(Strada și noaptea)

The street and the night are our daily bread

The street has a corner and the heart of the night is a meeting point

You wonder what you did wrong?

Nobody ever gets any answers

The difference is between what you were and what you could be if…

It doesn’t even matter anymore

I had some money, pens, and the holy lemon salt

A few cigarettes bought individually

Coin by coin and lice by lice, they show themselves in the night

Back in my day, a heroin dealer

Would keep 20% of the pure product for himself

The rest he sold mixed with powdered sugar or instant cappuccino

The drug trade is risky in its own way

There’s no bonus when the brain needs to solve problems on the fly

The wait is excruciating

Before birth and until the end of life

The wait is excruciating

The sky had darkened in that cursed gangway

I couldn’t make out anything, it could be summer or any other season

It wasn’t what we wanted for ourselves

But it’s not like today we manage to want something else

It’s not like life asks you what would you want to do?

What do you want to believe in?

What is your hope?

Just as Paul quickly crosses the street

Some people were having a walk, puffing on their cigarettes

He wants to ask them for a light

From behind us

“Get down on your stomach, down on your stomach! Don’t move!” they shouted

When you’re sharing the same carved-out piece of bread

From all corners, in search of substances

You throw yourself on the cement of the night in DIICOT-style

You remember that you forgot your name

No one can recognize you anymore

You ceased long ago to be one of them

You know your trade and the risks

You lie down, damn it, what the hell can you do?

When you feel the end of the gun pressed against the back of your neck

You don’t have time to throw away the syringe, you can smash the vial

And I’m glad, God, that I left the lemon salt on some bench

The holy lemon salt

They make you take off your shoes, undress

You’re glad it’s night

That it’s late enough that you can’t go back home

You forget that you lived yesterday, you don’t know if you’ll see tomorrow

In the meantime, you need limits

But no policeman has a brochure from any center that can help you quit drugs

At the police station, no one asks who you are

But they take your picture, they take your fingerprints, they consider you indebted

“We’ll be seeing each other again, you lowlifes”

I don’t even know exactly; I was 17 years old and next to my name

In some random file in brackets under a question mark

They wrote the word “addict”

(Copiii rătăcitori)

I’m too scared to sleep,

It’s too late,

I don’t know how long I have left.

In apartments forgotten by time, all lights were lit

Until utility bills—electricity, gas, maintenance—became too expensive,

Only love was made,

Nothing more, nothing less than love.

Now we heal by placing leaves over our eyes,

Becoming superheroes,

Some want to save us,

But there’s nothing left to save here,

On earth.

All people leave us, taking with them even the last

Ellipses…

City, why do you let me rage at the gates of your walls?

Why do you abandon me on side streets?

Where do you hide when I open my eyes and poverty draws me in?

Where do you hide when I offer you surrounding tears?

City, the pride, the arrogance, and the virtues of the commoners do not satisfy me,

City, you abandon me in my thoughts,

You hide in the dark thoughts of others,

You shy away from the beautiful women who smile at me between stations,

I notice them, I admire them, I dissociate reality.

Do not shy away, old city, showing your teeth,

Do not protect me, do not try to absorb me into the broth cooked up by gangsters,

They are smeared with the blood of our ancestors, of your homeland,

A city smoked out by false glory.

We are your outcasts,

Your wandering children,

At your bedside our veins are plunged into your soil,

Our bones support your profitable corporations,

Our brains dissected and squeezed by your machinery,

Using selective methods to satisfy immediate and forbidden pleasures through false gratuity,

Leave me with your promotions,

I have not left you,

I do not trust you,

Good to see you again,

I needed you to live inside you,

To offer in exchange all that I have received

From every person born in your city.

(Tot mai aproape)

We are getting closer,

So close, the last touch of the night,

Just a stone’s throw away.

We are ready to catch the end of the world,

It occupies too much mental space,

Relativity in the void,

Our lives once a binder for other lives,

Now just needless entanglements,

Thoughts among the deepest.

