Red card

"To think that Suarez, when he committed the hand ball, knew what was going to happen afterward would be something superhuman. The hand of Suarez is the hand of God and the Virgin Mary -- that's how Uruguayans see it." -- Uruguay coach, Oscar Tabarez

There was a young man from Uruguay,
whose hands struck the ball away one day.
In football that's taboo,
you're 'sposed to use your shoe,
but no law governs the heat of play.

A little world fell apart

"It's a tremendous act of faith to even get up in the morning."
-Cornel West


The simplest things can become terrific feats.
I remember, on a chilly afternoon last January,
a woman dropped by to quarrel.
She had weathered this storm before,
her brother lost his teeth to the police,
and we had no rapport to speak of.
My demeanor must have been incorrigible,
because her whole face twitched,
and suddenly her points collapsed in an awful shriek:
“My only strategy is to find a reason to wake up
every morning and keep from slitting my wrists.”

We hardly knew each other,
any one present in that drafty room,
so all looked on, mutely.

My tired arms
were possessed by the longing
to clasp her about me like
my tattered childhood blanket,
(a tiny prayer to ward off monsters under the bed)
investigations be damned, along with the vexing intrigues
that accompany blood feuds:
“Isn't he an anarchist?” “Isn't she a punk?”—
(anarchists, nothing but middle class honkees,
and punks, drunk scenesters, y'know)—
such were the lines we drew,
and cartoons we became.
The gravity of the situation
forced us apart
and we never talked again.

Still, I like to think our torsos,
strangely close, would have orbited
our estrangement,
and taken momentary refuge
in the delicate embrace.
Vanity, I know,
but such fictions, withdrawn
to the hinterlands of possibility,
may be enough, perhaps everything.

At a show the other night,
the kind of venue she might have graced
with her rusty bicycle and black stockings,
I saw a man,
a kindly, wrinkled face,
arms extended, his calloused fingers
offering cigarettes to no one in particular.
No one noticed him talking to himself
in the shadows, and the gift receded, as
the steady hum of street lights.

Futbol

Another World Cup game on display.
The barista grins, "regulars", shaking his head,
and carries on with co-workers.
“You really get into this, don't you?”
On the patio, I marvel at Robinho,
the scorching afternoon cannot match
his knack for happenstance and soft tap
of a black shoe that pierces
the finest cracks.
He glides ahead of yellow-shirted comrades,
forehead laced with brooks of sweat
like champagne,
peerless, triumphant.

Of course I have a taste for excellence,
my sleepy limbs tremble
before a dash of libertine flair,
but I am too unpracticed,
I manhandle the ball,
and fear my lungs are ruined.

Wittgenstein once remarked
that he created his own oxygen—had to—
he lived in the heights, surveying affairs from a lonely bivouac.
I may be winded now,
last week my dear friend
accused me of cliche,
but retreat to the musty corridors of scholarship
is unbearable.
To inhale brisk air, romp on the pitch, and attack the goal,
is my last stand
and point of departure.

Like a gypsy

She looked stunning, “like a gypsy," one of her housemates mentioned in passing. It was definitely the black scarf adorned with faded red roses and thorns that she had tied into her boyish hair cut. But that wasn't all. She wore a form-fitting grey thermal, coffee-stained on the chest. Then, of course, the indigo skinny jeans she pilfered a few weeks ago. The ensemble would've appeared tacky, out of place in the world of haut coutre, but he couldn't have felt more contrarily. Especially tonight: beyond the clothes, her whole demeanor had changed. Her mannerisms weren't choppy, gestures weren't exaggerated, even her lively skin tone whispered a certain poise. So they glided through the night in each other's company, it was really something, and for once it wasn't suspicious to anticipate a happier future. They were already tasting it, and that was proof enough. The difference was one of emphasis. All the usual problems were present in new disguises, but tonight, two hours of conversation interrupted by the housemates and her frequent visits to the bathroom showed that they both were reaching a point of no return. They both were learning. He was moving back, she was moving out of that unhappy house with dignity, and that's how they were becoming themselves again.

You still know me by name

Staring.
Again words blew about aimlessly,
like so many tumbleweeds, no further comment.
Only I kept chattering while we occupied the loveseat,
and you pillaged through an oversized purse in search of another cigarette.
You were thinking about tattoos, and heartbreak. Always heartbreak,
and occasionally disturbed by the question, how we will pay for our anxieties?
Our lungs will gradually resemble coal mines and the weary miners will go on strike.
At this your stomach grumbled, or from too many shots of whiskey—
we are frail animals, our cheeks discolored, and we are frightened by our own scent.

It must have been the gossip that stifled me.
The unavowable longings of two bodies complicated by details,
such as personalities, mixtape collections, properly sorting the recyclables, political views and stories about pet ownership:
the jibber-jabber of seduction will forever conspire against our best intentions
to produce loneliness.
So it hardly mattered that my fingers savoured the gentle relief of your spine, or carefully stroked your bangs, or how you unmistakably turned, leaning in for the kiss.
Yet for a moment there were only quivering lips, erratic graspings, and other squirrely maneuvers,
the whir of a ceiling fan
that reminded me of betraying her parents' trust in the basement long ago,
and my forgotten love for astronomy.
Maybe we both were pretending.

