My resentments act as bookmarks
to the feminist writers occupying my bookshelves,
inappropriately labelled ‘the fair sex dome’,
but forgive me my inadequacy of thought—
I’m of the rugged gender.
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I am who I am
Each and every one of us likes to think that we are unique in our special way, but at the end of the day, there is always a Darwin or a Wallace who will find a pigeonhole for us in the taxonomy. If I had to characterise myself, it might be something like this:
- Domain: Vocabulia (the users of words as opposed to Pugnia, who would rather use their fists)
- Kingdom: Eloquentia (the effective users of language as opposed to Prolizi, that is, word wasters)
- Phylum: Creatores (rather self-explanatory, as is the opposition: Interpretes)
- Class: Scriptores (basically, writers vs. Oratores, that is, speakers)
- Order: Poetae (poets, obviously, with Prosatores, prose writers, standing on the other side of the fence)
- Family: Matutinae (who write in the morning, unlike Noctilucidae, who prefer the darkness of the night)
- Tribe: Puristae (pure like the glass of water on their desk vs. Stimulantes, who can’t write a line without at least a sniff of coffee and cigarettes)
- Genus: Hedonici (writing for eternal pleasure as opposed to Pecuniarii Pii, who write for money, but only from a pious source)
- Species: Poeta Purus Hedonicus (I’d like to believe it’ll be me while I keep the copy of Stanley and Danko under my bed)
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I curse the day
I curse the day I tasted bridal bread and salt.
I curse the day I met the future posy thrower.
I curse the day I let the dissolution slip through my fingers.
I curse the day I woke up in a stretcher.
I curse the day I was born,
most of all.
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Selfish genes
I find green on blue rather disturbing, especially in their radiant, sun-drenched shades, which sounds a good deal sillier now, when I said it out loud. It’s like thinking you’ve married a woman and then, the day after the fair, realising that she’s a mother first and foremost and that she’ll turn you into a walking wallet once you’ve done your marital duty. But that’s evolution for you. Genes don’t give a tinker’s curse about your dreams and aspirations—their one goal is to replicate. If only there were a way to give them the middle finger once and for all.
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Simple living
En réalité le satanisme a gagné. Satan s’est fait ingénu. Le mal se connaissant était moins affreux et plus près de la guérison que le mal s’ignorant. G. Sand inférieure à de Sade.
Notes sur «Les liaisons dangereuses», Charles Baudelaire
My neighbour leads a life of studious regularity
and doesn’t mind if George Sand is inferior to de Sade,
as long as he can perch on the scroll finial of the church across the street
to catch his breath between feedings of his chicks.
If only I were a magpie.
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Requiescat
You know you are old
when your late-in-life children become adults
and you no longer draw the curtains
like the swords your forefathers drew
in all the new—for them, at least—lands.
Now you can simply find some well-deserved rest
in the inherited armchair
or tomb.
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The barren love
Romantic love is the desire for copulation,
embellished with the timid glances of a sonnet,
unless you are a eunuch who settles for lyricism
out of barren necessity.
Is that why I would rather have an empty bed
than empty shelves?
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Only the brand
To sit at your desk in a cheerful disposition
is quite the illegitimate thought
when you pose as a harbinger of sorrow.
You are in the business of authenticity, after all.
And once your words leave the printing press,
you have to be even more careful—
a stain on a page never sells well,
whether it’s a bleeding nose
or heart.
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Envy
I have always been—and still am—convinced that life is an unnecessary hassle to which we are subjected without our explicit consent. But since I dread it so much, one might say that simply ending it seems like a viable solution. The thing is, that would require either a great deal of knowledge or determination—neither of which I have—which shows just how much effort both nature and my fellow inmates put into keeping me in this panopticon. Oh, how I envy the paramecium or, better yet, a pebble on a riverbed.
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hidden pilcrow 