In English, Please

In the World Today

I read an interview with a young poet today
(He is not so young at 31 years old)
He said that he is present in some form
in most of the poetry today
I liked that and thought it was a prerogative
for a young poet
The young poet lives in a small town
where, according to him, culture thrives
Denizens dress up and go to
cultural events; they participate and
run their refined palettes over
coarse poems and smooth prose
rub them carefully between fingers
and bring to the equally refined noses to discriminate
I liked that even more – the small town
on the outskirts of the world
with robust appetite for culture
(I am developing a taste for small towns)
Then he was asked a question about his other passions
and he said that there was one thing
a reputation, if you wish – he likes older women
Older by a year, or by twenty
His range is like his presence in poetry
and the culture of his town –
far-reaching and unbridled
I liked that the best
Mostly because I could imagine
the proud folk of the town
reading the interview
of their talented son
and nodding in agreement
as if all is well with the world

Belonging

How funny it is to think now
of that time
when I entered the house
where I felt I belonged
Or it belonged to me
It was factually a ground floor
of a renter’s house
in a well-lit neighbourhood
that cozied itself in the middle of downtown
Two rooms at the front
one over there
one here
bathroom, kitchen and windows
following walls
or the other way around, and around
I stood in the centre of that house
and closing my eyes
(so I wouldn’t get embarrassed)
I imagined lying on the floor face down
with arms spread out
Then I said to the people I met there
„Please, leave my house now“

Sensational Haiku

„I am a phenomenal woman“
says phenomenally
Ms. Maya Angelou

I am too

It Snowed All Day

It snowed all day – the first snow
of the season hallmarked
with slit-open desperation
It is different this time
I bought new boots yesterday
That was lucky!
There was no heat at home
(a printed excuse pasted
to every door and inside elevators
said it was an emergency)
I am not poor now and I pay high price
for a home that doesn’t have heat
The staff frequently put lies to the walls
signed by the manager
with added apology for inconvenience
at the bottom
“This is exemplary hypocrisy”
I tell my daughter pointing at them
My fingers cold
I was dropping angry words
at the walls and the tropical fish
in a small bowl all morning
She understood and hung still
in the cold water of her bowl
I complain habitually – soon
the Lady of the Office arrives
thermometer in her hand sticking out
as if she’s a doctor on a house-call
Within moments we have diagnosis
“Yes, my dear,”
she concludes every year
“you are insane”
I swallow my anger and decide to get fat
by next winter
Then I’ll inspire fear – I could eat them
for lunch and have a beer
It was on the way to the bank
on Yonge Street that I remembered
how lucky I was
to have new boots
and small knitted gloves
that made my hands look like
cutouts from craft paper
Out on the snowy streets
icy and cold
I treaded in my rubber soles
to the school on Avenue Road
where my baby waited for me
It was dark and the winter idyll glittered
brilliantly
 
Rendezvous

I had a dream finally
a beautiful dream

in which I met
a former lover and he didn’t hate me

He did not explain why such lack of
resentment – although I’ve noticed that men
remember sex better and
they remember love better
but that must be because men claim
and steal and love to think that they
remember everything better

He was beautiful in that dream
Not only did age not touch his face
but it has reshaped itself into
that of a virile adolescent cherub
framed with blond wavy hair and marked
as a target with round red lips

I caught a glance of myself in the mirror
positioned perfectly stage-like in that dream
its only intent that I gain a more realistic
perspective on this unexpected rendezvous

Red and black face cringed into a silent
scream and eyes popping out all blood-shot
I looked like a particularly ugly version
of the Devil

But he looked on at me lovingly
as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful

I Command, Please

Cheat if you will
Steal, sure, steal and lie
if you must
Live with it any way you know
And be proud – how else, you are proud
Be dishonourable if it’s your way out
But uphold one, just one
commandment of mine

Don’t kill

Comparatives on Better

In New York Magazine
the staff writer bears the drudge
of a slavery-inspired industry that is seeing
a vertical surge while it hogs
the prime locations that would otherwise
be rented to similar-minded enterprises
She has submitted herself to the close
encounter with poverty and was touched
by hands that have seen dirt and despair that
if she knew about may have deterred her
from the cheap service and bits of relaxation
they provided through the mani&pedi combo
At that cost – the maltreated immigrants
underpaid and afraid of the tremors in their
boss’ temper – I too could afford to relax

Capitalism, the undisputed stallion of our prime
capricious and mercurial in its greed
shares its loot after all: charity wings
of benefactors in hospitals and art galleries
alike turn cities into clean examples of
afterthought and redemption
There is nothing better – shrug philosophers
and retired oligarchs concur in their villas
Better is what better is
Slavery on the main street
will tell you – it is worse everywhere else

And So I Read The First

And so I read the first
of the Nine Stories by J.D.Salinger
in which a young soldier returning
from World War II shoots himself
in the head above the bed
and the afternoon siesta of his lovely
young wife who had waited for him
in those dry years when emancipation
grew more out of simple boredom
than it ever could on dissatisfaction
It is the economy of his language
as it is with economy of any language
in expressing the economies of life
that I like in J.D.Salinger
Imagine the rosy cheeks of America
in the post-war years
caned out of sheer rage by those
returning to these shores as if it’s
Eldorado missed by the Spaniards
four centuries earlier
few thousand air miles to the south
and seeing that optimism can grow like
mushrooms and mildew
Impotent in its glow to tell
stories of what they saw
they claimed the unalienable right of
young men after each war to keep
their pistols now as veterans
because they may need them
to blow out something one last time
for old times’ sake

 

