like a death

i have preferred forgetting.
over remembering.
tearing bills of momentous meals
rather than preserving them.
if only after a thought.
never saving the tickets
of memorable journeys.
i have made sure to tear them up.
never to find them again.

i could have easily put them away in boxes.
cleanly categorized.
when in fact unaware
i have chosen to bear them all along
without faces. each of them remains in air
like a death.
not talked about.
piling on. one by one.
more and more deaths.

making my empty bag heavier. and heavier.
i will begin from now on.
to save those bills and tickets.
i will print photographs and put them neatly in albums.
i will buy boxes and stack everything properly.
store these memories in a corner.
so that they are there everyday.
like a photograph hung on a wall.
ignored. gotten used to.

untitled

like those colorful doors of a dilapidated palace bombed in a war decades ago.
and abandoned thereafter.
we have remained shut for so long now.
that we have forgotten how we too could open, on hinges rusted and tired.
and let the light of a day pass by.
winds and rains too if that isn't too much.
no one wants to talk about what we were meant to be.
the new kids have more walls to play with. with incomplete paintings of the other side.
done by amusing circus animals freed only to entertain a desolate crowd.
they cannot open the doors. they don't even know if these exist.
we are walls now. time has painted us white. the color of quiet.
and we are lost. even to ourselves. why are there remains of a war, always ?

Children of our era

by Wislawa Szymborska translated by Joanna Trzeciak

We are children of our era; our era is political. All affairs, day and night, yours, ours, theirs, are political affairs. Like it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political cast, your eyes a political aspect. What you say has a resonance; what you are silent about is telling. Either way, it's political. Even when you head for the hills you're taking political steps on political ground. Even apolitical poems are political, and above us shines the moon, by now no longer lunar. To be or not to be, that is the question. Question? What question? Dear, here's a suggestion: a political question. You don't even have to be a human being to gain political significance. Crude oil will do, or concentrated feed, or any raw material. Or even a conference table whose shape was disputed for months: should we negotiate life and death at a round table or a square one? Meanwhile people were dying, animals perishing, houses burning, and fields growing wild, just as in times most remote and less political. ---- Source: Poets.org

poems

poems very often are short.
and that is why
i can still be with them.
things when they protract,
all of them more or less,
seem to make less and less sense.
among houses by the road
breaking down, falling as i write.
trying to understand things, people.
is the worst of our failures.
for that is not meant to be.
what permeates through is the forgetting.
and what make sense are
things with the span of a dream.
to last unbroken in a memory
obscured by a new war everyday.

internet.

we are like flies on a trash can.
the syllables of a loud, slow, melancholy sufi song.
dry leaves, withering, falling as autumn approaches.
morning rain. sad, cold. and pink.
the seconds hand of an old wristwatch.
indifferent. like sisyphus. or angry perhaps.
we are the water, that is falling.
in the highest waterfall of the world. now.
or the ends of a deep blue sky.
stereotyped as beautiful. inappropriately of course.
the monochrome orgasm. that pervades everyday.
everywhere. everyone. tired of its ubiquity.
in standing alone. on the deserted bridge. holding it together.
we are the dead. waiting for a life.
while we make fun of the other dead.
and talk of morality.

Bukowski

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” 

--

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.” 

― Women

-- 

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” 

-- Bukowski

Source: www.goodreads.com

paris

i am today.
this ancient proud building on a busy street.
basking in its past. since a century perhaps.
peaceful orange almost.
you. i guess. could be
that pair of tacky red sunglasses
put on by a disinterested beautiful blonde
with white hair and blue eyes busy crossing the busy street
looking the other way.
neither of us knows the other,
only the orange red blue white black
and the busy street.