A Bit of Poetry

A Translation by a poem by Mario Benedetti

The Defense of Happiness
---

Defend happiness as the trenches
defend it from scandal and routine
from misery and the miserable 
from the transient absences
and the definitive ones

defend happiness as a principle
defend it from fright and nightmare
from the neutral ones and the neutrons
from the sweet disgraces
and the darkened diagnostics

defend happiness as a flag
defend it from lightning and melancholy
from the guileless and the guilty
from the rhetoric and the heart attacks
from the endemic and from the academic

defend happiness as a destiny
defend from the fire and the firemen
from suicides and homicides
from the leisurely and the overwhelming
from the obligation of happiness

defend happiness as a certainty
defend it from oxidation and filth
from the famously worn-out time
from the morning dew and opportunism
from the prostitutes of laughter

defend happiness as a right
defend it from god and from the winter
from capitalization and death
from last names and regrets
from probabilities
                          and from happiness as well.

A Bit of Poetry

The Science of Goodbyes
-----
Sometimes I feel my skin is a city
in Spain, where you live as a gypsy

and I hate how you stand in Madrid,
in El Museo del Prado, naked, 
hunching over your body 
with a dolphin at your feet.

Symmetry, Spirituality: 
the crude-and-cruel architecture 
of your breasts, as a statue,
much like you, 
but refusing to be photographed alive. 

I’m learning how to use Cable Theory and 
squid nerves, electricity of the brain,
models to explain how I woke up in Barcelona,
dreaming about your molecules.

I wanted to wrap you in myelinated sheets
to conserve your signals 
or maybe open up my chest 
and shelter you like a butterfly
in a bullet-proof vest.

I sit in the cross-town bus 
listening to others in love, 
or searching for love, 
making up explanations 
for the concreteness of angels

or theories of how space-time 
folds over our backs
when we swim together. 
A scientific theory
can always be proven wrong, 
so we believe in astrology, 
the throw of the dice, our heart 
as an oracle. Vividly I remember: awake,

thinking you were pressed against me, and I see
the marina instead, with the boats and the sea,
clumsily imitating your irises,
not as grey or iridescent.
These are the strange things I dream about: 
two bodies with one head, 
our souls collapsed like childish lungs. 
When dreaming, I am confused 
like the wall is confused
when I drive a nail through its flesh,

the same wall upon which I kissed your
necklace, leaving an antiquated aura of glory.
Afterwards, I rearranged my furniture and lungs
to be closer to the lights, to see you reflected
in the windows as a maybe-comeback-goodbye,

expanding, smiling, unraveling the arteries.

"for AJS, the duck, the lion and the green pants."
Published in Quarto Magazine, 2006

Post-Modern Romantic Manifesto

Watch out, cynics and poets with no blood or bones. We will get you, unveiling how you have transformed poetry into a dull, rotten science. we will unveil what the common purpose of your art is to twist and turn to the sound of the inhumane machine. We will unveil how you eat cynicism to survive and kill the only human quality we possess over everything else: Love.

We the undersigned, have wowed to write and feel and be alive, and know that love must be retrieved from the deep darkness that it has fallen into. We live in New York City, a place where love has been arrested at sunrise, eternally. We live here and we work, and read, and study in the metric machine to destroy the cogs and wheels that have been ruling through its ghastly heart. We will take back the humanity that we have lost from you, the elitist writer, the man of technicalities and syntax, and we will fight against losing our humanity. We will uphold what others have fought for--what other poets were fighting for through their sword-poems.

We want to revive the notion of romantic poets, poets who defy postmodernism and view it as an attempt to pidgeon-hole the soul of man. we want everyone to enjoy poetry, from the leader of masses to the breadmaker. We want everyone to come sing with us, and for us to sing about being human and loving. We uphold Kurt Vonnegut's claim that the true purpose of human life is to love whoever is around to be loved. We uphold Dylan Thomas as we rage against the dying of what makes us human. We uphold Ginsberg as we fight against the humanistic starvation of the soul in our modern society. We will chant to Kenneth Koch, imitating a match, bursting into flame, or the water boiling...

This is not a passive movement. This is the boiling point--it speaks of urgency. Join us if you still think there is a light to keep alive in the wick of the human soul.

For us, the spark resides in writing about being human and about love, about the spirit and how it won't be buckled into submission. For you it may be dance, the thickness of paint or photographs. We want you to express the same feeling in your medium, no matter what it is. We encourage public displays of affection, we encourage the abhorement of cynicism.

this is what a post-modern romantic is.