Radmila Lazic

empty-ish

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Sorry, My Lord
–Radmila Lazić
I’m penniless, my Lord.
Empty heart, empty pussy.
The pockets of my soul are turned inside out.
In my head something tinkles
As in a Red Cross box.
Slip something in my wallet, Lord.

I’m empty and broke.
My heart whistles like a teakettle.
Elsewhere, landscapes burst with beauty.
Here darkness presses on the eyelids.

I squandered everything, blew it away
As if there was no tomorrow.
Now it’s Your turn to give me something.
Feed me, heal me
Before You write it down in Your book.
Give me a butt, a lousy nickel.
Give this sinner a cock.

Give me this day.

I neither sow nor reap,
Nor do I weave.
I obeyed Thee, Lord,
Now You take care of me.
I laze in bed past noon,
Loaf around all day with nothing to do.
Nights I spend in bars or over my manuscripts,
Keep vigil, bleed.
In the morning I step on the cold floor of my heart.
Your son, Your darling,
I sniff between his legs
The way a bitch sniffs her litter.
You said: Do unto others
As you would have done unto you.
But that man gave me a kick,
Shook me like sand out of a sandal.
I suspect other heels dance now
On his heart’s stage
While mine lies hollow like a gutter
Beaten by lethal drops of rain.

Nothing comes easy to me anymore-
Narrow gate, narrow path.
Stop staring at me, Lord.
Gravity won’t hold me up.
I ‘m tipsy, I’ve lost my footing.
The street grows even more crooked.
My house is even more distant.
Give me Your hand, extend Your finger
Like a torch, not a whip.
Life wails like a mouth organ.
I’ve thoroughly lost my way.
I can’t tell from the birds,
Plants, trees, cardinal points,
Sweetwater fish from the deep-sea kind,
The source from the mouth of a river,
The dreams over which I wade
From the street where I swing my hips.

Many times I fell in love forever.
My heart was a hot stove.
Now the jug is broken.
Let there be sex unstained by love
Is my slogan now.

Every other desire I shook off
Like raindrops from a coat.
Have mercy, Lord.
I sing of a drowned soul
Which I can’t drag to the shore.
My hands hang like wild game.
Help me! Rescue me!
Give me-mouth-to-mouth!

I love strong drink, violent men,
And other such foolish things.
I confess to You, Lord,
Not a Single sin eluded me.
Like Your own body
My heart is a pincushion.

Sorry, Lord.
I’m neither Martha nor Magdalena.
I’m what You spat out, Your discharge.
Now weigh it all on Your scales.
Don’t tip them, don’t cheat on me.
Go and weigh them.
Blind my heart, take away my sight
To suffer and pay.
Lord, have mercy on me.

Original

Sorry, Gospode
-Radmila Lazić
Švorc sam, Gospode.
Prazno srce, prazna pica,
Izvrnuti džepovi moje duše.
U glavi tek ponešto zveči
Kao u konzervi prilog za Crveni krst.
Tutni nešto, Bogo, u moj buđelar.

Prazna sam i bez prebijene
Srce mi pišti ko čajnik.
Negde vidici pucaju od lepote,
Ovde sumrak pritisko kapke.

Sve sam protraćila, proćerdala.
Sve spiskala.
Sad Ti udeli, nahrani, isceli.
Pre nego što ubeležiš,
Daj pljugu, daj kintu,
Daj kitu, ovoj grešnici.

Daj mi danas.

Niti sijem, niti žanjem,
Niti predem,
Tebe poslušah, Bogo,
Sad Ti pobrini se za me.
Izležavam se do podne.
Danju unaokolo cunjam, gluvarim,
Noću nad rukopisima il po barovima
Dreždim, krvarim.
Ujutru stajem na hladan pod srca
Tvog sina, tvog čeda.
Njušim njegovo međunožje
Kao keruša svoje male.
Jer, Ti kaza:
Sve što hoćete da vama čine ljudi,
Činite i vi tako njima.
Al šutnu me taj čova,
Istrese me ko pesak iz sandale.

Više mi ništa ne ide od ruke —
Uska vrata, tesan put.
Ne bulji u mene, Bogo,
Ne drži me zemljina teža,
Nacvrcana sam, gubim korak,
Ulica mi je sve krivlja,
Kuća sve dalja,
Pruži ruku, pruži prst,
Ko luču, ne ko prut.

Život cvili kao usna harmonika,
Daleko sam zabasala.
Ne razlikujem više vrste ptica,
Biljaka, drveća, strane sveta,
Rečne od morskih riba,
Izvor od ušća.
Snove po kojima gacam
Od ulice kojom njišem kukovima.

Više puta voleh zauvek,
Moje srce beše vrela ringla,
Sad je vrč razbijen.
Seks neuprljan ljubavlju,
Moja je deviza.
Sve druge želje stresoh
Ko kišne kapi sa kaputa.
Gospodi pomiluj!
Pevam o duši utopljenoj,
Koju ne mogu na obalu izvući.
Kao obešena divljač vise moje ruke.
Pomozi! Izbavi!
Daj mi — usta na usta!

Voleh gorka pića, žestoke momke,
I koješta još,
Priznajem Ti, Bogo,
Ne mimoiđe me nijedan greh.
Kao Tvoje telo,
Moje srce je jastučić za igle.

Sorry, Gospode,
Nisam ja ni Marta ni Marija Magdalena.
Tvoj sam ispljuvak, tvoja slina.
Sad, sve stavi na kantar.
Ne priteži i ne zakidaj.
Odreži!
Obnevidi mi srce, liši me vida.
Patiti i platiti.
Gospodi pomiluj!

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

worthless and painful reserves

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Twilight Metaphysics
–Radmila Lazić
It’s too late to teach my heart anything.
The alphabet of suffering
I already know by heart. I test it live.
Life knows more than the Sybil.

Time has stopped. What bliss is there in flowing?
Reality resembles a moth-eaten sweater —
This is poetry.
Life limps like a crippled girl
Who hopes to marry well
Even though her heart is scarred with memories.
Biography of fire and water.
These are the worthless and painful reserves
With which one starts on a long, uncertain journey
Over one’s own private homeland
On which every foot steps on in boots.

Older than Cain is every suffering,
Even this one which like a cousin from far away
Has come for a three-day visit
And stayed, made herself comfortable,
Took up all the room —
And says nothing about leaving!

The time of miracles is behind us.
Time of tower-building,
Heavenly and earthly gardens
From schoolbooks and poems.
The so-called Greek luck awaits us
Where we will never arrive.
Therefore, if you can,
Water the flowers and the heart
From the same pitcher.
Time doesn’t dry up,
Nor make steps quicker, as they say.
Time swallows its own images
As if they were its children.

Get it through your head, throwing a blanket
Over your face won’t help you.
Even if underneath it a dear body waits for you.
No use stuffing wax in your ears either.
The siren’s song will be a part of your scream.

Those born happy and less happy
Die before their own body dies.
They wear their faces like other people’s clothes
As in paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

The one who wrote the sky, the earth and the sea,
And above all, snow and dreams,
The phases of the moon, the color of leaves, our faces,
Seems distant and cold like the North Pole.

Don’t call that nihilism or blasphemy.
With wrong syntax and bad diction
Was how the world was created —
So many apples of divisiveness
Have been tossed between us,
One of them will roll even at your feet,
Perhaps, just as you’ve brought in the harvest,
Added up the accounts,
Thrown your hands over your head
Chasing rings of smoke and reveries.

Dead-born will be your wishes.
Your every hope will be a widow.
And as for love, not enough
To spread on a slice of bread.

