I am attracted to redheads with freckles, perhaps because the very first woman I noticed,
signalling that I had finally reached my awkward age, was one. Neither beautiful nor ugly,
she was the epitome of perfection, and all I wished for was to push her on a garden swing.
Decades later, I know it was bizarre to wait for a nod to follow her long silk nightdress.
If only she knew I seek a home—not a hotel room, now and then—where the bouquet
on the table is a humble cauliflower.
As I lend this body to this mind, the question arises: what defines me?
Perhaps I am whatever will remain once we have basically established
what I am not. This, however, leaves us with two sets, which are likely
to expand ad infinitum, and as such, they might not necessarily be equal
in their implications.
For love, we do crazy things. For love, we change the world—or at least try to.
All that for something we cannot even clearly define, despite millennia of effort
and a plethora of adjectives added to it. The brutal truth is that Romeo and Juliet
were nothing more than oxytocin junkies (to be accurate, it is a whole cocktail
of chemicals, but you get the picture). So excuse me, but if you asked for my take
on the subject, I would say, love is the white whale in an ocean of chemically
induced despair. And yet, for one more shot at it, I will give up anything,
or something like that.
It all starts with a word or a phrase that turns into a paragraph,
and only then is it divided into verses and stanzas, if needed.
At least, that is my approach to writing a poem. The particulars
for sure vary from one author to another, but the whole process
has one thing in common: it is a trial-and-error-ridden fight
for immortality—pointless if you ask me, although I still take
part in this rite anyway, mostly in the hope of a breakfast
at Tiffany’s.
I am a poet, a born grandstander, trained in the pageantry
of baring the soul. And don’t be fooled; the events of my life
might be the raw material, but it takes a great deal of fancy
to spill out a verse. Although, remember, even a stage death
requires the true colour of blood.
I chipped a plate today, and as insignificant as it might seem, it somehow saddened me.
I have had it for sixteen years, and it has survived in mint condition through daily use,
three home moves, and a breakup. And yet, one moment of inattention was all it took.
So I guess it may no longer be of use to serve my guests, but I will save it to show you
that having a past does not rule out a future—one day, when we meet.
My kids’ language is not my mother tongue.
My mother tongue is no longer a language
of mine. My everyday language bewilders
everyone else. Perhaps we all speak fluent
stranger.
I have always been a man of few words. Even back in the day, as a journalist,
I preferred news over reportage. First, you clearly state the event, its location,
and the time frame. After that comes the purpose, and only then is the reason.
In the end, it turns out that life boils down to these five fundamental questions:
what, where, when, what for, and why, in that exact order. And yet somehow,
we are so fixated on the last two.
What if imagination is a decaying sense, only temporarily kept alive like a fading memory
of the letters I once wrote? For instance, the other day I was going through the laundry
and found in the inside pocket of my jacket an old coffee shop bill with a note on the back:
“Your lips have no eyes; my eyes have no lips—we are complementary entities.” I recall
that tingling feeling when we walked with cups, holding hands, unaware it was the last time
in a crowd where no one looked at us, and you liked it that way, regretting only that real life
has no soundtrack. Then, for a while, our hands practised irrelevant gestures to pass the time
between meals and sleeping hours. I know; I never asked why you decided to run into me.
You never asked why I left, either. Perhaps we were always just perfect strangers in disguise,
rehearsing another day of their drama on paper.
hidden pilcrow 