The Blue Tower (2 page)

 

Rommel was kissing heaven's dainty hands, and yet
from his airplane above the Sahara, my uncle
Rafko Perhauc still blew him to bits.

Via vaya, contolino.
The bench claps shut.
Canicula, canicula, my chest, my hat.
Canicula.
Masaccio was discovered in the next village over.
A bushel cuts the throat's angle.
It won't give me away.

 

Skull and crypt
Phallus—radish.

My bench goes to confirmation and hosts pistachios.
I remember Milenko wrapped in a toga.
Tearing out an accordion's guts means a lot.
Vanitas rotates the full moon smoking out of it.
Milenko preached at St. John the Divine, you don't
know if you can't see the cabin in the mirror. If you see yourself with
your fingers, wave. Stupica was finally ruined by his ambition
to paint a group portrait, a fresco, a monumental
work. Svetozar was in the chair at Dr. Rode's,
I waited outside with the fallen palate. I knocked
a cupboard out of the wall. I won, but nearly died. Barry
Watten told Miško Šuvakovič horrible things
about me. In my taxes a rabbit jumps
into the bull's eye of a cornea. Are you wet, white bird? What are you like?

Drawn moths don't penetrate the papers
or even get them wet. Goo-doo-lee, goo-doo-lah
rocks in my drinking cup. Death starts growing

 

in the sap. Short sticks fall in them. My grass,
frothy rouge, my grass, frothy rouge.
Flax intanats and then we're back at the velvet

 

munchkins. Knock on a door that's not there,
and the figs have red pits. Here's where the captain
with the dry skin swam. Exactly the same green

 

boot between the dark and the light Stradivarii.
When the Govic builds. When Cirila goes for milk.
I was father's driver. We rowed

 

like lightning. I wanted to be alone in the sand and
roll in it as the waves came. Lakes don't have any
plankton. Wire isn't wrapped inside the abdominal

 

cavity. It's an earthquake. Fruit touches the ground like
a lightbulb. The Ciudad floats on water and on the corner
a dog awaits me. Death is a ceramic. A Montesquiourous dog shits in it.

Clay of silent diasporas, is water yellow
when the oar hits it flat? Where does
all the wool on the cliffs come from? Does the moon

 

send a compass? The color of feathers, of fur,
of skin and the heart's rumbling under volcanoes
all depend on the place where its point is

 

set in. The court imitates the river. Terry
had a sixty-foot-long tapeworm inside her.
That time the court won. We cut the tapeworm to pieces.

 

The pumpkin, the vessel, or more coarsely put, the body
was put together like a babushka—one cell
inside the other. The points of the seams smelled of

 

lemon. Then a hand began to stroke
the nipple. And side passages were opened
for the cavalries underground. That's how

 

we discovered the field of torches, which
began mating with sagas. There was no more Captain
Bada. Suddenly we had the word

 

anitra.
The innocents made themselves a necklace.
And so we lived. Once again the cooking
was done by Cassandras, lovely

 

apelike monsters from the Carpathians. A horse
kissed me in vitro. Giudita offers me
her neck. I've stopped making eights with my bike.

The vehicle is simple. “Beauty sleep every day.”
Eight kilometers from Lisbon by streetcar, going
west. Reader, escaping from my baskets, haven't you noticed? You
can't escape from five baskets at once. The baskets
shift like a juggler's balls. And we were off.
We walked and walked, naked, far into the militarized zone. Hey,
handsome! You're squinting beneath me. You have to look in my eyes.
You proclaim a new good and a tank drives into your mouth.
We didn't slam huts like these since little Friday's
times. You don't even have a proper terrace here. A duke or a horse.
Kerry sends me caravans of camels from the
furthermost parts of the world. My home is Persepolis.
I accept my gifts in a factory. I lived to see
Alexander. I kept Alexander alive.

The Portuguese are bound with butchers and rampage
through the grass. Ubi, ubi, ubi, ubi, night? I carried
heaps of sand on the boat with a bucket. An otorhinolaryngologist
strengthens power. Let's drop this. I'll graze over
pastures. Listen to sounds in a bathtub. Aim my flashlight
at the stars. Up. At the treetops. Down. At the earth. Down.
At the ground. And zip, burrow my body into the air between cat
and bird. Between shotgun and stork. But the hunter doesn't
startle and shoots me above the waist, so my
lower part drops off, pants and all, and catches in
the bushes, waiting to be picked up and buried.
Silken lives end with “I wouldn't wish you a
splendid breakfast and a wretched supper,” as
Professor Menaše warned me. God warns me with death.

An etching, a beautiful white etching, you're devoid of people,
devoid of bodies. What if we started flapping, or spinning like a
propeller, we would invite frogs and plums and sailors' earrings

 

so the air wouldn't be thin, or the place where we're going. Will there
be action? Will lightning flash? Will there be phantasms? Dropping
trees, just wires quickly twisted in a ball? Frank!

