hidden pilcrow

i am not looking for a woman
to die for, but one that i would like
to live for. i could take her to the lake,
pretending we were just paying a family visit,
and then caress the surface of the water
as if it were the skin of her arm
lying next to mine. but the truth is,
i am not looking for a woman
beyond the caress of a verse.

i am a man. but what does it mean?
to be clear, it is not about my flat chest
and what is in my pants. it is not even
that i am three times more likely to take
my own life than an average woman is,
compared to whom my life expectancy
is four years shorter anyway, or that i could
be one of the vast majority of rough sleepers
or prison inmates. the problem is, i feel
lost. is this what lycurgus foresaw? maybe.
i am just not convinced i would like to live
like a lacedaemonian.

it is five in the morning and my maltese friend just woke me up
to let me know how much he appreciates my stanzas. i am cold.
the temperature dropped below zero, so i moved my mattress
closer to the radiator. the silence outside is suddenly bursting
with the shouting of the last marauders returning from their night out.
then, the upstairs neighbour begins a concert of creaking floors.
he heard them too. and although i know the chance for me to fall
back to sleep is gone, and that the young shelley is waiting for me,
i give myself another moment. this is my intimate one-on-one
with indeterminacy.

i do not remember if i was young
for long, if i had a teddy bear, or if i was
afraid of the monsters under the bed.
the first song fell into oblivion, as did
the first dance. but i got lucky. i learned
to read and nothing was ever the same.
only that i immersed myself in reading
about life and actually stopped living.
and now i do not know who i am
beyond the paper world of mine.

people find me funny when i am angry
because i am angry, although usually
just sad and otherwise unremarkable.
and there is also that fine line between
acceptance and the resigned shrug at all
that one considers one’s fate.

many years have passed since i learned the greek alphabet.
the first cause was, as always, the blind bard from ionia,
followed by the three tragedians and the father of comedy.
but the symbols once drawn by the hand of plato and aristotle
now mainly represent the variants of concern, with the omicron
just beginning to fill the red lists.

lapped with gusts of wind, the longing sound
of violins sinks into the rapids of pavement,
flooding the rainy day with pachelbel’s canon.
i look less and less at an emaciated calendar
with a handful of pages left to be torn off,
the last leaves on the tattered birch tree
outside the window, with no hope nestling
into the granite.

every time i die, word by word, breaking through
the stanzas, i reveal my anointed embarrassment
resting on the paper catafalque. every little slip,
every scratch and bruise, every fleeting glimpse
caught when least expected, every yes and no
carefully extracted from the rattle of my old
smith-corona lies in front of you. but remember,
you do not read my journal, so stop asking if this
or that really happened. would you ask stephen king
if he killed all these people?

you do not have to be particularly unhappy;
sometimes all you need is to not be happy
enough. then you get your gaiety booster
prescribed by a man in white, and you wonder
a week later how on earth you woke up
on this uncomfortable bed with your arm
connected to a drip, the sound of wheeze
coming from the bed on the right and moaning
from the other side. and when will the bell
of a nearby cathedral toll another hour
until the next inevitable examination
of your subjection?