Listen to “Birth”

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Birth

For Krešimir

The night wanted to live,
ether, what bodies do
within the walls of a skin.
You felt it in your mouth,
your lungs, your belly.
It warmed you in dark blood,
stashed your first memories
in the slow music
of a woman’s body.
The unseen, ruled by desire,
had a sudden fever,
a dream of you,
unpredictable but true.
It was the end of April
this time of year when
things go madly wrong
when girls spit in the mouth
of death and lie
like fallen statues,
thighs glued with pollen.
The sun rolled on the ground
and the world’s ruin
leaked from it, blue,
purple, green, changing color
on your skin now
bruised by love.
You became a mystery
to your own darkness,
wanting more and more of it.
The addiction was absolute,
‘Mine’ your favorite word.
By the time your pupil uncoiled
to swallow all this light
a ruler’s name fell as well
on your tender bones
and as they got harder
left you with no song
to call your own.
Anything this earth
gave you, anything,
dispossessed you all the same.
Where had it gone ?
The sweet sound of your name.
The sound Night uttered
before sea or even sky.
Was it the ultimate exile,
you from yourself ?
The new one passed
from mouth to mouth
like a bottle of gin,
and you started making songs
of absolute possession.
But it was too late,
“I” was superfluous
“You” couldn’t be ” I “.
You began to lose
one thing after another,
and the world went on
as if nothing happened.
But I remember, lover,
after having lost
a thousand times
the same horizon,
and renounced even more
to what must have been joy,
you still had kisses
for my salty hips.
Your flesh, inside me,
was full of births,
your voice bathed me
into the blackest ink,
and music,
music made and unmade us.
It went on, ceaselessly :
“Come, love. Die, love”,
a full, unbroken circle,
the end never known
from the beginning.
Your body, its weight,
brutal, was life
and death, all the rest,
trite, counterfeit.
Your cheap ciggies,
your cotton shirt,
were more real
than bread or air.
So let me drink now
to your messy hair,
to your sparkling eyes,
to the black fact
of their absence here.
All has been
taken from me.
Other hearts beat
under your drunken lips.
And the night
as you always wanted,
never stops to crush me,
crush me, crush me.

Nobody Else’s

In that sunny room, where our cruelty
stood unveiled, and all knives broken,
where I stopped thinking
it could have been different
or unrestricted, or incandescent,
where I stopped hoping
you could have stopped me,
when the first bloom died,
in that unnamed clinic,
the moment came when
I had too much of knowledge,
too much of truth,
too much of clarity,
too much of comprehension of the future
and my heart, red and cold, clotted.
It was full of music,
something you played me
something nightly, I lost it all.
Still knotted to my memory
it hung there,
interrupted,
dry as a fossil
among photographs of Paris.
Later, as you laid estranged,
in some eyeless bed,
sick of your own caress,
you sent me a pomegranate
full of morning heat
spilling new blood cells
on my pale navel.
With an analytic glance,
I dissected its inside,
the countless seeds, crimson eggs
and their various transparancies.
Then I closed my eyes.
Soft waves of music rushed in my veins.
Well, it was late.
What can I say ?
Love is a dark fruit.
You can have my head on a platter,
I will execute the dance
and the dancer.
In this red swarm
one beat was my own.

Death At Dawn

Choke me – I still can’t sing
I stand negative in a black spring
with no need of touch, words,
music,
or whatever it is.
Unvariably,
April falls from your thighs,
war, sex, wine New
lactescent nights
– it was before.
Now, each pulse,
each sigh of the living
sinks in my throat,
and absorbs my breath
like an inverted mouth.
Choke me – I can’t forget
there’s no silence, no stillness
on Earth.
All around,
heroin drips from trees,
cherry blossoms dislocate,
float along rivers,
cloak graves in honey.
I stand like a false note
before ours.
The last day we were a life,
this day,
when the blood in your mouth
was still mine,
and the milk in my breast
was yours,
this day, the last, is an anomaly.
Choke me – I still can’t sing.
We are alive
but gone.
The worst of April
is done.

Listen here, Read by RM: