Bringing the pictures at dawn. Places to go, people to forget. When I think of friendship I get this strange feeling of pure joy mixed with melancholia. Not because my definition of friendship evolves around emotions, because it ends without them. I needed someone to rely on and I had friends. They were like a family to me. In fac, they were more than a family. Terribly flawed, with broken wings such as myself, I could bear the thought of tomorrow through the eyes of others. I could bring my dreams closer to realisation knowing that there were others near me who could breathe the same majestic air of failure. Promises of a new life brought upon us by the new overwhelming possibilities ahead of us. Chaotic, meaningful, deliberately harmful and respectful notion of time, I bid you make one exception and save some lost souls! 
Places to confirm our weakness, feelings to improve our behaviour, girls to make us start again. Comparison throuh the lens of an all seeying eye. Leaving me alone, near the doors of fate. I couldnțt enter. I just lay back, smoked a ciggarette and waited. I didn't know I'll wait forever. Nor that my wait will be so much like a broken leaf's trail through the air. I had no exception in my mind for you. Yet you came in. Hope.
For another lifetime, my thoughts spread into words and numbers like falling stars caught the glimpse of my vision. And so I was older. Not old, just older. Perfect harmony, symetry, words, repeating in my mind like endless whispers on a broken cassete recorder. Fleeing from the rain, under the shadow of a barricade, leaving thoughts to wander, aimlessly, displeasing, profoundly beatuiful. Times of joy and times of neutrality. Times of monotonous sorrow. And times of shadow and decay. Shall I be alone with the Gods again? Shall I smile and taste from the same cup of tranquility and oblivious mystery? Bring them in. Let the light creep upon my heart. Not a word of  doubt from the masters above. The pavement, stronger than our bodies, bent under the pressure of our dreams. Piercing through the veil, I was no longer a ghost. 
Climbing stairs, prying on households, I came upon the forest's shadow. But it felt like a home to me. Cranking up the volume and breathing evaporating fumes from nearby, I waited. We waited. It never let me down. My blood, my pressure inside my veins held a secret I couldn't resist to unveil. Carressing it was a hard task. But I was a harsh task master. So it begun. My unfolding journey towards the end of  the earth. Towards the end of oneself. But I was not alone. I was not going to die alone. And that made me feel safe. Without knowing, without knwing what? I knew everything I wanted as long as IO didn't know the truth. How foolish. How wise. How distasteful might it seem to others, rambling and gambling and dancing in this twisted game of fate alongside others. Parteners of decaying youth. Misfortune was our guide. Our promises were impoverished stars. Made of shrapnell and steel. The fire burning in my heart like a furnace. Melting away all impurities, crafting a diamond from the bones of an angel. Heavy fumes, heavy nights, lingering in paradise for a long while, then retreating to our dark homes. Where stories of malfeasance and disturbance crept over the walls. We had to survive another night, to be alive another day. And so on, and so on. Lying was bad for the soul. But poor advice is even worse. I lied about my condition. We lied about it. Preferring the sweet taste of a bent truth was not that hard to me. It was harder to live with demons. But the real monsters were inside my head.
Then it all went down. The dam broke loose. The beer spilled. And reaction to the casual world finally caught it's pace. Our tankyard lives trailed by the creeping tallons of a thousand fingers. Pointing, chanting. Evil. they are evil. We should be evil. Why not? 
Forget me, remember me, live me drown me, lie to me, place me, displace me, unfold me, steal me, kill me, rape me, trace me, collect me, disturb me, listen to me. You are not going anywhere, unless the corners of your eyes shoot flames. Unless your hands are ablaze. Unless you have a band of thieves to guard your back. A band of losers that will soon be millionaires. We robbed souls penniless of misfortune and doubt, of sad and fear and loathing. And we destroyed all their possesionss. So come to us, wether you're rich or poor, you're going to leave, enlighted, fulfilled, enchanted. Nevermind the positive book reading, the character building support, the zen, chakra and all other forms of bullshiting people. All you need is a cigarrete a beer and a barefoot dance around the campfire. It's tradition around here to burn your soul, before you go. Before you go home.

