THE YELLOW NOTEBOOK

Alphonse Millet is a seventy years old Frenchman who searches for his old notebooks he left in the attic or the basement of his country house. Alphonse quickly reads through his finds, and tells about their contents to his grand-daughter Lily who types and saves all the words she hears on her laptop computer, before the notebooks are thrown into a fire, because the old man doesn’t want anyone to ever waste their time and hurt their eyes deciphering what he calls, “that unreadable stuff”.

“Please write,” Alphonse says, “a black notebook. Eight per twelve centimeters. No title… No date… I wrote about the heart of a butterfly: Something sexy… About Voltaire, that he wasn’t at all an atheist, although he surely was an impious person… About turning time itself into fuel for an engine so we could visit other worlds… About the electric universe… About a child who believed that he could fool the world, who grew up to become a fool who believed that the whole world cheated on him... About a very hungry lady–I mean a dragonfly...” Etc.

Alphonse can’t find one special notebook, “the yellow one” as he calls it, but Lily discovers it in her room, at night, and learns an extraordinary secret her grand-father wrote about some thirty years earlier. What is Alphonse’s secret? What will happen next? I can not tell you now…

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Divinity (detail) by reading_is_dangerous]

PORTRAIT OF AN OLD FRIEND

An old friend of ours lived in a forest.
What forest?
We forgot its name.

We are very old too,
and there was a lot we wanted to forget,
and so we did.

We forgot.
Now what was it that you wanted to know,
my darling?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Portrait of an old friend, in a forest by reading_is_dangerous]

MAGIC WORDS

Her job was to listen to people. After-hours to relax she would sit at her favorite bar, and have a glass of red wine, and talk. One day she told me, “your hot body, your good smile, your good fortune, your days, your dreams, your nights, the whole of you; a hungry river will take it all. It will be a beautiful morning, I hope, when these words will come out of your mouth, “EAT ME!” and the waters will swallow you. Whatever you do, whoever you are, the rivers, the deserts, the seas, the bogs, a quicksand, a fire, the Earth will take you. The world never rejected anyone or anything. The world gives you all what it has, the good vibrations, and once in a while, this means a good facelift, a new beginning, your atoms reorganize themselves, and you’re now a white lily, a rabbit, a wolf, a tear in one of the wolf’s eyes.”

I asked her, “What about Him?” I didn’t want to say His name. “Him, you mean Him?” she said, “well, everybody knows that He stood laughing when they put somebody else on the Cross to be crucified in His place.”

“Who told you that?” I asked her. “A good friend of mine, a priest,” she said. “How horrible a thought,” I said. “How beautiful,” she replied. “The Truth itself isn’t important. What’s important is the story, because that’s all we got, stories, tales, legends, myths, poems, songs, jokes, conversations… and even lies, and that’s all magic, and that’s the only magic there is, with dancing, and skipping, and running, and taking things and people for ourselves, before we give it all away.” She ordered two glasses of wine. “You’ll see,” she said, “I just uttered a few magic words, and soon we’ll each have wine to sip, and later we should go skipping. Imagine this: Two drunks skipping hand in hand, in the city.”

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Red wine by reading_is_dangerous]

THE SPARK PLUG

Beautiful nook. Badee bada. A demon came out of me, smoke, smoke. “Hello, at last,” I said, “Badbye, you fool,” said the demon. It left. Didn’t wave or look back. Damn it.

Oranges won’t be for sale for another month and a half. We’re considering selling the Christmas tree. There was a plane flying low, last night. It maybe was catching flies. Ha! ha! I laughed. They should know better. Don’t catch a fly unless you’re going to eat it. Birds know better. Frogs know better. Lizards know better. Cats know better. Spiders know better.

I will not walk on you. There is a spark plug in your third eye. Have you ever heard of the third ear? We all have a third arm too. Let’s hold hands, and step into the dance!

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Lake Monkey by reading_is_dangerous]

I WILL BE IN THE WALLS

3:00 AM - BRING ME A GLASS OF WATER, PLEASE
There is a bell. She is a woman. I am about to leave. I wish she wasn't made of bronze. There you go. Yes.

6:00 AM - AGAIN
Again, this is where I am going to. Yesterday. Why not? We can't go on like this. A table. A chair. I will be in the walls, in the floor, in your mouth. A spaceship, I am. Little red Riding Hood, but she's grown up. There you go. I will clean this mess I call my mind, my backyard, my thoughts, my tennis table, so I can play with you. I once had a girl friend, she had the most amazing green eyes, a forest each. I was a white beast, furry, unknown, all teeth.

6:35 AM - NO
This means no. No. No, no, no, no, no. I should step on it. Smash it. What else could I do? Ignore it. Yeah, yeah. It will wither and die, if I ignore it. I shouldn't give a no to anything that's going to wither and die anyway. Yes, yes. Ha! That's better. I feel better. You're right, Yoju. I should have thought of it.

Where should we go? To see the red monk.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The red monk by reading_is_dangerous]

GEMSTONES AND ME

Birds of stone, their eggs are like hematite, turquoise, jasper, quartz, lapis lazuli. Each egg is a world, every morning I eat ten. Casanova, you should read his memoirs, could eat twelve at a time.

The flight went well. I am so happy to see you. Did you really think I were taller than this? Ha! ha! Now where should we go? I will have scrambled stones and bacon too, please, with a kiss.

The Sun rides a blue horse. The Moon is an egg in a silky dress. Stars are electric lights, baby, didn’t you know? Please hand me the green ketchup. Birds of stone fly underground, that makes them harder to shoot. Have you ever seen a tiger catch a bird? Tigers-eye. Agate. Malachite. In the word “scream”, there is the word “cream.” Casanova loved hoaxes. He invented the lotto. Can you remember the names of the twelve Apostles?

Twelve tourmalines together on a necklace smiled to me. I flew all the way on a rugby. Did you really not guess a kiss is better than this? I will have a French light, please. Tigers don’t cry. Amethyst, sugilite, chysocolla. Remember this song? Boys don’t cry

I live underground too. Yesterday, a friend and I examined a few old books he got from his grand-father who died recently. There were all of Molière’s plays, three volumes published in 1776, and I wish you could feel the paper, it hasn’t turned yellow, it’s really incredible quality paper. We read aloud Le Bourgeois gentilhomme created in 1670. Act IV, we couldn’t stop laughing, because the Turks are dancing and singing, “Hu la ba ba la chou ba la ba ba la da.”

I had a collection of gemstones when I was a child. I wonder what happened to it, and what of my stamps, and what happened to my electric kit, you know, with a set of colorful resistors, and black transistors, and little light bulbs, and wires, and sunbirds of stone.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Self-portrait with a hat by reading_is_dangerous]

THAT SOFA ON TOP OF THAT SOFA

You are the last person to read this. Tonight was tonight. Something came out of my back, and said, “This is not your back anymore.” I went away. I had an umbrella, but it was angry at me. “Why do you…” the umbrella asked me. “Shut up!” I shouted. People stared at us.

I know you think I’m a fool. I smile when I should be eating steak, the steak in my plate, the meat you so kindly grilled for me. I like it rare, with pepper. Pepper ants, pepper fireworks. I like the smell of it, them, us, you. There is no way around it, my nose is a freak for pepper. The other day, the NASA contacted me, they wanted to study my nose. “You guys won’t need that on the Moon,” I said, and that was it.

There is no limit to the speed we could reach if they let me develop my Silence Engine. In deep space, it’s very silent, and an engine that could convert silence into motion would enable us to leave the rest of them crazies here on Earth. I’d bring with me a forest, a swamp, stone elephants and wild roses. Have you ever had tea made with wild roses? The petals, the fruit, both do well.

Crazy Dolly. Remember that song? That must have been a song. I am sure there was a song. I must have heard it when I was a boy, when I was listening to music when I should have been asleep. This morning, I dreamt that I was painting for real, not on the computer like I always do. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, he came by to look at my works, and he said, “I like that sofa on top of that sofa.”

::: ::: :::

[Picture: That sofa on top of that sofa by reading_is_dangerous]

I forgot to say, I forgot to say that today I had my first pomegranate of the season, and it was very sweet!

THE MUIRBORPO

if you’ve never heard of it,
let me tell you about the muirborpo

it is a common parasitic fly
that lays a single egg
on the eye of its human host

that is the inner eye,
the third one,
and so the larva develops
by greedily eating your special sense of sight
until it feels ready for metamorphosis

unfortunately you’ve gone blind to others,
blind to your inner self,
blind to the future,
blind to the greater picture

you can still hear words,
higher speak,
the Song,
the greater harmonies,
you can still hear that—thanks to your “third ear”

but soon a young muirborpo comes out of its old larval skin,
and it is hungry,
oh! so hungry

you were already blind;
now you’re about to go deaf.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: 30 years ago by reading_is_dangerous]

BILL COSBY, DENNIS KUCINICH, LOUIS VITALE, AND STEVE KELLY

I just listened to Bill Cosby on Larry King Live,
it was the first time I saw him since the times of his show,
how long ago that was, I don’t know.

years go by,
I don’t watch much television,
but I feel lucky I turned on the TV today,
because Cosby spoke good words,
words of wisdom,
words of truth,
his truth,
I mean, nobody really knows what the truth is on anything,
but at least one should always try and say what seems true to them,
and one should always speak their truth on TV especially,
and that’s what made such a strong impression on me,
that I heard a man speak from his heart,
using his brain,
with the knowledge of some interesting statistics,
unafraid,
committed,
kind,
without being too much emotional about it.

indeed, I found Cosby to be very rational,
deep,
inspired,
serious.

he spoke about the beauty of Mathematics,
that we should tell the children about it,
that when their eyes open to the beauty of science,
their world will become a better place.

I can’t quote him exactly,
because I have bad memory for words,
ha! ha! isn’t that funny,
but the ideas,
I could catch his ideas very well,
Cosby is telling the people to talk to each other,
to build or to rebuild their community,
and to fight together against the evil that plagues them,
whether it is (it was) the Ku Klux Klan or the crack dealers,
and that no one should wait for the government to bring them money
to be the solution for this or that problem

people should talk,
share their thoughts, their ideas, their experience,
so they have a chance to find a solution.

in a way, the Internet can be a great tool for that,
but my feeling was that Cosby meant that people should meet,
and discuss the issues important to them,
and build trust,
a community of people who can trust each other.

when he was asked about politics, about the Black candidate, one Obama,
it was obvious that Cosby didn’t care about skin color,
not in that context anyway.

“there is one guy I love in Ohio,” Cosby said,
and he forced Larry King to say the name: Kucinich,
but when Cosby wanted to talk about all the important things Kucinich is saying,
Larry King cut him, and said,
“We’ll have a break,”
but there had just been a break,
and you know what I mean.

afterwards, King asked Cosby what he thought was the impact
of the crimes of a few well-known Black men,
their impact on the image of the Black community in the medias.
Who cares? was, in essence, Cosby’s answer.
He should know;
he could have said more,
maybe better,
because over the years, Mr. Cosby has had a few lawsuits against him,
but in my opinion,
that’s besides the point.

he asked,
Why don’t the medias spend more time telling us about the crimes of
those who poison our food, who poison the land,
who waste our savings or ruin the lives of millions of people?

since I’m writing about what’s going on, on TV,
I might as well add a few words about this famous Russian talk show,
it’s called The Cultural Revolution,
and yesterday they had this question,
“Does knowledge (being informed) makes one sad?”
with the idea that maybe we shouldn’t know too much about what’s
happening.
The guests spoke one hour about it,
but in the end,
the host, Michael Shvydkoy,
he said something like this,
“Knowledge won’t make you more sad,
although it might disturb your sleep,
but why should you sleep well all the time?”

by the way,
what’s the difference between
knowledge
and information?

::: ::: :::

[Picture : People by reading_is_dangerous]

It should be interesting to read, Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, published this year by B. Cosby and A.F. Poussaint (who was also on Larry King Live).

I just read: “Louis Vitale, 75, a Franciscan priest, and Steve Kelly, 58, a Jesuit priest, were each sentenced to five months in federal prison for attempting to deliver a letter opposing the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca in Arizona.”

THE UNIVERSAL RECORDING DEVICE

we fear words
like we fear masks
like we fear doors
like we fear the sea, the giant fish that will swallow us.

we fear words
like we fear death or the last moment before death.

our last breath.
Any word we say
could be the last.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The universal recording device by reading_is_dangerous]

STEAK, LUCKY, DAY, HAT, METALS

inside of me is all
metal
various metals
happy metals
unhappy metals
strong metals
weak ones
rare ones
and even, radio-active ones.

the heart is the exception, yes
it’s made of steak
it’s a cross between a steak and a single sock
it’s full of
milk,
red milk,
extraordinary milk that sings in the rain,
that watches clouds in the sky
and knows all,
this girl is like this,
this girl is like that,
this woman is being honest,
this woman is a storm,
this storm has been going on for a few days already.

there is lightning,
the climate is changing here,
we see more rain,
more water,
more of everything,
except that I can’t really trust myself,
because I forget a lot,
faces,
features,
names,
the weather,
years,
what day of the week it is.

I remember one day in Tbilisi
as I was walking down the street in Sololaki
I saw a rugged-featured man coming out of a courtyard
and he was old
and he had a long beard
and a cap,
and he asked me,
“friend, what day is it today?”

and I thought,
how lucky,
how great,
how incredible,
how magnificent,
how strong,
how beautiful a man can be
when he can just stand up and ask that question.

how drunk?

well
I’m getting there except for the long beard
and the hat maybe,
I wouldn’t know what kind of hat to wear.

what hat would be proper for a man
whose inside is all metals
except for the heart
a steak
a single sock full of red milk
etc.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Vendredi by reading_is_dangerous]

APPLES AND THE GOLD COIN

I found an ancient gold coin.

one side is naked, bah!
The other side bears this word, lex

now I am considering eating it, the coin

in the old days,
people who could afford it were eating gold, yes

they still do it today.
Gold dust on a chocolate cake will keep you
healthy, or make you look beautiful (if that’s your wish)

now if I chew on that old gold coin,
I wonder…
maybe I’ll just get a little bit older?

oh!
What if I just had an apple instead?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Apples or perfect red circles of life or esoteric knowledge by reading_is_dangerous]

HYPOTHESIZING

I am hypothesizing that
the next
great American revolutionary
maybe was born in a trailer
shortly after the devastation brought by
hurricane Katrina

her mother is single (I’m just imagining)
and working on three jobs
and ill
but she doesn’t have access to health care
and she dies of exhaustion in ten years from now

she leaves just enough money for her girl to
undertake graduate studies in philosophy
and history
especially,
the history of the Russian revolutionaries
because, let’s say,
the girl’s great grand-father was Russian,
and she keeps an old pistol from him
that was used,
the legend goes,
to shoot on a cruel general
during the reign of Tsar Alexander II

but a lack of financial support
forces the poor girl to abandon her studies

she doesn’t care
because she has a boyfriend she’s in love with
who is a well-known peace activist
for whom she writes numerous speeches
good ones, excellent ones, extraordinary speeches,
until one day
when a private security officer tasers the boy to death
for no apparent reason (of course)

from that day on
the girl reads her speeches herself

“my words are too dangerous for anybody else
but me to read aloud,” she declares

she moves away from the peace movement
and closer to something else
some new system, her own invention
which goes beyond peace

maybe she’ll believe
as Lenin did
that an imperialist war like the so-called,
never ending war on terror, ought to be turned into a
civil war between the classes

she might be able to achieve this
by throwing the predictably disillusioned veterans
of any future (imperialistic) war
against the corrupt establishment,
against the war profiteers,
against their already degenerate society

I wouldn’t support such a position
but I doubt she’d be listening to me or to others

what storm listens to man?

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Silhouettes, head by reading_is_dangerous] (Spring 2007)

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, a former lawyer turned revolutionary, became the first leader of the Soviet Union in 1922. He died in 1924 at the age of 54, either from syphilis or because of a fourth stroke caused by a bullet lodged in his neck since an assassination attempt six years earlier. He spent the last ten months of his life bedridden, unable to speak.

ARMENIA WAS BEAUTIFUL TODAY

I went to the inauguration of an arts center for children,
in a little village
an hour away from Yerevan.

the center seemed well built
activities will include painting,
sculpting,
carpet-weaving,
and needlework.

I examined the tools for working with wood or metal,
everything was functional,
drinking water was running from the taps,
the place was clean
with a lot of windows
and a nice patio.

there was a garden with all the vegetables you could dream of:
eggplants
tomatoes
okra, etc.
and tasty walnuts
and the poplars all around were turning yellow,
and I thought of my dad,
because whenever I see a poplar tree I think of my dad, well,
that’s since I compared him to one,
in a poem,
on Father’s day,
this year.

there came a priest
who sang a prayer for the opening of the arts center,
and I thought,
that’s good religion. See,
the people here are not hardcore believers,
well,
that’s my opinion,
yet they always visit their churches,
and they often invite a priest who’ll sing and say a few good words,
in Armenian,
and it’s beautiful,
it’s always beautiful.
The melodies of those prayers are just great.

the center was built and is financed by the family of an
Armenian artist who studied in the UK,
and lived, and worked there, and in Italy.
He died when he was only 37;
He had planned to help establish creative activities in Armenia.

an arts and crafts center will surely be beneficial to the local children,
there is no doubt about it.
I saw some of the kids’ works,
decorated pebbles,
wooden game boards,
ceramics,
etc. and I thought it was all excellent.

there was a mancala.
That was the first time I saw one in Armenia.

“What’s this?” a man asked me.
“An African game,” I said. The man turned to his wife, and said,
“It’s an Egyptian game,”
“It’s an African game,” I repeated.
“Yes,” the man said, “an Egyptian game.”

the children were beautiful,
and they behaved well. There was a violin, a cello,
and the wine was good, for once.

the next time I go there, I’ll bring a kite.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Somewhere out of town by reading_is_dangerous] (Picture taken earlier this summer, before the loss of my camera)

I searched on Wikipedia for Mancala, and found, “The first evidence of the game are fragments of a pottery board and several rock cuts found in Aksumite Ethiopia in Matara (now in Eritrea) and Yeha (in Ethiopia), which are dated by archaeologists to between the 6th and 7th century AD.”

THE PLASTIC BOAT

I was a plastic canoe on a river,
in a slalom race.

Various truths marked the winding course.
Never did I hit a pole.

Was I happy?
I don’t know.
I want to believe that I wasn’t unhappy.

I won the race,
but I wasn’t the only winner.
There were millions of us,
five hundred,
maybe seven hundred million winners.

The losers—oh! there were so many of them—were trussed,
then drowned in the cold waters of the river,
by the canoeists.

See,
the losers were people,
but the winners like me were just boats.

I am a boat.
I am just a plastic boat.

I know this doesn’t make sense.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The race by reading_is_dangerous]

I THINK AND I THINK AND I THINK

I think and I think and I think
But nothing’s coming out of it

I eat
I sleep

I think and I think and I think
sometimes I write a word

I put a few words together
A few sentences

I think.

I can see the whole universe
The past and the future.

there is no end, you know?
It never even began, begin, will begin

a thought is a sight
You can’t touch it, but it’s there

it’s a thing,
and I am a thing.

I hear voices
Monster voices, monstrous.

“the question is not
If there is life on other worlds,
But if there is love
Elsewhere than here?” a voice says.

“is there love here?” another voice asks.

“what happens when you hate love?” a third voice asks .

can you hate love? And if so,
What does it mean?

love is a bind.
Hate is a bind too (of another kind)

is everything a bind
Or is there something that’s not?

if you kill love on Earth,
Have you killed it for good?

if you kill love,
Are you free?

if there was a door you could go through and
Step out of the universe, would you…

think about it.
Think

why do you keep your eyes closed
While little boys and girls dig some deep holes in Congo

to get that precious metal we need for our cell phones and comps
So we can grill our mind, our minds

how many minds have you? One?
Some people say: We have more than one soul

the soul comes in parts.
The good part, the bad part, etc.

I believe in good and bad and evil
But not in Good with a big G, or evil with a big E

anytime we try to reach for anything absolute we fool ourselves.
There is no perfect circle to search for

no perfect void.
No perfect silence.

I hear voices, noises.
There is a “eeee” sound that keeps me awake.

they say the Sun is singing,
but we can’t hear it, we don’t, shortly after birth, we lose it

I’ve lost it.
I’ve lost it.

Among men I am a man
Among dogs I am a dog
Among trees I am a tree
Among the dead I am dead

but who is I?
“I am the whole universe.”

among stars I am a star
among criminals I am a criminal
among tears I am a tear
among ships I am a ship

now tell me
Where are we going to?

what sea?
The sea of Saints.

one day
We’ll sit together
And talk.

I’ll tell you this:
I think and I think and I think,
And nothing is coming out of it.

the nothing.
You know?

the opposite of
Everything

by the way,
The price for fresh figs is about one dollar a kilo, these days.

maybe one can love love
And love that they are loving love.

he he he
ho ho ho

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Something is on your head by reading_is_dangerous]

THE OTHER SIDE

Whether or
not we can ever
cross over the dark Sea doesn’t
matter to me.

What you wish there
was waiting for us on
the other side
is what
matters to me.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: The other side by reading_is_dangerous]

DOTS, AND THE LIVING STONE

sometimes I want to say,
“I hate this,”
but I’m trying to stay away from that word,
“hate,”
so I say, I write,
“I dislike this,”
but the meaning or part of the meaning really is,
“I hate this,”
although I didn’t write it,
so the effect on my brain is maybe less,
not as strong as if I wrote,
“I hate this,”
but I’m losing some of the strength of what it was
that I wanted to say.

I do hate a number of things, situations, noises, stupidity,
bad food or food that’s not food, but people pretend it’s food.

I hate it
when I can’t tell somebody
why she should be careful about a certain person,
because I have no right to tell somebody all what I know
about that person.

if I made a list of the different types of questions
a human being has to deal with or could be dealing with,
it might look something like this,

1. Metaphysics. The why’s and what’s
2. Laws of the Universe. How everything works or worked or could work
3. Human life. How we, human beings, should live together
   
4. Art. What’s beautiful and what’s not. What’s art, why art, etc.

I’m not saying this list is complete,
or that any given question couldn’t belong to more than one
category, no, but my list helps me think of what it is that I want to
think about.

where would I put history? In section two, I believe

the hardest questions, in my opinion,
have to do with how human beings should live together

unless I remember something wrong,
five thousand children die of hunger (malnutrition) every day,
which is about a million and a half children every year.

I don’t understand how we can tolerate a situation like that,
and I hate it.

I hate that situation,
I hate that we tolerate it.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Gold atoms? and spontaneous writing by reading_is_dangerous]

AUTOMATIC

“what monster bridge?” I asked
“your shoulders,” they said

“so my head’s the monster,” I said
“your thoughts,” they said

that is good,
I believe

I’ll write a film script,
“AUTOMATIC” shall be the title

it will be about automatic thoughts
and mechanical speech

AU- reminds me of gold, the nature of the human soul
TOMA- I want to say tomatoes, ketchup, blood, ordinary drama
TIC sounds like tick, the tick of a clock, time

I don’t believe in the personal soul
but the idea exists, the myth

we are been colonized with it.
There is Liquid Paper all over my fingers

..<>..

we’ll argue mechanically, in the darkness
until dawn

then we’ll argue some more
until just before noon

then Stringhetta shall read a short poem
Right in time for the sunlight to fill the picture

then all will be very quiet
but for the faint sound of the rocking sea

::: ::: :::

[Picture: We need waves by reading_is_dangerous]

THE MIRROR CARPS

this woman, she bought two live fish
wanting to cook them for dinner
but she cannot resolve to kill them herself
so she puts them on the table
hoping they will die quickly

this other woman enters the room
and she sees the gasping fish
and she asks, “why don’t you kill them?”

the first woman explains why
and the second woman says that she cannot kill them neither
and she sits down
and she watches the dying fish
and those are mirror carps
and imagine you could look at yourself in a mirror carp
and imagine it could talk

after a while, the second woman says, “I won’t eat these fish,”
and the first woman says, “me neither,”
and now the two of them are waiting for the mirror carps
to die for nothing

the second woman was the sister-in-law of the first one
whose husband had just been murdered by the secret police
after the three of them had been deported from their home country
to a faraway land
because of some crime against the State
the man had been found guilty of

whether or not he did anything wrong
is hard to say since at the time of the events (some fifty years ago)
they were many random arrests
and perhaps that was all part of a machiavellian plan
to make everybody afraid of everybody else

when people get arrested nowadays or even killed
by this or that government
because they were “suspected terrorists” or
because it was another “terrible mistake”. . . . . .
when I hear about it, I sometimes think of those two women (real women)
who couldn’t kill or eat the mirror carps or let them live

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Fish by reading_is_dangerous]

TAKING A WALK

I saw a man with bright red pants,
And two girls eating vanilla cones,
And a tourist reading a map,
And three boys eating vanilla cones,
And a beggar asked me for a cigarette,
But I don’t smoke.

I saw a woman wearing a black t-shirt
Decorated with fake pearls sewn in the shape of
A fish,
And I saw five girls walking together,
Arm in arm,
And all were eating ice cream in a cone,
And at the corner of Mashtots’ Avenue
And Tumanyan Street,
I saw the stray dog that ressembles
A small German shepherd dog
And that dog is almost always there,
And it looked utterly depressed as usual,
And I didn’t dare talk to it as I sometimes do
Because I know its reaction is to bark joyfully
And that’s never a good idea for a stray dog to bark a lot
In the city.

A bit further down the street, I saw the ice cream seller,
And I thought,
“He’s aged a lot recently,”
And I asked myself,
“When was the last time I had ice cream in a cone?”
But I couldn’t remember.

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Birds by reading_is_dangerous]