XXLove letters

 

 

When you crashed out,

 

I remember the lines,

I remember the author,

I remember the girl loving only two boys,

One of them was a poet,

The other one was her husband,

A very special man,

He was special enough to be her ex,

Successful success should last,

If it doesn’t, it dies in the cradle after the birth,

No one could recognize in a homeless clochard,

A once thriving young poet,

Who conquered Montmartre and Paris,

He was so good with words, 

He choked to death on his own vomit,

He was a genius,

Misunderstood,

He was ahead of his time,

Following eccentricity of his paranoid logic,

His tortured by alcohol body was found,

I knew he had neither rent nor wallet,

Anyway I dropped by,

Everyone thought he was a drunkard,

A jobless and lazy man,

They said ‘Watch out. He is a mental patient’,

He was hospitalized,

On his way out the door,

He continued drinking again,

We wandered the nearby hill,

We had a long conversation,

She couldn’t stop talking about his terrible death,

How fragile he was,

Like a kid he was unprotected,

She couldn’t stop reciting his poems,

She still loved him in the present tense,

Then I understood how lucky I was,

Surprisingly rhymes lay down,

On the soft warm spring evening,

On the fluffing her light brown hair spring breeze,

They sailed away,

Like their creator they were unafraid to drown,

I had not recognized the poet,

But I remembered his metaphors,

Driving everyone crazy,

Thanks God,

 I couldn’t love him the way she did,

Otherwise when he died,

I would have died with him,

His death would have rhymed,

One more quiet tragedy of lonely roads,

It was staged in the land of the wealthy.

XXLove letters

 

 

When you read anonymous verses folded into a heart,

 

 

I close my eyes,

I tuck silence,

Neatly around my neck,

If you don’t remember,

Then it never happened,

It’s my favorite music,

The ashtray is littered,

You have just gone,

Myself decides to stay stabbing me right in my back,

The willful rebel is sealed in the box,

It smells musty,

 It tastes pungent,

Driven crazy by thirst,

It licks opium dew,

It has no choice,

All defense tricks crash onto high walls,

 Feelings flatline,

What a waste of salvation,

The edge of mind is a terrible place,

I’m rummaging through dustbins,

Arrogance slaps me in the face,

‘Together’ hangs by a thread,

I’m a wreck,

I memorize the life lesson,

Morals provide a shelter for cowards,

Mercy provides a shelter for weakness,

Stillness screams,

Endurance equals zero,

Loneliness asks for forgiveness,

Sickening mind seeks,

Logic has gone missing for days,

It isn’t missed,

I need words meaning love,

They give birth to collision,

Coincidence is the god and the hangman,

It makes the best plans,

It builds tombs and fairy castles,

We choose to be shadows of ourselves,

One tomorrow night we’ll pretend,

You will pretend you regret,

I will pretend you are a stranger,

You are someone I have never met,

 

As if you were Santa,

One day I asked you for love and for guidance,

You answered politely,

 ‘I beg your pardon’,

People ask me,

 ‘Why are you always lost?

Why are you always losing?’

 I am someone they have never known,

Hypocrisy is the most successful profession,

 

I dedicate it to Paris sunshine.

 

 

XXLove letters       

                                        

When you felt lost in the land of twilight roofs,

 

You won’t forget your first day in the cage,

You had no trust,

You saw no future,

You reflected on zinc roofs,

 Paris has thousands of them,

Thousands of wells for lost souls,

Thousands of atavisms namely maid’s rooms,

Thousands of girls covered with mini-skirts,

Hidden in boots,

Trapping strangers  in fishnet stockings,

You will forget nothing,

But back then the day we met,

You were grateful and very tired,

You wanted to crash out,

You’re a stranger in my Paris,

It smiled at you with the corners of its mouth,

You didn’t trust me,

That night I had to leave,

That night you had to let,

I dissolved in back doors and dustbins,

In easels and coffee shops,

In twinkling store windows,

In the wind chasing leaves and scraps of paper,

In shiny cars getting high on legal speed,

You had a chance to deal with your fears,

You were the face of my life,

I left you one to one with the hallway,

It was a long-tailed monster,

It drove everyone crazy,

You attention got caught on doorknobs,

You heard footsteps,

Then doors started creaking,

Gnawing locks angrily bit,

I was your only escape,

I was your only chance to get out of your own prison,

I was your last cent,

You opened a nightstand drawer,

 It needed a facelift,

A ramshackle piece of paper was folded into a heart,

The previous tenant forgot it,

Incriminating my cleaning skills,

You tried to be gentle,

Loving hearts easily ripped,

There were sad and beautiful verses,

You would have dedicated to me,

If only you could have written poems,

But you could paint mostly silence,

You painted it with rainy colors,

Your paintings looked more like raw violence,

It was the crooked kind of violence,

It imprisoned for life setting no one free.

