life

The riddle of death

Stand, paralyzed
Under midnight’s neon
The wind is cold
Your lungs filled-with fear

The voices of the city silent
But yours angry and desperate
                             Then you say:
I was not meant to live
For I know not how to die

Silly mortal questions
Burdensome and disquieting
Aching uncertainties
Interrupting your sleep

How serious can it be
To die and nevermore be
Have we trembled for naught?
Expecting a snake
               Which was only a rope

Sleep has come, today is born
Lost in duties, whatever follies
Unaware of future’s scheme
Nothing matters but this instant

A prospect of madness

 

 

 

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?

 

Within the human skull

Human Skull

There is a voice inside
A tongue that never goes dry
The discourse, the clattering
The endless commentary
Under our thin hairs
Echoes of words, so many words
Life is raped of its simplicity
Every object has a name
Who can resist the force of opinions
Rotting in his inert monologues
Behold this eerie creature
Whose existence is ruled by
thought

POEM ii

POEM  ii

Why do I feel I must carry
in distress and despair
the weight of the universe
                       heavily laid on my back
 
How can I ignore the monumental,
the towers of suffering all life
must sooner or later endure
                       and perpetually misunderstand
 
How can silence substitute
the boundless pain in every
instant of transience,
                          every day and night
 
Inexpressible this senseless world!
But a spark of total nirvana
when submerged in this chaos
                         I let everything go…

Terror and Indifference

 

Formulate my desire
O’ World of Wonders!

 

The diversity and variety is astonishingly intimidating. We can choose from numberless alternatives and attempt to satisfy the most serious question mankind has ever asked: 

What should we do? 

What, amongst infinite possibilities, should we do with our life? A life uncertain and finite but nonetheless it is here – we breathe the nectar of life! And with this monumental gift who has satisfactorily guessed what we should do with it? 

Are we certain we are capable of battling with that question, the pinnacle of all morality? Aren’t we more like frightened little creatures led astray by the currents of uncertainty in the vast ocean of incomprehensibility? 

Isn’t it easier for us to admit that our lives have no definite course, no preordained commandments; that the heaven of our ideals is blank without purpose, empty of constellations that could guide us through our erratic nights? 

What is left when we stop pursuing the specter of a deceased spirituality, what do we find but a total dimension of nothingness? 

Open to multiple interpretations, Nietzsche wrote: 

“He who fights with monsters should be careful
lest he thereby become a monster.
If you gaze long into an abyss,
the abyss will also gaze into you.” 

Is he speaking of the abyss of meaninglessness or perhaps of purposelessness – or the emptiness of being that is in our constantly escaping existence?

That vast open ocean of emptiness in which we float and sink incessantly is terrifying and hideous. Once we renounce any definite course in our lives, what is left but the constant terror of the unknown…?

 But swim and swim in the treacherous waters of solitude and when you face the monstrous shadow of the universe, bleak and senseless, pray you will have not renounced everything for nothing ––

 That in that terror of being alone
religion-less and closing into death
you might stumble upon a Liberation:
that crushes your hopes and rewards you
with a dauntless indifference
to the horrors of existence