Photo by Fischer Twins on Unsplash

“It’s too late to teach my heart anything”

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National Poetry Month continues. As much as I love ‘standards’ that we get in English-language literature and poetry education, I love much more the stuff we don’t get and have spent my entire adult life seeking those things out. The university-era me, greedily slurping up the lit – whenever I could find it – of the former Yugoslavia, by then in tatters, fell in love with Radmila Lazić (Радмила Лазић), expressing as she does, so much contempt for the binary, the boundaries, the rules, the restrictions. It mirrored how I felt then, before I had fully found my way or knew where I might go in my life, wanting to burst out of the confines of expectation, the humdrum and some life requiring obedience to anyone but myself.

A Woman’s Letter
-Radmila Lazić
I don’t want to be obedient and tame.
Coddled like a cat. Faithful like a dog.
With a belly to my teeth, hands in the dough,
Face covered with flour, my heart a cinder
And his hand on my ass.

I don’t want to be a welcome flag at his door,
Nor the guardian snake under his threshold,
Neither the snake nor Eve from Genesis.

I don’t want to pace between the door and the window,
To listen hard and be able to distinguish
Footsteps from night-sounds.
I don’t want to follow the leaden movement of the watch-hands,
Nor see falling stars
For him to gore me drunkenly like an elephant.

I don’t want to be sewn with needlepoint
To the family portrait
Next to the fireplace with balled up children,
In the garden with puppy children,
And I the shade tree,
And I the winter landscape,
A statue under the snow.
In a pleated wedding dress
I’ll fly to heaven.

Alleluia! Alleluia!
I don’t want a bridegroom.

I want gray hair, a hump and a basket
To go roaming in the woods,
Picking strawberries and dry twigs.

With my whole life behind me,
The smile of that boy,
So dear and irreplaceable.

Twilight Metaphysics
-Radmila Lazić
It’s too late to teach my heart anything.
The alphabet of suffering
I already know by heart. I test it live.
Life knows more than the Sybil.

Time has stopped. What bliss is there in flowing?
Reality resembles a moth-eaten sweater —
This is poetry.
Life limps like a crippled girl
Who hopes to marry well
Even though her heart is scarred with memories.
Biography of fire and water.
These are the worthless and painful reserves
With which one starts on a long, uncertain journey
Over one’s own private homeland
On which every foot steps on in boots.

Older than Cain is every suffering,
Even this one which like a cousin from far away
Has come for a three-day visit
And stayed, made herself comfortable,
Took up all the room —
And says nothing about leaving!

The time of miracles is behind us.
Time of tower-building,
Heavenly and earthly gardens
From schoolbooks and poems.
The so-called Greek luck awaits us
Where we will never arrive.
Therefore, if you can,
Water the flowers and the heart
From the same pitcher.
Time doesn’t dry up,
Nor make steps quicker, as they say.
Time swallows its own images
As if they were its children.

Get it through your head, throwing a blanket
Over your face won’t help you.
Even if underneath it a dear body waits for you.
No use stuffing wax in your ears either.
The siren’s song will be a part of your scream.

Those born happy and less happy
Die before their own body dies.
They wear their faces like other people’s clothes
As in paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

The one who wrote the sky, the earth and the sea,
And above all, snow and dreams,
The phases of the moon, the color of leaves, our faces,
Seems distant and cold like the North Pole.

Don’t call that nihilism or blasphemy.
With wrong syntax and bad diction
Was how the world was created —
So many apples of divisiveness
Have been tossed between us,
One of them will roll even at your feet,
Perhaps, just as you’ve brought in the harvest,
Added up the accounts,
Thrown your hands over your head
Chasing rings of smoke and reveries.

Dead-born will be your wishes.
Your every hope will be a widow.
And as for love, not enough
To spread on a slice of bread.

Photo by Toa Heftiba used under Creative Commons license.

Feeling – Poetry – Morning Blues

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Today’s feeling is a lot like I stumbled across in a poem, “Morning Blues” by Radmila Lazic:

I’m fed up with faking happiness,
Play acting contentment
As if it was all just fine,
As if things are beginning to go well
Now that I’ve played the role of my life
And won the big prize at the lottery.

I yearn for something I have no name for,
For something that would change my life,
Turn it upside down,
make it leave the rails on which I travel
making punctual stops.