5 new poems

 

UPDATED RESUME

 

One. I just moved in.

They carry me in a sort of marsupium.

Two. Major family conflict

I remember nothing of.

Three. Harmony restored.

Trip to the seaside.

Polaroid I now keep on my desk.

Four. Questions about God.

Brief introduction to loneliness.

Keyboard sounds.

Revelation of death.

Five. Watching cartoons while drawing.

Delicious lunch under the table.

Grandma’s unlimited kindness.

Six. Inventing a country.

Concerns about the time machine.

Seven. Revelation of happiness

And human warmth.

On my birthday.

Eight. Playground destroyed.

First serious melancholy.

First time abroad

(Blue salty Aegean).

Nine. Inventing characters.

Playing and drawing most of the time.

Ten. First trip to the land of silence.

Ohrid lake blessing my sight.

First time physically flying.

Eleven. Finding my calling.

Twelve. Paris.

First major crush.

Awkwardness of puberty

(Blood sticking my jeans to my thighs).

Thirteen. Script-absorbed

(The seriousness of writing).

Old French songs and American indie pop.

Photographs of my Bucharest.

New friendship.

Fourteen. Completely friendless.

Quiet.

School is torture.

Reading Dickens and O’Henry in the breaks.

Phone calls to imaginary friends.

Finding my calling.

Fifteen. Heart opens.

First love.

Finding my calling.

Sixteen. Love-obsessed.

Continuous struggle.

Cruel spring.

Fascination for being a teenager

(‘Sweet 16’ and all the clichés).

Golden fall light embracing Tirana.

Seventeen. Uninterrupted switch from shadow to light.

Chocking on loneliness.

Four simultaneous crushes and then

Back to the first love.

Eighteen. Revelation of beauty.

On my birthday.

Summer in Paradise.

Losing four friends in one week

(School is torture, once again).

Burst of desire.

Nineteen. Major life change

(Heart opens).

Heavenly love followed by hell

Freedom

And revelations of myself.

Right before my birthday.

Twenty. Happy times with close friends.

Transylvania caressing my soul.

Weekly parties in the dorm.

‘I love you’ he whispered.

New Year in Prague

And then the plague.

Self-censorship abandoned.

Twenty-one. Loneliness-obsessed.

Romanticizing my past

In order to survive

(The boredom and accuracy of memory, mostly).

Also obsessed with the concept of memory.

Unceasingly working

(Solace).

Twenty-two. Revelation of fear.

Fight against fear

(Four victories in seven months).

Joyfully drunk on New Year’s night

(Memories gone with the drink).

Freedom-obsessed.

Work in progress.

HOMOGENIZATION (MODUS VIVENDI)

 

And who will believe me when I say

life’s intense and overwhelming

even when all I do is walk around the lake

get coffee to go and hum songs to myself

staring at the multiple exposures of reality?

 

It’s like sleepwalking, I guess.

The physical world is nothing but an empty glass

to be flooded with my dreams.

Past & future are equally unappealing;

what I see before my eyes

is all that matters and exists.

I’m weightless and also finally unified

(body & soul).

 

All is inspiration and intuition.

Slow tornados in the shape of daily poems

(most of which I’ll naturally never share)

and calls I’m getting even though

very few will believe me

(telepathy is kind of outworn, it seems).

And if I’m wrong it’s no tragedy;

I’ve lost my sense of border anyway.

 

So how could I be in danger

If disillusionments lost their impact on me?

(If all is unreal and volatile

where would the wounds find place to dig?)

And how could I be safe –

now that everything is real?

(And my mind builds and distorts as it pleases,

unafraid of fear.)

 

How will I be free?

How will I be anything but free?

 

PREPARATION

 

Before the new life:

half mourning, half labour

animal turning into angel.

 

CLUMSINESS & CANDOUR

 

I want to send you 20 silver seagulls –

a glimmering dance over the stirred waves

 

or a harp song on a summer night

in the tumult of the city

 

or a love letter.

 

You don’t get to choose, though.

I’ll do what suits me best

so if you ever dream of a harp

resting on the bottom of the sea

know that it’s me who hid it there.

STATE OF GRACE

 

I become a water current

thoughtless and alive

a small force of nature

necessary

and free.

 

The center of my skull temporarily turns into a white crystal.