"Now it is time to collect my consciousness"
Now it is time to collect my consciousness
To mine for the roots
I come from a mining town
I walk backwards, I collect stamps, cross that, memories
And they fall through my fingers like fine grained sand
Like a clock, like liquid time that flows from my eyes
Now, I can reach into my heart and see the town
I can project the image of so many housing projects
No need to own a house, there is always a flat to rent
No burden please; there is a train to catch
I see the long wide roads
The trams to town; the traffic has not yet reached these traffic signals
And the grey blooms in unexpected colors
In flowers picked from the gardens of unsuspecting public
In the shade of the trees, in the red of the trams, in the blue of the trams
In the darker red of the buses
We knew of Everything that went on in this town
We knew all the people and all the places you could dance in
But then, Vaska died
And Latex went mad
Bori disappeared who knows where
Tom's dream turned out to be true
(I still regret not going to the funeral)
Some people lost their faith
And I left
I left behind a person that was me
That I am now trying to find
And sometimes, late at night, I do not think of Dean Moriarty,
But of these friends and stories we had and could have had.
Prague, My Friend
I don't seem to be fit to describe your beauty
Perhaps if I had a cheat sheet of the facts or a documentary
The exact number of the statues on your auspicious bridge
Or the size of your main square that has seen so many of us cry, rejoice, shop, and prostitute ourselves
for the party, the corporation, or the Western Tourist
I can only assume that you have more than 100 spires
And that the gold in your name is of the highest calibre
and refers to your heart
I suspect that's what the alchemists were after
And when K. walked through your streets, you were still dark,
without all of those pastel colored facades, souvenir shops
with Matrioskas (hello, this is NOT Russia)
And no fast food, no fast coffee joints to complement your new lifestyle
Perhaps people have something to hurry for now
Catching the tail of their freedom
Speeding through this city in their new cars,
and once in a while grabbing the red hot core of eternity
and burning their fingers
Describing all of the above in the sweet flowing undulating language
(freedom should roll like those hills)
And yeah, I can tell you we have those hills,
but I have crossed them
Whilst you, my sister, my adopted mother still lure the strangers by your beauty
That even after all these lines, I am still powerless to touch
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When I die, I will first go to where I was born,
and at that point, take it all in,
moment by moment,
question by question,
train by train,
and flight by flight
I will decipher my dreams:
The bedecked elephants
The bleeding raven,
and the talking dog;
Revisit lost people,
the man who I met by the Prague castle
his daughter
and their Balkan connection
I will understand all the cross–roads of Europe
Exits to America
and Flights to Asia
I will understand the unsaid
Then I will say the unsaid
In entirely new words
That the world has not seen
I will be glad that my legs are not there
to hurt from all those travels
In short, I will be happy not to have any luggage
The barrage of which in my dreams I do understand
even now
But the person that dies is not the same
as the person that was born
and in–between, a string of ever–changing situations
a jungle of paths
That I will walk on
only this once more
and look into the eyes of all the moments
give them a long and hard stare
and shake hands
Impermanence of All Things¹
I used to wonder as a child in Sudetenland²
Why do these people come to our house, all the way from Germany?
What is it they want to see? Who are they? What brought them here?
Grandmother seemed so kind inviting them in,
And I was probably proud –
Of our golden yellow house
Its red roof
Green balcony
Pink roses
And abundance of strawberries
Now, 25 years later, an immigrant tech worker,
Shopping for organic strawberries never to recover that taste
Counting dollars and vacation days
I wonder every now and then –
Who lives in that house,
And would they let me in?
Missing Anita Lynn
Nobody really knows what happened
We used to call her Big Sister
She inspired us to cook, so we made an eclectic purple soup once
In The Globe, she preached to us about safe sex, and told us about her wild adventures
With expats, artists, and one government officer
We always thought he was sleazy
The beginning of spring in Prague
Still echoes in me now,
But that year Hrabal jumped out of his hospital window
And Anita thought he did the right thing
She was not the person to do the housework
The note she wrote, what a great day, it's time to clean up
Appeased the lethargic post–communist cops
It seemed ominous to us
The artist in her chose a beautiful day to die
1. This poem was originally published in The Bohemian, a student journal at the Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. 2. Sudetenland is a region in Czech Republic where prior to WWII lived many ethnic Germans for centuries. After the war, the Czech government forced relocation of this minority to Germany, and the Czech people were able to buy their vacated houses cheaply.
Ekleksographia:
Wave Two
March, 2010
Poetry
Daniela Kantorova
Daniela Kantorova grew up in Czech Republic and is currently living in California, pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology with an interest in trauma. Her passions include human rights, writing, and photography. Kantorova has been blogging for Mideastyouth.com and, as a member of the Baha'i community, she has been active in raising awareness of human rights violations in Iran.