Greater than Lukacs

During last evening's reading, Clement was rummaging through his bag for a pen to underline a sentence. In the end, he found two pens instead of one from the right pocket of his baggy bermudas. He looked towards me, then laughed goofily at himself. It reminded me of the pen Georg Lukacs took out from his pocket when the KGB officer arresting him asked if he was carrying any weapon. The intransigent pen of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 he surrendered. For a moment, I thought he is more magnificent, greater than Lukacs, but of course, I did not tell him.

The Photographer; An executioner's assistant

photograph of a camera
picture of an execution
photo of a photographer
shooting a picture

shutter speed and dropping blade

late 18th or 19th century

the same pose when one gets fucked in the ass

motherfuckers
kill motherfuckers

bed bench and bend

Panzer Delete

The wind,
imitating a night in Jena,
has blown
and flipped
back to three pages ago.
The page just read
- read but remember nothing.
You don’t remember anything as well
when you blew your mind and memory
but feel the wind blowing the hair has aged
hazy weather or head
when you are next to the old window.

20 July

- the habit of reading signs, billboards, etc. along the street, in the car, here everything is undecipherable, nice to feel like an illiterate.
- North is now a disillusion. Condemned to remain in the Southeast. Flashed by, the thought of the marriage between science and revolution. Seems to be 'a short love with a long divorce'.

A Song for Anti-Humanism (Non-Structural)

A Song for Anti-Humanism (Non-Structural)
For Chien Swee-Teng and Stolichnaya Andronnikov

A day of six apologies
Arrested by a sentence from a page

 - I was dragged out from that evening bar
no strangers there
(no puerile, self-pitying urban alienation).
Everyone looks familiar here
the same bastards, the same kind of motherfuckers
reproduced en masse
(because their parents wanted, but half-understood, pleasure)
the same pasty faces
who can't wait to get their claws on feminine skin,
get themselves drunk, get the ladies drunk.

'I apologise for six days
Arrested by a sentence
read out
on the radio

the voice told a tale I am more or less familiar with
- the boys hummed a tune and moved their mishapen, spastic hips.
(they needed something to rub on,
and there were many legs of tables and high stools)

Techno beat, we thought of Africa, the beat that could move the most primal soul
the most visceral beat.
I just couldn't use a single word 'dancing' to describe this movement.

We half-understood Hegel
but we remember he said Africa has no history
Their pseudo dialogues have no subject'.

Arrested by six sentences
recorded on the tape.

- I was dragged out of the country I was born.
but I find it hard to call this island factory a country.
But I am not that fucking yellow skin conceptual artist
who claims to have lived in Berlin, New York and been to Venice
who thought he's too good for this place.
Global, international and contemporary citizen of the world, liberal open society.

I hear he's married: amazing, somebody actually opens her legs for him.
I imagined his face when he's having an orgasm.
I have one word for it: non-aesthetic
And I understand beauty is not the chief concern of most conceptualists,
but this guy must have done some dematerialising work on his face too.

He is not a refined, intelligent elitist motherfucker like Borges or Roger Scruton.

My summary for this rant:
fucking artists, writers, philosophers and laid men.

Notes on May - Ernst Auer

1. On Mirror and Glass - why was it not included in Michel Tournier's Le Miroir des idees

what about Television and Morning Windows? the noise and view 'outside' - Evening, they were shut

2. Time,
Longer than the length of her hair
than the length of the lace, the pair of leather boots. (repeated motif in another text)
entangled hair, combing contra criss-cross lacing

3. On Wednesday, a friend tattooed a tiny tit on his hip by rookie tattooist , equals ebriated folly, birthday is not an excuse for stupidity, and also it looks more like being stamped on (by the heated metal cap of a cheap plastic lighter)

Advice: He should have gotten the tattoo in prison, if he wanted it for free. And please, why small instead of big tit, or tit on tit?
On friday, fought two Indians around the housing estate.
Advice: Do it more often, practice makes perfect, should be extended to other areas. The fighting not drinking at neighbourhood though.
Summary: First as Farce then as Tragedy

Pencil of Nature - Ernst Auer

Back in the same room after the fire, though I shouldn't say it is the same, the angle of the sun did not change, to lighten the charred wall with a rhomboid at this time of the day, higher than how one would hang a half length dressing mirror, lower than where the drawing room painting should be, at the neglected corner of the room, the web, a deformed pentagon, traps black flakes than insects, on the floor, I noticed the charcoal photo frame, I recognised the leaf-motif, but I am not here to cry about picture I have lost or to complain about the unpleasant smell.

Present Tense - Ernst Auer

Present does not exist
it was the point where past and future overlapped.

Say now
now became before.

and how to remember the person who wrote it.

Fridays – Ernst Auer

When Fridays are now reserved for her, I could only mention to others in silence, that I might be faithful to her face. Yet, I fucked up the face I am supposed to trace on wood. And fat boy laughed at me for talking to my reflection. The rest left the table, and it took me four days to write about the half an hour between two strangers: questions, answers, pauses, and long silence. I just can’t record it as a conversation. The silence broken by what you saw in the sky, but I couldn’t see the patch of seven colours - a patch, not an arc or bow like the origin of your surname. I didn’t tell you I am colour blind, why the flowers are painted grey, how your air steward boyfriend could hurt you, and how I contrasted the colours to the patch of rainbow he would leave on your face.

grey - Ernst Auer

No colours could fault grey and his typeface of despair

Street of Napoleonic Defeat - Ernst Auer

A story teller,
from where else but Argentina
was ready to tell me a tale
about a man, a person
who walked past a synagogue
with the taste of blood and mud on his tongue,
after eating half a kilo of cockles.
***
I mean, who else would I want to listen to now?
But yet, I have to wait for a translation -
voices from reality do not include subtitles.
***
Thought of Hepatitis,
the Star of David,
behind the gate,
a gentile security stared back.
***
From this end,
the long street seems tapered.
But it would stretch, the width will expand
when he starts walking towards the Chinese temple,
after the Hindu temple, at the other end.
***
The smoke from the cigarette
dangling from the corner of his mouth
won't irritate his eyes.
The smoke from his cigarette will blend
with the smoke from the burning incense.
The words the Argentinian spoke are confused with
the prayers,
the mumbling or whispers
of prostitutes,
hostesses,
lounge singers,
office ladies,
worried housewives
and weak men like us.
***
As a foreigner here,
he shall not make a fuss about the heat
but sure he looks like a madman.
***
Now I prayed only for a bank robbery to end it all,
since there's no war,
but to buy a shotgun or pistol...
I wasn't sure if that's a question.
I walked into a convenience store,
one bullet is enough,
but only noticed condoms and lubricant gels next to the counter,
I noticed the flavours.
I walked out and turned right
towards Bencoolen St
and was reminded of colonization and barricades
all over again.

Thursday

At Berlin, on a thursday
inside a train station now an art museum.
Beuys, Jospeh Beuys
room after room.
Boring videos, coyote, fats and near death,
dead wood, and mystical metal
chalkboard encased,
what's the point of discussion, explanation or debate
talk and talk
photographed the
Shaman, Shaman performs
performs the decomposition of Europe.

Eva as Stone

'I can't recall the date Eva turned into stone. As a marble statue of associate tyranny frozen in a tireless and unchanging pose, or to read the epitah on her tomb, for her body underneath or our relation's demise. The body not the person who has left the world to reside inside my head. The bullet hole, the 'eighth orifice' meant for my head was staged. And the rumour that we fled to Argentina together, History wants to pardon us, for us to live until a ripe old age, for our German tragic drama to sound like an American fairy tale, of this Teutonic history to Walt Disney myth, like how I turned the world into a theatre of war. On the date of her departure, I, the living dead, could only be mute and inert, sadly for one who was once feared and respected for his voice and gesture.' - Ernst Auer
'Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, das Datum Eva in Stein verwandelt. Wie eine Marmorstatue der Tyrannei in ein unermüdlicher und unveränderlich darstellen, oder die epitah auf ihr Grab zu lesen, denn ihr Körper unter oder unsere Beziehung Ableben eingefroren. Der Körper nicht derjenige, der die Welt verlassen hat, um in meinem Kopf befinden. Das Einschussloch war der achte Öffnung "für meinen Kopf gemeint inszeniert. Und das Gerücht, dass wir nach Argentinien floh zusammen, will Geschichte uns entschuldigen, für uns bis ins hohe Alter zu leben, für unsere deutschen Trauerspiels wie ein amerikanischer Märchen Sound, dieser teutonischen Geschichte von Walt Disney Mythos, wie, wie ich drehte mich um die Welt in ein Theater. Am Tag ihrer Abreise, konnte ich die lebenden Toten, nur stumm und träge, traurig für jemanden, der einmal gefürchtet und respektiert für seine Stimme und Gestik.'- Ernst Auer

