In a newspaper

Jam session

In a newspaper they said

One of the greatest pleasures in life

Is in being able to play the piano.

Upon reading this I recalled how I recently

Tried to explain all my life to someone

– over the course of a few drinks,

Trying to make everything fit into a single story –

A selection of dramatic, humorous and sharp sentences.

Rolling stone

Her papa was so utterly crazy

And she was so normal and calm and warm.

I was as shocked with how crazy her papa was

As with how beautiful she was

And what extraordinary ways she had found

To escape the madness.

What extraordinary ways she had taken

To make some normalcy out of me.

No Name

Audience

So many great writers

said good things about another writer

who was without an audience.

The writer in question didn’t want their

praises, he wanted the love of the people.

But it was all in vain,

he was writing only

for the people like himself.

Armenia

It was an intergalactic amount of suffering,

enormous,

Dear Sir.

They say a million or more

are in question

beyond every reasonable doubt.

And at one point of my life

I was studying history too,

after history had studied me.

How can you disregard all that?

Those you consider as your own kind

would surely have something against it.

The number of your kind

is not quite that small,

Sir.

The Sanctuary

This place should be

a sanctuary,

in spite of the past and all the evil done.

We could make it like that,

but only as people

who like certain, ordinary things.

Strictly man-made.

A Soldier’s Confession 1995

Drinking rainwater

thinking about you,

actually just a few of you

the women in my life.

It’s all matter of smile,

I would realize much later.

A Soldier’s Confession 1995 II

I said: I am a bit afraid.

You said: Don’t be a fool.

And then you who had tried to encourage me,

You died.

You got killed.

Am I the only one at fault for your death,

Beloved friend,

Or should every one of us take the blame

Everyone who didn’t see the end?

Proud in Despair

This is an excuse,

and I am writing it on a day

when one of my old men friends

disappeared.

Just like that.

Because of the things like this,

I do not usually come to meetings,

Although there is nothing I would like more.

Espresso Pieces

Horizon

Only me and the man who’s lost both his arms
On the running track today
By the mountain.

On the far side
The sky is clear and blue
Not above us.


Convincing

I tried it believe me
And she did as well.
It’s what everybody does.
It’s perfectly normal.
And really nothing
Can happen to you.

Unless you’re very unlucky
Unless you’re very unlucky


The Same

She was all
Excitement and escape, always hooked up
on the same things in life.
Same cigarettes,
Or regular bouts of giving up.

I never understood all that.


Trouble Studying History

The past
And the way
People understood
Life, love, friendships, sex and god,
How different
And how strange

Strong in the City

It is not easy to be strong in the city,
Not when the sun is shining,
And a terrible accident has taken place,
And blocked the way,
And once you get out seeing all that disarray,
And meet a surreally beautiful woman
And have a little chat with her
In the middle of the day.

Refreshing gene

I have a gene for survival
And I am more than thirty years old
And I am not bold or too grimy
Outside
I am more than thirty years old and I know
Many who did not make it

You cannot deny anybody
Their own taste in god

Not enough

Too many times it looks like
It is not enough to be a man.
In the way it is necessary to be an animal, or plant,
Or dust spread by a warm wind
It’s just not enough
Too many times


Respect for the morning

Respect for the morning
So many talked about that
This way or another
Thoreau for example
I keep on forgetting
That I should pay due respect
To the morning

Sharp Stone

A person walking next to me
Suddenly took a sharp stone from the ground
And in that moment
It seemed that that person's essence
Emanated from that stone
It only seemed that way
For a moment

Idea

If an idea is too far from an emotion
Or to close to it
It turns bitter
How many people loved something or someone in a wrong way
And died because of it
Just as if nothing had happened?
What indifference.

Artists

So many masters never showed you
What they can really do
They showed you just the bits of it
For you to figure out the rest
Leaving the most of it to you

No Power

Reading poetry with a lighter
Has anyone ever tried that
On the balcony with only shadows and starlight?
When we are talking about the poetry of Fernando Pessoa
I start to wonder where are all the Zippos I have lost
During my life

Daylight

How many are learning a new language for tomorrow
Awaiting a recipe still not prescribed
Or discovered at all?

Maybe this is an abyss for you
And not for me
But whoever you are
You will have to wait
Just like me.

At least I can fool myself into thinking
That I am a poet
(I know how they're revered in, let's say, South America),
And that the sun is breaking through the clouds only because of me
As I drive into this new, unknown city.

