O dead danelion!

So, how to extinguish the cold fires of the past? What conclusion would you publish with the world between your fingers? Its wednesday night in Mezobereny and I'd bet I'll be drinking in the old man bar in about 15 minutes. I bet I'll remember something there, the feeling of crushed powder tunneling through my nose, or the cadence of a long forgotten orgasm, echoing like the scream of a barn owl through an empty hayloft. Or maybe I'll revive some summer night, closing my eyes on the hood of a honda civic, I could see miles into my triumphant future. And when I return drunk and lonely, I will write something about the church bells, the soundtrack of this sad now, words that trick themselves into sounding hopeful, when all they really are, are scracthes of another existence stenciled into a hollow narrative. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll have another glass of wine and watch zoolander, and dream of possibilty, glory, love. Here are two little embryos. They might be poems one day. But if I kill them now, those artsy republicans will try to kill me, and then this beautiful blog would extinguish, and as its most dedicated reader, I'd rather that not occur.
Our Foreign Tongues

Like an old Hungarian woman pushing
a bicycle down a dirt road
the rain drives the window.

Like a ex-lover dialing your phone number
over and over and over, a call
that you wished you could answer,

and let some silence say something,
that you did love her, that you never
meant to take anything away,

or that you only left because you can’t
stay anywhere long enough.
You can’t take your shoes off,

nor your coat. You can’t come inside
out of the weather. You can’t love
a life that is so clearly unlovely.

If there was a silence strong enough
to say that you never use her recipes,
that no warm meal can offer

sufficient warmth and that you remain
in the rain watching wet grandmothers push
their broken bicycles home,
then you’d say it. You’d say it.


Mezobereny February 17

Maybe it was all the yellow things,
or the years of dirt distorting the view,
but for the first time, I felt
I was on the right side of the window
that we do not exist on accident.

The yellow crumble of old churches.
Sparrows in canary costumes.
In Bekescsaba, woman drag axes
down the street, mangy dogs order
coffee and no one is interested.

Something dramatic happened,
It had to do with yellowness.
Why else would such a serious
steam burn my eyes,
like a lost Saturday in summer?