Giannina Braschi - Empire of Dreams

Nothing. Everything looks like nothing. Everything is pale. White. Nothing. Everything is rotten. Everything is absurd. Nothing. Because everything is so difficult. Or because everything is so simple. Or because the world turns. Nothing. A television. A telegram. A concert. Skinny, emaciated poetry. A pale, thin poem. A sickly poem. As if the gasoline were running out. As if the fighter no longer wanted to fight. As if he were exhausted. As if his eyes were closing. As if he couldn’t go on. As if he were about to drop dead. Over the tomb. Dead. As if poetry were ending. As if it had to end. As if the poet did not exist. He doesn’t exist. It’s reason enough for him to be quiet. Silence is suddenly born. The spokesman for death is born. What is born is always born. But nothing is here on top. Placing silences on things. Giving them moments of closure. Of enclosure. Giving them spaces or ways. Slowly. Walking with a child’s bicycle. On a street. Someone passing by a building. By a building erected by silence. Or a void. Which will also become void. Even absence has its motives. And its hovels, its details. Its voids. One would suppose that at the end of so many details something must be found. But absence places a period at its beginning. Dots its silence. The absence of death. The absence of silence. The absence of exclamations and interjections. The absence of absence. Nothing.

I will speak of my absences. Of all my absences and my negligence on top of heaps of faults. On top of mountainous heaps or hopes. One bunny has two boy bunnies and a girl bunny. The same is true of squirrels. They multiply. And then they trample over us, men and more men. Women and more women. Absences and more absences. Three or four were missing from death or from life. They returned. Returned. One returns returning from life or from death. From the wheel that turns. From childhood one still returns. Down the stairs. The travelers returned. Returning from childhood. Or from abroad. Returning down the stairs or the elevator. One looks back. Looks back. Back. And writes a period. Doesn’t write it. Feels absence imposed. Feels returned from absence. And feels it. It is felt without meaning. Without meaning or significance. I won’t call him man. I won’t call her woman. I won’t be able to tell those who still haven’t returned. But it must be felt. It must be lived. From the back. The back of life. The absence of life. She who went and did not return. She who went, never to return. It wasn’t thunder or rain. It wasn’t morning or afternoon. And it wasn’t night. Or spring. It wasn’t life. Or death. It was nothing less. Nothing more than nothingness. The nothingness that does not speak. That does not say a word. The nothingness that does not drown though it cannot swim. Nothing was the absence of nothing. Nothing was the nothing of absence. Absence was the nothing of nothing. It was the very nothing of nothingness itself. Absence.

Absence without wanting it. Without imposing its mandate, its power, or its sovereignty. It imposes its rule. It imposes its destiny. It imposes what must be imposed. Without there being lightning or thunder. Without there being a moment later. Neither forever. Nor goodbye. Just because it wants to be the same lost innocence. Just because of its remoteness. Or my distance. Nothingness just isn’t. Isn’t here. Unless it lay down to sleep on the core of its own void. On the tomb of its own vacuum. But the scream of nothingness would cry out even over this tomb. The testimony of the tomb or the nothingness would start to manifest itself. My voice would cry out over this nothingness that imposes its silences. Its deserts. Deserts of dust. Deserts of lives. Of winters. Of suns. Of silences. The screaming of nothing sets in. The breathing of death sets in. It imposes its corpse. Its distance. It imposes the testimony of nothingness. It imposes silences, suicides, the sad coming of dawn. It imposes rosaries. Upon the very tomb of nothingness.

I am a void that abhors the void. There is no possible explanation. Abhors it. And enough. Affirms. Walks and continues. Requests. Implores. Entreats. Sobs. Or cries. But abhors. Many moments of life have already been requested. And now I kneel. To implore. Sick. Only to ask. Only to beg. If it’s possible. A moment. Only a moment to cry. Kneeling. And only a heart, only a memory, only a repetition. If it were possible, I’d want them to forgive me. A damned forgiveness. I don’t want to ask for it or beg for it. A possible history. A possible repetition. And I’m fed up. And I ask my partner to dance again. Dance. Dance. I dance. And dance. Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap. Jig. Jag. Jig. Jag. Come here, gag. Asleep. I dream. Violent. I implore. And laaa. Leee. Laaa. Leee. Laaa. Violins. And trumpets. Bee. Bop. Bee. Bop. What’s that I see? A mouse on the floor. What’s that I see? An ant on the floor. What’s that I see? Two little roaches in love with the floor. Or with life. Or with lightning. Or with thunder. Or with the wheel that turns and turns and turns throughout the universe turning around again. All over again. Click. Clack. Click. Clack. More. More. More. More. Two more times. Three more times. Ten more times. Fourteen more times. A dozen more times. Two hundred thousand more times. And more. And more. And click. Click. Click. Clack.

