Four Poems

Gunnar Wærness

(donald duck / 3. february 2018)
 
people have started making pornos at home
concocting way more sense and meaning
than they’re getting paid for
i don’t want to hear      giant rattan furniture
creak like freeze-dried polystyrene skeletons       i don’t want to see
a wall of empty darkly lacquered bookcases devouring
all the light in a room       just to display
a single flowerless vase with gilded fluting       i don’t want to see
the soft corner of a cot in the left edge of some snapshot       i don’t want to see
a brown-edged palm cowering like a hostage
behind a nimbus of newly bleached hair       i don’t want to guess
the story behind the grease print       on the window or help
to carry the garden furniture out       or sort the piles of laundry
because i have played human for so long       that i understand
that i’m the closest these girls come to a father

besides i have walked around       without pants
for about a hundred years       and i understand       that i am made
not to live       but to serve       as a magic mirror
at the bottom of the food chains       you already see it
in the first movie       where i start screaming like a boob
about a bunch of little things       I was never like mickey mouse
he could hold his tongue       and become a detective       and stuff like that
i was stuck in low-paying jobs       climbing on skyscrapers
cannon fodder for the film industry       and then came the depression
bread lines       job lines       way-out-of-lines       and then came the war

where did they come from really       the other villains
dangerous dan mcboo         idgit the midget         scuttle         emil eagle
not to mention       pegleg pete       the phantom blot       and the beagle boys
from the oddments of surplus-europe
lithuanians who'd forgotten lithuanian
jews who didn’t       know they were jewish
until reading the letters       from their dead mother
albanians who called themselves mick and rick
and skinny and minny and elle and belle
the silent-type armenians       from the anatolian plains

singing full-throated while drunk       bulgarians who had converted
and were called pomaks       but wanted to be called turks
bulgarians who spoke greek       and were called karakachani
but wanted to be called greeks       or simply the gagauzes
whom nobody has heard of       except from her the russian poet in boston
who had been a translator for the moldovian sheepskin mafia
in the nineties when transnistria was the wild west
and all of a sudden they were at the front desk
and called johnny and bob       and stopped dropping by to visit me
and each other
at the same time as i was re-cast
as indiana jones and some explorer
and a fortune hunter       and the world’s first duck on the moon
i       who was an animal       and a clown
condemned       to parody the poor and miserable
and i did that pretty well       until they invented reality tv
and the poor and miserable became world champions
at parodying themselves       and I was downsized
into various shit jobs       and started writing poems
like one that on a lonesome road       doth walk in fear and dread
because he knows a frightful fiend       doth close behind him tread
maybe a little too much tradition
before I surrendered       to my own obstreperous diction
show me whom you laugh at       and I’ll tell you what becomes of you
after the revolution       i mean how can ordinary people be so dotty
about a little hyperinflation       when our typical pets
dogs and cats       parrots and mice       must be set free
and overnight       become common pests
and are resurrected as       standard barbecue dishes
served at kiosks and bus stations       a teeny tiny slaughter
shishkabobed with bikewheel spokes       wrapped in old newspapers
served right in your hand       the new gold standard
in a run on empty cupboards       on empty
restaurants       on the empty countryside
i feel this could be our fate       me
with my cruel bow       i laid full low
the harmless albatross       sailing behind my dinghy       me
sanitizing port-a-potties at night       my bed
full of crumbs and white feathers       there is nothing
so creepy as an animal       coming back to haunt us
(or maybe one thing:       a dead tree in bloom)
for what is there to haunt with       when you have no spirit
how are you going to harrow anything       when you never walked the earth
and quake quacking with every puff of wind       o i really regret teasing
the three little pigs       since their dad became bratwurst
since the fleas got lice       since the lice got mites
since minny mouse herself       is now scared of mice

 

 
(poetry festival / july 26 2016)

