Why is there me rather than not,
as if the slipper animalcule were not enough,
even if only recalled from the bygone, coarse syllogisms
of my birthplace, to allude to an obscure pen warrior,
known perhaps to a few highbrows in the Slavic literature department here and there?
Obscurity is actually what everyone should aim for, by the way.
But that’s just me, I guess. After all, fame seems to be the currency
that buys the much-desired immortality
of tomorrow’s bog roll.
What is the future, if not an incoming bygone,
or the present, if not an ongoing hereafter,
or the past, if not the nonce—just erstwhile?
When you think about it, our perception of time
is no better than of the squawking of a magpie.
No wonder we populate scrapbooks with eidola,
as if every departure comes in an untimely fashion.
A thousand miles is a mere few hours on a plane,
and even by car, though almost double the distance,
it would still be just a day-long journey—not the weeks
our ancestors had to endure—and there are no dangerous
wild animals or bandits lurking along the way.
The worst that could happen is a delayed or cancelled flight.
And yet, I can’t help but worry—trembling with fear even
—when the message on my mobile, asking if you’ve arrived yet,
shows as undelivered longer than expected.
They’ve never had more than a kiss,
and even that would be a stretch.
Besides, I knew where this was going
from the first moment I spotted them
sneaking down Back Wynd.
She wore makeup as if it made her life more tangible.
He was nothing short of perfectly forgettable.
Together, they couldn’t be a better future addition
to the divorce statistics. And yet, despite everything,
at that moment, I wished them a glimmer of a chance.
Perhaps I was being nostalgic and probably a tad jealous.
After all, I’ve been there once, and nothing
has been more tangible since.
Sometimes I feel like Mr. Linea, always surprised
by the abrupt end of the line and yet chasing birds
away from the twittering machine mercilessly
hanging in my bedroom full of silhouettes.
And while each fight may seem a bit superficial,
all the previous ones were won with relative ease.
In fact, all I had to do was check every morning
if I still knew how to breathe in and out, casually
count the heartbeats left until the last one,
and indulge in a few other guilty pleasures.
My name means ‘gift of Yahweh,’ which is ironic
considering I don’t believe in deities,
and even more so since I was the sole reason
for my parents’ marriage in the first place,
and it wasn’t a happy one. If I were to guess,
they probably had no idea. But come to think of it,
even if I had a name as solid as Peter,
I would still have to get used to being alone
and learn to live with the pain
gradually spreading throughout my arm.
And while I never liked it, it seems having a name
chosen on a whim wasn’t the worst thing after all.
If only I could believe in a sentence that begins with ‘I’ and ‘myself,’
one that soothes the gripping drama of coffee beans in a howling grinder,
one that covers the silence with ‘One too many mornings’ on the turntable,
one that sums up a man’s life without conveying persuasive language,
one that perhaps this once I myself would dare to resist falling for,
except the forbidden never asks for forgiveness, and that’s the sentence.
How far have we come from the caves
of Altamira, Lascaux, and Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
to the pit on Mare Tranquillitatis—or how little?
In a way, it’s ironic that we plan to live in a cave
again, although the moon is no laughing matter,
since we like to think we’ve grown over the millennia,
even if in the end it’s just demographics.
Time measured by worn shirt collars and holes in socks,
or by glyphs drawn haphazardly by seagulls on windows
to be washed away by rain eventually, or by the varying
intensity and amplitude of pain in an arm—is it truly all
but nothing? After all, if I learned anything over time,
it was to appreciate a piece of home-made flatbread
with Moroccan-style hummus and black or green olives,
spiced with Sir Roger’s complaints about nightingales
and strumpets at Spring Garden.
hidden pilcrow 