from The Squatters' Gift

Robert Rybicki

illuminobjects

let every word be a revelation!
let it be beautiful like shitting under a tree,
& fucking squatting down & not
on this disgusting can. Who
will forbid me, who will tell me what to do?
My fingers smell of metal.
The smell of sweat & iron. That’s
the workers’ smell! The smell of electricians!
This isn’t Hugo Boss! Get lost, Calvin Klein!
In Literatura na Świecie, they think intensively about New Yorkers!
And I'm sitting who knows where! O’Hara’s shmara,
shmara & samara! Kirał who? Kirał who
phthalic carbomide & chlorinated rubber?
In the circles, no one will compete with my lacerated brain,
meanwhile, I set here in the park, all a-cleans’d & the sun it’s out
behind them bushes . . .



APPLEMA
was pissing, with his can
to the canister, a fart
to tweak
its faint flame.
- - -
Damn it!
Heart rampage!
The sciatic nerve
like holy smoke!
A real wolf
has broken into the market!
FOR
a tausend years
we’ll set up a journal
CARRÁMBA
and publish
                 interviews with doggies & mousies
                 en el lenguaje de perro
                 y el lenguaje de ratón
                 squeak squeak
                 woof woof
                 CARRÁMBA
                 será la última palabra
                 en el mundo
                 muchas matas
                 el lenguaje de plantas
                 el lenguaje de bacterias
                 BACTERIAN

the highest
state of mind
is       keine Ahnung

in the tiled stove of imagination
Professor von Absurd
burned all the libraries
crumbled the stone inscriptions
& the remnants turned into
                                      a sandbox
to which he crawled
                                                babbling happily
                    the clock hands twirled back time
                    like a girl's hair
                    & a rainbow rose from his forehead
the end of which disappeared
behind a distant planet
                             grand
                                   like the sun
& he said:

since I’ve survived a thought,
it's time to ignore civilizations

4. when we all do it together

when money & countries disappear from everyday life

trees will grow on the wrecks
of forgotten cars

the buildings will be where they are
& we
shall visit each other in our own homes
for which no one will want anything from us
we’ll happily prepare warm meals

                there will be love on the street

                the truth will be nice



In one moment

two thoughts flew thru the brain
& left streaks
like jets. In
the narrowness of an answer,
in the constraint of an answer
to all ills, to
this one question, which
is always one question
regardless of circumstances, when
the letter “c” doesn’t pop up when
pressed, any
pressing as an atavistic form of vitality (au revoir,
academic jargon!)

none of you, university smuts,
can mess with my poem.

I saw an echo of thoughts.
Thought sent a wave that
bounced off something
certainly not off the skull,
certainly not off the rock wall,
certainly not from a you reading
critically, which is also a figure
in this
line. Maybe
it’s a Hungarian, hung

in the chute, in shambles
I, which envelops in you,
beyond the romantic
conditions of love,
beyond all conventions,
beyond the hope for change,
beyond change.

Recently, I read lectures by Michel Foucault & there it was plain as day:

get to know yourself,
take care of yourself.



LOCOMOTIVE SIRENS

look at the heart of the cathedral which is the stained-glass window
a locomotive siren flowing outside the city

titmouse, tit, magpie, blackbirds & rooks
pecking crow nuts from under the snow

like smog slog kiss-kiss side-step & jump over the track!
he missed the wall because he chickened out

the mouth’s menace whistled but no wave came
the trees absorb sound concrete in a rust burrito

the liner booth barrier red lights clatter
the steady metal rhythm of the plates



Untitled

I look at myself from a geological perspective.
Necrophiles aren’t interested in the history of the species.

The Head of State with a rainbow mohawk,
latex pants & a lace Łowicz jacket,

meets with the Präsident der Stadt in Auschwitz
prison garb at the techno event in Stary Licheń.

Poles long hanged Jaruzelski & Kiszczak
on the gallows in front of the Palace of Culture & Science.

Priests have given their cars away to the poorest
& started growing marijuana in the parish gardens.

Comedians with the faces of celebrities became
hermit philosophers, eating vegetables from garbage cans.

The dailies have disappeared from the windows of disheveled kiosks.
No smile will mask the high fever.



THE CENTER
is, the self
from the bottom, a polygon
of lights in a polygon
of lights, the self like
an empty glass,
setting the self in a space
that exceeds the pull
of Earth’s gravity, the self
like the electronically tuned
sound of a vibraphone bar;

how to answer a question
which is like a spring for the self, the spelunking
of the self, maybe like a rubber wall for the self, thought
like a skateboard (oh, he fell on
his ass)
the center’s everywhere,
every particle is the center,

how to think when it’s cold,
when in math
only geometry makes sense,
human geometry,

when a person’s constantly
reduced to something, for
example, reduced to money,
ground zero of money, what can the marriage

of money & mercy accomplish,
what’s the point of writing if it carries
a command; from which side does

the guttersnipe appear more clearly
                  : where a penniless
beggar rummages in the trash, or

where non-existent millions
are funneled ruthlessly
                    I dreamed up
                                       by
mathematics.

(a layered I?
forgiven of passion

more “unshakable” than the earth)

I beyond picture & sound

I beyond writing

I twitches

isthmus
to the unexplored

& what you’ve seeked,
thinkers prophets

teachers of the invisible

discover find figure out

I unshakeable when I hurts & suffers
I unshakeable when dies

                  ’tis this you
                  (beyond gnowing
                  echoing)

translated from the Polish by Mark Tardi