Guest poet: Daniel Dragomirescu

Destinies

                to Joe Bardy Tisch, a man whith a lot of destinies

Like with all of us,
I had apportioned a few destinies,
crammed one into the other
according to some arcane
previously approved decisions.
These days I vaguely remember them.

In one of them
I was selling happiness to some tourists,
as if it was fairy-floss
at a crowded country-fair – 
they would open their mouths wide,
take one bite,
and then throw it into the next rubbish bin.

Then, from time to time
I would suddenly transform into a 
chubby Father Christmas
- always rushing with a fed up attitude -
to distribute toys made in China
to all those puerile impertinent,
many of whom deserved
a backhand across their faces.
I was whacking them now and then,
when their parents were looking away.
They would scream that
Father Christmas has hit them,
but their parents would explain to them, 
patiently, that in fact, Father Christmas 
does not exist!

Often I would wake up as a customs officer
for thoughts and dreams,
charging duty
for all sorts of high volume subjective goods,
from prayers to palaver,
which were passing, planned or haphazardly,
through people's heads - mine, yours, 
everybody's. I would stack them in a folder
to be evaluated later,
at the Last Judgment.

In the happiest of these destinies
I was becoming a nocturnal clown
with long work experience
into the amusement of your body.

Finally, with the passing of time,
I was introducing myself
as a professor of calligraphy,
in a sordid world where no one
was using pens anymore.
They were all laughing at me,
pounding on keyboards -
monotonous and deadly keyboards.

But all of these destinies
would flicker faintly
like some lights on the edge of the 
horizon, on the edge of time,
which could not dim the brightness
of the stars in the mid-summer 
night sky. Because through 
all of these lives
I loved you!