But that’s not what I wanted to remember,

I want to draw hopscotch on my chest,

Come, throw the first stone,

I don’t care if you, in turn,

Pull me out like a nail from a coat forgotten in the rain,

Decayed with the passage of time,

Another season.

I used to say that soon she would enter through the door and exit through the window,

From mirrors, from paint and markers,

Fragments of a world lost like a dream that

Many of you have forgotten,

Because it’s easier not to heed your calling,

On the path you claimed on nights filled with doubt and trouble you would walk,

Rarely with someone else.

Please don’t kill what’s still alive in the world,

Let everything exist alongside you,

In each of us whispers a chorus of voices.

With no tricks or cunning,

My presence is presence,

People call me from nowhere,

From nowhere you met me, remember?

Where are we going today?

Nowhere

And then I shudder,

At some point, I folded gentleness into you,

I feel I have arrived late,

But better late than never,

I hope one day we all make it home,

Excited like a kiss,

Shining as silently as the sun,

After we close our eyes,

We close them,

And that’s it.

I injected a four-room apartment into my veins, not necessarily on the outskirts,

Where it shelters a family.

I tried to do right by myself, and by mom and dad,

To take them to the school board meeting

When the community officer lamented our truancy,

As we shared unboxed red Viceroy in the bathroom.

We solemnly swore we didn’t all reek of vodka, we said,

See you soon enough.

I was about to lose even more, extended my left arm,

One evening I loved myself from within with a grand heroine.

The needles were a choice, the thefts were not,

The consumption was a choice, the withdrawal was not,

The abuse was a choice, the pain was not.

Every night I stay awake, think of everyone I’ve ever connected with,

Once I had a dream—I fought alone, utterly unfulfilled,

Like a lone wolf, I’m too scared to sleep now, it’s too late,

I don’t know how long I have left.

You feel complicit, you judge in passing,

I will never get there,

Not even I wanted to become like this man.

If you ever bend down to give me a coin,

Know that I fought until the last tear,

To rise up,

To keep rising, intoxicated by venom.

Rarely do I recover,

With drugs in my veins that could kill everyone in control

Within an hour,

Without a drop of guilt,

Without any makeup to cover the shame on your face.

There’s something familiar in this, like when at six I stole 10,000 Lei from the piggy bank,

Bought all the chewing gum from the kiosk, all the way back home, we chewed on it like fools,

In a single direction,

Which I immediately forgot as soon as I was asked where the money was.

Even today, I keep asking where the money is,

When I need it so much.

(În atingeri)

My superpowers have vanished—

Ignorance, tolerance, forbearance.

Life unfolds facing the sun,

A tear of pain,

My first kiss spoken through clenched teeth,

Pain glued to the earth,

With my forehead at knee level,

Seeking a God to bribe for escape

From claws, from fires, from clenched fists,

Wars, psychoses, and death,

Muscle spasms,

Fog over the brain,

Uncertainty in prolonged silences,

Advice, pleas, demands.

How do you find yourself? Please write to me

That word forgotten by all,

The next after the first word spoken by everyone,

The one that starts with a smile and ends

With two people embracing,

In our touch, we are angels,

In departures, we are demons,

The end is always this which this word refuses to touch,

It’s the word with which you start your day,

The word most repeated in everyone’s minds,

It’s the word before the first word,

It’s the boundary no one crosses.

A life lived in solitude is owed to all the people around me,

In our dreadful silence, a terrible teeth grinding,

Tremors and uncertain acknowledgments,

In the windshields of cars illegally parked

On the capital’s roads,

During a peaceful stroll,

I hope to find myself waiting patiently,

Lord, please, cut me out in editing,

Replace me with a landfill

Of recycled feelings,

Where I too once occurred.

(De la droguri)

Once, I could pinch between my forefinger and middle finger

The entire condescension of those who collected herbs

And powders prescribed in urgent rhythms

To those who ceased to tickle merely for the sake of a smile.