Fantezii

Those shadows have nothing to do with me.
Dramă personală, conturată de un buchet de fantezii, aruncate vulgar, peste masă, trădând o lipsă de respect lascivă, năucitoare, ucigaşă, din care orice plăcere surprinde aprinderea către dorinţă. Nu prea mai cred în dorinţe. Totul îmi pare întâmplător.
Trying to keep it together while falling apart.
Povestea noastră, în fond. Tuturor ni se predau principii sănătoase de viaţă şi e normal să nu le respecţi.
Când te rogi pentru ceva oferi un lucru la schimb.
Ce-aş putea oferi pentru viaţă? Sau măcar pentru iluzia de a trăi din nou? Nici asta nu mi se mai pare palpabilă. Vreau o iluzie pe care s-o mai distrug din nou. Și o vreau acum.
Supraviețuire.
Cei naivi n-au șanse.
Privim la cer. Dans.
Primesc în dar amintiri. Pământul se învârte cu mine și eu o țin pe ea de mâini.
La început pare dur, dar apoi îți dai seama...
Îți dai seama că până și natura se corodează și e captivă în același joc de reguli ca și tine.
Nothing fades away, until one day...
Că a distra niște turiști suprasaturați, zeflemitori, depravați e slujba naturii. Rațiunea și forța sunt inutile. Poate că doar iubirea te mai scapă, Și buzele care miros a sărut.
Sânge, sâni, pervertire, beție, luptă.
Când stai și te gândești că toți murim câte puțin în fiecare zi te apucă plânsul. Apoi râsul. Și din nou plânsul. Și tot așa. Prea firească nu e nici primăvara asta din suflete care te surprinde și apoi te lasă baltă cu nasul în mocirlă. Leșin la gândul că nu pot fi tânăr din nou. Dar mai rău mă doare că nu sunt nici bătrân. Încă.
Drama personală nu există. Trăim cu toții un fel de dramă la comun din care nu poți scăpa individual. Mistere peste tot și puțin timp. O vendettă a vieții, suntem fluturi prinși în plasă, viespi orbite de mânie și nevoia de acțiune. Mi-aș dori să dispar pur și simplu într-o zi. Nu prea mai văd nimic nou. Nici măcar în cărți. Prins. Prins. Prins. Zorba grecul. Cum o fi să dansezi cu întunericul viselore tale?

