Hungary Hungry Hippocrite: The Ugly American Adventure

Zebras

2007-05-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in over a month. Here's some little poems. Shhhhhhh!

On the Way to Szarvas

I saw a mutilated deer carcass.
Black birds rummaged through the carnage
with their pitchfork beaks like winos
picking a dead man pocket’s for change.
I thought of you, snapping juicy tendons
of our bloody, burnt-out roadkill love,
and although the image was adorable,
(your red fangs and delicate fork)
I think its time I told you that
every time you try and kiss me
I try to kill you with my tongue.

Hangover

Something about stray dogs, ghosts rattling
like bones finally surrendering, shriek of moon.

Topless horseplay, the twisting green of dirty windows,
bee-hived ballerinas crying inside a glass of wine.

How and when did where arrive? Are we
there yet? The answer—islands and islands away.

At the Window

A pair of newborn kittens
with their heads stuck in their asses
squirming to breathe is what I think
her breasts resemble from here.

Next!

I want to live somewhere
where I can hear
a train ramble away
at least once a week,
an escape route
I’d promise somebody
I’d never take.

Tavasz is here!!!!

2007-03-29T02:55:00.000-07:00

Birds, hungarian birds belting out folks songs, birds fucking flitting in my mind, a sappy soundtrack as the credits of my final dream roll out my head. Birds. In two weeks I will buy a shotgun and kill them all, (especially the ones twiddling in my head) but for now its beautiful, a sudden virilty fills me. I can do anything for the next second.

Last night I finally bitchslapped my insomnia, and I actually slept for the first time in three days. This week my classes have been terrible. I assigned busy work as my bloated brain wobbled back and forth between conciousness and some terrible gooey feeling. I met a very clever hungarian girl for coffee, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn.t keep up with her jokes, which were mostly puns and ironic suckerpunches, you know my favorite type of humor. During my private lessons, we watched movies. Hopefully next week with my mind and body recharrged I can make up for my ineptitude. By the way, insomnia in Hungary is fucked because church bells bang all night long, and I am not sure if I am dreaming the landscape. I still wonder if I'm even here. Am I still in Portland walking hungover down Hawthorne, trying to find a way to slay the grabby goblin in my brain?

PARTY IN MEZOBERENY

2007-03-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

PARTY IN MEZÖBÉRENY!!!!!

This small town swelled to the size of a badly sprained ankle this weekend for the annual sandor bali. Two other Americans and I sat through a Hungarian play only to dance to a terrible band, all night long. We had to do some freestyle climbing to get back to my apartment at 6 in the morning. My American colleagues gawked at my students all night long, while I reminded them that they were gentlemen and not pedophiles every 5 minutes. I am hungover as hell and I didn't drink a thing last night. I won free trip to the szolarium (tanning salon) in the raffle. Ladies, Ladies one at a time!! My dark teats will remain a deep mahogany for at least two weeks.!

The Piano Flutters Like a Drunk Butterfly

2007-03-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

Or maybe butterflies flutter like drunk pianos. One of those is right. I know butterflies much better than margarine!!!!!!!!!!! I was in Vienna a short time ago. People traveled in fiberglass bubbles, that darted through the air. There was a funny dog. Nevermind, that’s the Jetsons re-run I watched on Tuesday. But Don’t you think Judy is hot? I think she should quit Space Age Beauty School, and concentrate on her rocky relationship with the undeniably hunky Irving.

Vienna is the place fingers come from by the way. And Mozart. Fingers and Mozart. Vienna is the most encouraging city I have seen. There was already a postcard in my mailbox when I arrived home. There are buildings way older and better than the pennies you save that you think you are old, and probably worth more too. There were many different tongues, saliva from at least a dozen different countries covers St. Stephen’s Square. There were Spanish sneezes, Czech coughs, French farts, German groans, etc. etc. Fucking expensive though. Somebody says it because of some giant European Onion. I don’t understand. I’m drunk.

The Moment I Stopped Loving You

was probably
around the campfire
when I told you
I thought of
the perfect chorus
for a pop song
and you never
asked me
what it was.

Battling The Jolly Green Giant in Hungary(to all the motherfuckers back home in Anotsomerryca, You know what I mean. goddam right. Hellefukingyouya!)

