Poetry

Lucian Freud

lucianfreuddetailself-portrait

 

Impressions upon a visit to Lucian Freud´s exhibition in Lousiana, Denmark.
Solitude is heavy, our subjective isolation is inescapable. The eyes gaze nowhere, time trickles away, endlessly. The only task left for these subjects is to endure the blankness of temporality. For time flows so slowly it appears to be still. There is no resistance, a species of quiet resignation, the carnality of their human condition is effortlessly lived. Their globular faces weigh them down as if they were made of lead. The overworked faces manifest the elimination of all activity; which has turned life into a simple and plain permanence.
There is no despair, just a timeless patience. An imposed fortitude in the regions of choiceless existence in which they sojourn.

Freud-dog

 

LucianFreudGalpainting

 

 

Lonely Fisherman

geometry of our world

Have you ever felt that things are not going right
traveling on a train, hours turning long and hollow
the geometry of our cities, bizarre and strange
grey clouds manifestations of our discomfort
  A world asphyxiated by man-made senselessness
 
From a lighthouse humankind is a lonely fisherman
pulling up his nets from the side of his boat
hopelessly unaware of the colossal orb and suns
encompassing his insect-like labors and concerns
  Our insignificance engulfed in an universe of mystery

The oppression of language (two poems)

 

 

 

 

The following two poems explore the human need to express everything we experience and the impossibility of absolute correspondence between lived experience and our descriptions.  I wonder why we cannot contain the purity of experience in ourselves without exchanging it for the artificial-reality of words and symbols. Wouldn’t it be better to leave the flux to itself while we join in its silent (nonverbal) dance in an ahistorical frenzy? For what are our conversations but a miniature-history of the world and our lives? Must mankind be forever trapped in the webs of a descriptive situation? What’s the need to define place, time, mood, thoughts, hopes and expectations?

 

 

Is life too great for anyone to bear alone that we must reduce its intensity and infinity to the limited bounds and finiteness of language? 

 

If we cease to communicate (purge) life could we die from an overdose of life itself?

 

 

 

 

 

These are the dry leaves of the 21st century
Falling upon our feet that coil
A path as snakes on a dune of sand

These are the subway noises
Under the surface of our routine
Where are our shouts of ecstasy?

These are the ripples of passion
Unborn embrace of earthly bliss
We are one catastrophe away from paradise

These are the memoirs of all power-lines
Showering us with light of illusion
Approaching twilight for today’s relics 

These are the end-products of pleasure
Fascination with the wonders of plastic
And a what-for question left unanswered

 These are the dry days of the 21st century

 

 

 

 

 Fetch me nature’s product in a plastic bag
While this blue-eyed kid stares at me
As I dance to the melody of pure purposelessness 

 Talk to me about an Asian photograph
While this train takes me to your hometown
As I write lines of life’s ineffability

Promise me there is a higher plan
While I grow old with laughter
As I adjust my twisted underwear

Abandon me for taking the trivial for the profound
While the grass is still wet outside
As I swear life’s grandeur is best unexpressed

Behind the Chaos of Creation

 

 

I was dark as a gigantic shadowed mountain

I was impenetrable like a frozen ocean

I was silent like cactuses in a desert of nothingness

I was absent as the cold sleep of death

I was static like an atom between galaxies

But I was not alone, not abandoned

We were lovers, young and passionate

We made love, through and through

Our bodies flew away in the agony of pleasure

Then we both, in the horizon of thought

Disappeared like gods behind the chaos of creation.

Who am I?

If an apple would expand to the size of the earth
One atom would be the size of the original apple

If my brain would expand to the size of the earth
What portion of land would hold my consciousness?

If an atom would expand to the size of my room
The nucleus of the atom would be the size of a speck of dust

If my neurons would expand to the size of the earth
Would I find myself at the level of continents, rivers or trees?

If the veil is lifted and the cosmos exposed
Will weight disappear,
     and matter and I,
                    become undistinguishable?

Immensity

 

Feel free to venture into it,
Those lands of lucid revelations
Upon the contemplation
                        of a tree
                            or an ant
The formation of a cloud
                        or the wind in skies
Submerging into the intimate universe
While our sight becomes a tongue
in warm moist contact
With the immensity that surrounds us

 Oppose it no more,
Engulfed in the tenderness of the night
Surveying the voids of the galaxies
Stand maskless on the precipice of every moment
            In a frightful convulsion of disbelief
Powerless: halfway between wonder and adoration

Hopeless eyes

From this region here to that other geography
From this sober dream to that brittle philosophy 

From this silly present to that uncertain future
From this strange human to that evolving creature 

From this labyrinth life to that simple death
From this fleeting day to that final breath 

What consoles my hopeless eyes?

Confession of Horror

 

I am afraid of the world

I am terrified by its size

                   Its unpredictability

I fear its mouth

It’s going to swallow me whole

 

I am surrounded by a wasteland of panic

I am going to perish in agony

                             Alone

 

What can I do but wait

                   Endure

Survive the intense torture

 

This is rape!

The world is raping me to death

 

I am paranoid of the Chaos

                   I have no control…