Gintaras Grajauskas

Soft snow poem

there are barbers and buses,

there are women saying ‘I know you’,

there are winters, like now

there are streets,

and orange sellers

of oranges

there are quiet madmen, I know one,

it’s snowing outside the window, winter,

as I said.

there are houses, and in the houses

there are many 

many things

there are screws, and there are nuts.

You can screw them tight, take them

out, entertainment for boney fingers.

there are days every morning

and nights every evening,

for how could it be otherwise.

probably there are also books, at least one,

surely there are readings over the shoulder,

furtive,

a monotonous adventure.

And that’s it, there’s nothing else?

nothing. Then what, then what.

*

The comic strip

what a strange comic strip

my life would make

all the little pictures would show

a long journey on a dusty road,

the slow movements of an eye,

bentgrass on the side of the road

all the little pictures would show

the reins between my knees,

and above my head, in a white 

balloon, the text: hmm hm hmmm,

ladida do da, and polite

albeit dignified nods

to passers-by on the road

all the little pictures would show

the whip in my boot, drooping eyelids, 

the fallen corners of my mouth,

and the horse’s massive rear

so you drive and you drive, 

driving along, you drive

from one frame 

to the next

*

It’s him

It’s him who takes the lemon out of your tea

It’s him who gnaws the legs of your table

It’s him who turns the lights on and off, walking around

cracking his knuckles

he tosses your children up to the ceiling

calls your friends at four in the morning

then smashes a bottle onto the wall and

pees in the sink

he’s an atheist by nature, he’s god’s bane

he’s your inquisitor and sweet revenge

he sleeps with your women, and sleeps

like a babe

he comes and goes as he wishes

he refuses to tell you the time

he laughs at you, laughs

doubling over

he dips your lemon in sugar and chews

he looks into your eyes and says: ‘someday I’ll kill you’

he looks, nodding your head 

and smiling.

*

What there is at the internet’s core

mystics say a spider squats 

at the internet’s core

no, say the specialists

he doesn’t squat

but really, it’s the biggest

garbage dump in the world

full of homeless people

with browsers

what’s most fascinating is that 

the internet is nowhere

and that’s where we have 

our addresses

*

Radviliškis blues

he was the most handsome man 

in the whole town – and tall,

not stupid, and that smile of smiles;

girls circled him like sharks

I had hair down to my arse,

and we were a couple back then,

until he fled to make money

and that was that

he married some Irish girl, an orphan

with two kids: he sent photos –

they’re all standing in their dumb

Dublin with big smiles

and he always calls me ‘deary’,

always writing letters, but once

he sent an sms: ‘forget that shitty

life, everyone’s cool here now’

I wrote back: ‘you know, I like

it best in my own hole’ –

and what a dumb mistake –

home, not hole, for fuck’s sake

if not for those two urchins

I’d walk there on my own two feet

and rip the eyes out of the face

of that entire Ireland!

9 ‘because I’m not at all the one you’re waiting for…’

10 Illumination

11 Winter, a long-legged dog

12 Grandfather’s birthday

13 Meaning

14 St Lucy gets hit on the head

15 ‘on that day, if you remember…’

16 Ballad

17 The maiden and the unicorn

18 St Lucy’s secret letter to the Master of the White Scarf Lodge 

19 Soft snow poem

20 St Lucy among the Hyperboreans

21 Heat

22 Pipe organs

23 I don’t dance

25 How to defeat a berserker

26 God’s frequency is 50 Hz

27 How it all happened

28 In high grass gazing at the sky

29 Battleships

30 ‘now, it doesn’t matter…’

31 The comic strip

32 ‘to look for insults…’

33 It’s him

34 Painfully funny now

35 The ending which probably doesn’t exist

36 ‘having bounced around the world…’

37 ‘it’s already getting dark…’

38 Emigrant

39 While eating a hamburger by the snack bar at kilometer 64 of the Klaipėda-Vilnius Highway, I met a learned raven

40 Little Buddha

41 Sincerely

42 Poetry readings

43 Poem about the Lithuanian search for identity

45 ‘i’m building a barricade…’

47 Some kind of Kafka

48 What you need to know about life

49 The artist’s wife

50 Second-hand

52 Screen

53 What there is at the internet’s core

54 An exercise for summoning happiness

55 Children’s games

56 Not a poem

57 Cinematographic poem

60 Before the crucifixion, they muttered

61 When it rains and rains and rains

63 An immortal

64 Victor

65 Icon painter

66 Radviliškis blues

67 The decline of the West

68 Berserker II

69 The whole truth about knights

70 I understand her, seriously

71 Initiation

72 ‘damn, again with that red mazda…’

73 Spring on Mažvydo Avenue

74 The inside of the coat is the better side

75 ‘Good day! Nice …’

76 Whatever they say, what matters is how it really is

77 Blind Date

78 Closer, farther

79 Person with half a watermelon

80 ‘you wrote, of course, a mendacious…’

81 Shaman

82 ‘yeah, so you’re right – I sang and…’

84 ‘i was playing tennis…’

85 On steam engines

86 Everything seems fine, but something’s not right

87 Maybe something’s not right, but everything’s fine

88 Some more about Frank

89 Five quick looks

91 Procession. Fog

92 ‘and so i wrote…’

93 [ _ _ _ _ ]

94 After a reading

95 Thaw