I'd rather be dead than cool - Kurt Cobain

I was the highschool looser. The drop-out. The emo kid. Nobody would hang out with me and nobody laughed with me. But they did laugh at my flaws. Behind my back. When they thought I wasn't awake.But I was awake and I felt everything, sting me like a knife.
Like what it is to have a fucked up home and a disbanded family. The ones that laugh are the ones that had it soft on them. Theyr biggest fear was what to order when raising the menu at the restaurant, my biggest fear was raising more than myself. You never know when your last day hits you.
But I hated them from the moment I understood that I was alone. Being extroverted and being isolated is like throwing somebody in a prison cell with nothing to eat. Nobody will ever want to know anything about starvation, because the well-fed stomach keeps up a happy mind.
But guess what? You can also be happy on an empty stomach, when books are your only friend and going to the supermarket to feed yourself seems like a deadly sin. I'm an outcast, myself, not because I wanted to, but because fate has had it's way tougher on me than on the others. Am I the only one?
No way. There are countless souls just like myself, who wonder poor and alone accross this graveyard that some people call Earth, some people call home, I don't call it anything, I don't care.
But guess what? We burn the fat off our souls. 
Hard living also means hard dying, it doesn't kill us so it makes us more powerfull. I never though I was a good person. I always thought I'd go to hell and die in the worst possible way. Being a pessimist is an ugly thing. But being a blind fucking optimistic son-of-a-bitch is even worse.
You bastards are so eager to demonise everything you haven't experienced. So what if we smoke ciggarettes until the break of dawn? What if we smell roses in the gardens of strangers? What if we die of hangovers the next day? We are here because we are meant to be this way and we are not leaving nor will we bow down to some sort of trend introduced by a corporation.
And when we all get to hell, you fuckers will have the most fat on your arms and legs, and the demons will eat you first. They will fight and befriend us, but they will slay and cook you. They will chase us and they won't catch us because earth has made us swift.We will pretend that the darkness is a new home for us parasites. We never had one anyway! What's another eternity of suffering? I'm just getting warmed up!
I never believed in fairytales, although I wanted to. I desperately seeked my refuge in the uttermost incredible things: sunsets, broken shards from a spider's web, the "evil" cemetery, etc. People say I'm crazy, I say I'm completely insane. There's no intensity in what people say! There is only dullness! There is no contrast in what the world percieves. All they see is grey!
So what if I feel the most safe when I'm walking alone in the forest and I feel the wings of a dark presence surrounding me? ? like to think that whatever keeps my soul warm sometimes has some osrt of a higher purpose and won't let me go. I was crazy , demented and starved, humiliated, but I never was lost. I could always find my way home through the darkest of woods without dispairing.
I never embraced defeat, because it was worse than death. There was always a dark star guiding me. And it's not like I'm satanic or anthing like that! All I saw was darkness right in front of me, but I knew, that there was something beneath that, worth fighting for, worth the struggle and if I could just breath in and take the pain I could really break through those walls and see the light. The real light! Can you imagine? Not the sun, not the stars, not any light knows to mankind or this universe, but some sort of light of my own creation. Meeting yourself at the vanishing point of the world, without breath, thought or any other disbanding joy of the body that could intimidate you.
Sometimes I wonder what are the traces of the language we speak? What do words mean to some people and to some other people? I have met men that slaved themselves in factories who made a hell of a lot more sense than your idiotic responses to simple questions. "How are you?" I'd ask you and you'd tell me all about your stupid lives. You could summarise your entire life right there and then!
When I asked the factory worker, how he was, he'd tell me: "I'm fucked." And that made a hell of a lot more sense to me than anything. Plain and simple. Yet mysterious.
I have just met some people that completely understand me. And sometimes they lie. But it's a beautiful sort of lie, they're young, they're just kids and they say things they never did do, they just talk out loud, it's weird because they really believe in what they say and that makes me believe it too even though we both know that they're just fantasies. I can dissapear anytime in a place of my own, or a new place where I've never been, but where I've always wanted to go, unleashing myself on the streets of a new-born town like the wind in the cannopy, like the stars over New Jersey.
(to be continued...)

Vara perfectă

Este vara pe care numai eu pot să o am. Desene, răvaşe, baloane, pulbere din paradis, lumina răsfrîntă într-un ciob de lume, o capelă unde se mistuie eul tău.

Nu mai pot să scriu. Mi-aş dori să fi citit 1000 de cărţi înainte, astfel încât toate cuvintele să-mi alunece cât mai lin pe tastatură.

Nu am reuşit să fac asta. Nu pot să respir. Nu mai pot să privesc profeţia unei dureri iminente. Este aşa de rău să nu poţi scăpa de tine însuţi şi de proverbele devenite realitate dintr-oodată pe pielea ta!

Speranţa. Nu a existat niciodată. Este o eclipsă, poate fi şi o surpriză salvatoare. Dar ea nu există. E o închipuire. 

Probabil că sunt disfuncţional, dar am o groază de regrete. Am auzit că unii oameni nu regretă nimic, din toate cele ce au făcut. Aşa să fie?

Mă uit în ochii lor şi văd că privirea lor spune acelaşi lucru. Poate că e înjositor, dar eu pot să spun că am o groază de regrete. De fapt, respiraţia mea e un regret nemărturisit. Viaţa e un regret. Poate şi moartea e un regret. Şcoala a fost un regret. Mâna mea e un regret.

Regret că nu pot să fac mai bine. Regret că sunt disfuncţional,regret că sunt repetitiv, că n-am iubit cât trebuie, că m-am jertfit inutil, dar cel mai mult dintre toate regret un lucru: că mi-am suprimat ocazia de a mai fi sincer cu trecutul. Nu pot să privesc în urmă fără să închid ochii.

Mă doare. Şi-atunci privesc în faţă şi nu-mi place ce văd. Dar continui.

Şi merg pe un drum ascuns, părăsit, dintr-un oraş periculos, unde oamenii s-au fortificat în case şi privesc la televizor. Merg pe acolo şi văd multe locuinţe, unde geamurile au luciri ultraviolet, iar ecranele îşi schimbă faţa ca un tigru pornit la vânătoare. Verbele nu mai au sens. Semnul exclamării nu mai poate fi folosit. Sunt probabil pierdut.

