An Airport Emergency Journal

            The way priorities of passion and greed are drowned at times is clear only when the water is burning the nostrils and the throat and the heart. ''How do I fucking make sure that I stumble upon the blonde in the lobby again?" becomes "Where the fuck in this room is my passport." Desire turns to despair, desire made cold and wet like wet clay, uselessly smearing and freezing on all the fingers. It is the perfect little red booklet that you need now, not the perfect little red nipples: That which is made perfect by its seemingly unreal loss has overcome that which is perfect in its lifelike dreams. Indeed, loss overcomes imagination. You imagine perfect little red nipples again, other perfect little red nipples; but every time you lose that perfect little red booklet -for you do lose that booklet very often, in hotel rooms, in bags, in airports, as if to abandon the name and the likeness that is you or as if to cut all this crap and pleasurably imprison yourself in a waiting room of an airport forever-, every single time, the nipples will be gone. Everything will be gone. A gentle, mellow aching of the heart for a few hours and no more "Oh I am so happy and so anxious and so curious and so fucking frightened that I will be living on another continent in a few months and oh what is the food like and ah the culture is definitely inferior yes but yeah human rights and freedoms are certainly much, much superior" but only an "Oh will I be alive the next second, please let me be alive the next second' now. The nipples gone, the passport gone, the hotel rooms gone, airports gone. Only the heart remains. The heart of the matter. Not that any of it matters. Nipples in a hotel room and a glorious higher education in a foreign continent and other dreams of the future shall be unravelled only if they are to be unravelled, because the ache shall heal only if it is to heal and if it is to turn into a torn, dead heart then it will turn into a torn, dead heart. Loss drowns all passion and greed, death drowns all loss and passion and greed; and the fear of death drowns all, even death. But if your heart is not aching yet, none of this will matter much to you, I know and approve this, the audacity of an uninterrupted, unbothered life. If -or when- your heart is not aching anymore, this will really not matter much to you either, not anymore. I know and approve this, too, the foolish, immense forgetfulness that characterizes the human being, making him the slave to passion and greed crying out in joy and exaltation. But you've paused graciously from your passion and greed to read this crap, so I will cut to the point: Go on, go on like this, write little meditations or chase nipples to suck or lose and find your passport, whatever you think will help you get through with the fact your heart is slowly -or quickly, (''oh please not quickly''--the first and foremost and the only shared prayer of all men and women)- becoming torn and dead; but pause just for a little moment every once in a long while: Think about trying to become the kind of person who doesn't lose a passport, not quite that often, think about not worrying about death and separation that much, it cannot possibly be good for your heart. Or think for a moment about seeking medical attention. Then carry on.

Gifts

My gift
is to read lucidly and impress the elderly
in two languages
and win at
small insignificant things
like not pulling the doors that say PUSH and predicting rain.

Your gift
is beauty
I would kill you
if I knew I could steal your gift that way.

I read men and women whose gift is
to write like mirrors;
unravel body and soul, make and unmake
dawn and dusk between two covers
I would burn every single letter they wrote forever
if I knew I could steal their gifts that way.

I know of someone
whose gift is impeccable health of mind
who is alive despite knowing that
his name will be on a gravestone somewhere someday
I would unleash maladies on the world
Pestilence and plague, dusk, eternal dusk
if I knew I could steal his gift that way.

This
is the kind of person that I am:
shameless twat, servant to the vest
who wants the dawn and the dusk, winter and summer,
your gifts and his, all the gifts, greedy, yes, won't stop--

luckily someone gave me a gift of paper and pen
so I lie still in my little lair, buried
in jealousies disguised as longings
my desire endless
my limbs unmoving
my blessings uncounted,
scheming and scheming.