Poetry and Antipoetry

Can a Poem Help (1992)

You buy clothes
and I buy records
you cough
and I have hemorrhoids

When discussions go well into the night
and the feeling is that only the wall understands
that all paths lead to a dead end road
that everything is gray and gray and gray
and nothing is white or black

You wear yellow clothes
and I go to Fendelkraiss
looking for a way to fly abroad for a month
or trying by all means to avoid you

How can a poem help...

Lisbon (1993)

while
writing poems to you
in a cafe
in front of the birds
the painter painted me
smiled to me
while
I wrote you poems
and wrote that
he was painting me
all the world was invaded by love
our love
filled the world.

Poème Yougoslave (1994)

Il y eu plus d'années dans cette année
Que dans toute ma vie
J'ai appris la mort

J'ai appris a vivre dans la tombe
Appris la haine
Appris le vol
Appris le crime
Appris qu'il n'y a pas d'amour sur terre
Appris qu'il n'y a que des interets
J'ai appris

Antipoetry (1995)

Like Nicanor Parra I write antipoetry
antipoems for antipeople in antibooks
antipoems for anticritics for antireaders
antipoetry for antiassholes in the antimatter
antielectrons in the antiatoms for antideaf
in my antiadaptation to the literary world
in the antigroup of the antiliterature
antipoetry for antieditors for antiprizes
for antilectors for anticorrectors for antipublishers
and it is not because I don't like poetry or
because I don't like critics, it is because,
like any other antipoet I only know
how to write
antipoetry.

La pitance du feu (1996)

Le bateau brulait sur la mer
et le pere dit au fils
mieux vaudrait sauter a la mer
que bruler ici
au moins nous servirons de repas aux requins.

Le fils repondit:
Et pourquoi ne pas etre
le repas, du feu?

All poems translated from the Hebrew by Moshe Benarroch, except those in French translated by Moshe and Danielle Benarroch.