Merg pe un drum,pierdut...

(Îmi vine în minte compromisul. Dar de ce? Nu pot să mai renunţ acum la pieire. E şi-aşa mult prea târziu să mai dau înapoi şi uite că acolo în vale strălucesc parcă stelele!)

  

Untitled, Unfinished, Unending…

Losing interesting people was always a hard thing  for me. There is  a hint in front of every lie. If you teach your ear how to listen carefully than you can almost hear  the roaring of every heart stroke through the walls  and the lungs and the pin-pointed rapture of the lingering blood vessels. I never imagined anything  like it before , but I can see it now between my aching eyes, trembling and whispering words about prophecies and hunting for a spark of soul. 
Words that become poems, boys that become men, long lasting phone-calls, the grey pavement and every step taking us nowhere , to a land neither seen or heard of.  Playing games with madness, letting her touch me once in a while, to explore the meaning of pain and to discover the two edged blade of adventure. Hidden in the sand, practicing  a  ritual of love and rage, nowhere in sight, trembling odors, mirrors, light binding the waves to shore, and shadows sending them back, ever hungry, ever restless.
If I were different, I would be a seagull and I would play with the waves sometimes and sing when the storm comes. Playful and vengeful, like a wave, unmatched, unchallenged, I would circle above the humans, joyful yet dis-charming, like a new born hope, impossible to reach.
All my life, I’ve lived among ruins. Broken side-walks, empty theaters, disenchanted patios. It always seemed like I had arrived just after a storm and while I picked up the empty chairs from the lawn  I couldn’t keep from wandering what was there before? Spilled goblets, party cups and wine sprayed across the grass in some sort of joyous gesture. I’ve never wanted to be a reporter of life, or the one that keeps track of my youth, but somehow there it is, right in front of me: no choice. It seemed like people had more fun before, the halls were full of light at night and cosmic designs were not yet in motion. Sometimes time stood still, when laughing at a table, or touching somebody’s hand by accident, it took more than a moment to realize that nothing is eternal and that was enough for me. Some form of convalescence, even if only for a second, it helped me recover and cure my superstitions and neurasthenia.  Lying in bed at night I would dream about it over and over again until I couldn’t keep myself from wondering back into  the  cradled bars, a place for hunted youths, such as myself.
The dark alleys and gangs, held evidence of a long fought battle, between rust, pain and dust. You couldn’t tell the difference from a dignified cemetery and the spray painted walls . Echoing in disgust, fear and plagued absence, the words didn’t really mean much to me:  Alcohol and pills, Playing with fire, Romance, Trains for the dead, No hope in sight and name of bands I never heard of before. But it was a familiar sight, I passed those alleys every-day and they were like a childhood home. While  at night, they were completely transfigured – no more than a few shadows kept the distance between this world and another one full of mystery - where the boys and girls had blue eyes, and blue spirals in the sky, marching like an army battalion, chanting and enchanting the stars and everything in sight until it faded away.

Noaptea

   Două felii de portocală neatinse, pe masa din lemn de nuc și un baston vechi sprijinit de ea. Farfuriile sunt încâ nespălate în bucătărie, iar pe fereastra din dormitor se vede o siluetă feminină privind în întunericul de nepătruns. Lumina felinarului îi conturează formele zvelte și dezvăluie trăsături palide, triste ce au fost vesele cândva. Ochii se aseamână unor scântei, de parcâ însăși noaptea și Hefaistos au complotat în făurirea lor, două pulbere de flăcări, o implozie de lumină.

   Nicicând nu am văzut ochi care să mă farmece precum ai ei. Iar eu mă îndrept spre ușa de la balcon cu mișcări molcome, stângace, amețit de vin. Nu știm ce ne așteaptă. Nici n-am știut vreodată. O! Voi suflete deșarte, ce priviți în noapte... Nu vă mai chinuiți atât să discerneți ceva din somnul luminii, altfel această toropeală lină s-ar putea răsfrânge în voi, și apoi... Dar apoi?  Încă nu știm ce e apoi. Siluetele se contopesc. Felinarul răspândește o lumină caldă, aurie, pe fețele lor se citește tristețea, o tristețe însuflețită de bucurie și veninul deșertăciunii. În aer se răsfiră colbul. Copacii sunt treziți la viață de vânt și parcă o orchestră întreagă se naște din vuietul naturii.