For Eugene

.It was published in 1991. Printed on the cover page is the title 'Things to Translate'. Written on the same page, beneath the title 'For Eugene, in Stoke-on-Trent, 25 VIII 2003 (with all my best wishes!) Piotr Sommer' and a drawing of a stickman holding a stalk of flower - not a faceless stickman but the kind with a smiley. Piotr Sommer is the author, a Polish poet. I found this thin paperback in a secondhand bookstore about five or six years ago. Often when I open this book, I would come across the same page and read this message before proceeding to the content. Although I am not the addressee, I have read this handwritten message lying on my bed, in the living room, in school, on the bus, in the toilet. I thought about how and why the book had ended up in the secondhand bookstore? I speculated about the relationship between Piotr and Eugene. Why flowers? Superficial, merely acquaintances, Eugene has no interest in this book, and it was dumped together with some bills, statements and invitation cards piled under the coffee table with the old newspapers and magazines, after a month or so. Maybe, they were once very close, intense but the friendship has soured very badly and Eugene just couldn't stand the sight of the book. Was it misplaced and sold as a part of a bulk by a rag and bone man? Perhaps this Eugene is already dead and his family cleared everyhing in his room, including his bookshelf with a modest but eclectic collection. I thought, this Eugene could be one of the few Eugenes I know. The Eugene from sixth form, the well-loved Eugene, the much-praised Eugene, some forgotten Eugenes. Related words and names came to mind, Eugène, the French Eugene, Eugenides, eugenics. Perhaps, this Eugene is an avid but selective reader who maintains the purity of his collection like a fascist. If that's the case, I would say to the imagined (but not imaginary) Eugene that it is not 'a matter of of taste'. But rather how some people without the faculty of taste are allowed to express their opinions, and are given the rights to act on their tastelessness.

.

10.2.1927

In that old film
there was a new imperative for the actor:

to break his silence
as technology advances

reduced gestures
when we hear sound effects
with images uninterrupted by texts

not because
his words could readjust her smile

not because
future morning sun could colour the window amber

not because
we want to hear the voice of Hitler

no longer grey,
certain spots of the kitchen were warmed
without grease.

In diesem alten Film

Es wurde ein neues Gebot für den Schauspieler:



sein Schweigen brechen

Die Technologie macht Fortschritte

reduzierte Gesten

wenn wir hören, Sound-Effekte

mit Bildern ohne Unterbrechung durch Texte



nicht, weil

seine Worte könnten nachjustieren ihr Lächeln



nicht, weil

Zukunft Morgensonne konnte die Farbe der Fenster Bernstein



nicht, weil

wollen wir die Stimme des Hitler hören



nicht mehr grau,

bestimmten Stellen der Küche waren erwärmt

ohne Fett.

Four Paragraphs in the Park

Not during the day when a tree in no other colours than green burns. On a humid night, the leaves – being two-faced – switched and betrayed its colour again like the chameleonic sky. Not bothered about the routine beauty of dusk, not fascinated with the palette of its clouds. Over-praised, over-painted, over-photographed.

It was hot not warm. You saw some middle-aged men praying publicly, half-naked, for the false respite of rain. You heard some young educated women making speeches, promising the party would change the weather. You thought they should shut up, pair up and find a hotel. The images of tropical beach resort posters from postcards and tour agencies crossed your mind.

While irritated by how eloquent and witty one could be, or fail to be, their use of certain words (such as ‘hope’, ‘belief’, ‘faith’, ‘care’, ‘future’, ‘change’ with words like ‘wish’, ‘unwind’, ‘relax’, ‘dream’, ‘holiday’, ‘plans’) either made you yawn or gave you goose bumps.

After the rain, the dark woods with dark leaves are wet – weighing a bit more. You kicked on the bits and stepped on the pieces, fallen from the trees, littering the concrete pavement. You thought about some snails you have killed. You picked and collected the twigs and sprigs as materials for a miniature park in a trite dystopia. You planted a branch as a bare tree, and related it to the tarnished name ‘Art’ and the ugly word ‘Design’.

24.3.2011

Naked, or dressed in nudity
those extensions, beyond my fingers, toes and nails (orteil/articulas)

my sympathy would be an insult.

Taureans - Stiere (19 Jan 2011)

He prefers
to have his breakfast
with the kitchen light on.

She notices
the blue flakes
on his left foot
and the peeling sky.

... at least
that's what she assumes.

er bevorzugt
um sein Frühstück zu haben
mit Licht in der Küche auf.

sie bemerkt,
die blaue Flocken
auf seinem linken Fuß
und das Peeling Himmel.

... mindestens
das ist, was sie einnimmt.

half-circle

impossible, impossibility
where will it be?
will you be at the East of me?
when Southeast was running amok
when Northeast is always repressed.

I do not have enough words that you spoke.
a bottle cap was all that I could find to use as a globe

to help you picture better
the furthest distance one could travel
along the equator,

the actual distance we were and would be,
the half-circle from each other.

it wasn’t that long ago

Then measure it.

reachable,
about the distance of a blister on the other ankle