excerpt

Group Tour
Give the little bugger something, Harold said. He won’t leave us
alone ’til you do.
They had just exited the market across from the hotel. Both
wanted to stretch their legs before dinner, which according to the
itinerary was to be served aboard a boat cruise to a pagoda of apparent
significance. The frenzied pace of the market left Winnie feeling
dizzy. Unfamiliar scents always caused her to gag.
Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the afternoon glare when the boy
touched her on the shoulder. He thrust forward an unwashed
palm.
– Haroo, ’Merican, he said. Straw adhered to his unruly thatch
like dust to a mop.
– Ca-na-di-an! she corrected, hoping louder would somehow
improve the youth’s linguistic skills. It hadn’t worked anywhere else.
– How much should I give him? she asked, but her husband had
wandered ahead.
The boy tugged at her sleeve.
– Hold your horses, sonny, she said.
Coins pooled at the bottom of the handbag she’d purchased in
whatever country they were visiting the previous Tuesday. All she
could recall was that it had been Day 10, halfway through their holiday.
And that Harold had kept her awake most of the night with
gastrointestinal difficulties.
Their tour leader Karen told them not to worry if they forgot how
to convert the currency. Monopoly money, she’d called it.
Winnie handed the boy a coin bearing the profile of an erstwhile
emperor. The youngster appeared disappointed, so she poured the
works into his excited hands. All the countries mixed in together…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897971

To Stay
It must have been one in the morning,
or one thirty.
In one corner of the tavern,
behind the wooden partition.
Except for us two, the place was empty.
Barely lit by a kerosene lamp.
A sleep-deprived waiter was dozing by the door.
No one would see us. And we had
excited ourselves so much,
we were unwilling to be cautious.
Our clothes were half open, and there were not many,
since that divine July was very hot.
Enjoyment of the flesh between
half-open clothes,
a quick glimpse of the memory which
has lasted twenty-six years, and has now come
to stay in this poetry.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763823

THE LIFT OPERATOR

However, the lift operator isn’t surprised; he had seen the same
cloud, though a little darker and deep red in colour, in the mirror
of the elevator, when tiredness and sleep overtake him, pressing
the floor buttons, taking familiar faces of the high-rise offices
or their clients, con-artists, crafty, imaginative or simple-minded
villagers, lawyers with briefcases, tailors, book sellers, cigarette
sellers, unfortunate people who have slowly lost their last virtue
of loneliness, their last dignity of silence, ready to kneel, to beg,
to lie, to flatter, for a little more bread, for half a cigarette, for
a quarter of a kiss, for a thousandth of glory — always unready
for the whole of Eros, for the whole death, for the whole
sacrifice and glory.
And the café man is always there with his tray full of empty or
full cups and glasses
always minding his tray, not seeing the faces and the lift
operator observing nothing, though seen everything
responsible for the ascent or descent
responsible for every stop
responsible for the floor numbers
even the office numbers along the hallways
where the internal telephones are located…

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What Can I Say to You
What can I say to you, oh autumn, when you rise
from the lights of the city up to the clouds?
Hymns, symbols, poetry all familiar frosty
flowers of the mind flow onto your hair.
A giant, you appear like an emperor’s spectrum
on the road of bitterness and recollection;
with your golden greatcoat’s fringe you scatter
leaves and faces of stars upon the soil
you, the angel of decay, master of death
the shadow which in a few imaginary steps
occasionally you slowly flap your wings
to write question-marks on the horizon.
I yearn, oh shivering autumn, for the hours
for this forest’s trees, the lonely bust
and as the branches fall onto the soil at autumn
I’ve come to let myself into your holy ardor

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Beta

I baptized my life in the holy
loneliness of memory
that kept me
on the margins of logic
what’s the difference, you said,
from one step to another
when Hades, experienced,
exclusive and beyond the flesh,
holds a sickle in one hand and
a smiling ladybug on the other
and I said,
my only concern is the noise
of the heliotrope
during the sundown and
I baptized my life
in the holy shallowness
of the ephemeral and
in the depths of strange ideals
bloodied by the essence of man
thud of a shield on the daily axe
that balanced the echo of a bird’s
chirp with the resistance
of the tree branch that stirred too
I, the mortal, held up my destiny
in my two moistened palms

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eleven
The Black Myth
and the White
of generations
and races
became history
Hysteria became Myth
half of them forgot their origin
the rest of their destination

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21st of November
Another Sunday. Headache.
Too many cigarettes. Smoke. The windows
don’t open.
I don’t have but a week of rain and shells of cracked
almonds.
The faint light through the window; six pieces of ice.
The wick of the lamp, I don’t know, looks like inverted
silence. I count the squares of the blanket. All day long
I think that a basket of bread is nothing but a basket
of bread. I contemplate on this though I can’t believe it
because, why the buttons of our shirts get loose and
when the nights walk out in the roads, how do we find
the nails of the stars in the holes of the washrooms
every morning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK