Fairy tales and dragons

I dream of myself in the neighborhood.

my neighborhood

where the grass did not grow

just reinforced concrete

among sea-saws of shriveled wood.

a crazy geometry structered everything for us

the buildings ordered us.

there were narrow alleys

like wrinkles on a forehead

we meandered through them

like drops of sweat

always looking for a new place to hide

then

I see myself on the stairs by the elevator

the small manufacturing flaws

in the sandblasted glass door

gave me the priviledge

to understand the world and how it was born

when my young neighbors made claustrophobic love

waking up dazed in a spacecraft

taking them to the 10th floor

the blue floor where they vowed to each other

to stay together forever

surrounded by concrete

nothing was a joke

I slide on the red iron tobogan

forged in an infantile form

that marked us for misbehaving

to the market place with all the people

at the the rapist-murderer’s public sentencing

then queuing for meat

where we heard the echo of sighs

from a young woman

who had an illegal abortion

in the basement

in her family’s storage space...

that night a silver bowl rose

through the ventilation holes

changing into sequins,

the girl had become sparkly

like a dazzling gown

my memories also glitter

precious beads on my patriotic necklace

I see myself on the bulding terrace

where in summer tv antennas were poles for hammocks,

then fractals to capture

extraterestrial movies and games

from other worlds

the hot tar smelled of freedom

like spiced meatballs on grills

while we the building’s children

with thousands of guitars

matched the nation’s voice from stadiums.

then

my song about you and your history

sadly trickling down the buiding’s lip

slipping through the precast joints

into my teenage room

where posters stood for furniture

and the phone was

as now, a red ear

in my neighborhood girls ran with their lovers

straight from the beach,

leaving their towels as decoys

they would send me their letters with no addressee

so I failed the high school entrance exam

then, what a scare

the interview with

the charming plainclothes officer

a heavy 24 carat chain

to carry to the death

people were workers and glissened in the sun

a national-naive painting

the building had stairs of steam

and peepholes

the elevator doors were kept open for me

even without a car

I’ve been afraid of depths ever since

when the games were finished,

fairy tales began

from the mouths of the stories

dragons with seven heads appeared

smiling our way

people on my street wore colored glasses

I remember how fashionable stickers were

each window had one character assigned

there was a huge crack in the building

on my alley

late evenings or mornings at dawn,

my rebel friends would pass though it

I never saw them again

though during humid summers

their silhouettes appear in the hot air

like templates for ghosts

from the cubed houses, cut in concrete

custom-made

human mammals emerged.

the shoemaker ran out of glue

and lifts and heels

because we all wore wings and claws

in my neighborhood joy was best friends with death

and my world rested

on an imported crutch

on words without sound

in an alien world

from neighborhood tales alone

in my neighborhood

natural periscopes grew among the buildings

like tulips and chrysanthemums on patchy grass

so we had calligraphed signs

"do not pick the flowers"

my neighborhood was a fairyland

but in each tale

as in a perfect matrix

dragons with seven heads appeared

and from story to story

in thousands of pages

how many dragons

were split in two and multiplied?

and what I say now

is a never-ending story...

translated by Adrian G Sahlean