grycja
dont eat my food
2007
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grycja don’t eat my food poetry, video and drawings translated from the Ukranian by Olena Jennings and Svitlana Matviyenko
1 I always think about propelling myself off the ground I search for zones on your shoulders your bony shoulders press against my hands egoism brought on a state of misery and then the wars, the wars‌ your instinct to protect yourself tries to embrace my bare back words used to explain the need for it the beginning of autumn is always becoming stranger peace is always constraining and holding the door by a hair I always feel the trinity of you more strongly delight struggle and amorphism the amorphous struggle with delight the delight of the struggle with amorphism and the struggle with the amporhism of delight
2 your shame makes peace feel like cotton its result will be the freedom I give you the necks of trees drip with the juice of love the necks of trees drip with cold juice eyes appear more passionate from the side though passion for a fish doesn’t mean anything nothing will change the beauty that we have together we will lose it next year in November our goal will be the croaking of frogs at midnight beneath the cold juice of the dripping neck of the careless tree buy me enough flowers to make me choke
3 we kill some and show mercy for others according to a very subconscious Darwinism, and with the tongue that stuck out and croaked we try to catch the sickness that is already without its symptoms the epidemic that congealed like gelatin we make you melt, o how we make you melt! collectors of people, places and unnecessary jokes! the only thing that could have been born in the cold shower after hot skin – slush has yet to bring about love the hot tap water kills the last hopes of those shady people...who you won’t remember tomorrow… who left their telephone numbers and disappeared I’m a very small very much damaged deer but…winter isn’t coming, which means I won’t freeze
4 you will sift out the only holy part of me without leaving truth or leaving only truth and I don’t know what to do with it the only reason to celebrate is the absence of fact because there is time left. because there is certainty left – tomorrow you won’t be here either
5 claiming to be detached which is calming at first leaves the suspicious aftertaste that something still isn’t right nothing is complete anywhere the impression is that you are betraying yourself more certainly all the time and the words that drip away – they make you move at least but for what?
6 if breast milk were cultivated with soy fertilizer it would seem just as beneficial I think that the apples over there are especially good eaten with dirt in which a child’s green legs lie unclear what made it drunk my mother is making jam in the nearby house with rhubarb, cabbage, gooseberries, and sparrows then evening begins I come to pick up the child repeatedly having to pull it from the ground home singing in a hoarse, just-out-of bed, voice: “there are always fewer kind words left, what is there to speak with? the less I feel the more I eat” the child grows up knowing that everything around it is as pure as breast milk you have similar thoughts but it is very likely that this is completely untrue small antennae and whiskers prick you so that you won’t forget – everything isn’t necessarily the way you think it is they make you smell make you piss
and most vehemently they force you to buy gifts that you don’t want to give because all your life the absence of normal milk from a mother’s breast clean and warm has made you slightly anxious
7 Lina was laid-back but daring she didn’t get her period until she was 15 and she didn’t like men she liked the musty air in her room she could never find the light switch in the dark hallway – not even once then she went to work as a receptionist at some private firm and married a very well-read citizen who then left for a long time to take care of some business across the border and from there he sent a hundred dollars a month and sometimes shoes either one size too big or too small and later even more mundane her husband didn’t return after she turned forty she was alone until an old philosopher-healer found her he made her take hot followed by cold showers make salads and jog in the morning yet she agreed to everything more than anything in the world she wanted to have kids but it was already too late to be a mother even with the help of a miracle diet and the husband-healer kept composing books aloud and taking her once a year to the theater –
life seemed to be a good dish that it was possible to eat and preferably not to wash down Lina died at 56 from an aneurysm or some other shit that the household doctor didn’t catch in the cemetery there were about 10 people and even they didn’t cry that loud, it was clear that Lina’s life didn’t stand out in any way
8 streams of vegetarian dreams are lifted by pain not carried through term from the cry of a dead lamb 9 there is no knowledge like there is in your dreams you’ll go further by walking backward you will cry over the past and tomorrow you’ll take a road into a dog’s brain you have it all, but find nothing even if they would have brought everything and left it for you you wouldn’t have taken it Danish soil! I shouldn’t smell your tulips I make good use of your time singing in your voice for 107 years mistakes aren’t capable of being forgiven the sectаrian weaves words and the words sound half-strange half-legends
