Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Noel Negele- Three Poems


White Pride ( Good Night )

My good friend,
Let’s call him Mike
For anonymity’s sake,
Is an anarchist
And an active Antifa member

Hates racists with the passion of a racist
And every time he goes to the gym
He  wears  this black sweatshirt
That has “ Good Night White Pride”
Written on the back
With bold white letters

The only problem is
The hood covers the Good Night
Part
Leaving the White Pride
Part
Open to misunderstandings

Two weeks ago
Poor Mike
Got jumped by three black men
Who weren’t familiar with the Good Night White Pride
Movement
But all too familiar with the White Pride part of it

I went to see poor Mike
To the hospital
Because it was that bad:
Broken ribs and fingers,
A fractured wrist
And jaw

Poor Mike came to understand

Sometimes it’s best
Not to take sides.



My Uncle

My uncle
64 years of age
thin haired now, almost all grey
his belly a beer- expanded tambour
ready to burst,
a red nosed
alcoholic
and an embarassment to the rest of the family.

One morning I remember
I was seventeen,
freshly initiated to alcoholism 
myself
he came for a micro intervention
brief and subtle
used himself as an exemplar
of avoidance
said he used to shit blood for some time
and that he cant get it up anymore
"But I started drinking when I was 36 years old
communism helped with that
but you are only so young
ruining yourself
give it some time
grow first..."

I thought as always that no one understood my sadness
a teenage sadness holds no trestle
I know
but self destruction is self destruction
and thats what I've been doing 
since conscience first appeared in my life

and at that morning we talked
and ended up getting drunk
from that early
integrity be damned even in adults
and in truth my uncle respected me more
than my cousins
since he knew I was the only youngster in the family
who wouldnt hesitate to knock him down 
on his ass if he acted like a clown-
the rest of my relatives respected his age
I cant respect a man simply for surviving

and as soon as he found out I like to play chess
I was invited at least three times a week for a couple of beers
and a couple of good chess games

and from advising me against drinking
I quickly became his drinking partner
used to joke around
"We are the only two drunks left in this family.
Your grandfather was the biggest of them all,
but now he's gone 
so its left on us to keep it going..."

now
jobless
his wife of 40 or something years
can barely walk because of an accident
and she's the only one with a job
and my uncle 64
ego ravaged
drinks, cooks
and paints
his time to death;
his paintings are of sea shores
and horses-
pretty good
but good doesnt cut it anymore
in fact
it never did

He's a chain smoker
and to this day 
I really believe that a fortune has been made out
of the endurance of his lungs
"Uncle stop smoking so much."
"I eat these fuckers up!"

he was a better chess player
I must admit
better than me, by miles,
out of the thousand games we played
I must have won 5 at best

but when he found out I like classical music
drunk
he kept asking
"Whats the name of Bach then? The first name of Mozart? Of Borodin?
You dont know shit!"
and I realised 
out of chess
the man lacked
terribly in pretty much
everything else.



Rat Hole

In this rat hole
I know all too 
well, fallen again,
slid like a knife
on the wrist,
sucked into it
like a haricot
through a straw

inside the abandonded
buildings, alongside 
homeless immigrants
and femished junkies
their spoons are crooked
and as soon as as
"the semen of God"
starts to swim in the blood
their eyes glow and
they light the bonfires 

it is a universal fest
inside this room with 
no furniture, we are
waltzing with death,
careless as the monks
burn and the economical
indicators plummet, we
are untouched, uncaught
on the web of your reality
there are no spiders here

and the cannons blow
as if Tchaickovsky is alive
and also a junky

yes, yes, yes
but it lasts so little
and the night itself
becomes a ceiling 
roofing our dreams
as we reduce our souls
to something frail and 
unworthy, we quail, 
the everyday life scares us

more than death standing
on the dark corner
smiling at us, with a shivering
along the floor and into the very
depth of me, his shark teeth
so very pleasantly brushed

we are runners and you are
more capable than us, with
your fed cheeks and your
cash reviews- there was
once a time when we used
to want to know things but
not anymore-

deeper and deeper into
the well as the days
become weeks and the
weeks become months

no friends reach you there
no relatives find you

all the youth wasted and sunk-
we are quenching the thirst
of our demons as if we're
made only for them to consume.
 
 

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