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common delight

common delight

in the beginning they had been one
undivided
one delight, one breath, one presence

looking at each other they had found
the same spark of life
that was flickering in their own mind
light the other’s eye

reaching for each other there had been
no more division between both of their fingers, touching,
than between their own two hands

but the small gods divided them
for the price of a name
and grammar

I shall henceforth be called I
and you shall be called you
and there shall be common delight
one breath, one presence, one light
no more

The stone mason

The stone mason

He had seen them in the far off distance of the long street that moved towards the shop. Something in their movement had caught his attention. Two tall men moving oddly synchronically, not just the spacing and timing of the steps but all of their body movements seemed synchronized to exact, mechanical elegance. Both were dressed in black suits but wore no shirts. It was this odd detail that convinced him that they were coming to see him. Two men in black suits without shirts. Their faces were of a faint grey with sharp contours, very similar to each other like fraternal twins, their hair of the same shimmering raven black, held back with a tight ponytail. The suits accentuated their movements in the subtle way only an expensive fabric would and that could be mistaken for the confidence of its owner.
Both had light, almost dancing steps, yet one of them was clad in heavy, dusty work boots, the other in leather strap sandals. Upon entering his small front yard they parted ways and, abandoning their synchronical steps, started inspecting the sculptured that populated the yard, each on his own. He knew then that they had not come to commission a funerary stone. One of them bent over the mirror of the black granite and gravely studied his own reflection. Turned sideways and slightly stooped over, his shoulder blades protruded sharply under the fine fabric of his suit. His partner was reading the inscription on Linus Lindvall, as if he had been asked to pay special attention to it and was just now recording his impressions in his unfailing mind. The stonemason felt cold. He noticed that the sky had changed from a gay cerulean blue to a diffuse silver grey glare. He squinted his eyes.

Uncle Gustave

Uncle Gustave

wearing a black ribboned straw hat, gustave,
uncle gustave,
slowly walked down our street
with the help of an ivory colored walking cane,
vulnerable, yet erect like a king who
though victoriously
has fought his last battle and now
has nothing left to prove.

 

he left his sun yellow house with the forest green shutters
at exactly 2.10 pm every day the weather was fair
to an agonizingly slow approach of his bench.
even the birds stopped twittering and held their breath
as he was passing by
for fear to startle him.

 

his bench: dark green under an old chestnut tree,
facing away from the the bay, towards the street.
he carefully sat down, pulling up the legs of his dark suit,
and i climbed onto the bench right next to him,
but threading my legs through the wooden lattice of the back rest
i saw the silver water of the bay, the light caught in the crescents
of the small waves the undercurrent stirred up.
he looked at the street, I looked at the bay,
and we were silent
or talked in low, whispering voices.

 

we both knew he was dying,
right there and then,
and then for some more days to come.
we did not mind,
neither the three nor the ninety-three year old,
i had not been alive for the longest part
of his life,
and he would be dead for the longest
time of mine.

map of a brain on fire

map of a brain on fire

i will write up the contract
entitling you to
a map of my brain, that world on fire,
almost like the contract
we roughly sketched with a yellow pencil stub
(for authenticity)
on the ripped-out fly-leaf
of the iliad in my grandfather’s study.
(sacrilege!)

we were children then
but that is not an excuse

i will write up the contract,
not for nothing
did i go to law school to learn how to
negotiate that what cannot be agreed upon,
how to arrange the terms of a transaction
that is to lead to mutual discontent,
for content is not to be gained through negotiation
and mutual discontent will have to do

we were children no more then
but that is not an excuse

your signature stands in for
your body so it better be water proof ink.
maybe we were smarter still
when we used that yellow pencil stub
to draw a contract
that neither of us meant to honor.
we were pirates after all.

children do grow up
but that is not an excuse

so let us sign it in waterproof ink then,
against our better judgment.
here is your letter of entitlement,
all i ask in return is
the right to keep that old flyleaf,
signed in pencil.

good luck to you now.
i forgot to inform you
that this kind of contract cannot be
specifically enforced,
but then again,
you didn’t care for the flyleaf,
did you.

we are but children.
and that shall be our only excuse.

nothing

nothing

some people say depression is night, but night it is not as it is nothing. some say it is darkness but darkness is smooth and depression cuts with a blunt knife.

some assert depression is descent but it has no direction. some people say” i have it” but really but it can’t be had, it can only have you. some people say they came out of it but you can’t come out of it for it is rooted deep inside you.

some claim that it is an enemy but an enemy it is not, it is you yourself in a cunning disguise and with your own voice reverberating through the hollows of your brain that whoever you are, whatever you do will amount to – nothing.

so. why.even.try.

