Tag: poem

What on earth were you thinking? That you could live your life
without subtitles, as if you stood at the fireplace, bereaved but free,
burning cocktail sticks and never-opened letters, and all you needed
were writing utensils, a typewriter perhaps, and to be comme il faut,
an etymological dictionary.

I guess it’s good to hang onto something tangible, like seedless grapes
in a disposable clamshell container, for example. In the end, it’s always
been all about convenience, hasn’t it? But you are not listening, darling,
busy with preparations for a picnic to which I would be habitually late
if ever again invited.

You don’t have to say anything. Anything at all. Just slip out of your shoes.
The water is still warm. You know, I tried to remember the last time we had
a bath together. Perhaps you might recall it, although does it really matter?
Sometimes I wonder if there is anything more to protect beyond that lost
memory we once claimed as our own.

Once upon a time, before we were supposed to be happy
— I mean, de jure — we used to be just like that — happy

when left to our own devices. Of course, there were certain
urges, but we tricked them away with a loosely defined sin.

Sometimes we were quiet, lying on the grass-textured rug,
tired after a frivolous grapple over the last bite of croissant,

other times pretending one couldn’t answer the other’s call
of names learned overnight to be forgotten with the dawn.

And I’d like to think we were decent, even if we eluded
being caught only for a little while.

I have never touched the trunk of an olive tree. I doubt I ever will,
since they don’t grow up north, where I live, and I prefer to avoid
the swelter they thrive in. So as long as I stay here, I will not suffer,
except that I will not know the feeling of running my fingers over
the fissured bark of senescence.

If I stayed overnight, allowing myself to see perfection but phrasing it differently,
how cruel would it be? Or if you waited too long, so neither of us knew which part
still deserved to be considered good enough to play, who should call the wager?
And what were we willing to forgive to enjoy that pity game of ours a little longer?
Perhaps we should always have known better, that nothing would ever tell us for free
where the coarse seams joined.

Ignoring unguided fingers slowly sliding over the burnished neck
of Casals’ violoncello in El cant dels ocells, a sense of decorum,
a relentless companion of pity, renders the unnecessary ceremony
of serving a sovereign inevitable. And only the birds, carried out
in cages from crowded squares for the offence of their singing,
sense the falsity of this servile note.

If the ancients knew the art of statistics,
would they still believe in that little rascal Cupid?
It’s hard not to succumb to the reality of numbers
squeezed out of all those cyberdating ventures.
So, if we trust it, men find most women attractive,
six out of ten for that matter, but not vice versa.
Here, only the lucky two can enjoy the desire.
The rest of us, ugly ducklings, wouldn’t get
a glance, if only for pity. And it makes sense,
I guess, from an evolutionary perspective.
But why all this pretending to be any better
than peafowl?

Why am I still jealous of my old flatmate? We parted long ago.
I moved to town with my dusty desk and overloaded bookshelves.
She stayed in the suburbs, with her windowsills full of flowerpots
and the lawn neglected somewhat. The debris ended up in the attic.

She sometimes calls me, asking to stay with the teens overnight.
Where is she going? I don’t ask any more. She wouldn’t answer
anyway. She never did. Like shared loneliness, sealed with naiveté
and wishful thinking, her answer would only be an act of pity.