The Smell of Dry Leaves

the smell of dry leaves…
one time I had a gir-girlfriend…
I was in high school and for the sake of being weird
(I was a poet), I told her: you know what,
I see more colors than most other people,” and she,
M., would say: “well, you should
go see an ophthalmologist”, but truly,
not joking… the smell of
dried leaves being burnt in the Barbu V?c?rescu’s yard
next to the police general inspectorate…

I decorated the autumn season with diamonds then: it seems
diamond, the girl with braided hair (or gloves?).
everything was diamond then
and if people were defecating
it’d be a diamond knocking around in the toilet or
if the trees keeping their leaves, they were necessarily
diamond.

I was writing poems and crying at the typewriter
but the women were inv-invented
and I didn’t know how to make love, I’d tried
and failed as a boy,
a jealous, angry boy… a member of the Monday literary circle…
a student…

it’s so nice to rub a girl between the thighs
bare and so, very human
not “woman”
and if you open the window when it’s autumn outside
its scent would enter: the lea-
the courtyards
of dry leaves and red fire tongues…
sex is completely ridiculous in books and movies—plotted
fucking-n-sucking
insanity

in real life, though, it’s sweet and sad
the bodies are behaved
there’s the fucking and it’s sucking, also
but for most
and most of the time
it’s different, it’s:

her calling me Meer-Meer
or, Mrr-Mrr when I’m cheap
in the elevator, after going out
when I grab her butt and snarl: “this is it,
you’re not getting away: I’m going to rape you!”, but she plays along:
“unhand me, sir, or I’ll knock you out!”
standing at the door
unlocking
discovering ourselves in a silly, little home
and everyone, everything else can go to hell…

and now, for the great maestro of finales
to offer the poem
the perfect, poetic finale:

“ah, the smell of burning leaves,
of the leaf burning in the courtyards,
of diamond leaf from the air with diamonds…”