if only I wasn’t stuck so wretchedly in between one and all
if only we could write here without interruptions or adjustments
I also wish we weren’t this ensnared that all the roads
to the inside and outside alike— weren’t severed this bad
without ambiguity and obliqueness or even without asking ourselves
if only we write properly what have we been doing from morning to night?
we will surely reveal how empty this box really is
we are building scaffolds to hold water on top of water
it’ll destroy itself —mark my words!— in the end our shapely construct of ourselves will destroy itself! the one which we think we have constructed in an Other’s mind
which even if so would still self-destruct so now that we haven’t—you’ll see!—
it’ll implode without having ever been constructed after all not everything is malleable! i think it’ll break one day
and the malleable ones on the other hand—I think— will crinkle terribly
the situation gets so dire that one day one opens one’s eyes and observes himself say:
whatever there is, will be annihilated one day
and whatever has not yet been
will slowly grow by its ruins and blooms into Being and repeats but
whatever there was can never once again Become
sometimes one opens one’s eyes only to see he hasn’t aged enough to be an elder
but he’s stating the obvious so profoundly and nodding
as if it was he who had said it in the first place and no one else
I myself was lost in my own nebulous thoughts one day walking to and fro
lost in the fugue finding jewels in my dreams holding them in my fist
and dragging them to the precipice of reality by my teeth
a man with no arms went to bring water for the horsemen
I stand by my illusions and Jibber-Jabber
the same way that noblemen stood by the Truth
with the same perseverance
A man who was the moon, who was a lion, who was asked only to hold defense that day, who had some relevance to a kind of light, who was the scent of jasmine, who was sent to the Euphrates to bring water for children, who was mounted on a horse — let me say it this way, a moon-lion mounted on a horse, carrying a waterskin, lost his hands to the enemies and so kept the waterskin in his teeth, never fell off his horse before a spear struck the waterskin. With the same perseverance assigned to saints, I find myself persisting in illusions and jibber-jabber.
*
I can’t tell if the picture I’m seeing in the magazine is a day shrouded by smog
or a facet of a ship, wrecked at the hands of the sadistic, turbulent Sea— discolored and frantic
when the Sea is disturbed it is indistinguishable from any dust or storm or earthquake
Brown and Grey bleeding into one another
in fact the entire world of turbulence is Brown and Grey
in the dust, the thighs of a portly woman are on the ground, entirely stretched out
two men who are alive possess her body and a harp is also visible
but nothing else is visible
has someone died here perhaps? should we be mourning?
shouldn’t we at least be informed of how such a kerfuffle has ensued?
are you two the children of those portly thighs or just one of you?
she has now laid prone— is she perhaps vomiting from a plank of driftwood onto the Sea?
or were you perhaps at home when an earthquake carried you here like this?
if pictures were not taken do you know how transient tragedies would’ve been?
I myself have pricked the tip of my own index fingers as I was swimming in the choppy waters of the Black Sea—
so exhausted— reaching out for the wooden steps of the jetty a splinter pierced my hand—
it came out on its own and I survived this predicament
but survivors are stuck in a bind too
*
I wish we could figure it out— or even better! I wish they could figure out all that was our intent! — but not all those who are our very enemies but those who want to help— it would surely be nice if they could know properly what would’ve been done by now, but it was simply out of our hands—
a diver— right there under the dark, cold water— paddles his feet
I know what he wants— but in the morning when I see my own disheveled face reflected in the mirror—
or even scratch that— if anyone sees that reflection they wouldn’t know what they want—
and even worse than that are those who— from the moment they open their eyes in the morning—
know exactly what they want
and that itself is a dangerous mental obsession
and I’m not saying I have any goals in my chronic aimlessness
I have goals but despite my vices I don’t leech off of moments
I’m not guarding the door like a loan shark to settle my debts with this life
I don’t want my dues— my inheritance even— but unfortunately
I’m not one of those emancipated ones either
to turn up my nose and teach the youth about liberation
I’m mindful
and when it rains, I evade the puddles and suppress speech as if it were a sudden sneeze
my temples throb as if to implode— and then the throbbing dwindles.
speech and sneezes aside— even the floods eventually die down.
if only one could know which one is true and which is false—
since we have suppressed a thousand words like a polite sneeze—
or words that are uttered and we regret saying them forever—
these words are different from those— those are words that if truly possible,
they wouldn’t be so bad as to make us explode and say all that we should never say
if it rained at the right time, even if it rained a lot it still wouldn’t flood
and now that I list these examples they seem simple and naive
but if the same was said by an elder we’d all be impressed and say “how beautifully put!”
we don’t get along with ourselves or our own epoque
we xenophiles all of our old poets are strangers
it is only us who exist visibly on the streets
