an octave
higher
to rest
in a mute
miracle
in the lapse
of that
quietude
vibrating
in stillness
in a chord –
the infant
history
of
ecstasy
an octave
higher
to rest
in a mute
miracle
in the lapse
of that
quietude
vibrating
in stillness
in a chord –
the infant
history
of
ecstasy
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
Would you call me mad if I can confess of a certainty in the prospect of the future, even when I fully acknowledge that the vicissitudes of Time can easily outsmart the most rigorous mathematical prediction; yes I was sure that in ten years’ time I would be looking back to this very same day – today – as the fantasy of a naïve child’s imagination that mistook the nature of reality for that of a game: haven’t I erred in my conviction that life is best lived through the transformation of its contents into those poetic representations that plunge me into an ecstatic state of mind, in other words, in trying to grasp life by its tail by scrutinizing every tottering thread of Time had I not missed the meaning of reality by inspecting it too minutely, too unsparingly as to leave out of the range of my investigations the global experience of existence?
I saw in that Delphic vision a day when all these conglomerates of experience that surround me today would be no more than the debris of a vanished Past, a trivial irony that would have no more power to excite my cynical laughter. That day will come when I rent a paltry hotel room in Belgrade, killing my time with a lousy inexpensive hooker and when night comes I will stare despairingly at the ceiling wondering if abandoning my youthful delusions was a wise choice, since by then I would have purged myself of any prospect in the road of human creativity and would be living in the pulsation of every naked minute, suffering like every other human being in the claws of the beast of existence. And every so often I would glimpse outside my window to see a crumbling civilization and I shall utter words such as these:
Withered petals gliding down
Breaking from their cone
Into scattered puddles in the street
Let each petal leave my rose
Each desire run away
All sorrow, regret and concern
Vanish below –
What is it to me that we must die
Why should I carry the burden
Of Fate’s indifference to us?
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