Saturday, October 31, 2009

like a ghost
i walk among the crowd
and hear words here and there
which don't register consciously

the comfort of this language
of this anonymous collective
of this fickle city i truly belong to
has an unsettling power of grabbing me
subconsciously
almost on the level of id

but tonight
the crowd, the words, the images
are passing through me
as if i am not there

as i fix my gaze over the city
slowly dipping herself into
the dark raising from the east
i am trying to listen what she says

i hear the murmur of evening rush hour:
cars, boat horns, street vendors
and hurried footsteps of people
rushing to the safety of
someone waiting somewhere

i hear rain tapping on my jacket
(i am not a ghost after all)

i am not afraid of rain anymore

Saturday, October 24, 2009

cursed by a type of self-knowledge
which precedes all language
all the way down to the primordial soup we came from
we share the same damned cosmogeny of language
which artificially but unceremoniously divides the dreams
we each shred, torch and then pulverize
on our collectively tragic trajectory descending to hell
with a wicked laughter well hidden in our throat

yet in our faltering minds
we can't help but mercilessly slice and dice each word
frame by frame
sight and sound
humming a delirious tune of unwarranted forgiveness

Thursday, October 22, 2009

time drips into the shallow oblivion
of memories of an imaginary unsavory past
with slow clicks on the wall
my eyes close slowly
and my palms sip the timid warmth of a cup of tea
wondering if they will ever slip back into
the comfortable rhythm of my old language
flowing ominously out of
a half-forgotten history
recorded on cheap yellow notebooks
and loose pieces of crumbled paper

i feel it in my bones:
a winter of remembrance is descending

Monday, October 12, 2009

she borrowed that slight gesture of her hand
from arrows of time

and she knew that smoke stacks
pointed at a distant unknown star
with the feeling of immediate danger

while mornings curved under the weight of her hand
(not her hand really but the gesture may be)
ever so slowly
that feeling of immediate danger
emanating from that distant star dissipated
along with the promises she made for things
she could never do or would never do

she forgets stories, names and places sometimes
but her hand remembers with a slight gesture

Fashback: October 10, 1998

once,
there was a sound
of reason in the heart
i borrowed
from a pawn shop.

now it's gone.

father?
i am bleeding.
and i am scared of death
and other horrible things
they teach us in schools:
wars, poverty, madness,
impotence, authority,
guns, matches, needles
and pain.
most of all pain.

Monday, October 5, 2009

street lamps pierce the night
with a laser-like precision
while vermin gnaw at the night
and gargoyles choke on rain
on streets
haphazardly stitched together
with cobblestones and shadows

yet our collective dreams
fallen by the wayside
floating sullen
on the whispers of the dead
tell their incestious story
on the banks of the deep trenches
of our dejected history

but the dark currents of our sanity
in their own shallow grave
forget nothing of themselves
while we hear nothing
and we see nothing

we say nothing