think twice

you see her
swaying hips when she walks
oozing  music when she talks
and in
seven seconds
that it takes
to judge a person
you know
that
she's a
dumb.
blonde.

of course.

the heels the knees the eyelashes the everything 
just adds up to your
first impression.

...


sometimes
you really ought to
think
at least 
twice,
because sometimes,
in just
seven tiny seconds
she's already conquered
enough territory
to do whatever she needs or
wants,
sneaking along 
a highly functional brain
that resides behind 
a comfortable front.

 
Disclaimer: English is not my first language. Or second. Not even the third one that I learned. Beware of the bottle-bleached babes entitled to extra points.

summer in the city

...exquisit and unique sound and space conjecture that happened last night ...Boban Markovic orchestra opened the Jewish Summer Festival in the Dohány street synagogue...overload of  contextual clashes that left me breathless... born and raised inbetween worlds, stuck within the seams of the fabric of life, unable to express what one is supposed to be in terms of national, religious, ethnic or cultural identity in less than a complex sentence, I so rarely, almost never,  get to immerse myself into experiencing them, my cultures, my countries, my nations, my cultures and religions at  exactly the same moment...

 ... this...

...here...

.. the eyes that listen and the heart that hears and a wanderer that feels this  is ...right where everything belongs...

 
...on my way home I walked slowly, looking back and shedding along the way  the brassy echoes that were left clinging to my clothes ...I  watched them silently roll down the pavement, like the crumbs released to remind me where to return  once the night passes, smiling at the fact that my neighbor the building, the temple of someone else in a country where we are both strangers, bears an imprint of Byzantine ornaments on her facade just like I wear the face of my own Byzantine genetic architects ...

between half-past midnight and one

I wish I could bring back the days
the time when I was a man all on my own
I wish I could turn back the clocks
to the nights of countless thoughts now long gone
 everything moving so fast
 a man growing old while he is still young
 and those treasured moments of happiness
 while sleeping, the life passes
time escapes while you're keeping guard
someone else manages to tame it down
me I'm left behind staring at the back of it
the things I once loved
I'm no longer interested in


when did it all slip by beats me.


(1977, Milan Mladenovic)

in heat

...the white noise of air conditioner  stuck in the auto mode until dawn breaks is driving me sleepless and crazy...the distance between the worlds melts away and I sink deep into the things that people aren't saying... draw the curtains and  stay in...then had enough of  voluntary detention all of a sudden and just jump at the idea and  drive out of the city and climb the Mátra peak  for the sake of it and bag the knife-sharp breaths of altitude air, roll back down the mountain so victorious and feeling like even the tiniest beating  of the kánikula, the dog times as they call it here, is one of those life's most important things... ...the fear of water diminishes and  say yes to the boat ride and late night lake swimming...when respectable people don't care like once when they  were very young and foolish and free to go skinny dipping... the foreplay is excused with just a sentence stating that it's too hot anyway and with sweat pouring from every pore, sticky like a gum overchewed and glued to the palate , running down the salted skin in the dead of the midnight...  it even sounds quite logical and  convincing...


...... brains get overheated and all stupid and lusty and squeeze and spit out  out the  most ridiculous things...

...the streets are empty, my city turns into a ghost town  and faces, even when approaching up close are desert hazy, as if  the concrete breeds its own superior mirage of human variety ... the scattered tourists like orphans try out the shallow fountains... 



...babies get clingy and refuse to fall asleep without an hour more like  two of  monotonous rockabyebaby rhyme only a mother knows how to sing and pace the tempo and volume down to almost nothing...


...the hot sun that freckles the skin in heat which body can no longer dissipate and distribute otherwise washes away defenses  ... and life feels so good when I can laugh out loud in the middle of the street at myself trying to outrun the ice-cream streaming down my lips...

rampage

...mass slaughter in Lake District and an extradition news bite from a couple of weeks back brought to life memories of a very hot summer in a very small village terrorized by, in our Eastern parts, unusually typical serial killer.

...of course I knew the face but I couldn't quite remember it when the word spread that he was the prolific axe killer that haunted the longest summer of my life. He was on of those characters that you do notice and acknowledge the act of noticing them  but then somehow always get lost on the edges of your peripheral vision while you are looking at them, because, in an attempt of the brain to blur the image of something underneath that is upsettlingly wrong with that person you are looking at, the mind plays a self-defense trick and edits the stressor completely out of the picture.


...I think I cataloged him as 'one of those' people, the misfortunate ones that the village life  and its dark side of underachievement, driven by fear of the world out of its safe boundaries, had poisoned beyond repair, both physically and mentally. He had a disabled arm, the souvenir of taking on amateur brawl and professional boxing opponents more ample than himself in an attempt to claim a fairer share of the pie of life and smalltown social territory than he was born to have. He always did seem rather odd, everywhere out of place, I think I remember forming a chain of thought once upon seeing him that he was someone too cowardly to ever attack openly but definitely the kind of man that bears grudges, stacks them up layer upon layer of self-pity and envy and hatered, until the piled up disappointments of his life hit the roof, fry his brain and he probably ends up, as the locals like to colourfully say, 'tween the hams', swinging from the attic beams. 

...he ended up killing a lot of people and the fear of him had made my late  father slap me the only time ever, when at the peak of the hysteria and  killing spree I  was stupid enough to go out after dark alone, on the same evening when the village neighborhood watch dad was taking part in found the shop manager and his wife brutally slaughtered.


...the bottom of the ocean that gave way to the fertile land is still  just a misplaced depression of nature that spills its manic sorrow into the lives of  its inhabitants.


...in the small village, you not only know everyone  by name and three generations that preceeded them and are well versed into everyone's extramarital and sexual escapades, you know all the complex family relations that no sociogram could ever accurately portray , and all of the accumulated sins and mishaps of everyone you bid good day are available for discussion at any moment as soon as you mention seeing them. Small places have excellent collective memory when it comes to everyone else.

...a micro mythology of a place had formed and  things that everyone knows by merely living there were hammered into me stuck doing the brainless substitute job for my aunt as the lottery seller, right in the bullseye village centre office, next to the church, school, marketplace and  two meters across from the always open door of  'the' village café.

...so I knew the story of how he lost the function to his arm, how the wife was slightly slower and how he beat her once bad and ended up in jail, how he had a nasty temper and would nowadays pick fights with local super-men who would then turn it into a typically brutal laughing stock display. I also knew who his father was and what he had done. I knew where they used to have land that bordered ours, and the house where his grandmother had lived.


...they just speak, the villagers, their communication pattern is based on the assumption, or a communicative dogma to word it more precisely, that the intention of the designated listener whether he wants to hear the information or not is never inquired upon, because it is the standard rule that he does, and shares the common background information. If at any point  they notice that you've lost your way in the maze of names and events that prefix any information you actually want to hear, you will be made to go through it step by step and affirm understanding of every segment.


...the four of us were probably the oddest girls in the village, attractive enough to be tolerated instead of receiving the usual ridicule that is  given to anyone who dares to be too different, except for the village cartoons as  I called them. Every village has an aged rocker, a predatory sexually charged divorcé that everyone bangs, a useless poet, a politican, a  retired policeman, archetypes that are alive and walking around unaware of the fact that their need to differ is what makes them so sterotypical... but not every village had four girls 'from good houses' who study art or  whatwasitthatthingthatyoustudycalledialwaysforget come together in such a way that it impacted the rest of their lives, the girls who moved away and are already over the fence, out of its grip but by the force of a string of coincidences all four  stuck for a summer in it, and instead of getting all bigcitily depressed, were having the time of their lives, throwing cooking parties when none of them knew a thing about cooking beyond scrambled eggs , meeting for a five o' clock tea all dressed up, dating and exploring sexually men they would be ashamed to parade in the city and conspicuously borrowing books from the village library on almost daily basis, among other things.

...that summer was too radical, too carefree, too powerful to come to an easy-way-out end anyway... my very own, first-hand experienced summer of Sam.

 ...

debris of a letter

Danilo Kis, Danilo Kis, Danilo Kis
Little* Dany,
to your death I might add
my own little dying: my opus magnum
( a bunch of small bullshits,
to be honest),
for you have, you old scribbler,
already added to the pile 
just in time
with a shovel full
on top of mine
future death:
“DEATH IN PARIS” -
great title for a novel,
almost as good as  “...in Venice”!
But in Budapest?!
In this country that resembles a toilet someone forgot to  flush?!
You tell me...
You say nothing. Neither shall I.
But if you knew that it really did happen down south:
I am sure: you would have died laughing.
But you, with eyes that were to see death
you saw right through us
and ran away
ran from here, ran from there, ran from everywhere.
For me it's already too late.

P.S.
I hear bad things about you by the way.
Playing cards with Trotsky?
Well, you used to know best, just how much of a jinx he was.
Let him cheat sometimes.

