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And then I saw myself still hanging on
a word – the tiniest speck of expectation
seemed to had been worn dull – but I was waiting
for avian verbs to come like spring-risen
germs on beds in mouths of Germinal
months – reverie, revulsion, both scrambled
at random within old fields of palimpsests.

“Slack Vlach don’t flap,” the scar-ridden lines read
“the time a tree will grow from father’s tongue,”
which made me dizzy – phrases felt as if jammed
in the messy door of a calendar, come June
I mumbled in a jejune voice and I
will join the humble sect of next text reading
nights I try to follow as I swing
and roll around their silence:

nu-i bai zice Baicu, mergem la radio,
mă rad şi mergem, margento,
trebuie să ne luăm adio
de la pacea muzicii, e mai urgentă
efeminarea sunetului, sub un capac, într-o geantă
plină de zeamă de lume, din studio:

pianul pentru peanul cu aripi e-o plasă
în care rechinii din ochi şi din solzi ridică o casă

unde unduie mereu aerul ca-ntr-o zisă lungă lentă
dintr-un minereu greu de se-aude o

It’s not so seldom that I go to Aceldama, in spring
when, even if alone, I count in strangled
voice, as if neck in noose, the bloody
lunar coins as they set slowly under the
horizon; adrift then goes the star of Spica
and I speak in my sleep of your absence – maimed
words come and go as the tide stifles the shore-line:
What price is my life – hisses that surge in solitude.

Versuri nedisponibile

Spiritul plebeu din noi tânjeşte
după proză, de aceea preferăm
uneori poemele fără prozo
die zicea odată robert
bly – spiritul aristocrat din mine, însă,
tânjeşte dup-o iocast-a lui
plebee, de-aceea uneori
preferă nişte tromboane bla
zate-ntr-un amfiteatru din pom
pei: ne-nfumurăm nu fără tâlc azi
vine lava

There were a few more tropes to add to our
lethargic liturgies – some gestures of
entwined tongues as if we were both inclined
to straighten out the clinamen of tomes
through which the strut of single words or T-
units still ticks; your angle may fit mine
but we can’t part, we’re particles just nailed
to the sound wall of truth-tables – our auras
are reduced to fields of fuzz – the void
values fit phrases, slit syllables and signs
in the form of a scribbled over fiat lux.

But then, you are no fortune teller that’s
why you keep bringing up finances – what
your late Latin would call finis – since
our money means our end, the scope of the
translation being as you’d define
me man being going back to Greek
for parsing all personae void of voice
as an eschewing of linguistic shortcuts
and eschatologies. The scathing coinages
still echo vegetation, vintage of mowers,

that is, tomorrow, that’s what lexicons feel
like, sexual deaths under misprinted icons of
phonetic lofts which scrape the sprouting palate.
All sentiments are gone, all agons settled in
one sentence – tenses embroidered with
anacolutha, roots strained and tense
now rotten in collages of spent xanadus
and zany don’ts; under ungrounded roads
your score on scorifiers reads: love
all – souls in soliloquy are equal.

Again your modern arts – articulating words
against photonic screens beyond which
the muffled screams still fumble heuristically
for a ear, or a war? Our groovy topic in
an idiom or two means common place
or grave – locked locus, mute geometry
of genes wherein we’re silent through each other
for brevity of verbs demand expletive
plots of land; a dram of mere agrammatism
won’t be a drama – no language is a province.

(Intro: THE GENETIC DEFLORATION OF A SHE-FRANKENSTEIN)

I was afraid it was too late for all
those words – like signs no one would follow down
a dead-end road – but still your tongue,
(was it pretentious, or your mother
one?) shifted like shafts in cylinders of
flesh – who cared about the curios
you’d hidden in your den, the Latinate
old style in which you used to spread your stuff:
the wood-legged bookcase would not budge; uncanny
colons looked like stitches on a long C-
section, a stuffing box stuck with incunables,
centennial? – you scent no sentence – just road rustles.)

