All roads lead to everywhere (except Romania)

We tried to walk to Romania. Our legs got sore. Our red-headed entourage was set on fire. I have brown hair. We went north instead of east. We never made it to Romania. I stepped in two kinds of poop. Some satelitte witnessed our sad saga and lied to us about our location, so we pretended we were in Romania. Then we made out. (okay i watched people make out). We looked out across the wrong train tracks. As we kissed, our boots sank in uncertain mud. I pictured your toes squirming like worms. We were nowhere at last.

Okay. So there are several silences per second here. The silence of a fabricated Romania. The silence of church bells introducing an abandoned field. The silence of the great nothing sleeping around the corner. So here's a poem about it. I wrote it about Budapest, but the same feeling has lingered everywhere I go in Hungary. I am a drunk American and I am beginning to enjoy the spaces between me and everything I have said and will say.

The Fires of Budapest

You can’t see the dark,

light absent, a language unlearned.

Budapest buzzes lethargically

as a bee, or an old incandescence

from a forgotten attic, seen through

a window during a hurricane.

There is no word for please, no room

for flippant lips or polished teeth

in our squalid cloudy lives. Yesterday

means tomorrow and tomorrow

is some foreigner’s bad idea.

Finally, when the flood arrives

we will thank our God.

The only serious revolutionaries left

are vigilante cats. Stone Heroes repeat

the same line, something about suffering

and terrible beauty. Petofi was killed

by the right word on the wrong battlefield.

Night and silence are always sinister.

Even the church bells hiss a warning,

“There is nothing at stake here.”

Nothing means everything

and everything is the last thousand years

shackled to our ankles.