>\n one can easily get lost in the city, I walk like a human target but my Kalashnikov is well hidden I\u2019ll abandon my disguise I\u2019ll become a walking bomb<\/p>\n when snipers nod their heads at one another for I have quite enough determination a nuclear-contaminated Romania avatar<\/strong><\/p>\n people with lasers in their eyes but the burned skin, the face engraved with scars, And then the men with laser eyes will freeze And then – the files got lost Translation from Romanian by Merryn Williams and Adriana Boagiu, MTTLC student attempt I am the last wave of an avalanche that wrecked a century that unveils the sneering laughter of the void; the universal spirit which, like a shark, bites the net from his trainer\u2019s glove. I am alone in the garden of Eden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[615,77],"tags":[104,1150,1123,622,403,39,312],"class_list":["post-5297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-28","category-english","tag-adriana-boagiu","tag-egophobia-28","tag-english","tag-merryn-williams","tag-mttlc","tag-stefan-bolea","tag-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-1nr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5297"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5299,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions\/5299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe last wave of an avalanche
\nthat wrecked a century
\nthat unveils the sneering laughter of the void;
\nthe universal spirit which, like a shark,
\nbites the net from his trainer\u2019s glove.
\nI am alone in the garden of Eden
\nafter I killed my father
\nand cut out the snake\u2019s venomous tongue.
\nI manufacture clones of myself in the basement
\nand I arm them with nuclear missiles
\nwhich will take away your breath when you\u2019re eating dinner,
\nwhich will amputate the arms
\nwith which you slapped your children,
\nwhich will explode in your face
\nwhen you kneel in rapt communion with the telly.
\nI wanted to escape to another world,
\nI travelled all the way to the border
\nto demonstrate to you that there is only
\nthe hell which is here and now.
\nThe Christian dreamers have invented a circus
\nbased on fantasies and rewards.
\nBut the only reward is the gallows\u2019 hatch
\nwhich I myself shall open.
\nAnd I also wanted to tell you
\nyou are thin because your soul pulls you down,
\nwhile the spirit is castrated.
\nThey took away your balls like they do with stray dogs
\nand you pick up another joint
\nand another dose of really bad films
\nwhile riveted to your sofa
\nlike Jesus to his cross.
\nDrained with a syringe like Prometheus\u2019 raven
\nyou gulp down one more glass of advertisements
\nand in a catatonic daze, go shopping.
\nAnd your life is like the sotto voce remarks
\nof the newsmen who read jokes from the prompter.
\nIn the end you will be standing
\nin front of a completely blank TV screen
\nwondering how quickly a bullet crosses
\nfrom the temple to the brain.
\nBelieve me, it may take three hundred years,
\nand it won\u2019t even be your own death
\nbecause your life was hardly yours.<\/p>\n
\nthey send the SAS to hunt me down,
\nat every junction, snipers watch me.
\nNASA watches me too, through a satellite,
\nand all wait for the right moment to destroy me.<\/p>\n
\nalways knowing this moment may be the last one<\/p>\n
\nin the fake cast which I wear on my left hand
\nthe cast which they hold to your neck
\nwhen they sweet-talk you
\nand when they hold you down like the peasant you are.
\nShut up, they say,
\nand listen.<\/p>\n
\nonly for my nerves to scream louder<\/p>\n
\nwhen the great conspiracy declares
\nthat it\u2019s execution time
\nthe splinters of my brains
\nwill eye the city<\/p>\n
\nto shine brighter than this bitter sun
\nto explode at a seven-times-bigger junction
\nto turn the little tower into Manhattan
\nand all Romania into Ground Zero
\nto drive our neighbours mad
\nbecause this country has become a museum of terrorism
\nhalfway between Bin Laden and MacDonalds<\/p>\n
\nwhose vapour, whose outline, whose dead body
\nyou can see all the way from the dark side of the world
\nlike a piranha, spat out of earth\u2019s uterus. <\/p>\n
\npursue me.
\nI have to duck and dive between the flashes
\nlike a contortionist,
\nto run, find shelter.
\nThey want to kill me, trap me,
\nto scorch me with their looks,<\/p>\n
\nare only a disguise,
\na short-term mask;
\nwhen they surround me with their filthy laughter
\nI shall pour caustic soda in my eyes
\ngulp down pure alcohol
\nspit out my mask
\nas serpents do
\npour forth my soul
\nover these predators
\nand I\u2019ll assume my avatar\u2019s disguise.<\/p>\n
\nand then the lightning turn them into ashes.
\nMaking good use of time
\nthe avatar has sprung out of the basement
\nand set the earth on fire.
\nOne day, Death handed him a mirror, hoping
\nthat he\u2019d destroy himself.
\nHe gave it back
\nand slashed the witch\u2019s throat with spears of glass.<\/p>\n
\nand nothing more was known about his kingship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"