Mar En Noche (Gefühlsmensch Mist II)

Ojos de mar en noche

Se han ahogado en ellos naufragos moros

Con tempestades de carcajadas

Tell me where you’ve been,

How those scars got on your knees

Of wintry winds

And slashing clouds.

Your hands run right

Through me.

Labios de sal

Se desmoronan

Con el mas leve tocar.

An angular jaw

Full of history

Of clay and meadows

Now lit around the clock

Cuerpo y lengua

Of dried powdered peppers

And peopled with topografia Americana

My eye caresses a skin yielding, scraped by falls

Back from the Balkans and a German spell

There is a certain feeling that lingers when I return from every trip.  I cannot put my finger right on it.  After an elucidating trek around the Balkans and a serendipitous stay in Frankfurt filled with twists and turns as well as the number 7 signaling every single change, I am ready for another round and hope to be back there as soon as I get all things lined up.   Some photos of the trip and much more writing to come.  I am just gathering all my thoughts and getting my head straight.

Drinking some homemade rakija and eating salad...the proper way of drinking rakija in Macedonia

The baba Gilevski in the front yard and sharing her wonderful home with me.

In the highest mountain in Hvar. Riding bikes from Stari Grad to Hvar City, Croatia.

The Stari Most jumpers in Mostar.

Riding bikes through the hills of Hvar with Anne

Drinking wine on the roof overlooking Dubrovnik with Anne, Julia, and Sam.

In da ghetto!

In Ljubljana...what does?

In rainy Bled, Slovienia.

In a boat party in Frankfurt.

In Frankfurt with Anne.

...???

Untitled

“In these walls, I dwell

Break these walls, irate.”

He repeated this mantra as it echoed trough the corridors of his mind.  His lips were brittle, the skin laid in the surface as fallen, dried leaves do on the ground.  The floor was cold all around; but where he lay–there, it was as if it had molded around his body in a comfortable canopy that sheltered him from a six-foot deep solitude that would have been anybody’s fortune except his…at this moment.  There was no time for that yet.  The thought of it made him almost move an arm.  He had been here for some time now that seemed to him as a short, passing eternity.  He took long walks, as he used to, whenever he was able to shut his eyes; but the thought of the cold wave of needles would make him twitch with burning anticipation. –I always knew that the world was small, but this! …This!!! –He fell asleep again with his eyes open.

The voices were strange but clear, as if they were unknown, new languages.  The faces drifted by him with blinking, black beads for eyes.  He enjoyed the vagueness of it.  The feeling of just being an unnoticed insect on the floor gave him a sense of privacy, almost intimate.  He felt invisible as he witnessed the moves of others while he was a half conscious rag on the ground.  Now the figures stood by him, in congregation. Gesturing violently and then pacing back and forth from the gathering with, what seemed like, an elastic rope ready to swing them back to it.  All tied in their deliberation.  Then! One of the faces got loose, walked to the insect, and raised its limbs holding a long object.

He felt the quick blow to his forehead; the upper left hand corner of it, to be precise; he was more aware of some parts of his body than others, and some other parts were not even an aliquot of him anymore.  As the object plunged to his skull, he felt the air crystallize in front of him; ridding all the vagueness instilled and the sounds became clear. –Is this…?  Is this warmth?  Love?  Hate?  What is this? –He was trying to make some sense of the world.  He wanted to understand his feelings and their new lyric.  The pathos that sung his heart to sleep had changed keys and melody.  There were no corners left in him unsettled.  The whole felt as one massive cocoon that moved this way and that in violent jerks and sudden tugs, then hurtful twists and hands burnt. –Please, soil, be my canopy! –He pleaded as he sung an old lullaby that was forgotten until this time.

–ANSWER!!! –Said the voices, now loud and clear.

–Tell us what you know! –One by one they took turns and danced around him with heated churn.

They were getting tired too and their toy became boringly dull, without the cries and shrieks, there was no need to proceed in light.  They turned the lights off and played with him; the cables were peeled and all one could see were sparks in the dim, and all one could smell was the flesh turning gray.

“In these walls, I dwell

Break these walls, irate.”

He went for a walk again, just like he used to; but this time he grabbed someone’s hand, he turned his head, and saw the sparks flying away from him like quarks at the end of the universe…moving (or sifting) at the speed of light.  He had stepped out of the cocoon and his feet trembled at the lightness and warmth of these new sensations.  There was something in between him and the new landscape, but it was merely a thin and flexible thing that was part of all yet had a presence and feeling of nothing.  As he paced his entrance, there was tingling on his chest.  On the other side, there were people, with white coats, and lights and running with sweat on their foreheads and heaviness of thought.  There was a report: “Subject (PLZTY-90011325) was found to contain no useful information.” and with this brief punctuation, the file shut and the report filed away.

“Concentric Rings” (Lover’s Dance on a Dutch Bridge)

Concentric rings

Water ways

Brown walls

Hanging frames

On Princengracht, a bicycle

Being balanced by a stumbling

Sailor.

A leg, rising up to an arabesque penchée.

An arched back

A limp neck

The drooping head

In a plié, the sailor rests his

Torso and hangs his arms over the crossbar

As lovers drape their tired bodies

Drooling on the solar plexus

One hand on a tender buttock

A padded saddle

The other on a handlebar with the ring finger barely resting on the brake lever

A sinewy clavicle

Spastic in a climax of shifting eyes his foot gives way to his heel-a soft aplomb- and the sole from a shaky demi to a parallel rest; the shoulders relax and he lets go of nothing as they gently succumb at the highest point of the arched bridge.

I said nothing

I did not rush to his help

My heart beat rose quickly and there was dampness in my hands and my lip quivered, but I remained there sitting under the shade.