XXLove letters       

                                        

 

 

When my monologue was the most successful sales pitch,

 

 

The door number faded away,

The digits were gone one by one,

Losing patience,

We watched the world story,

It had been washed away,

Layers of time were layers of paint,

Every room has a view of the sea,

Yours wasn’t blind,

It looked out on the zinc ocean,

‘I don’t know an artist, who was inspired by walls,

The roofs of Paris are sheer beauty,

It’s the city above the city,

It isn’t big,

One hundred square feet,

Nevertheless it has all,

Four ancient walls, your own roof,

A table, a bed, a sink and a faucet,

One day you will be famous,

You’ll rent in Nouvelle Athenes,

All your works will cost an entire fortune,

One day your name will be more than successful,

There is one inconvenience of very little importance,

You have to share a bathroom,

It’s down the hall,

By the way I am a typist,

A maid’s room belongs to my aunt,

I help her to find tenants,

Sometimes it means ‘very often’,

She shares my financial troubles,

When I don’t have a rusty franc in my purse,

She never comes here,

She says Montmartre is dead,

No writers, no poets, no artists,

Only peep shows and the bourgeoisie,

                              They don’t know Montmartre,

They hear only prestige,

When they happen to hear old stories,

It’s the part of the city,

Here front doors look quite the same,

They take for granted,

Neglect and disrepair,

Abandonment and abuse,

They appreciate peels of time,

Don’t look down on them,

The most important thing is don’t fall in love with them,

If you don’t want to suffer unsuccessfully looking for cure’,

After I gave you my first advice,

I grasped a notebook,

The previous tenant had left on the table,

As if he hadn’t existed,

Now everything was about us,

Under the copy of Edgar Degas’ L’Absinthe,

We arranged our next rendezvous in the city of babel.

 

 

XXLove letters

                                        

When my heart was still available for rent,

 

 

 

The building was quite old and run-down,

At first sight its entrails looked like a maze,

I thought you were shocked,

You didn’t make a sound,

This time we climbed the stairs,

It was your first attempt to get to the top,

Artistic glam was separated, divided and chopped space,

Sleepy heads I meant your neighbors,

They could have sworn and witnessed,

It was a small, very ambitious, a mouse-free attic,

It was an almost clean place,

I failed to hit the gold,

You wasn’t afraid at all,

You had just learnt something important,

It survived dilapidation,

It was your first loud thought,

‘We think that hosts and tenants look like door bells wearing slippers and robes,

It is a wrong assumption like any other assumption,

People must look like their front doors,

Life is a narrow hallway,

We are allowed to see only doors,

We keep asking the same question,

The owner of which door we’d like to meet, to befriend or to love,

Some front doors are conceited,

They have chevalier monograms,

They look down on their colleagues,

Those are practical, simple and solid,

Others make fun of retro sick fans,

It’s distressing that we are alike,

 It’s amazing that we differ,

Some are lost in the herd,

In the grazing state of cattle mind,

Others break through and run,

Many of us jump and jump dreaming,

‘One day I’ll be better’

‘One day I’ll get bigger’,

As we were walking down the hallway,

Your dreamy mood was forced to change,

As the smell of something rotten was drifting,

In the particular part of the city garbage was a sure bet,

I didn’t waste a second,

I found a lame excuse,

I hated losing a tenant,

I laid my eye on you,

‘The girls didn’t do their homework,

They danced in the streets all night,

The latest issue of Marie Claire was clear,

Cleanness comes back into fashion,

It’s a matter of time when they follow the latest trend and the beauty advice,

I’m talking about dust bins and chlorine,

Sin is a source of inspiration,

Paris will never wash off its sin,

A genius needs it,

Sin is a breath of night’,

Using the key I raped the tolerant lock,

I tried really hard to bang (overcome) your last hesitation.

 

XXLove letters   

 

 

When the mill was turning,       

 

No one alive was supposed to see Francoise,

Only three bright exceptions,

Very obedient children,

Obedience wasn’t for us,

The people that didn’t shop on Christmas Eve,

And sailors that sailed away and never threw an anchor,

I was surprised ‘We are the same’,

Bric-a-brac shops crammed cobbled alleys, 

There was quite a line waiting outside,

The desert island of hummingbirds,

What a wonderful motley flock!

It’s always fun to have them around,

As a guide I informed,

‘It’s Moulin Rouge’,

The last survivor the windmill is turning,

They have early shows,

Service a la russe’,

The long queue had been piously waiting for a generous serve of bread and games,

The Paradise garden with dancing bunnies promised a lot,

 

The air in Paris is always horny,

The crowd was ready for circus, lust, sex,

 As a friend I issued an urgent flood warning,

‘They are neither angels nor girls,

They are nectar eating, covered in fake jewels,

 

Fluttering, murmuring, laughing, lustfully purring catnips and raggle-taggle half-dolls and half-birds,

They put brains out of service,

They take the best care of broken hearts,

They put all pieces together,

With them elevators are always working,

No one gets stuck,

No one falls through the looking glass’,

You wanted to know her past,

My guess hadn’t hit the gold,

 You were not an aspiring writer,

 You were an aspiring painter instead,

 And every painter must have a model, a brush, a palette and a ghost,

You were obsessed to know her story,

I liked killing my life with you,

I promised to tell you,

 

It was my excuse to see you,

‘Yes, the last time we talked on the phone,

How could I forget to tell you?

The downside of cheap rent,

Your neighbors are business girls,

   For the time being accept it,

It’s your sweet home,

It’s Pigalle,

 It appears to be the kingdom of sleaze,

I disagree,

No,

It’s the district of hardworking girls,

Red light wreaths look great on its doors’.