the sectarian rides on black bulls in front of the windows among cut trees snakes wound around orange trees cultivate legs in cold soil which you touch every year with only your fingers you don’t want the coming of passion you are waiting for things to stop changing you are waiting for stability a dog sent unordered you rake deeply with your nails looking for food for your world totally hungry you wait to search until day and you will sleep trapped in blue pajamas my fluid will smell the strangest from that moment when I, sitting on marble, see the storm
10 why don’t I smell of a woman with a full basket of baked apples with thick fingers with the aroma of ear wax and other unwashed crevices I don’t smell of a woman who symbolizes reproduction and care who probably has a sparse mustache above her top lip and small firm nipples I don’t smell of a woman who doesn’t shave doesn’t use eyeliner because my eyes are already dark enough doesn’t pick the blackheads from her face why don’t I smell of an average woman’s despair every time I smell more strongly of eyes that are full of the world’s sorrow of short broken nails of thin skin fit legs
of more-or-less fresh milk why don’t I smell of sex or sheets why don’t I drink large chalices of wine I want to know how to begin smelling like a nice unimposing woman and to distance myself from the world upon appearance the next time that was dedicated to some totally fleeting idea
11 I never went intentionally to the places that would have reminded me of something I’m quickly slow in the world this time I’ll hear footsteps inside my mouth 12 orders are always given more often now I’m a small quick assembly line hands move fast-fast and saliva drips onto the napkin especially prepared in advance my desire forces me to look at a stranger’s shoulders what am I doing? I’m growing Japanese rice on my stomach I’m carrying fish in my breast for suckling I’m cutting my cuticles with a blade my workers have the secret task of putting my saliva and cuticles into bags
13 surrounded by a lot of people with flowers in their hair and rotten teeth they are happy because they carry their present days in little yellow bags they sit down and breathe loudly-loudly the noise of their conversations cuts through the noise of the minibus wheels Juliette’s minibar the large breasts of its owner I imagine that I have breasts like that I run with them and they bounce and shake you asked once, how does it feel to have breasts and I tried to show you
14 my love you are always becoming more perfect today I ate little marmalade ships and thought about death again thought about death my love you can touch me until I’m lying in the bathtub and water runs down my body that is becoming pink (fat, rusty) I can imagine you in the supermarket where the crazy people go you can invite me to your house at night and tell me that will be better my love you can only see things your way finally you don’t exist I know – no one ever existed I know – no one will ever exist my face is round and small. I’ll finish that which will make it all okay a cow’s dead head a queen’s dead head and we are so dead-dead, like dogs in the middle of the road I hate God
15 around me there are a lot of really beautiful insane small women I would like to be every one of them for a half an hour so that I could also go crazy and become a little bit smaller because they read good magazines that have poems and horoscopes and stories about unrequited love patterns for a jacket and embroidery with baby jesus I live in the ‘70s. why not? everyone is just as happy as the next person my mom also lives in the ‘70s she has furs and boots, she has white hair and she wants a little toy dog today I beat her in chess 2:1 and my head is absolutely full of ideas ABSOLUTELY full. a little more, games… everything around is synthetic and warm wearing me out
with its surrealism I want to have a lot of plastic surgery so that no one recognizes me. is it really so important in this world to have beautiful legs? maybe I should cut the hell out of them and make myself small wheels? and to imagine people. don’t imagine people! to hold a pill of air beneath your tongue is not that easy organize the files print the photographs the next train is at six in the morning the train is such a good thing! to not comb your hair to not have hair buy new hair to flatter a cat I envy you – you smell of birch juice desire drives me to put the night in my frozen mouth
16 I enlarge some photos to the size of a real head I kiss the screen for a long time you want to win my world because of the delight you imagine eyes melt into a large body is pale skin – a sign of pale blue blood? why am I always biting my nails shorter? my cat shines with the scales of the fish it just ate a spiritual orgasm cappuccino kefir 2 cigarettes in 2 days sweet heart and endless pain in my lungs I change the expression on my face every 10 minutes when I’m on an artificial high then I become my mother I start to make rules for everyone around me with pleasure I would throw my body on white sheets and make the masseuse pour warm water with honey over me
a holiday comes along just when you understand that sometimes you can rest without worry yesterday I really wanted to be a 13 year old girl whose skin smells of milk today I want to be a forty year old architect who talks bullshit about some kind of deconstructionism at the same time I lose people but I already forgot some of them again I want to shave my hair off, write memoirs, eat wheat to grow a beard, live in a cave, grow mushrooms project spirals, dream dreams, draw naked nervous women I know what to choose from all this I’ll probably just decorate my room and make my cat pasta with bits of cod liver and pineapple
17
I was making love to the world and the world kissed my neck