Tag: poem

i can understand the feelings
of flat earthers. it is a matter
of sense of justice. because
is it fair that when i have to
sweat my brow, someone else,
somewhere in the so-called
antipodes, sleeps soundly?
and on the other hand, when
my life slips away while i am
asleep, on that other side
of the globe some lucky sod
delights in the charms of his
own life. so on my flat earth,
the world finally really revolves
around me.

my first unforgettable experience
as an emigrant was bewilderment
at the sight of churches turned into
pubs and nightclubs. not that i am
religious or anything, on the contrary,
i am an atheist and i understand
the islanders’ sense of practicality,
but my upbringing in a catholic
country made me feel a little fond
of such places, especially this eerie
silence of their void.

my mother once told me
that she had some distant
jewish ancestors, but that
little addition to the cocktail
that flows through my veins
hardly makes me a jew.
funnily enough, a feature
of my anatomy makes me
look like one and it did
not even require a mohel,
i was born that way.

my father once told me
that his father’s ancestors
came from the nobility
and his mother came from
an even more noble family.
it is puzzling, though, that all
this blue blood did not prevent
the proud men from drinking
their lives away and i nearly
ended up the same way,
a true son of my father.

and i once told myself
that i would never be
a faceless one in the crowd,
but only true to himself
individualist. it is hard
to suspect a ten-year-old
of contempt for people,
so it must have been
my naiveté stimulated
by the books in which
i escaped from my identity.

one might ask why am i
revealing these details?
the point is, i do not know
who i am.

when i think about the reasons for being funny
at three in the morning, i know that i will regret it
if only for the lack of sleep because it is the middle
of the week and i have to go to work in three hours.
but a glass of water and a piece of flatbread will do
wonders. so i chew my heavily premature breakfast
and wonder why am i not being funny any more
and when did it happen? i should have asked this before
she left.

sometimes i whistle christmas carols
in july. for two reasons. i like cheerful
tunes and i am always amused to see
the surprise on the faces of the people
around me. or maybe i am just trying
to find out if i have not forgotten what
it is like to be funny, if i have ever been.

when i read an old german jew,
i shudder. he knew the power
of words, and some of his own
still sound disturbingly relevant.
but what is much more worrying
is this unforeseen era of strong
angry men that came later.

i have heard my body replaces
all cells every seven years,
so i am a newborn man then.
therefore, do not blame me
for invading your home
decades ago. i was not
the one who chained you
to the basement wall
and forced you watch
your wife and daughter
raped. it was not my hand
that held a knife that slit
your son’s throat. i was
reborn so many times
that i forgot about you
in the basement of the house
that i now consider my own
family home. and yet i have
a feeling you would not
let it go so easily, brother.

of course it was all just
theorising. i am not going
to do any of the above.
but as you watch
the fireworks tonight,
think about bear river
and clear lake
and yontocket
and marias
and three knolls
and cypress hills
and bridge gulch
and wiyot
and camp grant
and sand creek
and …

if i had caught myself stranded
in a cheerful disposition, i would
have found this inconvenience
a self-indulgent retreat of will.
but let us stop there. is it worth
dwelling on your wrathful youth
now that it is just a faded scar?
yet something tells me that there
are marks that no tattoo can ever
cover.

sometimes i think of a man
with an alarm clock in his pocket,
hurrying to catch another day
he overslept. his phone was left
silent on the kitchen table
next to the half-eaten sandwich
and a mug of half-finished coffee.

sometimes i think of a man
trying to live up to expectations
of answering some half-baked
questions about his personal
pronouns. the grammar book
he used was written at a time
when it was still halfway simple.