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Photographs from Distant Places
(1)
In distant villages,
You always see the same scenes:
Farms
Cattle
Worship spaces
Small local shops.
Just basic the things humans need
To endure life.
(2)
‘Can you stay with me forever?’
She asked him in the airport,
While hugging him tightly in her arms.
‘Sorry, I can’t. My flight leaves in two hours and a half.’
He responded with an artificially caring voice,
As he kissed her on her right cheek.
(3)
I was walking in one of Bucharest’s old streets,
In a neighborhood that looked harshly beaten
by Time,
And severely damaged by development and globalization.
I saw a poor homeless man
Combing his dirty hair
In a side mirror of a modern and expensive car!
(4)
The shape and the color of the eyes don’t matter.
What matters is that,
As soon as you gaze into them,
You know that they have seen a lot.
All eyes that dare to bear witness
To what they have seen are beautiful.
(5)
A stranger asked me how I chose my path in life.
I told him: ‘I never chose anything, my friend.’
My path has always been like someone forced to sit
In an airplane on a long flight.
Forced to sit with the condition
Of keeping the seatbelt on at all times,
Until the end of the flight.
Here I am still sitting with the seatbelt on.
I can neither move
Nor walk.
I can’t even throw myself
out of the plane’s emergency exit
To end this forced flight!
(6)
After years of searching and observing,
I discovered that despair’s favorite hiding place
Is under business suits and tuxedos.
Under jewelry and expensive night gowns.
Despair dances at the tables where
Expensive wines of corruption
And delicious dinners of betrayal are served.
(7)
Oh, my poet friend,
Did you know that
The bouquet of fresh flowers in that vase
On your table is not a source of inspiration or creativity?
The vase is just a reminder
Of a flower massacre that took place recently
In a field
Where these poor flowers happened to be.
It was their fate to have their already short lives cut shorter,
To wither and wilt in your vase,
While breathing the not-so-fresh air
In your room,
As you sit down at your table
And write your vain words.
(8)
Under authoritarian regimes,
99.9% of the population vote for the dictator.
Under capitalist ‘democratic’ regimes,
99.9% of people love buying and consuming products
Made and sold by the same few corporations.
Awe to those societies where both regimes meet
to create a united vicious alliance against the people!
To create a ‘nation’
Of customers, not citizens!
(9)
The post-revolution leaders are scavengers not hunters.
They master the art of eating up
The dead bodies and achievements
Of the fools who sacrificed themselves
For the ‘revolution’ and its ideals.
Is this the paradox and the irony of all revolutions?
(10)
Every person is ugly if you take a close look at them,
And beautiful, if you take a closer look.
(11)
Just as wheat fields can’t thrive
Under the shadow of other trees,
Intellectuals, too, can’t thrive under the shadow
Of any power or authority.
(12)
We waste so much time trying to change others.
Others waste so much time thinking they are changing.
What a waste!
October 20, 2015
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