A Matter of Time

Desperately seeking
a mutually feminine way of relating
to each week and when it
comes to months I prefer not to be
called Sister Moon and associations
with lunar or lunatic circulations
and transformations drive me insane because
in the divine feminine divine doesn’t exist
and feminine cannot stand on its own
not on such thin sticks and whispers
There is nothing romantic in the female
experience except a male view on it
Cultivated as vixens maidens tarts broads tramps
and what was that other type – o yes – the girl-next-door
how could you go wrong if one day you decided
to give up being anything real and became -
O I don’t know about that because I am
not sure what is so good about not going
wrong but I am not going anywhere
not this time of year when the dog droppings
become frozen brown beads among generally
brown beads of everything generally
Every art form entombed and enbalmed a romantic view
of something as unromantic as female experience
and I hate that I don’t know anything fundamentally wonderful
outside of that failed concept because it doesn’t match
even the chair I used to sit on but it doesn’t
matter much anymore since it is only a matter of time
It is only a matter of time

Mouthful of Dirt

I turn the hot water tap
and let it run on my fingers
They slowly turn red
Warmth and then pain climb up
synapses with uneven speed
Hardened sides of my forefinger and thumb
don’t feel anything at first
I consider thermal distribution
through a lizard’s skin
It is Monday around noon
thoughts of sex draw an invisible
crown around my head
It is my Birthday perhaps that’s why
I wish there’s something to say
about this Monday
The pain in my fingers brings
tears to my eyes, face contorts
and I pull out scolded flesh with a howl
(too loud for a superficial burn)
Immediate relief at the touch of cool
air is closest to bliss
Pain follows
Memories of sex still haunt me
Intimacy is too vulnerable
with its smells, skin imperfections
and desolate urge to touch
to be awarded to anybody with memory
I look at my senselessly hurt fingers
and remember inadequacies of the past
Impotence neatly wrapped for the Holidays
(what was I to do with it?)
Premature ejaculation Type I – never saw him again
Type II – the happiest person I know
Irritated flesh from the marathon intercourse
that ran past Boston and down towards Bible Belt
Rubbing, pinching, grunting, promises
Too many promises
Too few reasons to remember them

On this bright day in October
I am looking for a job
What would I do at a job?
Lie and cheat in small ways
about minutes of my break
or the quality of what I am selling
listen to my colleagues with my ears shut
participate in social life of the hive
and not do my share…
I can do many things once I have a job
most of them devoid of meaning
In a Meaningful Life, Life is mandatory
and looking for Meaning
is permanent employment
Most of what we do has no meaning
That is how far I’ve come
looking for a job

I put on my walking shoes
take the brown coat and brown hat
and hurry outside
I may catch the quiet period between
lunch and the end of office hours
A glass of wine in the Sun
is like a postcard from distant memories
(not mine)
Now they resemble relatives
whose open invitation to visit
has become a relic itself – I waited too long
Construction workers move like mimes
in slow strokes of timed muscle management
Yesterday they would have stopped their dance
to look at me; today they don’t
If I show them my red fingers
they might help me cross the street
and I’ll look at their muscles and jaws close up
I don’t miss sex; I miss wanting it

Everything is closed – Sunday has moved to Monday
Only churches and banks validate
the parking rules of a traditional weekend
The waitress at a patio with cold metal chairs
ignores me for fifteen minutes
I’ll go home and pick up a bottle of wine
on the way

I have a new purse
It is cheap vinyl
bought at a franchise shop run by immigrants
A Birthday present from my daughter
Her father took her to the nearest mall
led to the store with bulging purses and luggage crates
and told her to choose
He did that with best intentions
After careful and intense consideration
of practicality and style
she found one, white and blue
with buckles and many pockets
and, as she explained later longingly
it was perfect
Her father said with an air of authority
that I wouldn’t like it
and chose the one I am holding now
dreadful, dark and infinitely dull like a Black Hole
She shifted her joy from choosing to giving
effortlessly
and called me right away from his apartment
Her excitement played hide-and-seek of crystal music
teasing my ear
I can’t wait to see it! – I exclaimed
She couldn’t wait to see my reaction
I saw it on Sunday
Her father said that it was cheap and the receipt was inside
It could be exchanged and he’d pay the difference
to upgrade to something better
She looked at him and then at me
Back at him
At me again
Too many lessons on meaning of life
Too few reasons to forgive us
later

I am almost home again
The cheap wine in my hand is too obvious
Like my other employments
drinking gets me ever closer to the top of the arch
from which I can fall to pieces discretely
I turn the corner and go across the little bridge
to the cemetery
It is peaceful
save for runners whose heaving breaths
make me deliberate on a new Holiday
A Day dedicated to the Immaculate Standstill
A day when we’ll all take our shoes off
and count our fingers and toes
like they did when we were born
On our Birthdays
No posters please
and no collections for fingers and toes
A squirrel hangs upside-down on the closed water faucet
and furiously licks water drops
its hind legs crossed over the metal pipe for support
one intelligent eye attentively on me

I fall on my knees beside it
and bite a mouthful of dirt
Nausea battles fear as I taste
the dead
pathogens
snaking movement of earthworms
squirrel droppings
shards of broken glass
chipped roots
and varieties of poison
Dogs piss on top
women’s high heels poke through sharply
men pound heavily with their flat feet
cars and bicycles carry a dead weight

With a mouthful of dirt
I speak for the Earth
and myself when I say:
Fuck all this!

Everything written in this blog and its pages, unless clearly stated otherwise, is the intellectual and moral property of Knez a.k.a. Ivana Knez a.k.a Ivana Knežević