Gluons

There is a firm where I work,
and there are meetings that we have,
every month or so.
And there is a man,
an experienced man, who always has something to say,
and suggest, and of course,
there are us, the rest of us,
never, but I mean never, accepting any of his suggestions.

The first meeting ever at which that man
didn’t ask to speak has just ended. And gluons
that have something to do with a sense of my own mortality
are passing through my hair.

Gasoline

I have just enough gas to return home, buddy

Just what it takes

This visit is not going to take place

I wanted to come over to your city

to escape for a day

the urge to go for a drive in summer is so powerful

and I have been deprived of my license for a month

unfairly

but somewhere in between, actually one third of the way there

I realised that I'd forgotten my wallet, my license and everything

I will be fine, I have just enough gas to get home

nothing more, nothing less

Overtime

I've done some hard work in my time,
like Bukowski and Carver, probably.
It wasn't easy being a soldier. I got so bored with the fact that I might die at any time then.
It wasn't easy hauling timber, either,
and not so simple being a construction worker,
and recalling all the work of construction ever done.
It wasn't easy being headwaiter in a luxury restaurant with a fine wine cellar, having to speak in two, three and four different languages, and communicate the information that I believe everyone should possess.
It wasn't so easy being a painter, lover and in reality
Always some kind of someone else.

Always on the run, always on the run.
I know that's been said so often.
But in my case
It's been like remembering you left the kettle boiling on the stove, and you run to get there,
only to discover
that there was no need for panic at all.

Just Notes I

There will be blood

This one is about blood, and it was originally written with a red pen, because the others simply wouldn’t work.

And here is what is all about.

For twenty years a heavy alcoholic, a neighbor with a funny-looking moustache, has been coming here, to a bar on the opposite corner, a place I sometimes go for a coffee, but not very often.

The alcoholic in question is a living legend in the neighborhood. Everybody knows him, kids and adults and the elderly as well. His miserable house is just around the block.

Once he kissed a little dog’s ass just to make people laugh. Another time he got into a giant truck whose engine was still on, left running by the driver who had gone off to use the toilet of this same bar.

He got behind the wheel of that monster truck and drove it into a house nearby where an old, retired priest used to live. The priest was woken with a terrible shock, and he died just a few days later.

And today, for the first time in 30 years, the alcoholic got a punch in his face. The first time in this neighborhood at any rate. It was another neighbor who was responsible, a guy nobody likes because of his violent temper.

He hit the alcoholic so hard none of us could believe it.

In the same bar. I wasn’t there at the time, I just heard about it. And as I jot down some notes for this piece on my cell phone, the neighbors in the bar are probably thinking I'm texting someone a message.

But I simply want to take a little note about the pain of the alcoholic neighbor with the funny-looking moustache. Pain much greater than the sum of all the years of his miserable and humorous life.

a call or a postcard

A cousin from Serbia visiting his sister in Bosnia

My neighbour, a seventy years old woman, is complaining: "My brother has come home again, just as he has done for the past three years, and he's been here for a month already. And do you remember?" she says, "Do you remember those four years of hell? He never wrote during those four years of hell. Not a word or a call or a postcard. Not even a fistful of beans sent through the mail. He is going to stay for another two weeks here. And I am already old and cannot take care of everything.

"Do you remember those four years of hell? Not a word from him. While we were suffering."

Every Time

I don't know why but I keep finding that things keep cropping up between us, ways of avoiding the crowd and unnecessary conversations.

And yourself as well.

And I don't know why but every time these evasions occur I find myself bumping into my real love or at least one of my real loves from the past – a woman or a true story.

It doesn’t really matter which.

I keep on finding real love in quite trivial but beautiful things, and I'm not talking about women now, I'm talking about, for example, a two hour-long chat that I had with someone I hardly knew, a waiter in the bar, where I dropped by for a cup of espresso, with a friend. No Tom Waits kind of story to be sure, this waiter was a Serb hero who stayed behind in the city and fought against Milošević. Now I know who this guy really is, he and his daughter, born right at the beginning of the onslaught, this guy who I hardly knew for about twenty years, I know him so much better now.

And this is a true story.

Not Poems But Pieces

Quiet Place

As with so many other places
around the globe
and in spite of everything
that has changed so much
I have decided that
I will survive in this city
and in spite of its quietness
after all

Living in any city
only means
that there are so many things
that are really none of my business.


Poetry Before the Doors

There is so much poetry
everywhere around
And that’s why it sells so badly

There are too many doors
everywhere around
Too much stumbling
and taking a deep sigh
before the doors