Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Noel Negele- Two Poems


Some More Bad Poetry.

We were on that Mercedes-Benz Sprinter truck again
All three of us, next to each other
The driver already on his third coffee
My brother leaning his bald head against the window
Trying to grasp some minutes of sleep
And behind his bald head
An ugly city gave away to viridity
 
I was on my fifth sober day
And it was the little things that broke me inside
Like say
The alarm clock at 6 in the morning,
The potholes in the streets,
the morning faces,
the beeping sound each time
I started the car in the morning
Indicating the perennial lack of petrol
or when we all loaded the equipment
on the truck
silently and synchronized
and it was the history of repetition that this fact
verified
that drove me mad
 
We went to a suburban nursery school on that day
Because the prime minister had a speech there
And we began to assemble the cameras
And the jimmy jib triangle crane
on their proper places
and it was a difficult task to keep yourself
from having a fit
when there’re so many kids around
and they had clowns too
and one of them had a fat gut
which made me feel good about myself
and realize
there’s always worse
 
But the kids were curious
About the cameras and the crane
About everything
And I had a bladder issue
And the coffee was awful
And I was trying to maintain a mental balance
In a sea of frenzy children
But the only way of managing
Was to push them away
Without manners:
“ Just fuck off to the clowns over there!”
 
At some point I went to the truck
To grab a piece of machinery
And while returning
I stopped in front of a closed door
And started smoking,
 
Half way on my cigarette
The door opened
And an ugly lady exited
Not quite closing the door behind her
Leaving a small gap
 
And through that small gap
I saw an impeccable flower
And it’s not a good thing
To see such a beautiful woman
Without being prepared
Because impulses begin to stem
And you’re suddenly
On the verge of doing something
really stupid that will get you in a lot of trouble
 
Of course she didn’t care to look at me twice
And of course I was thinking about her for weeks
Until the next equally indifferent flower
Would take her place in my mind
 
And when the prime minister came
And told all that bullshit they want to hear
All of them
Children and adults
And her
Looked at the prime minister
Actually listening
Actually expecting
And the only ones who didn’t care
Was me
And
That fat clown
 
And I could see it
In his face
 
He wanted a drink
As badly
As I did.


In The End Very Little To Nothing Is Left.

She showed me some letters I had once written to her
from years of which I remember nothing,
and I read those letters under her examining eyes
words of crying and groaning
loaded with what the writer once thought as essence
and I was amazed by the writer's certainty of his love
back when us seemed like an unbreachable fortress
back to now
where all the words of love seemed so terribly empty.

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