Couple of new ones!

As a celebration of Nicanor's 97th birthday, a few new poems (which, interestingly, come to 97 lines!):

From the Secret Diary of Parliament

For some time I had been seeing weird shit
My stomach felt like something walking on it
Several questions blocked the door when I tried to leave.
They would let me out sometimes at night
As long as I did not wear a shirt
So I would blend in with the moon.
Walking, I would think of Attila
And politics.
Days poetry took up all the space
Which made me too self-conscious
So I was glad to blend in with the moon.
Somewhere between two tables in a bar
A sound whimpered it was an emergency
But that was the very moment a speech
Beat another speech to death with a stick.
Surely you heard about that?
Thus precious moments were lost
While my party got a tattoo
It called doubt
On its tiny little religious doubt.
You can take precautions, sure,
But reason never sails a ship straight
Not even when plants keep their heads down
In a tall, tall world.
Of course I got mugged for my worst presentiments
The telephones stopped ringing
And littered the ground I walked on.
My trembling hand wrote a wrong number
Only good when I slept.
Uncertainty placed second at the polls,
Waiting for a foreign sound
To stab it with a pencil.
Meanwhile, down the arroyo,
The dentists of Belsen
Fell from the sky, hoping their passports
Could be renewed, black
As the back of your eye.
I offered my tongue up as a roast
For the sake of some conversation
I was so fucking tired
Of batteries. Electricity
Had to make a comeback
I need to share my worry about questions.
Erotic self-censure failed me
And I ended up hungry.

Bad jokes consume time a landlady just doesn’t have.
Stupid talk beneath a convulsing sky
Is not the Soul-Destroyer
It is just stupid talk beneath the convulsing sky.
I compliment you
On my imprisonment -
Usually I’d hate it,
But since tomorrow
I’ll forget the church again, anyway,
Thanks.


After La Trampa by Nicanor Parra


-------------

Dos

By February 5, 1927
I caught myself working
My way north with an Albanian.
Just following orders
North American style
Stealing the silver
For those who’d come after!
It was a pissy situation
Stretched across a bed
Drunk blind or both
And then I hear my name
From up above
So I freeze, see,
Blood cowers in my vein
While it got so hot
My pants expanded
I thought it was all over
So may as well stop lying
Stop making people stupid
Like I was king
My eyes flopped out on the sidewalk
So surprised they started frying
Desperate I did pushups
Made myself a telegram
To myself about getting smarter
There was a stone in my eye
The size of a kid
Forgot I was a man
Who did things right.

After Sermones y Predicas del Cristo de Elqui, ii, by Nicanor Parra

------------------------

The Space Opera

Nicanor appears in the southern sky, growing every second.
A coup happens. A coup unhappens.
Deep beneath the Atacama desert, lair of the rebels.
North America occupies 90% of the sky above Santiago.
The indigenous people are aliens.
The only way out of Moneda Palace is suicide.
Every night, a gun rises in the east, sets in the west.
A small fishing boat rescues flop-eared Jesus, drunk to the gills.
Jesus is a mercenary with a dark, dark past.
Nicanor points to the eventual heat death of the universe.

Gumby in uniform, clay gun at the ready.
Eugenio flees into old age.
Chile smells itself.
Nicanor sing softly in the nearest café.


All work copyright (c) 2011 by Jim Smith