Sober explanation of my insomnia

Sober explanation of my insomnia

All because of you I haven’t slept in so long
now I dream with open eyes
of black birds crowding
the lesser skies

All because of you I haven’t slept in so long
now I can see the shadows dancing
towards the grey stone
with the artful writing

All because of you I haven’t slept in so long
now I walk with burning eyes
the street you walked
two centuries before …

shadows

IMG_5733

the shadows were moving slowly, swaying like branches in a light breeze or high buildings on a windy day. to detect purpose in these gentle movements required a slight degree of paranoia, and yet there was no apparent natural cause to explain the shift of the shadows away from their corresponding objects and towards the center of the village like water draining from upset glasses.

finally, there were just a bits of shadow left, like drops in a sink adhering to the enamel by their surface tension. these droplets of shadow were sparkling like rainbows, no grayness reflected. the air was still and non-expectant, noon in a depressed small town, and the realization that the world was without shadows had not yet sunk in. in a dirty jeep, parked close to the village center, a woman lit a marlboro.

even those who had dismissed the shadows as inessential, felt disconcerted when the birds ceased to sing. on the morning of the third day, after a dawn without luminosity had given way to dull day light, small insects began their crawling procession towards the centers that had swallowed the shadows.

and someone laughed at the gray man in his wrinkle free woolen suit who solicited signatures on retro-active insurance policies. “one day only”, he implored, “an amazing offer”, but they shooed him away while watching the myriad of tiny, scarlet colored spiders tie a living ribbon between the outskirts of the village and the shadow drain.

and yet, the spiders said, too easily do you accept that we form a living ribbon, and wander into oblivion. one by one. what to your eyes a living ribbon is, to ours is a band of pain, and joy, and hope against all odds.

the mirror land

the mirror land

there was a gate and there was none. to step forward required no courage just a lion’s heart. beyond it was the mirror land. hares parading on their hind legs, walking canes in their pretentious front paws as was to be expected. what else? i could not see enough from where i stood. i stepped through.

once through, the scene changed just as i had suspected it might do (but had hoped against my better judgment it would not). no green bucolic scenes, no childhood dreams. there was another gate and not a gate, a foot of grey no-mans land between realities, not more. i stepped through the second gate, as if one step mandated two, oh, what a fool i was!

beyond the gate there was bright blindness, no object, no surface, no orientation, no gravity – not dream, not reality, a blindness that did not originate in the eye’s inability to see what was there, there was nothing. there was no gate, there was no path, but in the brightness, invisible, the pretentious hare, checked his silver time piece smugly, and i did not know how i knew he did.

then i heard it fall, the silver time piece, fall with a dampened thud that sent shivers down my spine. i felt the rabbit searching for it like a blind man, paws frightfully extended, and suddenly i understood why i could see the hare with unseeing eyes. when i had stepped through the second gate i had turned inside out, and the rabbit was trapped within.

Song of the Aelvor

Song of the Aelvor

i am luminous in my loneliness
there is no one else
to tell morning from evening
water from sky
light from shadow
no one to divide
idea and the symbol
representing it
the it from the i
and the i from the you
trying to find a bridge
back from nonexistence
reaching for stars
that burn in a distant sky
a sky that is a cold tent to dreams
conceived around hearth fires
we realize that
we cannot loose what is ours
and we cannot gain what is not.

Palaverous Lament

Palaverous Lament

The empty skies are where we want to go now
released of our desire
to conceive the next beautiful thing

We prefer the leaden days and starless nights,
industrial landscapes, gaping emptiness,
toxic waste and boredom of no-man’s land
(and no woman decorating a corner with market flowers)

You would not understand
if you thought we wanted to leave for silver shores
or even suburban homes, given the opportunity,
we prefer the empty skies and their agents

to the messenger of a glory
unsung