My poetry written in English
I still can’t believe I like dark chocolate,
and pesto, and a few other things I once found unbearable.
Does that mean I’m capable of changing,
or that I just don’t care anymore?
But it can’t possibly be the latter,
because when I think about it,
there are more bits and bobs I’ve learnt
not to like over the years;
case in point, an indentation on my ring finger
is long gone, but it still hurts
I had it in the first place.
When I visited my home country, I ran into an old crush
that I hadn’t seen in decades, and I wanted to say hello,
but then I got scared of playing the catch-up game,
and she just passed me by without a trace of recognition,
so either I had changed that much since our school days,
or I’d always been only a cypher to her—most likely both.
I’ve never really been sentimental. I avoid school reunions;
I don’t keep in touch with old classmates—living abroad
doesn’t help—so the old ardours should be a song of the past
as well, and yet when our eyes met for a brief moment
and I saw the weariness in hers, my first instinct was
to pull her close and whisper, ‘Everything’s going to be okay,’
but of course my innate cowardice got the better of me.
Either way, the unfamiliarity of my face aside, I sincerely doubt
she would appreciate that old lie, or at least that’s the truth
the cynic in me clings to.
If I fled to Norway with my bubble-wrapped dispositions and unbearable cravings,
would that be proof that I had finally shed the provincial attitude I was born with
or that I was a habitual procrastinator, constantly pushing aside the urgent need
to solve the mundane complexities of my pre-divorce life and start breathing again?
Perhaps I would have met a local songstress there, singing about listening to the ocean
and climbing her way in a tree—not that she would ever so much as glance at a bloke
almost twice her age—and felt my heart skip a beat once more. But that’s impossible,
because first I would have to shower, change, and hit the streets of Granite City, leaving
my granite tomb that I sometimes humbly call home.
I tried ice skating once. It ended badly—I killed a little girl,
or rather would have if I had hit her in the head with my skate
instead of the leg, which wasn’t far off, considering her height,
when I suddenly fell—all just to have a song with someone
(it didn’t work out in the end) or at least score another point
in that petty midlife skirmish of mine.
Have you ever asked yourself what would happen to a trifling quote
from the now obsolete phone book if, after years of practising being sullen
(while baking flatbread in residual heat, which is a different matter entirely),
he were accused of condescension simply because of a garrulous sentence
that he dared to ridicule? Perhaps he recalls the fourth mystic ape, the one
covering his crotch, but where’s the fun in that? Nothing beats casual trolling,
after all, in the temple of tadpole literature.
I had a stew
made with butternut squash,
sweet potatoes,
and sun-dried tomatoes
for dinner tonight—a humble result
of emptying the fridge into a pot
in the hope that the final product
would be edible—while listening to Joni
when the thought came to me
how utterly ridiculous creatures we are,
stuffing our mouths
only to excrete some hours later,
repeating it over and over again like markers
in an indefinite stretch of time between now and then,
and in the end none of us is any wiser;
everyone is just making it up as they go,
but perhaps some are better
at pretending
that they know clouds.
Between commercials and restless sleep, I worry about the closet romantic
who mocks karaoke—mediocre covers of his favourite myths—just to maintain
a cold demeanour that was supposed to shield him from getting hurt again,
because if one day he realises the cure is worse than the disease, I might lose
a convenient fallback topic that distracts from that innate indifference of mine.
Does being alive merely by habit still count as living?
I guess it all comes down to the definition of living.
Besides, even being alive is a menacing slippery slope
that can degenerate precipitously into name-calling
and ultimately a factional war of attrition and demise
of the couple you once were.
Of all the fallacies, Golden Age thinking is the one
I could least likely fall victim to, since I am a poet,
and being miserable is in a poet’s job description,
whether it involves the present, the future, or the past.
And what is this happiness everyone’s talking about
anyway, let alone how and where to actually find it?
If anything, not having been born would be the only
glimmer of happiness I can think of, but it’s too late.
hidden pilcrow 