Tag: poem

as i slowly begin to forget the names of people
and places, and the titles of once-favourite songs
say less and less, the evening nap suddenly becomes
the highlight of the day, just after i look at a picture
of little me with my favourite chequered blanket,
where i gaze at a teddy bear with great concern.
i doubt i knew then, nor do i know now, why.
perhaps we are simply born to live a life
marked by fear.

when i was half my age, i saw a dead body
directly in front of my face, lying on the hood
of a van. it was a driver who was thrown out
of the seat in a head-on collision and smashed
through the windscreen, but a displaced steering
system blocked his body half way through.
and so he remained, slung over the crushed front
of the car, unrecognisable as his skull exploded
in a collision with the hardened glass.

why do i mention these gruesome details?
because when i was photographing the scene
as a young reporter, i felt absolutely nothing.
my job was to take a picture for the front page,
and that is what i was focusing on. the body
in front of me was just a task, one of many that day.
all i was concerned about was not stepping
on the brain pieces carefully picked up
by the funeral director.

and it was only when i got back
to the editorial office and started reviewing the photos
that waves of cold and heat ran through my body
and i could not stop my hands from shaking.
in that one moment, i understood how easy it is
to overlook a man.

if i were writing about the indigenous peoples of america,
canada, and australia being second-class citizens in their
ancestral lands; or if i were writing about palestinians
and kurds who crave their statehood; or if i were writing
about uighurs sterilized, raped, tortured, and murdered
in chinese “re-education” camps; or if i were writing
about [insert any tragedy or injustice you want here],
would it be a struggle to shake off pervasive indifference,
or just a pathetic attention-seeking attempt?

nights with the prince of cool, dim street lights
outside the window, a glass of water enough
to accidentally blur a crooked handwritten note
on the back of your old life bill. sometimes
you turn the turntable down a little to hear her
laugh in the street. but usually you just follow
the path of the trumpet. my funny valentine
sang for the last time.

back at home… a phrase that, even after over a year,
i still feel uneasy saying. and i am not bothered by
the penny plain furnishings, as long as the bookshelves
are full, or the lack of a proper bed, when the folding
mattress does the job. because this is all i really need,
apart from a desk with a lamp and a fairly comfortable
armchair. and yet, something is still missing. or maybe
someone.

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.