He told me I would never again be

A man worthy of all admiration

Even as they filmed me changing my veins,

Under the deceitful contrast of a windshield

Of some Dacia Solenza.

On the streets of Bucharest,

I knew every vein, every incident,

Shortcomings from the tip of an insulin needle,

From the edge of the world, from the end of strength,

Of verses, disturbances, tissues,

Of street life.

I gathered them and felt it all in my forehead

With a certain tension, I feel tired now,

Evacuated from the darkness,

I have ceased to seek extreme solutions.

I emerged from the ground at some point,

It became light; it’s good now.

It’s terribly colorful anyway,

Not because of the drugs.

This is the last time I step over myself,

Exploding in depths on rails,

The train of life like in the first film,

When spectators fled the hall in haste, scared

By the inner revolt projected on a screen.

You are the subtitle of my life,

You understand the language that chills me,

Blunt, surprising reality,

Magnificent like a blank canvas.

Paint has entered my veins,

A strange initiation.

In my head, a charade of the mad,

Clanging spoons on dirty dishes,

A maniacal hunger without any reason.

How can you not hurt today among so many second-hand revolutionaries,

The illusion of eternal and healing life,

Dragons within, people in natural feelings,

By their presence, I scent your approach; it’s another world.

Beyond us, we mirror our shadows with each gesture,

In your eyes, you recognize me,

In my palms, I carry the lines of our life,

The light awaits us in our wake,

It’s oblivion.

Forward, comrades, ahead of everything,

Bury me on the surface of the canvas with her portrait left unfinished,

In my heart, brushes, paint,

Spiritual toxicity,

In the colors of the sky,

Let’s live now as if for the last time.

(O nouă predică)

Please, let no one sway your decisions

How long do you think we have left?

I’m nearing 34 and guess by my fifties I’ll light my last cigarette—

I suppose I’m an optimist.

My introspection is based on logic, but not on influence.

When something seems “not the right thing for the right reason,” well, doesn’t it seem off?

If you hear, “you imagined it,” run! Or show that person the door.

If you wander through clubs or dabble in drugs

And can’t find a God as you might outline in the spiritual reflection of existence, well, you’re in a tight spot.

If most things you do are meant to improve your lot, yet things worsen, what’s the solution?

What do you do when you need to pause, to take a closer look at what’s happening with you?

How long will you keep berating and blaming yourself for things beyond your control?

Where does this madness with self-improvement come from,

Or self-love, or the pursuit of money in general,

When most of us can’t even define a state of forbearance?

Sometimes, with particular forbearance towards my own existence—

Hilarious, mysterious, barren, ineffable, I curse in thought, and aloud,

But even more, I turn my attention towards something greater

Than myself.

I’ve long ceased to be what I think, and I don’t live in a world governed by my reason.

The real dilemma is: how long will I be kept plugged in?

For my heart still beats, organs auto-regulate with each blink,

And this ‘me’ plays no specific role in this whole scheme.

It’s hard today, it was hard yesterday.

I expect nothing, I want nothing, I observe.

And when I’m ready, I will be, and if not, that’s okay too.

And it doesn’t really matter so much what I believe—we can’t carry or solve everything.

Surrendering, aka giving in to what is, seems a plausible choice.

And if I’m wrong, the mistake is mine.

And that is simply uplifting,

Simply uplifting.

In the end, I’d give days of my own for you to be better.

(Blândețe)

Gentleness – is absent

Every thought whispered alongside spoken words signals

Exit, shame, entry, forgiveness.

A terrible concern for what cannot be controlled.

A priest becomes detestable—come over to your history, let’s find out who you are.

Stretch out your arms.

I’ve covered the spots where at sixteen I jabbed the burnt tip of a needle washed in someone else’s spit.

There are no metaphors here.

I support no cause; the night for me is a bildungsroman.

I dislike when you drool over another’s lies.

Please, stop.

I stand for nothing; how could I mean anything?

With each moment, I see you seduced by cat-like eyes.

You are hardest on yourself.

