Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

I was the black-and-white man in a color photograph
Kafka among the arcadians.
Poems, pohems, loveangelism
modernisms and bar blab about who’s the greatest
halls of fame in a train (returning from Onești): the best
Romanian novels of today
the top ten living poets
just like the Papuans
who still spit in the palm wine kettle to make it ferment …
but poetry is a sign of underdevelopment
and so is staring eye to eye with your God
though you’ve never actually seen him …
Mircea Cărtărescu · 41
I saw computer games and bookstores and both looked the same to me
I suddenly understood that philosophy is entertainment
that mysticism is showbiz
that here everything is pure surface
but more complex than any depth.
what could I become there? a man bemused, gone batty with happiness
but with his life over.
with his life totally fucked, like the worm in a cherry
who thought himself a big shot
until he woke up in the light, his own filth around him
(my filth, my insufferable poems)
I’ve seen people for whom abortion law
is more important than the collapse of the Soviets.
I’ve seen high skies of blue filled with the lights of airplanes
and I’ve known the roar of four thousand universities.
I’ve climbed the steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower
I’ve gone to the top of the Centre Pompidou through the plexiglass tube
and in Iowa City I’ve been to the Fox Head …
I’ve chatted about modernism at Ludwigsburg
with Hassan and Bradbury and Gass and Barth and Federman
the banter of the condemned with his executioner
on my microcassette recorder I caught the swish of the axe
that’s going to sever my head from my body.
I felt like sobbing in the luxury of Monrepos:
how is it possible? why were we born to so little purposeless?
why should we battle our right-wingers Vadim and Funar?
why for once can’t we simply live?
why now when at last we can live
do we again breathe the foul stench of garbage bins?
postmodernism and ’48-ism