A Global Generation

Locally Confronted

Texts taken from "In Our Words A Generation Defining Itself Volume 7"



TIME IN PERSON

If he is seen walking the city centre streets

with corpse steps, almost antiquated
or rustic
you can take it for true
that is not a working day now
but the weekend. But this man
- what an appalling life he has lived -
has not come here to show you
how time goes by
he is time in person
and how terrible he looks.

translated by Bernard Scudder

Author: Bragi Òlafson - 1962(Reykjavik, Iceland)

.::

Factual

An amphibian
Under a microscope
I await my death
Through slow dissection
There even might be
Some awesomely colourful
Pictures of my intestines
Educational and pretty
At the same time
All my deepest secrets
Exposed and the world
Could finally understand
How one can survive
With a stone-cold
Frog`s heart inside a
Blood-warm female body.

Author: Ulrike Gerbig - 1961 (Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

.::

Yoga

Sometimes - though I didn`t do what children did - I`d come into a child`s pose and rest awhile. In the back seat of our car, between the thick weeds behind our house, on my parents` bedspread, inhaling their strangely mingled scent. I did what I had to do: brought my mother tea, listened to my father talk of revolution. My parents treated me as an equal, but I needed little breaks, extra breaths. No one seemed to notice I was less than perfect.

Author: Wendy Wisner - 1977 (Bayside,NY, USA)

.::

Shoney`s Big Boy Restaurant

We waited by the door while my father sttod in line to pay. Several families stood waiting to be seated. Without any warning, my brother walked up to an old lady wearing a mink coat. He pulled a small card from his wallet and handed it to the woman. After a couple of seconds, the woman`s husband - who had been handed the card - turned to my borther.
"How dare you!" the mand exclaimed.
Several people turned.
"Hey, hey! What`s the problem?" my father said, stepping away from the line with his chest sticking out.
"Your boy insulted my wife!" he said with a sharp finger pointing our way.
"Yeah, why don`t you pick on someone you own size!" my father said with his deepest voice.
The man backed down.

When we left the restaurant, my father asked my brother whyat he had done. My brother pulled a duplicate card out from his wallet and showed it to my father. In small black print centered on the card were the words: FUR IS DEAD.

Author: Michael Hearst - b. 1972 (Brooklyn, NY, USA)

.::

So

I know the road winds here as if ignonimy as I dream yet another fantasy and try to cling on to you my rebel words do not leave me alone in ecstasy or defeat walking jostled among markets people memories do not show me your smirk again again or sound your cymbals again of insanity ... I recall the music ends here when I die and listen to the strains of yet another road not walked body not blessed woman not scripted when benedictions shower from above in agelessness in inanity.

Author: Prasenjit Maiti - b. 1971 (Kolkata, West Bengal, India)

.::

The Edge

I could already smell the consequences and I hadn`t even done anything. Sensnig an opportunity I broke out of the fold, the one I was dwelling in at the time, till I could figure something else out. The lure of the winds or whatever.

Still, I couldn`t think to see. Maybe vice versa. The real story happens to someone somewhere else. And to think of the mystical gathering, that it could actually turn out this way. Of course I`m not alive to know. Yet.

Took the fast train straight out of there, That`s what I did. The becoming of madness stiffens the corpse between my legs. It`s like fresh rollerblades on Saturday`s sidewalk, the sky rains the pus of life. Yet these are notes toward another day. And that`s why I forgot about the sunrise.

Author: Travis Jeppesen - b. 1979 (Berlin, Germany / Prague, Czech Republic)