For others, you carry them like a medic at a football match,

Sidelines where you leave your life.

Numbers and information are the new game of Tetris,

Finding a mad position diagonally.

I am a stolen painting, a classmate seated at the back of the room.

The city is full of mouths, tongues, popped-out eyes, crocodile tears, other animals turned to sandwiches.

I no longer want warmth, no longer want to be sad.

I am the wrong man born in the right place.

I see a degenerate generation,

An adjective

That has lost its morphological or functional traits,

Characteristics of its genus or species.

I paint electric pictures,

Sketch your spiritual destiny in detail, place thoughts,

Gentleness, understanding, I sketch, I open my sternum, shelter shadows,

Process them into tens of thousands of shades.

Did you drink too much last night again? Drugs are cool,

But you know nothing about drugs because

Arsenic.

We’re caught in a camp, let’s focus, when was the last time you did something, anything, for someone?

Why not? You want to play it safe.

No need for a system completely oblivious to a real problem.

I seek a real system for an ignored problem.

Don’t come close, I don’t want to know.

People like you would kill people like me, which means anyone.

On the boulevard, the same ads, hurry through life because you’re crossing my frame.

In life, we are born first, die last, we gather everything—

Chairs, glasses, plates, we measure, sweep, seek order, make

A real message, concrete actions, hard.

Leave the straw, suck it up—tomorrow’s another world.

Over time, I discovered that the horizon of my identity narrowed like a hyena in a disorganized fog.

You know I don’t know happiness; I have 5 Lei in my pocket and I’m out of credit, 16 percent battery left.

And I stand in the same queue, offering precedence, I wash my hands before I pee on your opinion.

I kiss hands scented with icons in a gesture of prayer, light a candle,

And burn a cigarette as a sign of hope.

I was, I existed once, ignoring the fight within, I chose the battles of others.

And so it goes, differently,

For nothing,

In vain,

Like gentleness,

Missing from your life, the goodwill of a junkie willing to do whatever is necessary for his realization.

We have too few hands to show everyone the way.

(Nu costă nimic)

Sometimes

Art costs nothing

For those entangled in first-person complexities,

For those who labor not from desire but necessity,

For those who occasionally lie just to stay positive,

For those acting humorous just to crack a smile,

For those who don’t read poetry because it can only be written,

For those who listen to the Ninth Symphony while drafting their life’s story on a cracked smartphone,

For those who read Naum’s poetry backwards and acknowledge its truth,

For those who, in 1899, read about the discovery of the unconscious,

For those who easily admit their ignorance,

For the junkies admiring themselves after kissing and making love among the stars,

For those who visit churches in deep secrecy,

For the hipsters whose attitudes accomplish little,

For those puzzled as to why they should call their parents to wish them “Happy Birthday”,

For those who abstain from drugs and alcohol, aware they might die from using,

For those engaging in some form of psychotherapy,

For those who once thought about quitting smoking,

For those who find the internet pointless,

For those who build bridges in Romania,

For those resting on Sundays by painting their hair or their room walls,

For those who wake up early and forget to go back to sleep,

For the inquisitive souls,

For all who have reached here,

Sometimes,

Art doesn’t cost a thing.

(Noi cei uitați)

A nurse tells me to extend my arm,

Clench my fist and look away,

But I’m too curious,

Too curious.

From my vein, she draws out neon highlights,

And I’m tripping as if I was on acid

I’m tripping as if I was on acid

I feel a drop meander down to my elbow.

We are the forgotten ones,

We are the forgotten ones,

She says, flashing her spray-stained teeth.

Paint is my huff, I tell her,

Graffiti is the street,

Built in my bones and guts, I carry all paths and walls,

My cells stutter the secretive tags painted in the dead of night,

Inspired by the memory of verse from the universe.

The same frequencies on my canvases,

The same oblivious art,

If you feel fear towards it,

No ghost will come visiting.

And the results? I asked her, digging through the underground

I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter anymore

The patient is declared unfit for a decent life