   E un spectacol pentru cer și luna și stelele-și coboară razele, dănțuind laolaltă cu frunzele din desișul nesfârșit. E un dans nebun, ce se-ntinde pe tot pământul, în depărtare codrii vuiesc iar ielele încep să cânte la vioară. Dar nimic nu mai are farmec fără privirea ei. Doi aștri coborîți din genuni, două licăriri de speranță. Iubirea merge mână-n mână cu moartea...

   Îmi țin iubita de mână. Și poate că ne și sărutăm, dar nu se mai vede nimic bine, pentru că vântul scutură perdelele , iar pe masă zac douâ felii de portocală neatinse.



(scrisă cu ceva timp în urmă...)

LIFE IS FOR NOTHING

“Life is for nothing you imbecile!” I heard her scream.

“You crook, you villan, pest of a human-being. Away from me!”

I loved this girl, crazy about Schopenhauer, maddened by life and grief and forever alone in her apartment, at room 209.

“What happened?” I asked her.

This seemed to infuriate her even more, and with a shriek, she took out the scissors from the cabinet and approached me. There were tears in her eyes, she was like a possessed animal, hunting its prey.

“Helena, put those down, dear, you don’t have to be so angry!” I cautioned her.

She put them down on the counter table and her gaze brushed the carpet. And for a split second, I could sense indecision in her eyes. Then swiftly, she lurched at me with the scissors and I didn’t have enough time to stop it, she sliced one close to my face and cut my cheek.

I caught her by the arm and there she was lying on the floor.

 

“You owe me nothing! Not your love, not your freedom, you’re a sick man, full of lies, a thief, a merchant of poor futile goods! You mean nothing to me. As I lay here each and every day, waiting for an unspeakable hero to rescue me from my wrath. The ill fates have chosen you to be part of my systematic failure. No wonder I grieve, no wonder I’m full of hatred…”

Then she was crying. I didn’t  know what to feel: contempt or repulsion. Then I remembered her gaze as we walked through the forest three summers ago. Her hauntingly beautiful smile and the way she sneered at me when I made bird noises. “Careful, they might try to mate with you, those crows.” Then I left her by the path, pretending to be unhappy, when I returned hours later, I didn’t even expect to see Helen. But there she was, standing in the same place, looking over or through the dark green bushes. She lifted her chin and started saying words I could never forget:”Here you are, my darling! But what about me? What about the fairy you left behind? Am I not just a shadow of the trees? Perhaps my place is there, within the hummingbirds. I have been dreaming a blissful dream, I don’t remember anything about it, except for the emeralds, those everlasting and conquering forces of nature, thay defended me from myself.” I didn’t know what to make of it.

 

Then there were the moments at the seaside, when we were taking long walks at night and she would gasp my arm and fiercely shriek. I didn’t even have time to ask her what was wrong, because there she went, running on the sea front and never looking back. Then she would peer at the waves through the pilasters. “I am not a dark queen, I am neither friend or foe to the absence of luminosity, I am the wind, in the winter, or in the summer, or in May and I never look back for sunshine. And I take care of my children, for my children are the waves, blissfully enchanting me with their smiles, my kin, my prophets!

Oh how I linger, just a drop of your water and I will remember it all.”

This was the moment when I had to catch her from behind or she would do something stupid. Nevertheless, it got me thinking: what was so peculiar about her? Why did she say those things? I knew she only did them around me, but sometimes I wondered if she did them when she was alone too.

 

Now she was trembling at my feet, soaking my shoes in tears, I knew she was so sorry about her scissors incident that it made it futile for me to even think about getting mad at her. Somehow, it always felt to me, like Helena was suffering more, even when she made me suffer.  This got me to the conclusions that I should hide her books at once, she never protested, because there were so many of them around, but I knew that if I took Schopenhauer away, she’d get me in my sleep.

“Do you love life?” I heard her say.

“Yes, I said.”

“You fool! Only a suicidal loves life…only a suicidal…”

And then she went to sleep in my arms, there on the living room floor, until I wrapped her in a blanket and took her away to her bedroom and put her in bed. She had the nicest look, sleeping with her mouth open just a little bit and her right hand gently pressed upon her cheek.