2007-03-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

My first battle with the Giant was a strange one. I was a poor coyote selling drugs so my girlfriend could afford an abortion. Then I grew a mustahce, shaved it, used the hairs to build a black mansion just so I could describe it in a spooky poem. Now I am covered in curry powder, and my head is a volleyball. Also I feel like I am in the exact center of nowhere, some great nowhere, like the Great Hungarian Plain, if it even exists.

Now is not a good time.
That’s what I want
tattooed on my forehead.
When I do need companionship,
sex, or money, I can
say its ironic, or that I brim
with hot optimism.

No offense. But no world
can yank at my ear lobes.
I spent all afternoon
reinventing the word universe,
and then rearranging the wheelbarrow,
which is now the word for a starlit sky.

Seriously, my heart floats like a ghost
following a former wife
around the track at the gym,
which doesn’t interest me.
And my mind blinks like
a florescent banana begging
tourists to have one more drink
before they visit their lives again.

So, don’t worry about it.
I’m not mad. You’ll probably never see me mad.
I am neither forlornly profound.
I am an animal that must hibernate
for at least three months a year
just to remember what dreams are,
and that there is no better time than now.

Hernadnemeti, Gyor, Szentendre, Budapest, Gyula, Szarvas, Szolnok

2007-03-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

I've been here more than a month now. I've dipped my dead body in a pit where stronger dumber men died a death a boy like me can only dream of. I made love on the roof of an old factory, mooned the moon, shocked the stars into orgasm. I've followed an injured dog into an ancient cave and stroked medieval bats with sunlight-filled fingers. I've flailed my foreign hands and stenciled SOS into my forehead with a red sharpie. I've been slaughtered by the corks of cheap champagne bottles and soaked Jesus with black absynithe-the only prayer that seemed justifiable. I am happy to spend my minutes shouting into tape recorders and embelleshing the events of my life into existence. Once again, I am a drunk American slurring my silent epiphanies out my dick and asshole, a sort of universal language that no one can and cannot understand. Whatever. This two dollar bottle of Hungarian wine is just enough and tommorow, another will be here burning red on my kitchen table and flowing like the tongue of an impossible lover down my throat with just enough warmth to fool my pussy pulse into pumping. Just enough warmth to make me not give a fuck, and give a huge fucking fuck at the same time. Just enough warmth to remember how much goddamn love I've brushed against in this precious little procession that plays like a mix tape in summer. The window is down and the system is up.

O dead danelion!

2007-02-20T10:19:00.000-08:00

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?

Fanta

2007-02-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

Mezobereny Feb 15

I just got the internet installed in my apartment. I’m hoping that this is a good thing. For the past week my hot water turns cold every other day, and friendly bearded men come around to try to fix things, to make the American tourist/teacher/milkman feel milkfed. It’s a rough mustached dark teat that I suckle. I want to offer them something. I point to the wine and they shake their heads. For some reason, I think financial tribute is too cheap.
Fanta might be the best soda in the world. I am feeling sick and it’s the only thing that kicks my clock. The men, my dark portly heroes decline the Fanta as well, probably because it is too tasty to actually drink. It’s like in the Thomas Lux poem Refrigerator 1957, when he doesn’t eat the maraschino cherries, “because you do not eat, which rips your heart with joy.”

Storks and Suicide

2007-02-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

There is a stork's nest outside my window. I pray that my prayers will fall into the nest and fertilize some sort of seed. As an afterthought I hope that it will not bring my students any American babies, even that storks of all nationalities will outlaw the creation and delivery of American babies alltogether. The neighbors say the storks are suicidal or cannibalistic. At least that is how I translate their swooping hands. Maybe they are just trying to replicate the gliding flight of the immortal white birds, but i know something sinister hides beneath their fingernails. Here in the warm wet dusk everything glimmers, yet its a sad shine, somethng so beautiful and fleeting, I know nothing will endure for long. The winter here is a sterile season, all things brushed with a grey polish. All certainity is certainly uncertain.

My superpower will probably have something to do with the fact that

2007-02-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

my walls are made from wood
and my heart is a chainsaw.

All roads lead to everywhere (except Romania)

2007-02-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

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.