(György Petri: Debris of a Letter) 

* Kis in Hungarian means little, small, tiny 


(reconstructed from a Serbian translation by Árpád Vickó)

can I just have one more

...the rush I was in all day... the ride across the town ...the stupid overlook lack of  deodorant on the back of my neck,  drenched in sweat under the hair. ...my  hate of  ponytails, even in the heat of the summer....


the unknown territory ...  the setting that disabled my usual  instant head to toe careful observation...the me absent-minded that archived the whole thing as a regular event...the surface and on it the things said, nothing more than that...


in rewind,


...the eyes opened slightly more than appropriate, the tongue-breaking name I gave was pronounced back correctly showing the extra effort, the prolonged greeting eye contact coupled with second hand grabbing the handshake,  the positioning straight across even though the seating arrangement was L-shaped, the legs spread open while sitting from the start, the leaning back position almost on elbows while I spoke, focus on my mouth, the straightening up movement forward when it was his turn to speak  that invaded the decency of my  touch distance , the slow head tilt  and fingers across the chin, the touching of the  right earlobe while other people spoke, then the showing of the open palm then the hand rubbing the neck, the press pause smiles that included eyes every time and the final mirroring dance in the looking forward to it segment.

 ...moondance.

...for someone fine tuned in catching the true meaning of the unspoken  I once more managed to pull a total failure in noticing  before it was too late.

 ***

When I flirt, I'm safe. The lines are straight and constant and I can remember and see them well, and the flirting itself is the external safety that subconsciously prevents accidental discharge.


When I don't flirt, thinking that the situation is by itself safe, that I needn't carry at all, prompted by the marvelous night happening around midday,   the dance starts because I've chambered the round unintentionally and automatically released the hammer.




***

why bad men tasted so good

...because the pain you were supposedly too smart to ignore was still not nearly enough to stop you from losing your mind and melting away for a night.

Good girls break their own hearts on purpose.

***


Come back down, come back down-
Come, if you're dumb

Shine on, I can see clearly the light on-
Crashing me into the rocks
You siren sweet-





So tell me true
I'd kill for you
It's sick i know
But after all
By definition of the word

Love is blind
Love is good . . .

bye.

PETRI GYÖRGY: Búcsúzás

Ég veletek, barátaim, vége a dal-
nak. Engem most már vár a ravatal.
Lehettem volna jobb, szorgalmasabb,
de sajnos ennyire futotta csak.
Kár, hogy így van, jó volna élni még,
másrészt, belátom, ennyi is elég,
nincs rá okom – nem elégedetlenkedem:
tartalmas és szép volt az életem.
S mint bársonyon smaragdok, jáspisok,
drága hónapok ékköve ragyog
még káprázó, boldog szemem előtt,
ajándék minden reggel, délelőtt,
kiélvezem a maradék időt,
mint ínyenc a húsos cubákokat
– csontig lerágom végnapjaimat.

 Farewell

Farewell, my friends, let's finish this song-

off. I am now waiting for the hearse. 

I could have been better, more productive 

but, unfortunately, I managed this far only. 

It sucks, would have been good to have lived more 

on the other hand, I realized, this much was enough, 

I have no reason to be - unsatisfied     

I had a rich and beautiful life. 

And like velvet  emeralds, jaspers, 

 precious months like jewels shine

 still bewildered  and  before my happy eyes, 

a gift is every morning, each day before the noon

I devour the remaining time, 

like a gourmet shank bone with meat  on

- the boney sticks of my final days.

( fordította nekem )

ps. Petri wrote a wonderful farewell poem in memory of his good friend Danilo Kis - I only have it in translation into Serbian - " Krhotina pisma ( Debris of a Letter)", if anyone knows where I can find the original -message  through my profile please.. .

Szivaroztam - (I Had a Cigar )

 ...I wish I had but it was someone else.

Andrea Gerak : Szivaroztam ( A Capella ) - listen here


Szivaroztam, megégettem a számat,
Odahaza más öleli a babámat,
Más öleli, másnak ül az ölébe,
Más leánynak kacsingat a szemébe.

Életembe' csak egyszer voltam boldog,
Akkor is a két szememből könny hullott,
Sírtam is én örömömbe', hogy szeret,
Bánatimba', hogy az enyém nem lehet.

***

I had a a cigar and I burned my lips,
There at home, someone else is hugging my baby,
Someone else is hugging him, he sits in someone else's lap,
He is winking at other girl's eyes.

In my life, I have been happy only once,
Even then, a tear was dripping from my two eyes,
I was crying with joy that he loved me,
And with sorrow that he couldn't be mine. 

 

http://www.andreagerak.com

( note: I found a few more verses in another version of this  traditional song - a bit of God and politics added , but still: )

"elmegyek a régi szeretőm után
megkérdezem, szeret-e még igazán"


 I am going on the path of the love from the past,
and  I am asking , will I ever love like that again.