How many horrible things can happen to a man before. Or after. And it all hinges on beauty. Or the wheel. The climax is a navel or a stone. I stop and think. And maybe I’ll throw a dart or a stone. I’m tired of watching. I’ll penetrate now. I’ll enter later. It’s not the same exact spot. It’s been two days. Two whole nights. Finished. Examined from top to bottom. Ten days of exhaustion. One long live joy. Or long live exhaustion. One more kilometer. You again. Me again. Behind the same pulpit. In the same classroom. A teacher. Dictating an invented destiny. A new word. Vocabulary. A closed book. Against this flower. Against this very flower. Against this very squirrel. Against the sun. Against all kinds of parachutes. Against the same ground. Against the same cold panther. Against the same dust. Crossed. Dust. Dust. Or fog. Smoke. Fires. Or flashes. That’s to say. Let’s give ten examples. Let’s set our goals. Let’s conjugate ten verbs. Let’s eliminate them from the grammatical system. Let’s take away their action. Let’s invite them to a hypothetical grammatical time. Oh, moon, oh, star, oh life! And let’s give them a chance to think. Behind a desk. Smoke, wind, dust. Above my eyes, two stars shine. Under my legs, face down, two lines meet that cross the same crossword puzzle. Without thinking, the solution is obvious. And still unanswerable.

A little while longer. Ten days repeated. I’m looking at the moon. The highest star. The solution to the same math problem. On a pile of conjectures. Polysynchronized colors. And the answer ten kilometers from my house. Proof for a theorem. I’ll supply you with all the necessary material. I’ll give you a certificate. A science diploma. Some goggles. From the time before iguanas and the world. A frog croaks. A cricket sings. I love bird nests. From the time before life. I love from dreams. Toad interpretations. I come whenever I hear iguana concerts. My orgasm is an organ. An organism. A simple tadpole that becomes a frog. A mouse has his own way of fighting a cat. He takes him out of context. The cat’s text meows. Mice want cheese. Cows eat lots of meat. Polychromatic urban cows. Green. Orange. Or yellow. The piano, softly. Or the C in E flat. In A minor. Still listening to the symphony. Still. Allegretto. Fugue. Scherzo. Or andante con moto, or andante con brio, or rondo burlesco. In the rondo of the minuet or the waltz. A C in E-flat. Ten days of fugue. Music vacations. An ironic fit of laughter still rules over the sea. And a stupid drool.

This is not it, says the teacher. Not my child, says the mother. Nor has this tale ended. Ten more times. The same season of the year, says the old man. And he imagines a flower, said the painter of the world. Said the murderer himself. The leech, the bloodsucker. His tongue is red. Blood red. It’s got red candy, said the boy. Days are better at the beach, said the swimmer. I’m naked, said the metaphorical man. The imaginary one drinks water. Thinks cognac. Thinks whiskey. Thinks scotch. Women always paint their nails the day before, said the manicurist. I’m in the world too, adds the polemicist. Polemics. I pretend I’m nearsighted. I’m a lefty, said the righty. The heart rests on the right side, said the nitwit. Two lines beside a great big X, said the mathematician. An experiment is a sin, agreed the scientist. I add — two experiments. I underline — a hypothetical exit. The labyrinth, said the minotaur. Or the museum, said the musician. Two notes simply rhyme, said the painter. And a locomotive appears, adds the metaphorical mechanic. So I won’t be told that I’m not a poet, adds the novelist, underlining poet. Here is something special. Here is a gift. Here is a box. Here are the metaphors for all theories. Here is a new doctrine on how to begin.