A CAMERA LOST IN A SUBWAY STATION

You kept gasping
while trying to work your way through the crowd and make
out where or if I’m among them, squirming as if in
an everyday skirmish against every
body – they kept coming and going and caught
you in that whirl, a thick cat’s cradle
so hard to pass around the world from my
fingers to yours while tangling with the palm
meant for nobody’s money:

success yet sometimes means I think to have
sex on some agglomerate to pass
one’s time as remedy for agoraphobia
or just to be with you in a bee-hive
hitching to where no boodle’s left nor thrust:
breakfast in bed – no multitude to throng
you, not for the world.

eu trecusem graniţa ieri
când m-am aşezat să-mi fac
nevoile şi cred că
simţeam că se ridică
ceva ca o ţeapă de
aburi un cablu tactil
o verigă de aer
ce urcă din hotar iar
în hota mea de carne
ca-ntr-o culă în care
culeg ingrediente
pentru masa soarelui
mă-sii un soi de asfalt
care-mi traversa cred eu
mătricea sau ceva trac
în orice caz mă confrunt
deci cu o frontieră
care mă străbate în
sus şi-n jos pe vreme de
vară (şi-i bine rău feb
ra (stiu eu) schema lui frye)
nu-i greu gravidă nu cred
că din vânt rămâne grea
dar mă perpelesc m-aprind
mă tremur crunt din trupuri
foşnesc ca un fişic (şic)
ca din fiolă mă-nfi
or or mă frunzăreşte o
spaimă o spasmă cum să-i spun
un soi de stihii ca din
sticlă de-unde cade chris
olitul insolitul val
insolvabil lasciv sol
o las cina-n sera
de seringi când lingi limba
ca un fagure de gu
re

I think she doesn’t live here anymore
the dropped drapes, dusty panes, the burnt bulb just
above the door – that goes to show you she’s probably
gone for good; I used to have a key though
yep, look, there’s some Moldavian wine left in the
fridge – so what did you say she used to do
for you, well she was my interpreter.

I used to give some lectures on the rare
uakaris – my way to chaff her since she had to trans
late all those horrid words, now something on the inte
rest rate swaps is what I’m up to; you see:
“these last nights felt like some unanswered prayers”
and then “the algae in the sky at dawn
brushed darkness off like ullage out of a wine casket.”

Yes, I see, the poetry collections in her book-case
seem like scattered lost acciaccaturas
on an obliterated score, the scars
on bulky dictionaries look much fresher.

You used to screw her? No, not anymore –
all yours now; take for instance ‘anodyne’:
tongues like hers sound like that, time and again
but the fun was that while for our ear it only means
alleviation in her language it
was lukewarm; the wine in your mouth is so coo

Versuri nedisponibile

Asta când o fi să ne pice fisa
nouă sau chip-ului din clape
stand la coadă să prindem noaptea missa
pe şapte glasuri aprinse de coca-cola sau de apa
făcută poştă, igluu, cal care sapă
în facultatea inghinală de-a obţine viză

pentru patria de ghindă a gurii
şi, poate, a urechii cărând substanţa neurii,

a neuronilor întinşi pe chitară, ba nu pe-un ţeapăn
Hannibal al naţiei sonore, iernând nu-n roma ci-n moara sorţilor nescrise:

tu tată al tuturor lucrurilor

încercuie pe dinăuntru centrul lumii
al săptămânii

zeu al nostru de ziuă târzie
care-ţi ţii chipul în poala pleromei

tu care vii vino mereu
tu fără de tată
fată
cu gura de vin
vii
şi ne iartă
vuiet al soarelui acoperind
crucea lumii cu un clopot

(vi)

şi tu sete nesecată de seth
sete nesecată de sete
adu patria mea plată rotită
sub plumb
fă din mâinile noastre-o monedă tăioasă
când trecem prin sângele alb
şi nu punem gura aceasta
singură
în pământ

(vii)

lasă-ne tu pământ din care răsare
soarele pe chipul meu
cu şapte ochi arşi
de propriile
pleoape

(i)

ape
tăcute frământate de lună
ape/ pleoape / ape

(viii)

The way in which you seem to solemnize
the dawn of every day keeping words
safe from my pack of foaming pages –
no reverie just the loud light
bathing all your legible gestures the way
in which you plant a pebble in the spine
of my corpus in progress, with no egress to
the evening – save Nineveh I’d say
for last, the blast won’t babble in another
dialect; sun dial like a clock of language,
clogged clusters in an agglutinated glossy
polyglossia, lighted world, long dawn
of a language, dawn and language.