Tag: poem

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I think of La Divina, who, all of a sudden, comes
to mind like a gift-wrapped bedtime prayer begging: pietà, pietà! Too late to play
the record leaves me with a distant memory of that great ugly voice of hers, once
and again jaywalking through a night already immortalised in polaroid pictures.

But when I lie down with my eyes closed, I touch the air saturated with the scent
of Eau de Verveine, which is puzzling because I never actually wear cologne,
and I assure myself that I could fall asleep if only I knew why the lighthouse
was no longer lit. And I swear I could hear the hoarse lament of a foghorn…

Only there was no fog.

I guess it is easier to just say, “I see you are happy now.” But one doesn’t smile
too widely, doesn’t laugh too loudly, and wanders around with their fist clenched
tight on the bottle neck. Happiness, I mean. You know, that almond-milk-bathed
chatelaine we all covet from afar. Only you haven’t heard the last one on the way
to the next eagerly anticipated Friday night out already.

I was never really fond of yellow, not until I met Miss Georgia Lass.
Two seasons later, only a hint of metaphysical indiscretion remained
unpraught in the canary shade. And just like that, the realisation came
that living that witty script would be a lot simpler. I could just occupy
the peripheries of a post-it note.

Sometimes I wonder who you are—you who read my words.
I’d like to think I have affected, perhaps even changed, your life,
but I guess it’s just something people like myself fantasise about,
trying to convince themselves of their relevance in a cruel world
of petty miscellanies.

There are only two kinds of people in the world—there are women
and there are not. I am not. I know this could be seen as a somewhat
narrowed perception of reality, but what can I say? I am a simpleton
and I love women. I danced with one once, a while back, but maybe
a little too long for the first time. And we had an egg hunt every day
but Easter. At least at the beginning. But then the reality check came
and called it all off, including Easter. Now there is a new egg-hunter
who does the dance exactly right, or at least that is what I have left
to believe. That and the Easter bunny.

There are notes in my handwriting that fill the blank pages on the backs of volumes
crowding my bookshelves, each a trivial remnant of a stranger I believe I once knew.

Sometimes when I look at them, it comes to my mind: all this effort and no sign
of the passage of time. But I did notice an interesting shift in punctuation.

And as I scribble these words in a newly acquired hard cover, I wonder
if the future me will still be bothered by that puzzling discontinuity

in the use of exclamation marks.

Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them;

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

My birthmark is invisible, like all the books piled up in every corner
of my memory. I simply lack the sturdy biography, steeped in dramatic
paradoxes, that has served so many so well. And I guess there really is
no point in apologising for my occasional outbursts of mauvaise conduite.
After all, there is always room for one more Shakespeare’s little sister.

Imagine getting old together. One day, we looked after each other,
had red borscht with dumplings for dinner, and then a wee moment
on the sofa to settle our stomachs before the evening walk. Maybe
we swapped books or just shared a particularly compelling passage.
Perhaps there was a wedding invitation, but more likely a funeral.
A real genre scene. Imagine that. And there were times I thought
we could actually make it. If only we had never met.

I never realised that the extra pixels of high definition
could make such a big difference. Call me sentimental,
but I kind of liked the bleary picture of my shabby telly.
But one day, it finally died, and I had to buy a new one.
Only then did I start to notice details I was unaware of,
like that tear changing the meaning of what followed
the one time we recorded our bed at dusk.