Category: poetry

sometimes i wonder if you like me
writing about you, even if it is not
really you, and i am just as elusive.
i could be your upstairs neighbour,
annoying you with the creaking
of floorboards or a typewriter song.
you could be that cheeky redhead
playing guitar on the fire escape
balcony, humming what might just
become the lyrics of your first hit.
and when we bump into each other
at the front door of the building,
exchanging some casual greetings
and commenting on the weather,
sometimes i wonder if you like
me.

they can not see me, girls, or women, i should really say
at my age, and with that faraway look in my hazy eyes,
why would i be surprised? even you only see the words,
not the man behind them, and i do not blame you for that.
it is not your fault, but the reality of the world we occupy
with ever-multiplied, fed with all the borrowed dreams,
soul substitutes.

we met by chance at prospect park. i was wandering around
looking for… i am not sure what. you just wanted to lie
on your back and photograph the sparse clouds in the sky.
i do not think you told me your name, or maybe i just forgot
to ask you, listening to the sound of your absent voice.
when we were passing an elderly gay couple walking underneath
the restored endale arch, still wearing masks but with a gleam
of joy in their eyes, i finally dared to take your hand.
one of them noticed my clumsy move and i think he smiled at me.
perhaps i reminded him of all the awkwardness of his first date.
i just hope that one day, my final ending line will be half as good
as his warm smile.

sometimes i try to remember what it was like
to share secrets in the darkness of moonless
nights, but all i see is the shadow of the posts
of our bedroom’s crumbling breakwater, where
we embraced the scars on each other’s bodies
and always regretted it, but regret is all we had.
perhaps you could add to that all the voicemails
that have not been heard, that we are still afraid
to delete.

so you are just a regular brooklyn girl
in that striped blouse and armbands,
looking thoughtfully into the distance
from somewhere near the williamsburg
bridge, as if you were playing at wenders’.

someone said you were bored, but i think
it is a longing for something reassuring,
as we all have moments when we have
to stop at the edge of the pavement to see
if we are still able to keep our serenity.

and now that i know everything about you,
there is still so much to know as i stare
at you with my blank, unseeing eyes,
sketched with a few bold pencil strokes
on the back of an old bookshop receipt.

wandering through the streets of the city,
i pass boisterous people, blissful couples,
and whole families laden with daily errands
and emphatic periods. and unless i get in
their way, they ignore me, which is fine.

and then i see a face with that familiar look,
a thin, stooped shadow in the crowd, staring
at the pavement to avoid the eyes of others,
a vivid reflection of my own hollow face
that i have been avoiding for a while now.

we pass each other, brothers in solitude,
without a sign of recognition, with the timid
silence of witnesses to the passage of time,
mismatched like unpaired socks at the bottom
of a drawer, nothing in common but that.

and there are many of us, some seeking help
in brotherhood, for better or for worse,
some falling into the trap, but all struggling
on their own, because at the end of the day,
there is only grammar of the four blank walls.

you know that you have lost when you come to a singles’ night out
and there are more than twice as many men as women, the latter
being either your daughter’s or your mother’s age.

you know that you are in a losing position as you do not do extreme
sports, you do not travel around the world, and the hot summer
makes you look toward the arctic circle with longing in your eyes.

you know that you have no chance of attracting anyone’s attention
because you are unaware of the latest gossip and popular tv shows,
and the age of the music and books that you enjoy is measured

in centuries rather than years of your social death.

so you are alive and i am dead. you are alive
to the sentiment in my stanzas, and i am dead
serious about collecting all the new york clichés
and bad jokes casually thrown by shadowy cynics,
because why not, if taking a walk and falling there
could help me feel alive again?

they say we are only six people apart.
but what does it matter when my voice
fades as soon as it reaches the friends
of my friends’ friends? you will never
hear the words that i want to whisper
to you on the coney island boardwalk.

they say we are only seventy-two degrees
apart. except that on the school globe,
every distance is short. my arms cannot
reach three thousand miles to hug you,
catching sunrise on the brooklyn bridge
with your cute twin-lens reflex camera.

they say… it does not really matter what
they say. all the degrees of separation
lose their relevance in a place shared
with an unrepentant stranger, espoused
at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.
loneliness is easier in an empty bedroom.