yeah i agree it’s lame       to travel this far
to talk about yourself       but sometimes
we just have to       so dear poets       and lovers of literature
in these plundered and neocolonized countries
these boring and hollow tax havens       we write
and we write       about stars and planets
titties and ass       death and resurrection       and we shed tears
because we say it all so well       with blowdried hair       waxed asscracks
designer jeans       pre-paid dinners
among these hired and funereal bartenders
but tell me       why are we reading poems
in the fucking smoking lounge
of the grand continental excelsior hotel
into which nobody ventures without a tie
you might think i’m cultured and genteel
because i came here on a plane       you might think i understand
what the four chichi forks on the dinner table are for
or that i care about wine       my granddad also picked his nose
and pissed in the sink       i am not trying to hide it
but i try not to show it either
i might be what some call a fox       fairly shrewd a little deceptive
and now and then i hear my own voice       turn into
an entire human being       i have never met       this is not a skill
it is not a gift       these poems simply want to come to me
when i stop bugging them with questions
i try to write authentically       without becoming a wreck or a pig
i don’t always like what i say       even though it sometimes comes easy
i try to not stand in the way       that’s my definition
of writing       i don’t mean to be coarse       or iconoclastic
the few who wander in here       aren’t they quite sufficiently nervous already
i want you to know       that i am ashamed       every time i realize too late
that i’m up here and strut like a stuffed swan
spotlit by bloodless high culture
and i’m not saying this to ruin the mood
but everytime we meet one of us has to say it
and today it was me

 


(empire / february 13 2015)

honored assembly       thanks for letting us stay here
this beautiful country       this proud people
brothers sisters       i have heard       that you are empire
but you don’t       look like empire
in the grime between gladiators       empire
in the syntax       oh yeah       i can see it       empire       drained wetlands
hydroelectric rivers       broad sidewalks       railways
encyclopedias in gold leaf       pools of umber beer
streets of creamy gravies       piles of onceterrified meat       empire
prairies burning       under rising blue plumes       cities cinched       like strands
of teeth       around the necks of mountains       empire
what we do to each other in hotels for money
at night       over the telephone       by appointment       empire
windows across the river       lights blinking on off on
the signals indicating the train is on its way       afterall       afterall
not all of us are dead       afterall       we are happy to see you
though we don’t dare talk to you       afterall

with paprika powder       i write the waste land       in the language of empire
with a sooty twig       i write the odyssey       in the alphabet of empire
with blueberry juice i write my country anew       with the lexicon of empire
my country becomes       a ditch a tallow candle       smears on your plate

when you hear that my country is disappearing       you don’t get terrified
when i have translated this       so you can understand that my country
is disappearing       you don’t get terrified       no
you grow furious       because i am terrified
now that’s empire

 

 
(business of the dead / july 26 2016)

today i have seen       a flattened snake on the road
i have startled a hare
i have seen a halfdrunk box of cola light standing alone in the forest
i have opened an empty mailbox and thought
this is just a bunch of naked events
these don’t happen to me
in order to become meaningful       rather       i am so empty
that in order to have meaning
they come to me
in order to happen       in this way
things are begging

to be created

in the ears of the smith
the sledges keep ringing
behind the eyelids of the driver
snow keeps falling
the sound hangs       in the bell
the fingers are blackened       by the newspaper
and like that the dead remain       here on earth
a kind of children       who have disappeared
back into us

no one is as close to us
as the dead
but we try anyway
to call them back
we speak so much of them
that even the earth we throw in their faces
isn’t sufficient to hide them

we talk so much about the dead
that the kids who play on the kitchen floor
play dead to get our attention

and the dead play too

at this very moment they continue to bury each other
those massacred in schools bury under their own bodies
the naked bodies of the mass incarcerated who died in prisons
the dead murdered by the police
bury the suicide-bombed
with their own bodies

the missing dead
spread the ashes from burned discotheques
and over the wreckage of factory ceiling collapses       mall bombs
turnpike pileups       they eat one another’s faces
and no longer answer when       we call to them

the word horse       wants to run with the horse       the word hare
wants to sit with the hare
the word death belongs with the living
the word loss searches for the missing
the word crazy escapes the lunatics
the word expensive is cheap
and available to all       the word free is cheap
and available to all       such are words       cheap
available to all       i am cheap and ordinary
and available to all       i am cheap and ordinary
and want to be with those i love       i am cheap and ordinary
and write about language       that angry crackling shroud
inside which the words are hiding       i put it on       i look like shit

sentences pull the guts out of the carcass that is the world
slick membranes slumped on its body       glossy fillets
of syntax and context       hang in context and syntax
panicked i stuff the intestines back inside
and i       i boil myself       and the dead
in my empty eyesockets       the steam is coming out my ears
i am the needle       the syntax the thread
stitching together loosely the language carcass that is begging me
to pull the silk-thin language over the body
and i do it
the carcass says       look
the silk shroud of language takes its shape
from the face of the body beneath it
and i do it       i put it on       look
it’s not a human being any longer it is a shroud
now i’d like you to sew a human being from it
and i do it       it looks like a ghoul
are you a ghost       no
i’m just like you
why have you made me like this
i don’t want to be like this

translated from the Norwegian by Gabriel Gudding