 

I eat you, after so long, after, let's say, Primož's
intermediation and what John says about where to plant the stakes.
John doesn't put it like that, those are my words,

 

John would like to come to Slovenia, but we are in
the buds, the fringe, the grass, the beech leaves, and I could ram Maximilian
Dorner into a beech trunk almost, look how pale

 

he is, you don't realize how much you've drunk, says Metka,
she always shows up and saves me, since I've had her I've been calm,
I have a home, nothing will blow me apart again, we'll die, for sure,

 

but all of us will die, that's the nicest part, when it's time of course,
not now, hey, the metaphors are all gone, metaphors are
the prow of a shipwreck, a swollen member, the dissemination

 

of Flemings, they really have come up, but where are we, I'm still
spinning that propeller, summoning the muse,
obviously, because in the night I got up and retyped

 

(saved to disk) what Peter and I had done. Paced
the rooms like a hawk and whispered, are you coming? are you?
I was a beast and snatched him from Tanya,

 

Tanya listens to Rufus, I also adore him, that time when I
drove Joshua to Lucca, we listened to him constantly, I
think we're off the ground, at least that's how my I perceives it,

 

here I am now, Beatrice, furious for having wasted
hours and hours with that third-rate professor,
a really overstuffed reputation, and hardly heard of

 

Grischa. Beatrice was the most beautiful woman of her
time and if I'd been hanging around Milan back then,
forget Tatjana, forget Nina, not even Monica Vitti, and

 

even she dried up, hanging onto Antonioni,
hey, there are no metaphors here, Jure would be pleased,
no he wouldn't, this would be too frivolous for him, we're left

 

where we are, we remain, we've had a nice life,
we have one. I saw a spider while I shaved,
le matin, le chagrin, I've got to get something out,

 

so that something is left for people if they call me up
today. How, the gifted ones constantly ask me,
how? Hey, Beatrice is bathing, I can hear the water splash.

The mosque is a model of corporate shams,
Žiga shleps a hernia onto greenery.
I cattivi
pluck hairs out of their nostrils,
perché
i cattivi, perché non i buoni? I buoni e i
cattivi sono cattolici.
Sure, sure, Diran explains at dinner,
all the English boys at Oxford wanted
to sleep in my bed, and
we did, as innocent as puppies, but as soon as they grew their
first peach fuzz, my penis got bored and I changed orientation.
My mother prayed that I not catch the “English
disease.” Nigeria is homophobic, and
you? It's late, it's late, my friend, and now it's too late.
Both of us are writers, neither one's a doctor, he also says.

We had pretty girls and were excellent dancers,
Andro and I. The dual number is disappearing. We slid
over Karst mountains and drove to the sea. Do you remember
Cabiria? The skirts were long and people stared.
Everywhere people made way for you. But in Paris
at your Biennale des jeunes, it was
me
who prowled the night.
It's nice when young people cry with pleasure and you float and
listen to their sobbing. Robert became gay in the
sacristy, when a bear pounced on him. I reminded him
of that holy man. And who counts the souls that are
grateful to
him?
Tomaž Brejc said, what have you
been up to, you're so refreshed, and we're all rundown and
tired. It's true. I should have stood by Andraž back then
and trimmed his wings. Brothers can't sleep with each other.

My bow of little rags doesn't symbolize
black ones. Bow of little rags?
“What do you mean by that?” Let's say a
lasso, let's say a net, that catches you and
makes you ask that question. As if you lit a smoke,
tunk, tunk, tunk, see how nicely it
burns. “That's cheap, dude,”
you don't need to invite anyone out to eat. Tak, tak,
yes, those are tiny little billfolds for communication.
A fishing pole for catching ones like you. Oops,
they fly off in the air and drop in the sea.
They smell of milk and of mother's gel
and when you grow up, you'll also be a famous writer.

A pig went to a trough,
ate three silent birches, and that's supposed to be kind?
It is. It's how we summon the muse

 

on the farm. I eat the monkey's militias.
Kandahar is for appetite. In Moscow Vallejo
jumped into a fountain and burbled in the Neva, which he'd

 

brought to Moscow to honor himself for the occasion.
No water, no life. My husband was vice governor
of Hong Kong, that's why we're drawn there to this

 

day. And who's sitting at the table?
Chris Reid! That's right, Beletrina's slippers, here in
Aldeborough, just like the ones Peter has in Somerville,

 

they hide them from me in Slovenia.
I wander the world and put on your
slippers, did you plan this?

 

The lady's plan: to sail into St. Petersburg on her
yacht. She likes the way a city
opens itself to view from the sea. In Venice I met

 

Arne. He had also sailed into Venice with his
boat. I only saw mine once I'd
sold it and so managed to cling by my claws

 

above the abyss of poverty. My helpers in that
were Arne and both Japec brothers and here I declare
my gratitude, and let this all be recorded.

 

The boat's name was Nike and it was a sleek
Jeanneau. My kids have sailed in it several
times, knowing nothing about its owner.

I have no idea, some seventeen colors will
flood me, seventeen lego blocks of lime, shots.
Just listen and you see the smoke, you don't see the smoke,

 

the smoke is in your head (classic terra cotta)
the influence of my panna cotta for supper, I mean
you don't see the smoke, we've been here and I wanted

 

to mention the hunters, for lo their shooting (the Bible),
verily their shooting (the Bible) can be heard here
even now, while I type, and there really are too many, they

 

pop constantly, destroying the gentle creatures from Renaissance
pictures (disegno), while we, my I (unsettled)
go out, dividing up into beaters,

 

some of us following grandpa and then he fritters
it all (Brueghel), but back then I didn't know him,
what did I know, Ločje, Šentvid on Pesnica,

 

Ščavnica, the terrace that supported a bull and how
you weren't allowed to eat a single
grape if it wasn't served with a cup of water.