Liftoff

In years to come
I may stare out a hazy window, indifferent to time as the dingy white walls and routines,
or crack a final grin at the sunlight dancing on bayonets.
But it is of little consequence because one cannot tell,
and yesterday news arrived, once and for all.
At loss for words,
I paused, glimpsing my relationship to the future
from the eye of a hurricane --
the windows were not properly boarded and I had not wanted to evacuate --
but could not distinguish the figures, or make out what survived,
and thoughts flew and collided like debris.
While others hesitate before the daggers of fate, then disperse wildly,
I was amazed, and didn't think that I had it in me to greet them
as a monument of possibility.
One will eventually learn that there is never any choice,
yet, careful responses matter --
there is nothing else to give.
So I dialed the number, twice, and she returned the call:
the past, which precisely lives, perished for me then and there
when I heard her voice amidst every uncertainty,
and noticed I had grown older.
Even so,
we are none the wiser,
and like the one to come, too young to see.

How I Started Smoking

When our schemes fail,
remind me to grin without envy
at those who keep saying 
good morning and good night.
When the conversation fades, sing 
to me of sleepless dawns, 
hallucinations of another world. 
Even if my eyes wander,
and nausea sets in.

The blisters on our feet were there
to demonstrate we did not make contact,
the ground was unforgiving,
banners chants and rage, forgettable:
people yawned, sought alternative routes.

If I spoke of learning curves, or rising action,
then you might confuse stories with textbooks,
and precise formulas might spare you 
the precipice.

The timing was not, is not, right.
Your ears were caked in wax,
and my social graces, pedestrian --
we were younger than our balding heads suggested.
Our convictions, which littered the sidewalks,
have since been recycled.

We are learning to wait.

Stray cats

Where we are going is not clear,
and one cannot stress enough
the inevitability of detours,
further,
the impossibility of a road.

The crows know better,
though also having overstayed their welcome,
they remain perched on a lonely oak,
divinely indifferent to the wind
that stings our fingers.

There are vacant rooms and boarded windows
to whisper everything that we lost,
and a eulogy no one could bring themselves to compose,
because the others stroll by, absorbed in the day,
like so many stray cats.
We have joined their ranks,
and now wander the streets
without plans or appointments.

The red bricks are unmoved,
and their coarse faces taunt the numbing air.
They teach us to view things
from the heights,
to endure without complaint.
And if victory is gritty defiance,
good times in the absence of friends
who no longer call or respond,
then let us offer a raucous toast
to fortunes we cannot tell,
and memories we cannot erase.

Such quiet

I walked the streets home,
bathed in orange mist
and serenaded by silence,
there were neither bums
nor sirens to accompany me.

The city is too loud!,
they always swear,
and keep chattering among charts and graphs.
But screens cannot replace eyes
or newspapers ears,
the hidden costs of noisy schemes and ceaseless movement.

Yet the tree limbs barely rustled
and the grass lay dormant,
along with the dogs,
undisturbed by lonely footsteps.

It is not that such quiet is better
so much as a prophecy
of perils to come,
and, perhaps, the promise of reckoning.
Still, the ground did not stir
and the dirty snow lingered defiantly,
as if casting aspersions.

Past

There is past,
a heap littered with rotting corpses
that will never heal,
and unknown horizon to squander
while sorting through the wreckage.

Only the future could ever be ours.

The storm blowing from paradise

The years pile up with anonymous wreckage,
and scattered images become latent feelings
bereft of details.
But you learn
to glance backwards,
without nostalgia or remorse,
just tranquility.
Turmoil is done,
loose ends returned to oblivion,
uncertainties banished.

So, onwards!,
to unfolding and future disasters,
every peril you sense through drowsy eyes
and nascent depression.
Another cup,
and tar to coat your lungs --
the world is not your oyster,
and they have got your number.

Where does it go?
How does it end?
And why ask questions
only the world,
and the world alone can answer?

The future uncertain

Again we were passengers
on their train,
but this time in the company of friends.
For once the ride was ours,
and we did not pay.

You asked for a paint marker
and I wondered what you would write,
how the walls would receive your poetry,
how the streets would greet our unruliness,
and whether we would last through the weekend.
We parted ways,
it's been months.

It was fleeting,
this opportunity to celebrate,
link arms and hold hands,
share cigarettes and conversations,
and kisses and stolen embraces.
All of it passing,
and we scarcely began --
we never quite shook the cops,
and you did not grasp.
I did not let go.

But goodbye to the city,
and farewell to each other:
we must return to our worlds,
separately, like bandits on the lam,
sworn to silence.

Tomorrow I will smoke on a back porch by myself,
and despite the urge,
I will not bother to call,
because I have already whispered into your ear
of a future that may not come,
of a forbidden innocence too easily
lost among the noisy routines and confusions that we survive,
and don't particularly like --
still you were reserved,
and you were not touched.

Already, I can tell
we will have tasted fresh air
a moment before suffocating,
And it was too stale,
your lungs were not ready,
so our wildflower will have bloomed in late fall,
without apology.

But I will not forget or forgive,
I must wear my broken heart proudly,
like these skinny black pants and weatherbeaten shoes.
And I will not feign indifference --
not in this world --
when rare beauty disappears without notice,
and I am,
rather, we become,
nothing more than quiet echo and memory.
And the future uncertain.

World dissolves

A chilly breeze
snuck past the blanket,
and waves of sunshine were cascading
over your nose
as you awoke.

Welcome, mystery! --
but faintly, groggily,
your grin-creased cheeks
chattered in defense of overgrown gardens.

Love?
Too trite a word,
too passe,
to convey what happened
as the boundaries separating you
and this drafty house crumbled.

There's a pot of coffee,
when you're ready,
a poorly-rolled cigarette,
and a few grandiose plans
I'd like to share.

Let's make for the coal-burnt horizons,
even if it takes skinned knees
to find our friends
in train yards or on highway embankments,
every place the world dissolves
we'll take fragile root.

Dedicated to Kirsten Brydum [January 22 1983 - September 27 2008]